aaaaah thank you that totally worked 👍 👍 👍 interestingly enough, my a:hovers (all of them) stopped working shortly before you gave me that (though they're fine in firefox, so i'm leaning more toward my browser is crapping its pants than problems with code) but i'll settle for non-blue hearts if nothing else

This is a good topic, it was a lot of fun to read. c': I hope it's ok if I kind of... check things out here sometimes... and maybe post haha. I like reading everyone's stuff!

I feel your complaints with female characters, for me it's like... I worry SO much more when it comes to my ladies because places like Tumblr etc tear apart female characters for like, any weakness whatsoever because apparently having flaws makes a woman weak, like I have literally seen people write long-minded meta on why you shouldn't see x character flaw as a character flaw because the character is female... but then you have the other people who get mad whenever a (flawed) female character is strong because it makes her a Mary Sue?! Like I tend to be disinterested in really overpowered/Special (last of their bloodline etc) characters in general but some people are only bothered by female characters like that and love the male ones... I don't understand people who get all double standard-y about it? Basically I feel like creating male characters is "safer" if they're characters you're going to be sharing at all D| I tend to overthink what aspects of my characters can be problematic (even tho my characters are self-indulgent half the time??) and that can really really kill my enthusiasm, it's just... sigh.

Anyway I uh I haven't worked on any of my pets in what feels like ages (and now all their links are missing from my profile whoo), I'm trying to slowly get back into it. I need to work on my pets so badly, I love them but I only ever seem to be inspired for 2-3 days a month and then I'm just shrugging the rest of the time pfff

Well you can definitely change the heart color too (that was just the color from a random pet profile) in the second string of code!

That is absolutely weird about the hovers. I did notice they weren't working on the hearts originally, but that's odd (I snooping in your coding, I hope you don't mind!) because you use basically the same font mods I do but mine are fine? Somewhere in there, there's gotta be something causing a problem (hearts are so fickle, they're literally effected by everything). If you want I can pull your code off one of your pet profiles and see if I can't figure out what's causing it (if I can't, probably can, she's a pro at this).

Haha well I mean to be fair I expected to be a minority here. A lot of users have mostly/all female characters, and obviously if people didn't enjoy it then media would stop making "leading" ladies like that xD!

The reason they actually do that (to both males and females) is because the blanker/less deep a character is the easier it is for a person to put themselves in that position. You can really see how effective that is with the Twilight franchise-- most people don't even acknowledge that the chick (Bella?) exists and instead are fighting over male teams and how much Mr. Sparkles and Puppyboy really love them.

It is a huge double standard, I absolutely agree (and tumblr... heh... you'd think the sheer amount of feminists on that site would put a stop to it but alas, it never ceases to 'amaze' me |D). Personally, though, I don't find the overpowered male roles any more appealing than the female ones. Like, going back to Jean Gray-- if that was a male character, I feel he'd be just as annoying and unbelievable as if he were female.

-laughs- though I will say over-thinking something is definitely a double-edged sword XD! Over-thinking everything is one of the parts I enjoy the most about character building, but unless you have the muse to over think it's very... deadend.

Motivation is the silent (character) killer -nodnod-

you know if you dont mind, i'd be super appreciative (hmu if you want me to just smail you the code or whatever, i can totally do that)

at first i thought it was just my browser throwing a fit, but now i'm back to thinking it's something in the code incompatable with chrome (???) because hover effects are working just fine on the main site. one thing i DID notice was that if you hover over my UN, it'll get "stuck" in the hover mode, but that's apparently the only link that does hovers, like at all.

all i can think is one of those weird CSS pushes that have been going through lately has messed with something in my coding, and for whatever reason only affects it in chrome? it's weird.

It's okay, I just pulled it from the source on one of your pet pages!

I also noticed the odd sticking hover! I also noticed that it doesn't really work for the stat links either (books and food), which is really bizarre... (I've found something in your display: none options is effecting the stat links though, not sure which one it is yet though).

I keep comparing your code to one of my profiles and a lot of it is pretty close to the same thing but as far as I know the hovers are working on mine (via chrome, too).... here's one of them if you don't mind, just in case, if you hover over the heart next to his name does it change colors? (Watch it not work and I'ma be back to square one or something and trying to fix mine too haha)

no, your hovers are working just fine, so clearly it's something on my end (and not just my wacky browser). the heart is normal, the links are normal, this is definitely something of mine.

Ive really enjoyed reading this thread! Since reading it ive tried to teach myself how to make a pet profile (and failed, but im going to keep trying, for the sake of my poor pets XD) and really feel like i need to start on some stories for my pets. Unfortunately, all but 2 of my pets are fanpets and i dont think id ever be able to write them a story that does them justice :( Per the discussion above - all 43 of my pets are male. I just dont find that i can identify with female characters in a way that i can male, even though mine are all fanpets lol

HAHAHA PROGRESS! Something in your content coding is not playing nicely with the header.

If I remove the from the display:none, everything hovers just fine (but y'know.. the header is on there making it fugly). And if I remove your code the profile goes nuts but everything hovers just fine. You ready for this? The absolute position of your is what's throwing all of it off. How? Why? ... no idea. It literally makes NO sense that suddenly out of the blue that would just, kill your coding but this is subeta so while it makes no sense, I'm not surprised at all.

Just try changing it to look like this:

{position:relative; top: 40px; left: -50px; width: 665px; height: 100% !important background: ; -webkit-border-radius: 20px; -moz-border-radius: 20px; border-radius: 20px;}

The only thing changing is the relative instead of absolute.

Also I dunno if you hate padding (I hate padding, and margins) but you can also toss this in there to move that pet heart up some:

p.pet_like {margin:1px; padding: 0px;}

???????? that??? of all things, that is what was goofing up my link hovers? subeta i will never understand you and your system of coding held together by thumbtacks and rubberbands

but yes thank you for getting to the root of the problem. it was just such a minor thing, so of course it was bugging the snot out of me

Haha I really don't even understand why that was the source of the whole problem. It makes more sense than the header disable throwing a wrench in it at least. Kinda? But still, wow.. not even having to change the top/left numbers just literally that one word is what was upsetting it... okay coding, you.. you do that.

You're totally welcome too, I spent a fair amount of my morning but after a little while it became a vendetta because I don't have obsessive issues or anything like code I will find out why you're not working I swear. I have a coffee maker ready to go don't try me.

i'm actually kind of glad i wasn't the one who went in to try and figure it out, because lord knows i would have completely deconstructed everything related to fonts, then given up when none of that worked, because of course the most logical route is not at all related to what was happening

like there's a reason i use a default layout/code for all my pet profiles (when they're up, anyway). i just figure things out once, and then swap out color palettes and call it a day. coding on subeta is just too much for my sensibilities...

Amazing thread so far, I'm still reading through most of the posts. Who am I struggling with? I have 24 pets right now and I think 5 of them are going in the right direction. A couple of those guys haven't changed for the 8 years I've been on this site, a couple are a little newer. But in general it takes so much changing of characters before one really sticks. I feel like I lost that ability, to just throw together characters. It was so much easier on Neopets. ;P My fault for not drawing and writing as much as I used to.

Interesting conversation about male vs female characters. I think there is a weird backlash against poorly written female characters in media that results in more poorly written characters. If you look at what we consider good male characters, they are all over the spectrum. Evil, beautiful, ugly, kind, scared, compassionate, sick, brave, strong, silly, uncertain, big, small, whatever. The same should apply to all genders. The real problem is when all of your characters of one gender are the same, which I think a lot of people try to counter with the "write strong women" argument. Write strong women, but also write all kinds of women. Write all kinds of people! No limits! That's my two cents.

@ Andrea Haha, yes, totally! I don't get along with them either xD. Anyways, I really agree with , I don't think I'd be good with female characters unless I am able to accept and work with all sorts of female characters. Though the double standard thing mentioned by can affect a lot of us. This so called social justice can be very pretentious sometimes, as I almost see people picking on all female characters in some way, like there's always some "political incorrectness" in them. There's no mold in shaping a perfect female characters, and women aren't perfect. Nobody's perfect.

Ahahaa here you are assuming I don't do the exact same thing! All of my profiles have the same templet, I just change colors and move on. I'm thankful I guess, that I can pretend to code enough to fake it, and that I really enjoy simplistic layouts-- with subeta's constant changing code if I played the elaborate/hide-and-go-seek hovers/graphic profile game I'd probably not be on subeta anymore due to mental instability issues.

... sometimes just trying to find out what changed can be enough of a hassle.

The same should definitely apply to both genders, and there most definitely should be more types of female characters who are vastly varied. Most of the time, the male roles go from A to Z and you see every single individual letter represented.

Then you have the females which are typically A (super perfect, super beautiful, in perfect shape with a perfect build, a genius, has half of the males in love with her, donates blood and hands out care packages to the homeless on the weekends-- is also a super human, and saved a puppy. Twice.) and then you have Z (entire existence is based on being the love interest of the leading male role.. no depth, no brain.. literally just a pretty face), there is rarely anything else (okay sometimes you get S, the sidekick of A or the defender of Z). It's so rare to find other letters represented, that I feel jaded and until rather recently (about a year and some change ago) totally disconnected from making female characters at all.

I'd fallen into the mindset of "oh look a female, I wonder who's love interest she is", which is sad, really |D Even now, I still find it so much harder and I find myself judging them more than I do the guys.

Hahaha oh god, to be perfectly honest though I don't get along with those types of guys either. There was this one winner in my office (who thankfully left last year, I literally came home and drank in celebration), who "Bro.. dawg.. yo.. yo.. bro.. lemme tell you daawwggg dis shirt I bought from blah blah blah ironed blah blah blah yo lemme tell you bought this salad my useless female servant-- uh I mean wife made me broooo". As if that wasn't fantastic enough, he often made "never expect a woman to do a mans job" remarks, but he also thought the recent Maleficent movie was "Disney supporting the worship of Satan" because she had horns and killed the (male) King.

... needless to say, I don't get along with overzealous "I'm about to tell you the most boring pointless aspects of my life, in full detail" personalities. Male or female.

lol ironically enough i've got the opposite of your dillema. i've got a much better track record of making/keeping characters on subeta (even if i'm not the most active in showing it), but i absolutely could not get invested in anything i made on neopets. probably why i'm considerably more active on this site, haha also what's that in your signature? my interests are piqued

i'm with you there, i'm a minimalist layout appreciator. lord knows i've been on enough rants about profiles that are basically one huge, intricate image with a tiny 200x200 text box with a hidden scroll bar. that is not user friendly but yeah i'm fortunate my tastes in pet profiles are as they are, because my art's shelf life lasts MAYBE a month before i get the itch to tear it down and cache it away out of sight, so turning one of my pieces into a layout is just a recipe for disaster. i COULD try and make a layout out of a commissioned piece, but lord knows i have a hard enough time finding artists willing/able to draw my characters on this site (but god bless the ones who do 🙏 )

and on that topic, here's another open question: anyone else have a knack for designing characters that are not so easy to commission art for? seems like everything i love in a character design is all the stuff subeta artists dislike/cannot draw. this is my eternal curse for making all of my characters uggos

@ Andrea Oh definitely. There's no double standard there! It applies to both genders for sure! I'm glad your coworker left, I'd drink to that as well! Besides those meaningless crap they talked about, I really hate the sexist comments towards women!

Lol neopets. My baby Nicolas was actually born on neopets by a gawd awful name that I adopted for stats (we're talking like 150-200 XD Oh, the stat standards between subeta and neo, one of the biggest things that drew me here)!

I don't think I brought anything else from neopets with me here, though. Or I guess I should say, Nico was the only substantial thing I gained from that site, and even that was basically months before I found subeta and moved on with my life. Seems like he should be older than that, but god... that was over 9 years ago now so I guess he's not really that young anymore |D

-laughing- Y'know, I work at a big pipeline corp in Texas, so needless to say I'm working in a man's profession with a lot of... men. And you know who stereotypes me the most? Other women.

Long story short I'm asexual, I hate kids -hiss moving cesspools of disease and sticky shit-, I bought a house by myself, and I now live with my friend () who also happens to be a forever single female-- while we are indeed not lesbians, if I had to take a guess at what people assumed I meant by "my roommate" it would probably be "lesbians". And believe it or not, the only male that I've worked with to date who looked like his brain was going to implode was the before mentioned winner. The rest of them are like cool, man I'd get the fuck out of Pennsylvania too it's cold as hell up there, hell naw. Ladies just seem confused, and then react typically the same.

"Oh well when you meet Mister Right" "Oh one day you'll fall in love with kids and want your own" "Do you have kids? No, I have a dog? .... -brain explode- ahaha that's not a kid XD??" "Well just wait till you have your own, then you'll love 'em!" ... or not. Let's go with not, final answer |D;

AND THEN THE REACTION IS ALWAYS THIS IS AWKWARD IDK WHY YOU'RE NOT FEMALE LIKE ME... HERE LEMME SHOW YOU PICS. NO LET'S NOT I LIED I'MA LESBIAN LALALA GET AWAY FROM ME -throws papers and runs-

That right there. That is a large chunk of why I never look at spotlight pets (also because I'm too literal for quad pets, which is the main demographic it seems), because I look and think.... y'know? I was never any good at Where's Waldo.. I think I'm done here.

And, and, when you do find the magic hiding spot the box is a pain in the ass to get to stay fullsized + scroll, and it's got a darker background color with pale gray FADED font and the scroll bar is an imagine and not one that works and I'm like... whatever is in there, isn't worth it. It could be something that makes Tolkien feel like a failure.. and it's not worth dealing with that sensitive coded crap :I

... And personally, I never commission like, anything. I always feel like it's a waste of money because the thing is either "cutesy" (like a chibi, and I mean okay I do that sometimes when I'm being super lazy but I want to get this visual out of my head and a chibi is the quickest/easiest thing to vomit out) and man I'm not paying $15 for a tiny chib I could do myself (I could get two TC CWs for that-- maybe three!)-- or it's like awesome art totally deserving of the cost and all.

But my characters are typically as fickle as their maker. And it seems like such a waste to spend (random number pulling out of my ass) $50 on something and then two weeks later Nicolas is going to be like "don't you think I'd look better with blond hair? I think I'd look better as a blond again, let's do that"... and I'm like well fuq, glad I did that. So I just don't.

But I have snooped around the art forums in the past and yeah, there seems to be a select few artists who are capable of (or I guess I can say willing to) doing "not pretty" things.

i stg i remember the neopets version of nicolas. vaguely, but still. and omfg dont get me started on stat differences between neo and subeta... i remember way back when, back when kolja (who was then named voloshenko in the old 'n crusty days) had like 80 even stats. i was like LOOK HOW STRONG MY PET IS because i mean hey, that's respectably bulky on neo, right? i'm laughing derisively just thinking about it

but god the only thing worse than a tiny scroll box with 8 px font and a hidden scrollbar is all those wacky fading portions and slide-out tabs and whatnot. i don't have that kind of patience to read anything written in a hazardous environment like that. like i understand this is all super subjective, but it's still a major pet peeve of mine.

and my problem is like, there's a lot of really good artists selling on here, and i'm not claiming otherwise. nor am i averse to paying a good chunk of change for a pic that i think is worth my while. but then on the other hand, the char i want to buy art of more often than not is a 50-something, hatchet-faced, receeding hairline piece of shit, and GO FIGURE that doesn't really tally into the strengths of many artists here. so every time i find someone who will do him justice, i'm like 🙏

then to make matters worse, i'm weirdly self-conscious about going back and making an artist draw the same character twice. like that giant pic at the bottom of kolja's profile? i commissioned that from my friend, and i've been wanting to get another (of kolja) from him every time he opens commissions, but i just keep getting pics of other characters instead because i dont want to be that weird guy who keeps getting the same character drawn over and over. is this weird? i feel like this is weird but that doesnt make it any less of a concern.

Haha that's funny, it's much harder for me here to get attached to the Subeta artwork I think, it's just so good! It feels like custom art of someone else's character, because of the quality, so unless I dedicate the time to do all my own custom art I end up losing motivation and I end up with less creative ideas and then I change everything. I think my ratio for the last 10 years of pet sites is 10-12 solid characters on Neo and maybe 6 on here, including the 5 I have now. Eeek. But I'm never gonna stop being addicted to pet sites. :D

And I second your "hard to comission art for" dillema! Many of my characters have weird or time consuming designs or it's part of their character to transform a lot, so they don't have 1 solid character sheet or reference. And I totally respect artists desires to not deal with that, when you're doing art for money you want as little complexity as possible. Even I barely want to draw these guys sometimes, haha.

My signature has a bunch of monsters from the game Dead Space! They are so cool. It's one of my favorite video game series.