I agree Ibanez, but now I'm being argued over character that has completely no relation to Spirit, maybe only living in the same period, but nothing else related to the movie.
I'm okay with "owned by cowboys who caught Spirit" "was a cavalary horse in the same fort Spirit was in" "pulled a train with Spirit", but only time period or jusr "met Spirit once" is not enough to make it a fan character.

I have also seen many characters made just to be mates to other user's horses or cranked out just for the design. These characters often don't have any thought put into their stories and normally aren't even drawn or spoken of again after their profile picture is done. These characters tend to clutter Spirit Source and are not fan characters to begin with. So bottom line, just put some thought into making a good history that is in some way related to the movie and you're golden in my book.

Also no sparkle horses. No. Just no.
You do not see scene, emo, punk, pink, etc. horses in the movie and have no place here. Though I just quit there because of art/design theft, the place to post those characters is DeviantArt or another art site.

(Had to post in two messages cause I typed too much)

Because I've gotten quite a few pms about my view on this topic just gonna throw in my two cents here.

This is a fan site so all characters posted should be some sort of fan character for the movie Spirit.
'But Ibanez, what qualifies a character to be a fan character' you say?

In my own opinion:

I believe all fan characters should, at bare minimum, be living in the Spirit 'Universe'. But explain in detail HOW they are related. The Calvary, the Lakota tribe, Cimarron herd, or somewhere else related to the movie. I understand not wanting to create a child, parent, or friend of the main character but make more of a background/low profile character that still has some connection to Spirit/Rain/Little Creek/The Colonel's story somehow. I don't see anything wrong with creating a story, design, and personality for a character not directly related to Spirit himself as long as their story has some tie to the movie. Such as they once lived at the fort, they belong to one of the Lakota natives, they helped pull the train, the list goes on.
But, for example, if your horse lives in (I'm coming up with this off the top of my head) Egypt it is obvious the only thing it could possible have in common with the movie is living in the same time period, which is not in the boundaries of being a 'fan character'.

sorry worded it wrong XD ment as in what are you wanting

Blaze> I'm not "trying" anything
Kirada> Now I think Balto Source has the most strict rules about characters. Highly unrealistic designs and colours aren't allowed, neither the relation like "lives in Nome". And thank you for finally explaining it clear that those rules apply to all sources, including Spirit Source.

bop - a mod removed it from must-see

The sole reason of my return as a moderator was to "spiffy up" Spirit Source. In the time that I was resigned in contrast to when I ran this site with UK, the quality of SS has taken a nose-dive as far as fan creations are concerned. So here I'm going to address a few things.

1.) Sparkle Horses.
I let "unrealistic designs" slide because I'm not THAT big of a stiff -- but blatant sparkle horses are a NO NO and I WILL deactivate them. I don't CARE if Balto Source accepts them - this is SPIRIT SOURCE, where ALL of the characters in the movies are -- without a doubt -- natural color patterns and colors as well as REAL breeds!

This rule was agreed upon by ALL of the mods at the time because of the indisputable fact that Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (S:SotC) shows REALISTIC horses, even if there are a couple of minor inaccuracies or exaggerations.

2.) Relation to Spirit.
This doesn't mean that it HAS to have a detailed encounter with Spirit himself. I base my characters to have had some prolonged encounter with at least one character from the movie -- for example, my character "Oklahoma Viking" was on the same ranch I fan-based Rain out of and was also Rain's big brother figure/mentor.

Having a strong relation to the movie in some form or another (not "he ran through Oklahoma once") is a REQUIREMENT. DeviantART has the "Horse Art RPG" (HARPG) for anything else someone just "has" to create that may not be related to S:SotC.

There are many mods who might not catch that a character isn't related to S:SotC. So if you stumble upon one, by all means report it for breaking the rules. Take a direct approach and message me personally if you have to - my primary focus is SPIRIT SOURCE.

Where do you see a unrelated must see character? They are all Spirit related...

troll are you trying just for unrelated characters to be removed or also unrealistic?

Sasuke--> You're right I see your point. I was thinking of character along the line of being in the Spirit (or any other source) universe but never meet the main characters. I actually never seen any characters that were from other countries and what not, not saying that there isn't any, but yeah that is what I thought people meant by non-related.