Animation Source Forums

I see this happen, and I see it ALOT, and it appears to be the same user doing so. "Can I make her a mate?" Honestly, children, exactly how many characters have you said this on? Have you actually even bothered to make any? There are more to characters than making them mates, in fact, not EVERY freakn' character on this site needs a mate. Allow me to stress this fact. When we're born, we're not instantly paired up with someone, so why should a character? Oh wait, they need to in order to keep this character game going...

Copy-pasted from another topic. Quoting myself boosts my self esteem.


I don't get the preoccupation with love. I really... don't. That could be because I grew up never interested in boys or romance, but I just don't get why there's a mad dash to hook up characterA with characterB upon characterB's inception. It reeks of arranged marriage and it creeps me out.

Sometimes I theorize that it's all in the name of getting a leg-up on the BS food chain. If you get your character mated with BigNameBSer's character, you stand a chance to get popular-by-proxy or get free art/renders/fanfics about your character. I won't lie, seeing your character reimagined by someone else feels pretty awesome, but it's really lame when you're only doing it to increase your e-fame.

Nowadays, I either RP out my character with a good friend's character and let romance develop on its own, make a mate myself, or just don't make a mate at all and play my character mateless so I don't have to deal with art/popularity leeches.

Yes, characters without mates exist. I'll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor.

So it all goes back to the popularity stuff again. I should have known. Considering people hoarder characters, it just adds up.

There are certain members who do this ALL. THE. TIME. Most of them are preteens or young teenagers (16 and under seems to be the going trend). EVERY SINGLE TIME a new character comes out, they are jumping on the page and begging to be allowed to make a mate (or assign one) to the character. It's annoying enough to see it happen. I can only IMAGINE how annoying it is to serious fan character makers.

Of course, it doesn't help that some of the peers of that group (16 and under n00bs wanting to constantly make mates for others' characters) are posting lousy, rushed characters, often which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the setting of the movie covered by the particular Source they are on at the time, in which they add, among other things, something like "looking to have a mate for this character". That only encourages these other idiots...

The point is, until someone gets steet up off his derriere and convinces him that we're all SICK TO FREAKING DEATH of the bad characters, the "can i haz maet" baloney, and the sparkle trash, we're never EVER going to see so much as a dent put into these trends. Period. You guys SERIOUS about wanting your fan sites back? Start making some real noise already.

I think I gave a short complain about this too xD
Funny that those people don't even bother to read your character's page. I remember someone once asked me, and already sent me CREATED character design(!) to be my character Storm's mate, even though her profile said clearly that she definitely do not wish to fall in love...
That's why I need to write "Mate: None(closed)" during character creation...

Luckily, this has only happened to me once, but I completely agree. The characters in general are the worst thing about this site. Because there are characters who are just...completely random. They have like 3 sentences on their bio, and they look like neon colored and have magical powers. Believe me, I'm all for creativity like this, but NOT on a BALTO fan site!

Balto Source is NOT the same thing as Deviant Art, no matter how many sparkle characters are on here.

Sorry, kinda off topic. But yes I find this and all aspects revolving around characters to be quite annoying.

Holy yes. I've seen so much of this lately, it's not even funny. You know that little "latest site comments" box on the front pages of the Sources? I was glancing at the one on BaltoSource the other day and saw SEVERAL charatcter comments--by the SAME MEMBER--that all read "can I make him[or her] a mate?" I took a look at some of said member's characters, and needless to say, none of them were that good.

I mean, seriously, people? Seriously? Do you really need to go around throwing out more pointless "characters" just for the sake of giving some other person's character an unnecessary mate whe you can't even develop your own few (or freaking many) little characters?

Don't get me wrong, I love shipping and whatnot, but that doesn't mean that EVERY stinking character needs a mate--ESPECIALLY not just because said character "looks good" in your opinion!

And I can bet you that they don't make the effort to make that happen either. If they do, I would be embarrassed to even have that thing related to my character; I would make them remove it.

Thinking about that though, wouldn't be saying that and never doing it be spam?

Thank you. Someone finally addresses the issue... I entirely agree with the points made above, and let me just say that those who go around saying "oh can I make them a mate??", also tend to do it (at least when it comes to my characters) on pages where the character has no intention of loving someone. If you have a character that let's say is a lovestruck type, then I guess it'd be in the right place, but even then, I find it very insulting for someone to ask to pair up a five minute character with one that took a very long time to construct. It annoys me to no end how those who ask this question constantly seem to disregard the character in question's personality. Half the time when I see this in the comments, it's on a character who has no intention of ever having a mate, falling in love, or even having friends. :/

I had just recently created a Character that goes along with my name Cero, and at least mini does care and only asked to make a Crush. Though I said she could, but he wouldn't like her probably. As he had his eyes on someone else, she was completely fine with it and went on with it anyway. AS for other characters. One actually was a no mate thing (A deleted character, a while ago) and people kept asking me about it. Maybe during the image processing you should put a stamp on it. "NO MATES!" xP

Sadly, a lot of people don't bother to read the full bio, and there are always those who overlook it even if you put it in size 100 font with big bold red letters.

Sorry for bringing this rant up again after two months of not being posted in, but I don't really think this deserves a separate topic: anyone else rather annoyed when they see that people are not only creating contests to make pointless mates for their characters, but for their FURSONAS, as well? I really don't think these people understand what the term "fursona" really means--when you're asking to make your fursona a mate, you're pretty much asking, "Hey, can you make a character to mate with ME?"

I mean, seriously. Fursona=YOU. An animal version of YOU used to replace yourself in drawings and other media, usually, but not always, because you're uncomfortable with drawing humans and therefore don't draw yourself as you. It's not just a "main character", as I have heard said. So don't go asking for a mate for your fursona; it's more or less the same thing as asking for a mate for yourself! :P Your fursona shouldn't have a mate unless you're married or, depending on how loosely you define "mate", you have a boyfriend/girlfriend. End of story.


Mini-rant over. :)

^ Yes. VERY.


(Sorry if that comes off as spammish. But I thought the answer could be summed up in those few words.)

^^ Oh my gosh, yes!

I used to do that when I first got here, to be honest. But then I realized that my fursona can't have a mate because I don't have a boyfriend/husband. I think people create mates for their fursonas because of how badly THEY want a boyfriend/girlfriend, and they think this will be just like having a real one. I gotta tell you, it isn't the same. Not by a longshot.

^^^ I third this

The fact is that people see completely no difference between a fursona and normal fan character. Not only they make contest for mates, but use them as normal charactes as well in their fan fictions.