Fandom/Kins Rules Update Feedback Box

Since it was added- pet site characters should be allowed, but only if the site in question allows offsite posting.  If they don't, nope.  That's violating rules and possibly even the law, depending.

Also video games which aren't explicitly meant to be used as character creators shouldn't be treated like they are, unless the owner of the IP actually allows such uses.  It's not fair to claim unintended uses of a game are fair game just because "you can be creative".  It's still someone else's IP, and a lot of times license agreements say they still own it all.

Well, I definitely think that derivatives of actual characters (ex: naruto as a dog) should not be allwoed; those are copyrighted characters and to make money off them in any way (adoptables, commissioned art to draw naruto as a dog) is technically illegal because you're profiting off of someone else's IP). This should also include Pokemon, unfortunately, as well as Pokefusions and gijinkas. Fakemon are a bit more of a gray area, and I'd assume they're more like fan characters. Nintendo is very sue-happy when it comes to their IP and people profiting from their stuff,a nd it could get users in trouble.

+1 On banning Canon Characters being uploaded.

+1 On the canon characters as furries and/or feral animals being banned. Also includes recolors of canon characters (I'm looking at you, Pokemon fandom. just because you made your Pikachu pink or gave it spots doesn't mean it isn't still a copyrighted character).

As for characters inspired by the look of other characters (let's say for example, if someone was making adoptables that are the children of X character or even children of X character and Y character), I think it should be allowed since they may look like the parent character(s), but are not. A user can write that a "child of X canon character" has their own personality, maybe adopted quirks from the parent (ex: verbal quirks like maybe a saying, or sound added to the end of words), and maybe even a shared birth mark (ex: Fire Emblem Awakening's royal family has a special birth mark that is passed down from generation to generation to symbolize the child's royal blood)

-1 OCs in Canon Settings. Fan characters should be allowed. I agree that using uniforms may be seen as a gray area, however characters do also have casual clothes/civilian clothes, so it shouldn't be mandatory to have the character in a canon uniform all the time. In the sense of My Hero Academia, hero outfits apply as being something off-canon since it would be an original design for the character.

+1 to ban OCs of a canon species. I am a bit tentative on this, but I am mostly expressing this with Pokemon, because again, NIntendo is very sue-happy about their IP being used for profit in ANY form. It violates copyright laws and technically, profiting from drawing canon characters (via commissions or e-sales of fan content like stickers or prints) for most franchises I believe is also a copyright violation. Flight Rising IMO is a gray area since dragons can be different, and the only "canon" (I suppose?) characters are the NPC dragons in FR. All others are used for roleplaying and people can dress them up differently and use skins to personalize dragons beyond their color schemes and genes. Note: Steven Universe and MLP characters are a huge gray area here too.. I think this excludes Transformers? Hasbro seems okay with people making Cybertronian OCs.

There's certain My Character/Avatar characters that cshould be allowed, and some that shouldn't. Frisk c an't be customized to look different-you just control their actions, versus a TERRA character you made that you made an OC from. If Frisk characters were allowed, there would be so many Frisk characters and they all LOOK the same. It would be kind of easy to steal art for them if your "OC" looks exactly like another OC (that is an MC but also canon). Fire Emblem's Robin and Corrin, too, fall into a gray area because they can be customized, but still stay true to a not-very-canon-divergent appearance, depending on the character's class.

There's a huge gray area that I think needs better defining.

Tbh I feel like all of this is just overly restrictive? 

Reuploading canon characters/kin galleries, things of that nature- +1 to ban 

+1 to banning obvious recolors

+1 to banning the sale of “Naruto but as a dog” characters. I have some really old characters that were made inspired by some of my favorites    But have evolved into their own thing that I would hate to see banned based on the premise that I was young and inspired. (Reason for not changing their design being (A) them having a bunch of art and (B) species rules and guidelines not allowing me to) Having stuff like that but for fun is chill but making a profit off of it strikes as wrong? 

Put into the words of my boyf “there’s a difference between directly transferring a character completely into another state of being (I e Naruto characters with the exact same story and personalities but as animals) than being inspired by something and it being your own thing”

Everything else? Overstepping imo 

I can understand banning characters that are just explicitly the canon characters and nothing else, but I feel like things such as all the derivative characters as well as AUs for characters should be allowed. I mean honestly, this stuff isn't really HURTING anyone or the site as far as I'm aware, so I don't really see a point in banning any of them? But out of the bunch the only thing I at least understand a reason behind banning is the characters that are literally just canon characters.

I think instead maybe instead it should just be a rule to make it more clear when a character you have uploaded is an AU, fan character, based off of another character, etc. that way people will at least know it's related to something ((in case of trades and whatnot, so they can be properly informed)) without ruining the fun for people who create or own these kinds of characters

BlueRocketMouse; I apologize for tagging you, but in regards to this site being for "original characters only" as far as I can tell it has to do with the description of what it is intended for.  From Toyhouse's description: A community for collaborative character creation and trading, worldbuilding and roleplay.

Collaborative character creation has some degree of "I am creating original works" implied. Not that I necessarily agree that all fan characters should be banned or that is how it was intended to come off, mind you. Just my understanding of the sentiment.

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Segwaying onto some rather disturbing sentiments I've noticed: I do want to say, though, I do agree that if it is a grey area it is better to err on the side of caution. I know people feel personally attacked by this suggestion, but it is more practical to stay away from subjects that could be copyright infringement. The fact is, your rights only extend you are not infringing on other's rights. IP is a tricky concept, but it is frankly horrid to sit there and say "well unless the creator says they have a problem, I am going to assume it is ok." No. Just no. If the creator says it is ok then be free, but just because everyone is doing it does not make it just or moral. You are still stepping on someone else's IP for your own selfish benefits. It doesn't matter if they are "brand name" or "small creators". They are still people with rights. Just my two cents on it. 

Edit for Clarity: This is more directed at the logical fallacy of well people are already doing it elsewhere about (simplistic) AUs in particular. That may be, but I don't think it makes it any more acceptable.

Uploading canon characters should be banned. You did not buy them, own the rights to them, or make them. I support OC x cannon, have OC x cannon OCs myself, and I think that that cannon characters should be supported, maybe a feature that relates to wiki or offsite links. But to upload just a cannon character/gallery to your account is not an original character, it should not be allowed. I'm not sure about respeciations, but to completely ban them seems a little harsh.

Deriviatve characters should be allowed. That is what a lot of beginners start with when they get into character creation, and they rarely sell the character, or change them a lot before doing so. It would just be unfair to beginners and younger people to ban it.

Cannon settings should 100% be allowed, and, please don't ban cannon species, self-inserts, and MCs. They can be 100% unique and creative, almost all self-inserts and MCs have different stories have different stories than noncontrolled cannon characters, that's the point of them. Also, like 90% of the characters on this site would have to be removed.

I'd say put rules on what you can sell, but not upload and use. I don't want to worry about what I can and cannot upload to an archival site that I keep mostly private.

+1 to ban canon characters

imo a good way to draw the line on derivative characters is if you can just say "they're x but with y" about them in a simple statement. "bakugou but he's a dog," "alphonse elric but he's a human barista," "naruto but he's a modern superhero"—these are just canon characters in AUs and i think they should be banned. same goes for characters which say they're ocs but are always cosplaying a canon character, share most if not all major traits with a canon character; these are a little more case-by-case but these feel more like bad attempts at skirting the rules at a surface description lmao

so anyway i would qualify the above as an AU instead of a derivative character, personally; i agree with the others who have said the category as-is is too broad. keeping pokémon trainers, hogwarts students, neopets, is fine. someone earlier talked about how the real question here is "who/what is toyhouse for?" and imo when this is much more a site for personal content, it makes more sense to allow fan characters that exist ~just for fun, instead of everything needing to be from a 100% original story or setting, because then we start leaning into this being a site for, like, Proper Professionals actively trying to Make Something of all their creations, where toyhouse is just sort of a fun sharing repository

also the "personalized playable MCs" category as-is is a REALLY weird one. like, frisk is absolutely 100% just a canon character; just because you can play as them doesn't make them personal? in the same vein, robin from fe:a has very little in the way of customizable aspects: appearance and spouse, but their personality is the same throughout the story no matter what you do with them. there are, like...four choices absolute tops that alter dialogue, only one of which has any impact on the story. corrin/kamui is a similar case. i think, like, fallout protagonists or your MMO characters more closely align with the hogwarts students/pokémon trainer school of fan character, because they exist in a setting but the setting is so open with so much to do and so many ways to do it that you can create a character personality from scratch in that way, and those are fine, but if a character exists in a canon setting already, there has to be a heavy degree of customizability for them to stop counting as just a straight up canon character.

Kadrina No problem for the tag! However, I personally don't see how the description of "collaborative character creation" in any way implies that the characters involved must be original. If anything I see it as quite the opposite, as collaborative to me implies encouraging the work of multiple people and/or taking inspiration from sources other than yourself. Even then, as I mentioned it's not like there isn't any original content creation involved whatsoever in fan based characters. Canon character based designs aren't always just a "copy-paste info off the wiki and call it good" type of deal. It's like I said before, I put work into creating art/writing for my fan based characters, along with figuring out how to put my own spin on their development while maintaining the aspects that drew me to the original character in the first place.

• Canon characters:
  • EG: Re-uploading Naruto with no changes made to his design or history (usually includes GIFs and screenshots from the anime or copy pasted paragraphs from the character's wiki page)
    - ban this
• Derivative characters:
  • Any characters derivative from canon content - this includes:
    • Explicit redesigns (eg. Naruto as a dog or furry)
      +1 (you can't be allowed to just slap on a "THIS IS MY OC" tag on naruto if he's a dog)
    • Characters that're described as an OC or sona but resemble the canon character in both personality and appearance or cosplay them 24/7
      -ban this (same shit as above)
    • Personalised playable MCs (eg. customised Kamui/Robin, Frisk, Gudako/Gudao)
      -allow this
    • Personalised pet site/game characters (eg. FlightRising dragons, Neopet/Subeta/ChickenSmoothie pets)
      -allow this as long as the pet site says its alright
    • Characters belonging to a canon species (eg. pokemon OCs, LOZ OCs)
      -allow this
    • Characters belonging to a canon setting (eg. BNHA/Hogwarts OCs that use the school uniform taken from canon designs)
      -allow this. why is this here LOL

???

Ban the obvious upload of a canon character, but derivatives should be fine. It's already a rule that if you're selling a derivative you have to say it's based on a character. I think that's fine enough.

There's only so much that can be said that hasn't already been said but I'll just throw my two cents up in here

When you're taking Naruto and just slapping him on here and saying hes your OC yeah get rid of it
However there's a big blurry line when it comes to inspired ocs

I have a DBH Connor dog
He looks nothing like Connor other than the LED and is named Connor
Doesn't wear his uniform doesn't have his personality doesn't have his backstory
He has a standard police uniform, completely different personality and story but is set in the DBH universe, and is also my sona;

So, does that mean because he was inspired by a pre-existing character he should be banned even though he has none of the same traits???
That to me is unfair and biased as hell; People are inspired by things it's just how it is you're always going to have someone who loves a character and wants to make something inspired by it;
( which there is a HUGE DIFFERENT between inspired and copied, if i made connor dog literally just a gray dog with connors hair and eye color and uniform and pasted in his personality then that's no longer inspired )

Canon settings / Species: Just because something is set in a particular world or is of a particular species doesn't mean that they weren't an original character from the start. Spidersonas are a good example I can think from this; people went nuts and came up with hella original spiderverse characters, why should they be banned?

Personalized MCs: I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed, they are literally your character from your play through of a game that you create the personality of and the way they interact with the world, Skyrim and Fallout are good examples to me because each persons MC is VASTLY different depending on perks, and race, and who you align yourself with.

This conversation as a whole just kind of feels like a "No Fun Allowed" trying to stifle creativity and fun honestly.