This is a page to answer any questions I get asked a lot, or anything I feel deserves an explanation beyond what's present in the comic itself.
GENERAL QUESTIONS:
IS THERE AN AGE RATING FOR THE COMIC?
I don't trust myself to provide an accurate age rating- I was pretty young when I originally came up with these characters, including some of the darker themes in their story, and I am currently a minor. That isn't to say that this comic is appropriate for everyone, though. On toyhou.se, the story is listed as 15+, and I definitely wouldn't suggest reading it under the age of 13. I highly recommend reading the content warning if you're not sure whether you can handle the themes. However, there's nothing NSFW or intensely gory in the comic.
WHAT IS THE "PREBOOT" / "ORIGINAL STORY"?
Most of the characters in Utopia Mechanism were previously part of an earlier OCverse, which was then rebooted into the comic. Most content for the preboot was in the form of YouTube videos which have since been unlisted- the ones which still remain up are usually up because they're part of multi-animator projects.
WHY DON'T YOU LIKE THE PREBOOT / WHY DID YOU TAKE THE VIDEOS DOWN?
To put it succinctly, the preboot handled a lot of things poorly. It wasn't constructed from a solid foundation- it just kept getting tweaked and reworked over and over again over the course of about 4 years. It just wasn't well thought-out in any sense. Its one saving grace is really just that I didn't tell anyone about the story.
CAN I DRAW FANART / WRITE FANFICTION?
Yeah! Please keep it SFW, though. I'd also prefer if [in fanart] you didn't change the body types of my characters [in other words, please don't draw my fat / stocky characters as tall and thin] Other than that, go nuts!
CAN I MAKE AN OC?
Totally! Go completely nuts! You'll probably want to stick to the comic's color palette, though. That's not any kind of rule, though, it's just for consistency's sake.
CAN I HEADCANON THE CHARACTERS?
Absolutely! I just ask that, for personal comfort, you not make any headcanons that erase characters canon identities. Other than that, though, go nuts!
CAN I MAKE HUMAN DESIGNS?
You're totally allowed to make human designs for the characters. I'd love to see what you come up with! I have personal humanizations for the cast, but you absolutely don't have to stick to those designs.
HOW WAS THIS WEBSITE MADE?
With Neocities, stackoverflow, and a lot of HTML / CSS tutorials.
WORLDBUILDING STUFF:
WHY ARE THE CHARACTERS CATS?
I've had a lot of these characters, in one form or another, since around 2017. They were cats in their original incarnations (mostly because I couldn't draw people) and so they're cats now.
CAN THE CHARACTERS [insert thing real cats should not do- like eat chocolate, or drink alcohol]
To make a long story short, yes. I flip-flopped for a while on whether or not the characters should be subject to the same dietary restrictions and such that real cats are subject to, but ultimately I think the comic just works better with the characters as... essentially just fluffy humans.
DO FERAL CATS EXIST?
...Kind of. You won't see many of them in the comic, but non-anthropomorphic animals of all kinds are present- domestic cats are really the only ones to get the anthro treatment. Big cats exist as feral animals, but not domestic cats. It's sort of like how humans and apes coexist, despite both being primates.
WHAT HAPPENED TO HUMANS?
They never existed! Humans in this setting are just replaced with cats.
WHAT YEAR IS THE COMIC SET IN?
I don't want to nail down a specific year- it's just "near-future" and I'll leave it at that.
DOES HOMOPHOBIA / TRANSPHOBIA EXIST IN THIS SETTING?
That's ultimately up to personal interpretation, as it doesn't come up in the comic itself.
ARE THE CHARACTERS WITHOUT [EXTRA] HAIR BALD?
Boil 200 years