Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25396609-20180128214516/@comment-25396609-20180130013910

You're not being petty, you're asking for actual clarification instead of nit-picking.

1) It's a rule intended to avoid "cheating" by using a character which has already been heavily reviewed and revised. It also makes it so you have to write from the begining specifically for the contest (in most cases at least; some of us have so many characters they've already got one laying around to fit a lot of themes or have one that'd be easy to retrofit into a theme.)

2) If you're completely changing everything, you reach the point that you may as well just find a new name and do it from scratch. I won't allow the character, but if I'm interpreting what you're saying correctly and you're doing a total rewrite, you may as well change the name and start fresh entirely.