This is a sensible position.

When the two sites are very different in nature, like an animanga fandom-based high fantasy + a modern-day real life site, it makes sense to keep them being different sites. The aesthetics play into it and as well it makes the members list harder to navigate when you have member sub-populations who won't ever interact with each other.

As far as when the two sites are not very different in nature (like animanga fandom-based high fantasy + animanga original steampunk fantasy)... I suppose it would depend on how much crossover there is between the player population of the two sites. If the same oc is allowed to be played in multiple settings, go for it. If not, but enough players are on both sites that it doesn't cause confusion when trying to find people to plot with, go for it.

Huuuge +1 to the importance of encouraging beginner artists to be able to draw their own hovers and character references- and that, too, includes people using picrews as a reference, who can only draw and take pictures of pencil-on-paper traditional art, people who can’t quite get that second hand right, but are pretty proud of their finished piece nonetheless- commissioning artists is great, especially for the sake of convenience (I highly recommend services like VGEN if you’re ever interested in buying art for forums/your characters!), but as someone who largely hails from DeviantArt roleplay communities, I would’ve never improved on my art if people weren’t so kind and accepting of my hand-drawn references back when I was 13.

There’s a big discussion already regarding the value people put on forum aesthetics and appearance, and I don’t want to get too into that- a lot of the stuff I’d mention has been said hundreds of times!- but it really does go a long way to encourage and accept artists and creators of all skill levels. Art and writing are both creative hobbies with a space in RP, and I love seeing them intertwine and interact in-RP! Going back to formats of RP where I draw my own references and create my own character art from scratch has felt really healing, for both interests.