Finally, a good fucking thread about closed species. I'll just give a few to start. I've yet to deep dive into this realm of original species so bear with me.
Waterdogs - essentially cats and dogs that lives up to its name with bodies being literally 75% water and clay or sand.
Co-ownership is common for those buying adoptables and closed species because sharing is caring, but there are times when this can get out of hand (e.g insisting the other party to give up ownership) that even the mods have to make guidelines for co-owning.
Save your grace because they have since been dead.
Washi-Washi - open species by the famed Hyanna-Natsu.
Oh boy finally it's been made. You're missing out on all the knockoff Dainty species out there.
Merbelles are just as restrictive when it comes to designing and the owner V4N4 has actually written in her T.O.S that she will not draw or design any Dainty.
No where near as restrictive as Merbelles or dainties but the biggest knock off of Dainties. Even taking half of their name. Dollie-Darlings compared to the group name of Darling-Dainties. However, while being a great value knock off, to even get a custom design made by the owner with no slot and being common expect it to be 61$ usd.
Pacapillars are the worse when it comes to people copying designs of them. They tend to have a lot of pacas heavily taking from copyrighted characters and then larger artists tend to have people make knock offs similar to their pacas. However, this is a bigger thing mainly seen in every large closed species community and it's never been addressed by any mod of the species. Most personally ignore it and will even say it's not their job to police designs they approve.
What would they do if you paid the money and then went into MS Paint to draw a terrible abomination using your mouse or something in like awful clashing colours?
Idk, I guess I'm not a super turbo autist who is eyeballs deep into the community and actually paying for this shit, but even if the original artist "takes back" the design, nobody's stopping the scorned customer from branching off and still playing with the character they paid for, making even more OCs of said closed species and creating their own insular world, with its own lore, etc.. Can't claim copyright infringement and all that jazz if it's not copyrighted/trademarked/what have you. It's the ultimate fuck you to some of these ego-inflated artists. Even if somebody reports it and the scorned customer gets slandered, these drama hoes all have receipts and can easily put the closed species owner on full blast for being an asshole. I dunno, that's just me. Furries are fucking weird, man.
This honestly just reminds me of neopets and the absurd amount of gold people would charge for brushes and the absurd things people would do to get them, especially the rare ones.
What would they do if you paid the money and then went into MS Paint to draw a terrible abomination using your mouse or something in like awful clashing colours?
Funny you should mention that, because that HAS come up before! Can't remember the name, but there was a big kerfuffle a while back because some species tried to implement a sort of quality benchmark, even for the MYO ones where you pay them money for the honor of then drawing your own thing.
It was completely exceptional on both sides, I got a good laugh out of it because on the one hand expecting a quality check on DEVIANTART of all places where most people cant draw worth shit was never gonna go well, but on the other hand it SUPER OFFENDED the people who couldnt draw for shit and that was worth the stupidity of the whole thing. It was also, among other things, apparently a targeted attempt to specifically keep a couple notorious can't-draw drama queens out of the species, so the resulting fallout was extra juicy.
I'm still in awe that snivy-kun and Seelmaru are different people.
I'm against the argument that a person can "steal" another artist's style, but like... even their character designs are so similar. If they didn't have their signatures on their art, I couldn't tell which person drew what.
I said i'd do a post on Wyngro so let's do it. I'm not wel versed on this group/species/creator but I have some good sources and i've be granted access to some logs and screencaps.
Wyngro is a closed species group that started on Deviant art and has grown to have it's own site on the side for I guess the off chance someone stumbles onto it and they aren't on deviant art. The designs aren't exactly worth paying for:
As you can see (different colors and patterns will come later), the designs are extremely basic and easily malleable to whatever little designs or quirks you can add to them. In the hands of a more nuanced artist, these designs, imo, can pop a lot more and look pretty cute if not worth something but they aren't. Nestly is the original creator of these basic Tumblr tier species and she's a piece of work in her own right. This is and isn't an understatement at the same time. There's a lot on her which includes tax evasion, scamming, theft, among others. She's apparently in her early to mid thirties and quit her job at Subway because it was too much to handle apparently to do Wyngro "full time".
This is her and she's quite the looker, don't you think?
From what I've been told, the tax evasion is her biggest offense. She's made close to or over $40k just from Wyngro purchases alone and has refused to pay taxes on it.
I was told that before in the early days of the group, a lot of the things were either free or effort rewards. That's perfectly fine obviously but later on down the line, something abruptly changed. On top of paying for singular things such as color changes, limit removals, BREEDING TICKETS, she has set up a patreon for the group as well. Patrons that donate get interesting rewards..
Basically, you can not only give her money from subs to her Patreon but just whimsically too! From the official Wyngro site! ❤
The cheapest thing you can buy is a Parent Color Picker
And the most expensive thing there is a fucking limit removal of all things. A limit removal that has restrictions and has a ONE TIME USE. You can buy this thing for $153 to use only once for a shitty baby dragon thing that isn't even yours to begin with at the end of the day.
Like I've said prior, things weren't this grifty. A lot of these things were apparently reasonable but gosh that's boring to our new friend Nestly. She needs to spice up her group because she's so bored with it! What do we do to spice it up? Create useless shit for our unneeded patreon tiers and paywalling supposedly useful things! Just like Joker in Batman Movie 2 said, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
Nestly showing nepotism and generally being an unprofessional mod and a huge asshole
From what I can tell with this screenshot, this is suddenly changing the already hyper strict Wyngro breeding rules and traits.
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Now we're to the other big part: art. Nestly is not the best artist let's call a spade a spade at this point. She's a low hanging artist: judges based on pretty instead of effort and skill alongside uniqueness and interesting factors. Why be a proper art judge when you can just be won over with something pretty or something your friend drew? I feel like, deep down, there is a word for this some where...
Nestly steals. Nestly traces. Nestly is just shit all around. There's plenty of proof and archives of her stealing and tracing over designs and artwork of other artists in the group and even former admins and members. This makes you wonder if anything regarding this idea was made by her.
Former group member calling Nestly out on her tracing:
There's a whole lot more to this but I'll do another post for that when I get more information on it. This post is long enough as is and I'm not good at these like the rest of you all. Hopefully this is relevant to the thread and gives enough info. Again, I'm not apart of this dumpster fire and I'm posting information given to me by a trusted source.
Aw winner winner chicken dinner, this sort of stuff is the good species shit I was hoping for with the thread, a LARGE number of species creators are ten feet up their own ass because surprising nobody, a business model revolving around a cult of personality tends to produce planet-sized egos. The contest stuff was a fun read, I know that's not with HER particular species but it's a great little seed of drama and the comments are beautiful. She legit doesn't even seem to realize what a fuckwad she sounds like. Thanks so much for the time to make the writeup!
Man I can understand making adoptables for a little extra cash on the side, but 1500$ for an ugly design that you can't even see properly cause it's cluttered as hell?? Fucking absurd. If people want to waste their money, than I suppose it's their right to do so.
I've made creatures before and made them an 'open' species because it's impossible to expect people to never want to draw something they like. Like as long as you aren't trying to claim you are the actual creator and trying to sue the person who is the real maker, than who the fuck cares? Who cares if you want to make one of those weird protogen things and give them a box for a head? People are starving to death in the world yet someone feels that arguing over the proper way to draw a weird fetish dragon is worth the time and energy.
I'd say have closed species for charity and things like that, but they'd still find a way to get butthurt about it.
Like I've said prior, things weren't this grifty. A lot of these things were apparently reasonable but gosh that's boring to our new friend Nestly. She needs to spice up her group because she's so bored with it! What do we do to spice it up? Create useless shit for our unneeded patreon tiers and paywalling supposedly useful things! Just like Joker in Batman Movie 2 said, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
Now we're to the other big part: art. Nestly is not the best artist let's call a spade a spade at this point. She's a low hanging artist: judges based on pretty instead of effort and skill alongside uniqueness and interesting factors. Why be a proper art judge when you can just be won over with something pretty or something your friend drew? I feel like, deep down, there is a word for this some where...
[The contained screenshot links] I legitimately thought it was only me having the image problems, huh. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3
I think that's all of them. There's also apparently some screens and journals about her defending a confirmed pedophile in her group as well and some talks of zoophilia too? I'll get to the bottom of all of that tomorrow definitely.
Aw winner winner chicken dinner, this sort of stuff is the good species shit I was hoping for with the thread, a LARGE number of species creators are ten feet up their own ass because surprising nobody, a business model revolving around a cult of personality tends to produce planet-sized egos. The contest stuff was a fun read, I know that's not with HER particular species but it's a great little seed of drama and the comments are beautiful. She legit doesn't even seem to realize what a fuckwad she sounds like. Thanks so much for the time to make the writeup!
You're welcome! I only remembered because of the Dutchies and it prompted me to go ask a friend for some proof of her bullshit. She has enough shit on her to have her own thread tbh but I'm not willing to comb through her social media and gay ops her discord.
gonna clarify something here
she didn't host the contest, it was hosted by another CS group entirely - she was a participant
instead of doing it like a normal person, she decided to one-up and practically mock a handful of kids in the process
comments of the second link showcase how few people thought her approach was acceptable, much less tasteful
also worth mentioning that for the longest time, being a patron only meant having "first dibs" on buying extra cosmetic content
first dibs is a loose term considering it was always the same 3 people - even among patrons - who kept sniping everything, leaving both other patrons and non-patrons rather frustrated ( plus ignoring suggestions to impose purchase limits so others have a chance )
was that the only reward? yeah, for the most part
nowadays there's upfront access to newer content, but back then she was very keen on neglecting extra rewards/ not offering any, only ever posting more overpriced adopts for patrons to snatch up
who wouldn't want to pay in order to have the right to buy more things
Damn I've followed Strudels for a while and I've forgotten this/never knew so this was certainly fun to read. Strudels are easily one of the softest closed species when it comes to members. Most members are under the age of 20 and use the group to develop more of their art skills/style through the RPG quests, DTE/DTAs, and monthly prompts and flash prompts. She was 33 or 32 when she did that, my god. That's not even mentioning how most of the poses seem traced.
Merbelles are just as restrictive when it comes to designing and the owner V4N4 has actually written in her T.O.S that she will not draw or design any Dainty.
No where near as restrictive as Merbelles or dainties but the biggest knock off of Dainties. Even taking half of their name. Dollie-Darlings compared to the group name of Darling-Dainties. However, while being a great value knock off, to even get a custom design made by the owner with no slot and being common expect it to be 61$ usd.
Strudels are easily one of the softest closed species when it comes to members. Most members are under the age of 20 and use the group to develop more of their art skills/style through the RPG quests, DTE/DTAs, and monthly prompts and flash prompts. She was 33 or 32 when she did that, my god. That's not even mentioning how most of the poses seem traced.
Usually it's no surprise when it comes to participants shitting on winners in contests, but it'd be fucking sad if any one of those entries are made by under-20 artists at the time, and for her as someone way older to scrub them that way as a giant fuck you just goes to show how much an ego-inflating bitch she is.