Background Character Questions|

[littlemissash]

@Melani3

4/22/2019 You asked some great questions about crossovers in the comments below! Here are the answers to the most common ones:

What do we mean when we say characters are copyrighted?

When we say characters are copyrighted, we aren’t talking about the combination of Episode assets used to create their visual appearance in the app.We are talking about their name, combined with their background, history, and personality. These make them a unique creation that can be covered under copyright.

@Melani3

Can I still create a forums thread/ask for others to create characters for my story?

In some cases, the answer will be yes. If you’re specifically looking for designs for background characters from others, that’s okay. A fully created character (a named person with a personality, background, history, etc) that is from another author’s story would be considered a crossover, or a character based on a real person would not be in line with our guidelines.

^ These are both from the official Crossover Guidelines

I think, if you mean someone shares with you a background character’s visual design only (like a specific appearance combo), then that’s okay. But if you mean someone shares with you a character they already developed and you keep them the same and then write them into your story, then that’s when it breaks the guidelines. So if my friend’s story has the protagonist meet a guy named Sam, and then in my story Sam shows up again, that would be against the rules.

TLDR; If a DC movie had a scene where a guy that looks like Tony Stark walks by in the background, that just happens, but if a DC movie had a scene where it’s explicitly Iron Man, that’s a crossover.

Hope this helps