Why I think reclaims are a shitty thing to do...

...and my proposal for a better alternative.


First of all, I just want to say that yesterday was my last day of work for the summer so now I have a month off til school starts up.  We might go on a family trip, and I'll still be doing social things and yard work and such, but I should have a looot more time to draw now than I otherwise have had lately.  So expect some pictures soonish hopefully.

Now, concerning the title of this journal.

It's a common rule in HARPG breeding journals- "I will reclaim the foal if it isn't active according to X criteria", some variant to that effect.  Everyone would like their horses' foals to be active, whether it be because we love our characters and want to see their kids loved, or because active foals means more points in various registries.  So far, so good.

But here's the problem.  Parent Owner doesn't think the foal is active enough.  No doubt the foal owner has plenty of horses to draw, so each individual doesn't get a lot of unique screen time, so to speak; maybe they've just forgotten.  Maybe their interest has been low lately.  Whichever the reason, the foal is inactive, so Parent Owner reclaims the foal.

First of all, you've just taken someone's character away from them.  How do you know what their plans were for that foal?  What do you know of their emotional attachment to it?  Maybe they really friggin adored that baby, and there are just various reasons it hasn't been drawn a whole lot.  A lot of us still adore our horses even if we don't draw them often.  Check your own barn- how many of them have you drawn in the past month?  Past year, even?  Of those that have been sitting for a while, do you love them any less?  Would you be upset if someone told you that you weren't allowed to have them anymore? 

On top of that, reclaiming inactive foals if you have inactives of your own is pretty hypocritical.

Secondly, what about Parent Owner 2?  Did you ask them?  Maybe they gave the breeding to the foal owner as a special favor to a friend.  Maybe they don't want just anyone having foals of their horses.  Maybe the foal owner paid a lot, whether in points or art, to obtain a breeding to Parent 2.  In reclaiming that foal, you've given yourself a free breeding to someone else's horse, without permission from either of the other two parties involved.  My own stable is a prime example of how this can go wrong- my breedings are almost entirely closed off to the public.  On rare occasions may a very close friend have a breeding.  If the owner of the other parent reclaims that foal in some activity check, they've just broken my strongest principle, and pissed me off extremely- and I'm not even the one who did anything "wrong".

And if the foal owner has paid you in art or points for the breeding, in reclaiming you've just forced them to give you things without them having anything left to show for it.  In the end, it basically means they paid you for you to add another horse to your collection, without their consent.

But Helsinge, I don't like seeing my darling's babies being inactive

Quite understandable.  So what should we do then?  We can reclaim- but as I've explained, that's one of the ways in which we make HARPG feel like an unhappier place to be.  After all, we don't own that foal, we have no rights to the bloodlines of the other parent.

What we do have is the rights to our own character.  The only thing in that foal that belongs to us is the right to use that parent as a dam or sire.  Therefore, if we do not want that horrible little inactive foal to be associated with our darling pony, we can just remove the rights to use our pony's name in the pedigree.  The foal owner can still happily play with their character, the other parent owner has nothing to be irritated about, and your horse can once again claim to have only active babies.

Of course it's best to handle things in a polite fashion, remind people gently to draw their foals once in a while, and only take back the right to your character as a last resort.  I personally don't care for activity rules at all, but I know it's important to some people.  However, it can be handled in a way that does not result in character theft, both of someone's foal and the rights to use someone else's horse in a pedigree. 

Something we often forget is that HARPG is not the same as real life.  We call them stables, and treat them as such, but technically our horses are not "realistic" horses, but rather bits of intellectual property like any other character.  Would you walk up to J.K. Rowling and tell her she doesn't own Harry Potter anymore because she hasn't written a book about him in years?  Not a precise parallel, obviously, but you get the idea.  Or look at how we react to "design theft", i.e. when someone creates a horse that looks identical to our own- the community almost unanimously agrees that such a thing is bad, yet IRL if two horses are born a similar color or pattern it's no big deal.  That's what I mean by people forgetting HARPG isn't real life- genetics can be altered in HARPG, pedigrees switched up, appearance and breed changed, whatever we feel like because they are fictional characters, not set-in-stone. A character is the property of the person who owns it, not anyone else.  We are acutely aware of this when it comes to things like design theft, but for some reason it goes out the window when we start talking pedigree.  Therefore my point is to protect both Parent Owner and Foal Owner- with my suggestion, Parent Owner can protect their character's integrity via pedigree permission (and rescindment thereof), and Foal Owner can protect their right to keep their character and not have it taken away.  I'm sure you hate it as much as I do when someone threatens you with reclaims- so let's not force that unhappiness on someone else, shall we?

I have yet to think up a "perfect solution" for the Parent Owner Wishes vs. Foal Owner Wishes conundrum, but this is the best I've come up with so far, and it's what has been the standard in my own breeding rules for a long time now.  If you dislike a foal's activity or usage or owner or whatever, distance your own character from it by severing bloodline ties and removing the rights to use your character's name in the pedigree.  Don't go taking someone else's character.

Just my opinion.  You can disagree if you like of course.  But this is something that has bothered me almost since I first joined HARPG, and I hope that maybe others will perhaps identify with this tricky little issue and my solution for it- or perhaps even come up with even better solutions that will benefit the community mood and interactions between players.

Edit- this requires respect from both parties.  Parent owners need to respect foal owners' characters, but foal owners also need to respect parent rights to the name in the pedigree.  If they don't want it there,  there's no need to cling to it, a parent name is just a tiny part of the character. You'll still have the foal you love. Be nice to each other guys,  if everyone bends just a tiny bit then no one needs to steamrolled