Does a pet's color/specie have to match the persona attached to it perfectly? I wanna turn my blob spectrum but the story I'm writing is about a mermaid.

Nope not at all, your character can be whatever you want no matter what the pet color. Pet spotlight rules are mmmmmooostly just to make sure there are no major coding issues and you have worked on several aspects of your pet on the site. The content/story ideas you come up with can be totally creative and unique as you want.

Ah, good. Thanks.

How can i know if the ""Nominate" link is available for everyone else? Do i need to activate it somewhere?

They need to be enabled here: https://subeta.net/spotlight.php?view=pets

Thank you very much! I couldn't find it by own ^^

I forget where that page is a lot but it's actually linked on the main pet page. I wish it was also linked in user prefs somewhere so I didn't lose it all the time haha.

I'd like to know why there seems to be a pretty small pool of (owners) nominated/winning pets. You can't ask people to nominate your pet (as I understand per the rules) and yet there seems to be a pattern of users having templates/art/stories/ getting pet spotlight wins. Mostly by people charging CSC.

Yes. I think the pet spotlight is just ridiculous. If you put the effort in and refrain from buying/selling to get a win then you deserve it. It pisses me off because it is yet another way to discriminate. One user told me I didn't do anything but train my pets. Yeah, that makes me less qualified to have an opinion.

Edit: Perhaps there needs to be more transparency in the nomination process. When a winner is announced there should be a "nominated by"' announcement as well. It should also be clear what has been paid for with csc by the owner of the pet who has won. Not a popular opinion by those reaping the benefits of the current system but I'm not a fan of people taking advantage. For ANY reason.

@ Cassandra Certain people put a lot more time into making their pets spotlight ready. If someone has 20 spotlight ready pets they will win more often than someone with one, and there's only so many users on the site, much less people invested in the pet spotlight. Like you said yourself you're more into training, some people like to only battle, only do treasures, only read books or do gourmand, or aren't interested in pets at all. It reminds me of how people where getting suspicious that certain users win the potion lottery more often- when it really comes down to those entering every day will just have a higher likelihood of winning. Since the spotlight is randomly chosen its a numbers game, kind of like raffle tickets haha.

I'm not sure what you mean by the profile templates thing, I looked thru the last 30ish wins and most templates people are using are free ones provided by or and people just edit the colors and background themselves, so I think most people who win don't pay for anything, and many more people could go that route and win with simple profiles or edited free templates if they want to. Most don't have custom overlays and some don't even have any custom art at all. There is not a lot that's truly necessary to win the spotlight when it comes down to it. That, plus winning being random, I don't see how it's discriminatory. But you should definitely make a thread in the suggestions forum if you have ideas like the transparency thing, instead of posting here, since this thread is for specific questions and you probably won't get many people seeing your post.

I'd personally prefer if we could just nominate our own pets since the pet community on subeta is pretty small, but I've found posting in threads like Recent Pet Progress: Give yourself a gold star, [topic not found], or making your own thread asking for advice will get you nominated pretty quick as long as you have the option toggled on and its visible on the pet profile. I don't think changing the visibility of who nominates pets will make a big difference on how many people enter. If we could at least ask for nominations if we feel our pets are ready that might make it easier. But I do believe being active in the pet forum is all it really takes to get nominated, no matter what the profile looks like.

If you don't work on your pets much but want to know more about the pet spotlight process and the pet community here you should join in more threads! ^o^ Be part of our lil pet community, nominate the pets you like, give peeps advice on profile stuff, we could always use more people!

[edit] I just found that there is actually a thread for brainstorming changes and updates to the pet spotlight here! That is a good place to post, they've already come up with a couple ideas I had thought of previously and who is a judge for the spotlight reads the posts there.

The problem with the spotlight is it is not a level playing field. A user who isn't even active got the spotlight win on Wednesday. What does that say about the vetting process? Users who have a lot of RL money can buy everything they want, with no effort. Commission this and that. It stinks of Neopets. There is a reason I don't play there anymore.

@ Cassandra I'd say if a user doesn't even have to be playing to win maybe it is a pretty level playing field? xD But more seriously, there are pets who win with barebones profiles, they just need the most basic parts of a profile to win because it's a raffle-style win. To me that seems like a level playing field. People can spend a ton of money on pets if they want but that doesn't really increase their chances, as long as the judge okays it they're all in the winners queue. I guess if you don't have faith that the spotlight judges are unbiased and will allow anyone in there's an argument there. Do you think the judges don't let in people who haven't spent real life money?

Edit: Are you saying you just don't want commissions allowed at all? Do you think free resources like profile templates provided by other users shouldn't be allowed, even if they aren't paid for? Sorry if I'm being nitpicky, just trying to figure out what direction you're coming from and what kind of rule changes might smooth out the process. The spotlight isn't perfect and at this point could use an update just for how old the system is, at the very least. I think staff and users are open to changes and revamping it.

I have been reading thru some of that thread I posted for spotlight suggestions and you should definitely chime in with rules changes there! There has been discussion there of things like: limit how many pets one person can have in the queue, letting us nominate our own pets, letting us ask for nominations outright, a certain % of the profile requirements done by the person who owns the pet, and changes to rules for crediting images on the profile. has said there's still active talk about updates to the pet spotlight so if you actually do want to see change you should chime in there with suggestions you think would improve the playing field, whether its your own or suggestions other people have brought up.

Let me get this straight. You train a lot and have impressive battling results but you are not personally interested in the story/profile aspect of a pet which is what the Pet Spotlight is for.

You seem to imply the Pet Spotlight process is somehow both cliquey/elitist with the same people winning over and over and 'barely any effort is required at all'?

It isn't strictly speaking a competition, it's more of a 'hey look at this neat thing' showcase, any pet that has been nominated and has some kind of realized concept behind it can get in, it then gets accepted into the Spotlight queue and rng picks 'winner' of the day.

CSC can be easily bought with sP.

???

I agree with everything you said and am thinking wth? I just don't understand why she is griping when she doesn't ever intend for her pets to even enter.

My pets are important to me and so is the spotlight. I buy code and I pay for stories tho have written several of mine; I also have had several pets recolored and some I also worked on myself, and have bought custom overlays. A very few I have paid for the profile. However, I edit everything and as such I have spent literally thousands of hours on my pets choosing placement, backgrounds, colors, text, animations, whatever. And with the profiles breaking last year my heart broke too as I had to re-do many of my profiles. I resent anyone saying that just because I paid for parts of my profiles that I haven't done anything myself. I also resent anyone saying that if anyone paid for their profile that it matters that they didn't do it themselves. So freaking what? There are amazing talented incredible people on this site and why shouldn't anyone avail themselves of their abilities for their pets if they so choose? No one should be penalized in any way for any reason in regards to this. Its ridiculous. Esp because it is obvious that pet profiles have won all across the spectrum of complexity and of sp or csc spent or not.

So I can work on my pet for 10+ hours, making+coding my own profiles, writing their stories, gathering TC items, but because I commission art and support artists on here I'm "buying" a win and I don't deserve it? Because I didn't do everything on the profile myself?

I work full time and I also am in school during the semester. I don't have time to sit down and struggle to draw things that won't turn out nice anyway, using art programs I don't really know how use. But if I have the money to commission others to bring to life a character that I have designed, why does that make my pet any less valid in winning the PS?

And even if people "buy everything they want," what does it really matter? Subeta is a pet site. Why can't we feature pets that have had hours of work put into them, whether the owner paid someone else to do the work or not? Either way there's a lot of hard work going into those pets, and they still deserve a feature imo.

I am still just wondering how it's unfair to other people who don't have $ when the actual winners are picked randomly from a pool of approved profiles. Unless you think the judges are picking only people who use IRL dollars to be in the pool in the first place, which doesn't look to be the case, it feels like a totally level playing field to me. You can put 1000 dollars into your pet and have it win, or 0 dollars and have it win, you just have to meet the basic requirements of the spotlight no matter what the content is.

I'd love to see the spotlight get polished & updated a bit, and the pet aspects of the site get more attention, but I don't think there's a downside to anyone commissioning art or profiles if you're just looking at who ends up on the news page.

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place (and time) to tag you and I know you guys have a lot going on with maintenance and bugs and all that but, I thought I'd let you know

Apparently my pet Coolidge won the pet spotlight on the 16th...but it was never announced in the news, but he's there on the Pet spotlight page...but on his profile it still says "This pet has been nominated for the pet Spotlight" .....and when I look at the page where I choose pets that are ready to be nominated, it still says he is 'nominated.

I'm probably one of the people being complained about winning repeatedly -- I've won ten times in less than a year. And yeah, I reuse the profile I made for every pet, and I don't have any fancy art or anything.

But that's because I also don't have a lot of money or CSC to spend. I taught myself to code specifically to make a pet profile, I write the stories myself, I look for TC items and buy them with the currency I grind from questing. I can't draw (or learn to do it in a reasonable timeframe), so I don't bother with the art side of things. And I still win the Pet Spotlight. People still like my pets, both to nominate them and to comment on the news posts. If you just want to win and not, like, blow peoples' minds, doing it without buying stuff is completely doable.

I remembered your pet. I definitely saw him in the news stream. I LOVED the art and profile. just stunning! Oh, and I looked. His profile says he won and has the trophy. Maybe its a glitch with your computer? Profile

Hey, I do that too! I've won three times within my four years here. I think I have at least 11 in the queue currently? My most recent win, Gemberry, was around 5-6 months after my second win. But yeah, I do feel the sting of disappointment when someone else wins with multiple pets within a short time frame. But I've always been pretty bad with contests decided by RNG. Go figure.

That being said, I understand why the random winning is in place.

Yes it got fixed! Took a while though...but thankfully everything worked out! :) And thank you as well!