Thoughts on closed species

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Rakuen Growlithe
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Thoughts on closed species

#1

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

There's something I saw people talking about a bit which struck me as a bit odd - closed species. I'm using the term very widely here because some species, like Dutch Angel Dragons, are just controlled and others, like Primagens, are "restricted." That means that someone came up with the species and now says that they can tell everyone how the species is used. In the case of Primagens, this can even mean forbidding people from using the species at all.
They are a closed species which means that I hold all rights to the creation of each Primagen and unauthorized use will be considered design theft.
I don't know how others feel about that but it seems really wrong to me. I support saying that no one can use personal characters (e.g. fursonas) without the specific person's permission. Those characters represent a specific person and using them is tantamount to misusing someone's likeness or misrepresenting them. I'm not even completely against all kinds of copyright. I agree that others shouldn't exploit the ideas of others. So I don't think someone should take Primagens and then sell Primagen stuff to make a profit. Although there are some more blurred lines there which I won't get into.

However, to say that no one can use a species at all is ridiculous. This is a fandom with a huge amount of fan art from various properties like Pokemon, Digimon, My Little Pony and various Disney films. The idea of closed species is kind of spitting in the face of all that fan work and says that fan art is wrong. We should be able to make Primagens or Dutch Angel Dragons in whatever way we want, just as we make Lion King fan art.
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Raven Song
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Re: Thoughts on closed species

#2

Post by Raven Song »

I'm a bit fifty fifty in this. I one corner I wanna make a deisng on each creature but as a designer... I've made a species or 2 that I ain't sharing. Because I have this vision and I don't want people fucking that up lol.

And I think that's the thing. It's about control and I'm all about that but also creative and freedom and argh.
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. Pablo Picasso
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Re: Thoughts on closed species

#3

Post by elysium »

Complicated question. On the one hand, a lot of them look pretty cool, but on the other, it seems a bit contrary to the "spirit" of furry, in a way. Furry, as I understand it, is this broadly creative enterprise about personal expression, so the thing that strikes me as most odd about all of this is the tension that closed species have with that.

Closed species have rules dictated by others about what you can and can't do, which doesn't gel with that free personal expression. I know that, in a way, real species also have "rules" about how they work, but a lot of the essence of furry comes in how people break those rules for species. So, if you want your fursona to be a real species, but with multiple tails or wrong-coloured fur or whatever, there's nothing stopping you from that, you can do whatever you want, and adding those details is adding personal flair. Having closed/restricted species have specific rules about what you can and can't do with them feels like it goes against that, and limits personal expression based on the rules set by others, and that is where it stops making sense to me personally.

There's also a fair bit of academic literature about the psychological functionality of the fursona, and a lot of things fursonas do for people and their personal identity and whatnot (exploration of identity, roleplay as an ideal self, social experimentation, etc.). Also seems like living by strict rules set by others undermines the possibilities. Not that I can talk, since my fursona is the most "creative" thing ever, but my fursona is perhaps not personally functional to me in the way it is to others, so maybe I'm being kinda hypocritical here? I'm sure these things are still possible within closed/restricted species, it's just counter-intuitive from my understanding. Or, maybe the literature focusses too much on overt functionality, because that's psychologically interesting, whereas there's quite a lot of people like me who don't "use" the fursona that way, meaning they can just go off the "hell, that thing looks cool" thing or whatever, meaning that the understanding of the fursona grossly overemphasises the functional aspects. Something to think about, maybe.

Of course none of this is to disparage anyone who has one of them as a fursona. As I said, a lot of them look pretty cool. Also, if this all works for you, cool. Not gonna tell you not to do it, just don't really "get" it myself. I'd be very interested to hear what someone who has one of these things thinks about these concerns of mine, and what their personal experience of having such a fursona is like, and how it works for them.

On a tangent, I suppose you could say that anthropomorphism itself is a breaking of the rules of the species as well, but that's a bit of a longer discussion and a bit off track, so let's not get into that. Just thought it was an interesting side note.

Also, since there was mention of the idea of personal characters and whatnot, there was a recent article done by the FurScience team on attitudes towards fursona copying, if anyone's interested: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/15283488.2019.1676245
Haven't had a chance to read it myself as yet, but I'll get there soon.
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