Viewpoint Banned Face Claims?

[SandraDeelightful]

While I don’t partake in the roleplay community on tumblr, I do peruse that corner of the site for gifs and face claims and whatnot. My own curiosity gets the better of me and I look at some of the roleplays, and I’ve noticed a trend that some of them have banned face claims. It’s not something that I’ve seen, at least not on this site.

These face claims seem to be banned for mostly the person action. And, maybe I just like to keep a certain amount of distance between the shows and characters I enjoy and the people behind them, but I often disagree with a lot of choices I see. Some of the GM’s say it’s for the comfort of some of the others in the roleplay.

Anyway, this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s something that I keep switching back and forth on. On some hand, I can understand. Some people (*cough* Amber Heard *cough*) have done things and I don’t want to envision them in a role. Also, sometimes I don’t think certain face claims fit into certain settings (Ex: I wouldn’t use Kirsten Dunst in Marie Antoinette as a face claim in some kind of dystopian RP). On the other, so long as the face claim fits the setting, I don’t feel right saying that because some people don’t like this person, you can’t use them as a face claim for your character.

So, I simply want to know if other people have opinions on this, and if anyone has seen it before (here, preferably, or places other than tumblr).

 

[nerdy tangents]

In general I think tumblr has the same problem as Twitter in that there is a high tendency to build echo chambers and run into people who like to kick off drama for no reason. It’s why I keep most of my searching of the site to posting my own headcanons or reposting animal/sailor moon art.

I also think RPN is too scattered to really form large scale clique mentality needed to ban anything. People tend to stick to their own small corners and don’t bother with what everyone else is doing.

 

[Jannah]

I have only run into banned FC's on one site, a HP site I'm a member of. Because it's based in the HP universe any actors who played characters in the HP movies are banned as FC's (Fantastic Beasts actors are allowed for some reason). There's also a few faces that are banned because the people themselves explicitly stated they don't want to be used in RP. Additionally, internet celebrities are not allowed as FC's there unless they're also signed to a modelling agency, a record label, or have acting credits outside of reality TV (reality TV stars are also not allowed).

 

[nerdy tangents]

Jannah you actually reminded me of something for years when roleplays allowed real person face claims they would explicitly link to specific modeling sites on my old site. So you had to use people from those specific sites as the admins wanted to make sure you were using properly sourced images.

This eventually expanded to include stock photo sites or photos in the public domain or attribution license.

Again because the admins were really strict about you using photos that had proper credit attached. So it wasn’t so much “this actor is problematic” it was “you do not have permission to use this persons likeness.”

I still do a modified version of this in that I ask all my partners to link to the original artist/source of their images. If you got the image from a modeling site fine, link me the original image so the model is credited. If you got it from Deviantart then link me to the artist.

And if said artist/model/whatever does not wish their image to be distributed then find a different one.

Got into a whole argument with a partner once because they were like “I keep the watermark on and this person is super popular so it doesn’t matter.”

I was like first off I can’t see the watermark/don’t know what the watermark means without being linked back to the original artist. And unless that person specifically said “hey it’s cool to use my stuff for whatever” then find a different image or write a description.

 

[AndPeggy]

For my RP personally, I don't allow FCs of very well known celebrities. It just really takes me out of it to see like Jason Momoa or Scarlet Johansson as a character.

 

[Jannah]

For my RP personally, I don't allow FCs of very well known celebrities. It just really takes me out of it to see like Jason Momoa or Scarlet Johansson as a character.

I know we all have our own opinions, but to me it's not much different from seeing them playing a role in a movie. A RP character is essentially just another role.

 

[NeonFlow]

When people use real faces for characters they tend to overlap a fair bit.
I've seen the same (I'm guessing a model) dude with short black hair dark skin tattoos an blue eyes a number of times.

Then of course celebrities pop up all the time, I'd be more impressed and immersed if someone used some average looking celebrities like jack black or Orange Cassidy