I'm actually the opposite when it comes to getting into the subetaverse. I tend to take things literally at times, and I think it's because of that that I have a hard time imagining my Subeta pet characters existing outside of Subeta. I can understand how someone might have difficulty with having their characters exist within Subeta with all the unanswered questions, though.

I like the idea of them having multiple forms, so maybe some of mine will have mostly-human anthro versions that exist outside of Subeta. I like the idea of them living in an alternate universe; I just can't seem to get my head around it for some reason. I think having versions that are more human-like than animal-like will help me to separate them from the Subetaverse a bit. My one problem is that I tend to have trouble drawing human faces, haha. I guess that's why I'm a bit hesitant, but I have improved some lately and it would give me a reason to continue practicing.

[-parade]

It's nice that Subeta has so many different things you can do with your pets and so much diversity, and there is quite a bit of lore to play around with if you keep your pets in the original verse. I'm quite partial to the Saheric and Tehb stuff we've got, but yeah the whole anthro vs human vs quad mystery is mainly what's keeping me from utilizing the setting. Keeping it so vague is probably for the best though, since there are so many people who have different canons for their pets. :')

Having AUs is always an option though, who doesn't love AUs? It could work quite well for character-building as well, figuring out how they behave when they're in their original animal forms vs their human forms. (and art practice is never a bad thing!)

... Now that I've been thinking about this thread, feeding hot dogs and to my wee Sauron is getting really bizarre.

[-parade] I have trouble not taking the subeta world into account myself and while having AUs and multiple forms is fun, in the end I like keeping things simple and straightforward. Vagueness is cool to give people freedom, yeah, but I guess to some freedom just ends up being confusing, haha~

After reading some stuff on subetapedia and noticing more pet NPCs, I can only conclude that the word "animal" is replaced with "pet"... And I got the vibe that it describes their nature in a sense, that being pets is kind of their thing a lot of time. Which is weird... But not necessarily wrong, this being a different planet and all.

I did come to a sort of conclusion though that maybe will help you guys too? Looking at our bank owner Morty King, the library quest ontra, the demi bandit leader and so on, I'm going for a "cartoon animal" vibe. It's anthro but not in the sense that they have human bodies and faces but more like Buggs Bunny or Donald Duck anthro. I sketched my keeto and serpenth and I'm pretty happy with it. My only gripe with going anthro was honestly the thought of covering up their bodies - unlike humans their bodies have markings and interesting features that were a shame to hide.

And so there you have it.

Pretty much all my pets are unrelated to the subeta universe and the pets themselves are just stand-alones for separate non-subeta based characters.

As for what those characters are, human, supernatural and in some cases fan based characters, but my fan based characters are of real people( Titian is a fan character of the Renaissance artist of the same name, and Waterhouse is for both John William Waterhouse( the artist) and the lady of shalott poem that his lady of shalott painting is based on).

I also have at least one that's an information pet on a historical time period/place, but that's only Byzantium currently.

All of my pets are OCs with no relation to subeta. I make them all quad characters, however they're nobody's pet. As far as species as far as being animals, they're either griffins, OC species, or other animals, instead of being subeta species. I just refer to them as characters, or Anima when talking about plots, since refering to them as pets is weird for me.

You basically summed it up there for me! My characters here started out as anthros, because I came from Neopets, where that was the norm and I just assumed it's what people did with petsite characters. As they started to encompass more of my creative attention though, I realized I can't really draw anything with fur and I struggled to envision half of them as anthros anyway, so I made the switch to kemonomimi/gijinka/morphs- whatever you wish to call them, which really aided me in developing them I think. That's pretty much where they've been for the last eight or nine years, though lately my brain has been pushing me to just make them fully human. I've always designed the human character first and picked out a specie/color to represent them after, so the pets I have on site are less of a platform in that way and more of an avatar, I suppose. Their stories are an AU and don't have much to do with our world or Subeta's.

Subeta has really managed to suck me into this thinking though that my characters are somehow more important to me if I have a "tangible" representation of them (though of course, it's just ideas applied to pixels either way). I think some part of me appreciates having a fun way to keep them organized and.. perhaps on a lower level, I also enjoy showcasing among a community that's important to me in a way that is normal and not very obvious. Whatever the reason, it feels very satisfying to be like "Yes. I have this character and here they are on this site, and here's some info and art for them." (though I'm pretty slow with that latter part oop)

Thank you ❤️

I can't lie, I've found straight up quad here to really difficult, so I edge around it. But like you mentioned above, that grey line between quad and anthro, like Anabelle of Freyalise's crew, is ultra malleable with the Subetan universe, which so far has supported it.

Depending on how anatomically human you're going, too, allows for choice on clothing or lack thereof them.

tbh this approach confuses me a little-- well, not confuses but... But for me, personally, I end up asking "why make them on subeta then?". I can understand that by making them pets you get to share them and have a space dedicated to them and all that, of course. Just something that the majority of the creative userbase sees differently, I guess? :'D I have a bunch of OCs for stories and so on and if I did re-create them as virtual pets it'd definitely be an AU that incorporates the subetaverse anyway.

But all of it is moot cuz there's probably no subeta-themed RP community ovo;;

Hah, for me it's the opposite - I create the character around a pet I like D Kind of justifying getting one in a sense. And yeah, I can understand the whole community aspect. Most of my OCs barely see any attention from anyone but me since they're story actors and there's no reason to make a sort of room for them.

It's, like, why go quad??? Thumbs are awesome! (tho there's a webcomic called Wurr with a quad canine society and their paws have a different structure to allow for crafting etc.) That's my thinking, yeah - some of my characters would have clothing, while others wouldn't either due to inconvenience or plain not caring. I wanna avoid changing the species' anatomy as much as possible.

I've been asking myself that a lot lately. Especially with sites like toyhou.se that from what I can tell have no limits on how many characters you can have. I guess the petsite aesthetic still keeps me here. xD

I think I'm of a similar mindset as you. One of the main reasons I started playing Subeta is because I liked the look of the pets, so I prefer building animal (or at least anthro semi-animal) characters around pets that I like the look of rather than choosing a pet based off of a pre-existing character. The one somewhat exception to this would be if I knew of an untaken name that I wanted to use and felt that it would work for a specific pet/color combination. (I actually have two names in mind that I may do that for... one I'm most likely going to do and the other one is still kind of up in the air since I've only figured out the color and not the species.)

All of my current pets are shells for OCs to fit into, because I love them too much to leave them alone ;; They also don't live in the Subetaverse, but rather groups of them would be from one story, and another group would be from another. So, I guess, in a way, Subeta is kinda my Charahub/Toyhouse, but without the profiles and stuff because I am as slow as a brick. So, all that, and along with what said in regards to anthros and humans xD

Speaking of, I do want to use the custom overlay feature one day for my pets, because I want to better represent them, but I'm worried that my designs might be too human to be anthro :/ Ah well, I'll see by then. (if anything I can just plop the picture on top ohohohoho)

When I was in high school I joined neopets and one of the aspects I always admittedly disliked about the site was how restrictive user's characters of their pets had to be. I had no interest in anthro characters and I didn't really know how to create a satisfactory quad character so I gravitated toward human characters. That isn't to say I don't have characters without animal forms. Shei, if I ever get around to her will probably be based on the concept of the Chinese demon and have an animal form, but she ultimately will be human though.

I create characters I know that I can weave stories around to my satisfaction and while I love the subeta universe in general I find it somewhat restrictive to simply work within the confines of just the subeta universe alone. I've seen some people who have amazing subeta based pets, but the concept of having all pets be subeta based alone just doesn't work for me.

Likewise, the same applies for quad and anthro pets to a degree. When I was in high school and still part of neopets I remember trying countless times trying to create quad characters I liked and in general they just never came out to my satisfaction so now I pretty much stick to human based characters as a rule.

Yeah, on toyhouse your characters won't tell you that the tomato you fed them is "ew gross"

[-parade] Heh, ye, for me I gotta pick a pet I'd wanna draw =v= And that's another curious thing about the community here - name snagging!

I was kinda surprised to see "Custom [pet species]" when I returned to the site this week... It's a pretty awesome feature. So do the rules allow you to use outright human character overlays or...??

Hmmm... I see. I get all my freeform juices flowing without any attachments to sites or such at all so I don't feel restricted. In fact, I find it fun to play within other people's universes, focus on a specific aspect or topic touched upon in the lore etc. and build a character from there. It might just be a matter of fundamentally different styles of thinking too.

Indeed, it's an awesome feature! And it does not allow outright human character overlays, sadly. According to the rules, we're only allowed to use quad or anthro designs.

However, the degree of how anthro a design could be isn't too clear, so I'm assuming that so long as it looks like the site's anthro characters, we should be fine-ish? I'm just a worrywart in general, so don't listen to me too much. xD

I would think so. Being fairly new to the site, I don't really know for sure, but I don't see why it would be a problem to have overlays of characters that are about as anthro as official site characters.

I love seeing what kinds of stories and personalities everyone comes up for with their pets, but when it comes to my own pets it's not really something I do. I've only ever been interested in having one pet really, so Bern is the color/species combo that he is because it reminds me of a really special stuffed toy I had as a kid (I still have it, just don't play with it anymore). He's the one that I train and feed and read books to for achievements and all of that, which is my main focus on the site instead of pets. I'm probably in the minority there.

I adopted Gaelic a while ago and decided to keep it because I liked the name and that particular experiment pet for some reason. Still not sure what I'm going to end up doing with it though.

Either way, I just kind of think of my pets as the animals/creatures they are (except I do imagine them being able to talk), but not like people or humanoid or anything. Although I'm not against other people having their pets that way, I think it's cool!

oh im not worried i doubt i'll spend money for it even if it is neat :y and im not the one with borderline human characters, eheheheh the thought that there could be human "pets" on people's profiles just popped in my mind and wOW now THAT would be bizarre lmao

Sometimes i'm jealous of that kinda simple life. Just me and my one only trusty companion being showered with books, training, food and so on :'] But no... I just HAVE to get as many as possible and of cOURSE i HAVE design and write about all of them WHY CAN'T I JUST LET THEM BE DUMB TALKING ANIMALS dont mind me it's 2am here i should go to ehbreafws, bed...

Haha aw, I guess it does keep things pretty simple. It can be hard sometimes though whenever new colors and stuff come out, there are so many that I love looking at every now and then.

When I was younger and really into neopets, I gave my pets a bit more personality and backstory but still not whole elaborate stories. I can see how it would be really fun though, especially if you enjoy writing and art and such.

LOL what you just said to Laurey describes me pretty much perfectly. I knew I wasn't ever going to have just one pet on here, but when I started I thought "Well, maybe I'll just have one or two for a while and slowly add pets over time," since I did enjoy being able to focus my attention on just one. That lasted about a week. xD There are just too many that I know I definitely want so I figure why wait to create them, especially if I happen to have a basic character idea in mind. Their stories probably won't be particularly elaborate, but I do like giving characters personalities.

[-parade] it's suffering :') i kno i made 5 pets at once or smth years ago because everyone got a GA as compensation for downtime so dayum gotta fill those pet slots haha why if mine weren't all potion'd i'd abandon THEM ALL (of course i made friggin' 3 new ones this week also B) way to go, me)

YOU'RE SO STRONG. full admiration from me, ok, MVP award i think i've become stronger myself tho cuz i've learned that i don't need to own a pet to draw them or admire their pet art?? it's rly bad if pet art inspires character.. i probably wouldn't do elaborate stories or even be where i am today if i hadn't gotten influenced by the epic cool people on neopets with their intricate plots and shit. sobs my neopets were naruto OCs