i have said it before and i'll say it again: if you give me a RL site and an animanga site that are otherwise identical, with this exact same rule, i'm never joining the animanga one.
you'll most likely never find a rl site with fc rules similar to animanga's. it's v common for them to require that the fc is within 5+/- years of age of the character, and have their skin color + culture + ethnicity match. there's also the whole bit about people of color and their representation(god forbid if you play all-whites, or all-korean) and -- in the unfortunate event if your fc passes, or speak out some controversial opinions, you're expected to change it pronto.
compared to that, animanga is... a lot more lax. we really just don't want people using klee's fc and say she's a 1000 years old dragon, or use a kiddy clara pic and say she's 20+ so let's do an M+ thread. the age rule is just there because we just don't want the bad apples strong-arming and twisting written guidelines to test boundaries. personally, in all my time here, i've only seen
one person try to write child-coded characters in M-threads, but since they use adult fcs... it's legal? i'll leave out the specifics :x
also, i like the rule of "minors allowed, but not allowed to participate in threads rated M(fight threads or otherwise), because somehow it seems that we're held to a higher standard while authors like george martin gets to write w/e.
that said,
on age: i agree it's v arbitrary. it's not that long ago when localization companies would age-up characters just to shut the western side up(JP:13y/o -> EN:16 y/o). nowadays they've skipped the middle man since localization discrepancies are more obvious with the internet. now, characters are designed teen-coded but then given a number of 18+, or younger, depending on who they want to please. you can't tell me a 16-17 year old is out there leading an entire nation as their upper echelon(keqing), or that lyney is 18+ when ppl on twt still says "oh he
looks like a minor because he was starved! so sad" then proceed to show him flirting with the mc + wearing shorts only shotas would wear + fanart him in nsfw.
honestly, put the genshin middle-sized characters together, and they really just look like an
after school club outing. chongyun and xingqiu looks like they both go to the same school together, so what's that about shipping minors?
also may we remember pela: graduate, drinks till she's hungover the next day, co-founder of serval's band in her collage days with cocolia(40/yo or smtg)... all while she's currently 16.
tl;drย the companies don't even care about their canon ages. it's just a number to them because they're
fiction. so caring for that is... futile?
ย for our purposes and comfort, as long as the representing art(usually hover image) looks like an adult, then it's ok maybe? ...inb4 someone uses an aged-up klee......... you get the idea. but im glad no one in my circle seems to do that(except that outlier)
,ย
kind reminder that this resource site is (mainly) for the proboards/jcink animanga circle, who tend to prefer more aesthetics than your common discord rp/anime rp sites(google anime roleplay and you'll see what i mean). if you want to write out your appearance instead of having it done via fc, or not be forced to do gfx or crop images, or not even care about fcs at all, those might be your better options. there's even reddit rp? in this circle, i personally think we love and stay here for when coding + graphics + writing come together. no other place does it like this(closest is tumblr rp but it's not collective), and while it does require more effort, we like the result, so i think... most of us don't find this an issue.
we do complain about the effort needed tho! valid.
also, i don't think there's ever a rule that you must use aesthetically pleasing fcs. at the most, i've only seen site admins (who have paid in money+effort to make their site look pretty for you who wanted to join) request that hover images to not be stretched or pixelated. they've done the whole site, everything looks good, so just ensuring ur own hover isn't squished is a small matter i think.
i remember someone using a hand-drawn picture of their character in 2b pencil, and it was accepted and ppl did write with them(and this is in those 'big aesthetic site' too -- tenkai). filters,,, erm. well, that 2b pencil drawing definitely wasn't filtered ha ha ha.
hehe my observations no one asked for. so sorry for the length skdhfskdfh. just gotta find your crowd i suppose, and a medium that suits ur needs best.ย
