As a CW buyer and a someone trying to pick up courage to make her own, I really hope that the staff and users will work together on this :)

I don't know about anyone else, but the reason I am so adamant about wanting facial features to be allowed is that revamps are currently handled in a manner that I and many other users find really unacceptable.

They frequently do not simply update the art to meet current standards, but rather change the entire nature of an item to the point where you would never guess that they were ever the same item*.

I use a set of base eyes to make the base for the OC that I am so fond of I named my account after her--Valiska Courinna. She isn't human. The base eyes I use appear catlike. Should someone revamp them randomly to make the pupils rounder or whatnot, I would have to find something else that worked for all her avatars, and I would want it to be a CW because those don't get revamped.

---

*I don't want to derail this thread into another argument about revamps. I just think that revamps shouldn't make items completely different. People who are using the items should still be able to use them for the same purpose.

I want to address just a bit more the entire "head replacement CWs aren’t allowed currently" denial...because while we can say "oh the TVs were another user and exempt...there are quite a few others and it's really frustrating to see things be denied for reasons that were never clearly outlined anywhere - especially when folks have paid money to have them here. Some of these are older, some are newer, all could reasonably be considered to replace the head. Some have the word "mask" in them, and it makes me wonder if were to just change the name of the noodle bowl to "noodle bowl mask" it would be accepted:

[preview=Mouthy Merc Mask] [preview=Skull of a Springtime God] ((this was literally just approved)) [preview=Ceremonial Mask of the Sun Dragon] [preview=Wei Tiger Noh Mask] ((also a new approval)) [preview=Old School Television] [preview=Wood Panel Television]

noodle bowl that was denied for comparison

Honestly...I know there's more than the examples I posted just in CWs alone, but I don't have hours on end to scroll through every layer to find them because most don't include "mask" in the name and therefore it's harder to find them. I don't understand where this rule supposedly came from or why it's being enforced - and if it's an interpretation of the base edits rule....well, the explanations are all over this thread for how that rule has been nuked by staff in multiple places. The only rule that remained as far as fully disallowed things was the no facial features - which....well....that seems strange given there are quite a lot of items/recolors already "breaking" that rule that were on-site when people /still/ getting that denial had to point out the unfairness. It seems like a super pointless rule but was the only remaining rule as far as disallowed items go right up until the noodle was denied and we were suddenly told there's an unseen/unposted rule regarding head replacements.

All of the rules are scattered, so I get how it's hard to find consistent interpretation - but as others have pointed out, everyone is afraid to even argue back half the time because staff has, in the past, retaliated against users for doing so. It's an issue that we are collectively afraid of that happening and therefore fighting with ourselves on whether to even bring up inconsistencies and unfairness.

I was fully convinced I was going to lose my account when I made the feedback thread regarding submitting as unlimited direct to shop to get items on-site when they don't fill as users were being unfairly banned for something that wasn't a rule (because they were following the rules of only putting in the stated number of copies and then unpricing items since they couldn't be self-retired at that point). I was prepared to have to lose my account because of criticizing and calling out hidden rules and behaviors. I've since been stressed out every time I have a complaint or criticism because I did face more denials on submitted items after that - maybe there's no correlation but there's no way for me to know - especially when people who also complained faced more denials all of a sudden. It's bad optics either way.

I've got a ton of unsubmitted recolors and a few new items and I worry now that posting/speaking out means more denials/time lost.

And for the record - I too work a full time job that has nothing to do with this website. I work 9.5 hour days and have other responsibilities beyond my job and I still managed to make a few minutes (unpaid) to respond. Interacting with the user base is part of the job of the person in charge of the queue when things like this (denials for item types that have been accepted in the past) is going on. I also 100% believe that someone in senior staff (Rah, Amber, Destiny, Keith) should also be responding because the concerns go beyond long queue times or inconsistent denials/approvals. There are a lot of super valid issues happening in the market right now and every time staff (including Keith) asks us for suggestions/opinions, we give them and then get 0 response. You want us to stay and keep spending but you need to start actually replying to us and communicating - as so many others before me have said. Didn't realize Keith had replied while I was typing.

I am really grateful to get a response like this! I do feel like it soothes a lot of worries, and I think a lot of the discontent will be slowly lifted the more we move forward as a community.

It’ll be interesting to see where we go with updated rules and guidelines, because I think the concept of “grandfathering in old items and denying new items with same concept” seems, not useless per say, but rather like a strange choice that would need more explaining; if an item has existed until now and not majorly changed anything or broken anything, does it really seem like something that should not be allowed in the future?

I would also love to see an organizational chart for the site in general tbh - I’ve been around for 12ish years but I’m still not 100% sure who is staff, who does art, who does coding (we all know and appreciate though!), and I do feel like this could be an easy way to just give a bit more transparency for concerned users.

Edit; lmao that skull was submitted by me and I was fully resolved to like go in guns blazing if it were denied for non art related reasons and then I just turned into this meme Also! The noodle head was submitted by Akita herself, I guess I just got .... really invested in being able to have a noodle head sksksh

Thank you to for responding as well, it's good to see our voices are being heard. I hope the points raised here help you guys make the necessary decisions.

Ahahaha okay, I pinged the right person then now xD But yeah - I have no issues with any of the approved items, I just think it's silly to deny the noodle when...well...waves hands at everything else

-- thanks for responding!

I think you might be surprised that a lot of the resentment regarding stricter standards for CW artists vs staff artists has to do with the fact that some of the things staff artists do that are outside of CW artist guidelines are really unpopular.

The grey lineart we have been seeing so much of lately? It's ugly. I'm sorry, but it really is. With bright colours like the dress in the new Romero set, it sucks the life out of the dramatic teal and peachy red colours.

That's what makes it stick in our craws so much that it's allowed but finer black lineart in our designs gets rejected.

Please keep in mind that if something is really a hot mess, there will probably be a good reason to reject it on even the most minimal set of quality-based rules.

I hope you will reconsider the facial features rule simply on the grounds that people get attached to the faces they use to represent themselves and/or their favourite characters, and a lot of people get really upset when base features they liked go away. Sure, one of the base eye sets that was revamped in the last round was cartoony, but that was why the people who were actually using it liked it. I don't think it actually hurt the site to let a few people have cartoon eyes.

Plus, this closed eyes thing is just silly. This rule has caused so many denials of items that weren't even intended to represent closed eyes and is a real creativity stifler that makes a lot of the people who support this site the most extremely unhappy.

I really want to know what's up with that because sometimes when I don't have much on my mind, I kinda wrack my brain trying to figure what about that could possibly be objectionable. I'll be honest, even if the rule is dropped, and I hope it is, I want an answer just because my curiosity about it is driving me nuts--and that's not a very long drive.

We can make eyeless avatars, one-eyed avatars and many-eyed avatars. There is a ton of rift stuff and zombie body horror floating around. Closed eyes are not particularly sexy, either, though with the latest L'Amour Parlor collection it would be super hypocritical to deny things on grounds of decency that do not actually depict parts of the body we are supposed to keep covered in public. So, what's the deal?

Closed eyes are not allowed because NO facial features are allowed. It's not specifically closed eyes, it's just the fact that there are makeup items able to be used as closed eyes that makes that a sticking point (some of which are SUPER old and which people have been using as closed eyes forever). No one is going to get away with submitting eyes and calling them makeup if the eyes are open.

I don't agree with the rule itself, but I do think the only reason closed eyes ever are/were specifically mentioned is because -there aren't that many official closed eyes on site, so they're in demand -it's a facial feature people could at one time get away with making (even though I'm sure not all the people submitting those kinds of items were actually trying to skirt that rule)

That seems reasonable! Will the new set of rules also be up for constructive criticism, like with the FAQ, or would you rather we stick to it 100%?

Oh, and also! Please reconsider the rule on asking about cw concepts in tickets? There’s probably a better way to do it anyway than filing a ticket, but that’s the one place we know for sure that it reaches the people/person it needs to. I think it’d be unreasonable of us to expect the rules to cover all possible items in the future, so would we be able to submit a ticket to ask if something would be possible or not? Up until now, that’s been considered as a pre-approval and the question wouldn’t be answered, but I’m sure it would literally save everyone time if we could get and could give more concrete answers.

Please reconsider auto-denying anything even tangentially related to Homestuck that does not actually violate copyright. That's not what Hussie wants.

Hussie just wants his copyright protected so that he doesn't have to compete with everyone else when selling his own merch. I really don't get the impression he's worried about items that can't leave a pet/avatar site and thus will never affect his brand.

IDK what remark he may have made 10 years ago, perhaps even at some con in person before he became a major brand with spinoffs and video games. But he has a statement up now. Subeta is not profiting off Homestuck simply because orange horns might be one option of something that people can pay for with the fake currency they buy from the site.

I agree with . As a non-releaser even I think there would be a difference in filing a ticket to ask if a concept is allowed at all vs trying to "bypass" the queue and asking if an item would be approved.

There's a difference between asking if something would be denied and therefore not worth evaluating for it breaking the rules from the start vs if something has good enough quality to be approved. It's comparable to filing a ticket asking if a pet page story concept would break the rules. Telling that person yes doesn't automatically give them a spotlight win, and telling someone yes that their cw concept itself would not break the rules doesn't mean it will be approved. Assuming there are other factors like lineart or stray pixels or whatever else that is looked at during the actual approval process.

Whenever users ask in the forums if something is allowed they're told by other users and staff alike to file a ticket, so I'm not surprised that people would want to file tickets asking if something would break rules. However I am surprised that these tickets are dismissed with refusal to answer properly.

If it will be allowed in the future, once the rules are updated, there shouldn't be too many of these tickets anyway, but you can't account for everything, after all.

Hearing it’s a team effort reviewing the rules and going over all rules from scratch does give me hope that the CW market can thrive again.

Any idea if you’ll consider lowering the direct to shop price as many of us have hoped for?

My mask was called Disturbing Hikei Mask, so adding mask to the item name isn’t a get out of jail card.

Hey there babs! Some important happenings have been going on in this thread. I know we are all cw buyers and releasers, so the outcome of this directly affects all of us. 'v' Staff have so far done a brilliant job of responding to us in this thread, so if you want your voices, suggestions, and recommendations heard regarding this subject, I suggest you post!

This thread's tl;dr: -Cw guidelines and rules regarding cw submission need an update, as the guidelines are either incomplete or flat out invisible. Because of this there has been a lot of grief, confusion, and anger in the cw community.

thank u so much !

i just want to add myself to the list of people mentioning that i think it would be...perhaps difficult and a bit messy, but overall better in the long run if we were able to give feedback on the cleaned-up 'new' set of CW rules before they're settled. even if just for the sake of clarification or wording, and less about debating the reasoning - although knowing the reasoning behind some unpopular ones (at least the ones with multiple/unclear answers historically) would definitely set people more at ease i think.

Amongst all the cw rules I despite, there are two rules that need to be changed asap.

1, CW line art should be black.

Reasons be some site items don’t even have them black anymore, and black line-art sometimes, depend on the design, makes the item look cheap and outdated, and that’s not usually what the artists are looking for.

2, Items that can replace eyes/ noses/ mouths. This is utterly vague.

I originally understand it as ‘ no eyes noses mouths’, and that is completely understandable if subeta wants to keep minimum control over the style of the HA or keep certain looks exclusive, like the rose eyes previously only obtainable through crystal shop. But after I worked on a eyelid item a year ago, I found out by the comments that sometimes eyelids are not acceptable either as they sometimes can be mistaken as closed eyes, and users mentioned to me to be careful on item art. I submitted the item Deity Relic originally as a under eye makeup, but then I got accused to be submitting this item ‘ purposely to make it as a eye replacement’, I explained it’s not the purpose but I never got a response back. I then gave up subeta entirely.

One year later I returned just to find out that users has submitted eyelid items and got accepted, not only one item was accepted, multiple items, why???? Just because mine was the first one for a while so mine got denied?? And every other that had the same idea got accepted because it’s submitted later?? I really don’t want to deal with luck when submitting items anymore it’s too absurd and it disturbs the experience on subeta entirely.

Glad to see a little more staff interaction.

Not going to hold my breath waiting to see what comes of this though, as sometimes projects have a tendency to hit the back burner.

If / when the new rules are finished though, I agree that I think the community should have some input (at the very least on the wording, because sometimes the wording on things like denials has been really bad.)

Also just because this is the current thread getting the most attention, doesn't mean this is the only issue that needs addressing. When things smooth out a bit more (with both onsite / offsite issues) I do think staff needs to address other threads / concerns and issues that have been popping up a LOT lately.

Although I've been involved in the Custom Wearable community as (primarily) a releaser and (occasionally) an artist since its release to the general public (around November or December 2012, if memory serves me right), I've rarely weighed in on discussion regarding any changes to the process or the guidelines, despite seeing many of my friends grow out of the site, or even leave because of changes to the Custom Wearables system and/or market. That's not to say that every change throughout the years has been for the worst.

As a TL;DR for my sentiments, I do agree that the Custom Wearable Submission Guidelines need to be:

1. more transparent to both the staff and the userbase, i.e.,
   Quote by Emyon

   Heavily agree that the rules are not clear on what is and isn&;t allowed. If there is a written rule [...] we need it in writing somewhere Official and Easy to find.
   ; and,
2. updated to reflect changes that have been made over the years.

I tried my best to read through the thread, so I apologise in advance if my concerns have already been answered, or if someone else has already raised them:

I agree with this if the ticket is enquiring about a Custom Wearable concept without necessarily showing a finished overlay. Yes, even if the ticket explicitly states that the concern is an enquiry regarding whether x is allowed, I believe staff may just be concerned that it can be used as a loophole to bypass the denial count, for instance.

because: What would remove the need for submission of tickets for these concerns entirely, however, are clear guidelines as to what kinds of items can be submitted under each category.

Do you remember/have you seen the Pricing Scheme Guide back when the pricing categories were first introduced? Threads featuring silhouettes like those are a good start. Existing items can be used to demonstrate the types of items that fall under each expanded category.

Regarding items that have been accepted under the term of the former staff member handling Custom Wearables, I want to hold on to a benefit of the doubt that these discrepancies (the aforementioned and vis-á-vis 's Bowl of Noodles item, and the vis-á-vis the have more to do with differences between interpretation of Custom Wearable standards between the former and current Custom Wearable staff members, opacity of standards, or the creation of new standards.

Whichever of these may be the case are not a good precedent. Consistency in the service delivered (Custom Wearable appraisal and approval) is something that the customers (userbase) come to expect, and any changes have to be communicated clearly to the userbase.

As regards the Polaroid case in particular, I assumed this was similar to grandfathered cases of "official" items also referencing copyrighted material that had been overlooked due to the sheer amount of staff-made and user-generated items there are in Subeta's database.

The reason I've seen staff provide for this (pardon me, I cannot find the post anymore, as I couldn't figure out how to do forum search for the life of me) is because certain items have anatomy or other considerations that make them more difficult to appraise against the human avatar base. I personally also found it absurd that a small tattoo can cost 2000 CSC to submit for 5 copies (e.g. , I am looking at you.) especially when it's not a full-body tattoo, but again, I could see that it may have been done in foresight against any potential loophole abuse.

The reason I've seen for this is because they have to contact a separate staff member (someone who is in charge of items/the item database) to manually change the category / item name / et c. I've been told via ticket that any future requests for overlay / item image / item name / description changes will not be entertained because I am a "frequent flier". (That's not verbatim, but you know what I mean.)

You know what's sad about denials due to categories being wrong, grammatical errors, and the like? They count against the ten-strike rule.

(Unfortunately, the OP also has that answer truncated, you can check here, if you'd like.)

While we're on the note of categories... where do we submit which items? It's not really clear for items which fit multiple categories. I've yet to get a denial due to submitting an item in the wrong category (or I must have the memory of a goldfish), but:

I have the same problem! I submit a lot of sweaters that modify the base, and I don't know if it's a "Sweater and Jacket" or a "Base Edit". Both are in the same pricing category, so I figure that's why I never got a denial for that reason.

Tribute items. Oh, boy. I have been a fan of Andrew Hussie's work since Problem Sleuth and I was around for the sadness the HS fandom in Subeta felt over the possibility of any tribute items to Homestuck being completely nil. At the time, I also interpreted Hussie's stance on derivative work the same way as Subeta. I actually think that was a prudent decision on staff's part to prevent possible ligitation from What Pumpkin/whoever manages Hussie's IP (if a bit hypocritical, given the and items on a similar vein.)

Speaking of tribute items, if there's anyone who understands Subeta's past with Custom Wearable items and undeclared tribute items, it would be me -- I was close to a few people who were in either between knowing what they were doing when they explicitly did not mention that items they submitted as Custom Wearables were taken from a different property, to people who didn't know any better because it was an oversight back then (oh man, you guys should have seen the very first CWs back in 2012. Many of them had NO tribute changes, because those were not a requirement yet, at the time.)

In fact, I did get a denial on the because it was erroneously assumed that the item was an undeclared tribute item.

Now, I do not expect everyone on Subeta (especially not staff) to know that I am training in surgery, but to assume immediately that an item is a tribute item when it is something very generic is a bit reaching. I admit that the staff member in charge (I believe this was at the time there were two people in charge of the queue) may have tried their best not to come off as confrontational, but it felt bad to receive this denial.

I know where Subeta is coming from when staff are hypervigilant about unsourced tribute items coming from the userbase, given that some people have actually deceived staff and the community in this regard in the past. I really do, but sometimes, staff can be too zealous about it while not looking at themselves.

There's a loophole (not sure if I can call it that) used since the rule has been implemented that makes that possible. You can use a cupcake, a vessel, or any other item in the item image of a hair item, provided that you show/incorporate strands of hair somehow. While I will personally be sad if this rule will be amended to disallow any item images that are not locks of hair or mannequin heads (because I mostly get custom wearable items for treasure chests, not for actually wearing), I am all for it if it means that it's something that the community wants (doubtful; I think people like creative item images.)

I agree with you on your sentiment especially if you look at the part of my post addressed to Valiska, talking about staff's double-standards regarding tribute items. (Also tagging and because you also mentioned the Subeautique items!) I just wanted to clarify that this rule in particular refers to external lineart and not internal lineart. This particular artist consistently makes items that disregard this particular rule, but since they're a member of staff, I just resigned to the fact that they're exempt from the rule.

(Also pinging because you asked about this!) Apart from what had already mentioned here, I believe this has more to do with staff wanting to maintain monopoly (apologies if that's not the right choice of word) to create face items in general, barring make-up items. For a time, I believe make-up items weren't even allowed.

Here's my two cents about this:

1. Other staff members have to also be involved in the process of the rule rewrite. I'm very happy to see that Keith has also responded to this topic, it gives us hope.
2. Quote by satan

   I would advise you to more forward rather than backwards with rules regulation.
3. In conjunction with , any grandfathered cases have to be clarified, and then disposed of accordingly (be it any restrictions on recolours, refunds, et c.)
4. Ask for feedback from the userbase and other staff members on the revised rules and please consider our feedback. Opacity and difficulty of finding information on what status quo is regarding Custom Wearable approval standards are lead to a lot of confusion, and differences in rule interpretation among the userbase.
5. Quote by varsna

   definitely list every single rule, even if they are tedious. [...] rules & guidelines should be separate from any kind of FAQ or denial examples or pricing category outlines - these other resources are very important and also need updating, but mixing all of these things together into one format will probably muddy everything. [...] if any one single person gets a denial for a "secret" or "hidden" rule that isn&;t listed after the overhaul, user trust of staff in regards to CWs will probably NEVER recover.

Below, I will quote some other feedback I personally agree with:

I was going to link to maybe half of those threads, but wow, thank you for finding the rest and posting them! I thought some of those got lost in the forum migration.