I’m so glad they dropped that trademark request… I don’t want my favorite holiday to be owned by any company, especially not Disney 
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They already own the world! It’s scary. Pretty soon we’ll all have to wear Mickey Mouse hats and sing songs lest we offend our lord and savoir Yin Sed
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True! I’m not one to blindly believe in conspiracies, but Disney is definitely too powerful for a company that makes animated movies and “sells happiness”. I mean… Donald Trump who? Putin where? Kim Jong-un whomst? Disney already owns the planet, we just don’t know it yet.
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They already own over 50% of entertainment 
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We’re doomed and soon-to-be-brainwashed 
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Think about Once Upon a Time. They take these characters from “Disney” and created their own story with them and it’s all good.
You can do it, too.
Because the characters and settings and stuff are all public domain now, which means anyone can use them in their own idea. All things eventually become public domain.
Once Upon a Time is owned by Disney though.
This is really bad advice. Characters aren’t all public domain. You have to be really careful with copyright.
The “Disney” characters are. That was the point I was trying to make. That’s why you have things like Once Upon a Time. By “Disney”, I mean characters like the princesses and whatever.
But Once Upon a Time is a Disney product. Of course they can use Disney characters.
If you try to use it and you aren’t owned by Disney and haven’t arranged agreements with them, you’re gonna get sued.
Definitely not Elsa and Anna exactly, though.
But “The Snow Queen” can be used if made in your own way.
They can’t be “Anna” and “Elsa” like Disney did it, but yeah. Snow Queen! <3
Once Upon a Time uses Elsa and Anna. It also uses the Disney variant of Mulan and Hook.
Once Upon a Time was created by ABC… which is a Disney company. Disney owns 2/3 of our media. They protect this hard. You have to be very aware of what belongs to Disney and what doesn’t
Oh fam, that wasn’t my point. Okay bad example. Lol
Let’s try Beastly instead. A book written by some guy. Can’t remember his name < He can use the original story of the Beauty, inspired from the story that also inspired Beauty and the Beast.
Hey! There’s a film version of Beastly that I didn’t know about.
But yeah, the point I’m making is that, YES, you can re imagine the characters that are “The Beauty” and “The Beast” and “The Snow Queen” because they are public domain now.
Of course, you can use non-Disney owned characters. Disney don’t own any of the major fairy tales because they were made before copyright. They don’t own Shakespeare plays either, though The Lion King is just Hamlet.
You have to be VERY careful when someone asks if you can use a Disney character. You’re not allowed to use Belle’s dress, you’re not allowed to name a bunch of the minor characters the same. You have to be very aware of what parts of a story Disney owns outright. You can use the name Belle, but not the name Adam. You’re not even allowed to use the talking furniture.
Slippery, slippery slope… one that we should be very careful with crossing.
I understand what you mean.
I feel like people that write stories, like…I forgot again what his name was that wrote Beastly… they’re creative enough to put all their own spin on an inspired idea that came from somewhere else. I think when anyone thinks of “Disney”, it’s the original idea behind it. And even if it wasn’t…I don’t know. As a creative person, I don’t think it’d be very fun to write an idea that you already know and that everyone already knows, ya know?
Maybe I’m just too daft to see it any other way. My bad for that misunderstanding. XD
But if we’re talking about Episode and this particular story, we have to be careful what we tell authors.
I mean, look at the OP’s screenshot! I can identify 7 characters in the list I can see that may cause problems just for sharing the same name as a Disney character (or Barbie).
I didn’t see the screenshot, and YES, I’d avoid Barbie in the sense of Mattel Barbie,
I understand that the name “Barbie” isn’t actually trademarked, though. As long as it isn’t literally the typical Barbie with all those occupations and the bubbly personality, there are actually people with the name. Just like Adam. But yeah, if it was Prince Adam from that French place that has no name, and he’s the beast, that’s…way not a good idea.
But yeah, it shouldn’t exactly be what Disney/Pixar had anything to do with. I wouldn’t use Barbie. And if you’re going to use Hercules, you should definitely call him Herakles instead. That’s the original, real name.
Most of the remakes of these stories have them down as like “The Mermaid” or “The Snow Queen”, only giving a name if absolutely necessary, like in stories Disney does, they have names, but the versions I like to read, these characters are never named…
Of course, I understand why you’d need to name them for Episode, but like I was saying before, changing them is good, and they can still be whatever they are.