alright i think at this point just about everyone agrees that the pet image requirement is not only unnecessary, but it is more of a limitation to creativity than an encouragement to show off our pets. yes, i understand the idea that you want to see how the character ties into the subeta pet, considering this is a subeta pet spotlight. i understand that. but i don't think that means it's necessary to actually have a "quad form" of our pet on the pet page itself for this to be conveyed.

first of all, people don't always choose a color/species for straightforward reasons. sometimes it's a thematic choice, sometimes it has to do with the expression of the pet - whatever. we are required to clearly state the species and color of our pet from the get go. so if i say my pet is a sweetheart kerubi, everyone knows that she's a sweetheart kerubi. if she were to win the spotlight, the first thing people would see on the news page would be a picture of a sweetheart kerubi, and upon following the link would see her profile and artwork and story and would be able to draw their own conclusions as to why i chose to make her a sweetheart kerubi - she's sweet, she's cute, she has pink hair, that's about it. but she's not a kerubi, or any animal. the kerubi is simply symbolic of her, an avatar of her character, not anything i feel the need to explicitly plaster on her profile. the pet shouldn't need to be literal, or even quasi-literal. the pet can just be the vessel through which certain aspects of the character are expressed. and people are going to see it anyway, so why do i need to put it right on the page if it doesn't fit there visually?

second of all, some people don't even have the space, code-wise, to put a pet image in their profile. some people are already at the character limit and have worked very very hard to stay under it - they have made compromises, they have removed things, they have found creative workarounds. and they should not be punished by forcing them to find even more workarounds, or undoing some of the hard work they've already done to follow this new and arbitrary rule.

this is an incredibly unnecessary restriction, and while i understand the motivation behind it - this is subeta, these characters are subeta pets, it is a pet spotlight and therefore the influence of subeta pets should be apparent - it does not seem like the best way to encourage creativity. many people have expressed frustration and distaste for this rule, and it really has come out of nowhere. why only now is it unacceptable for a spotlight pet to only have anthro/humanoid art, or no art at all? it just seems a bit cruel and unfair - because while in some cases it's not a big deal and it's easy enough to put the image somewhere on the profile, there are still cases where it's really not a preferable option, or even logistically an option at all.

i know i am not the only person who feels this way, and while it may seem like a silly thing to be upset about, it's bummed a lot of people out and even led people to give up on striving for the pet spotlight, aka a major site feature that brings/brought a lot of people great joy to participate in.

idk I kind of agree with the rule considering it is a pet spotlight. Like if you just want somewhere to keep a page about an OC or something that's cool but like, that's not a pet spotlight that's just an OC spotlight. And there's nothing wrong with that except it's not what the site wants to do (and there are other sites you could just as easily host an OC instead). Like if you go to a pie lovers meeting and talk about how much you love cake, like that's cool and all but the cake lovers meeting is down the hall

I guess I just prefer seeing overlays/art that shows how the character in question relates to the subeta pet, rather than just art of a girl and "this girl is somehow a Sweetheart Kerubi."

Anyway I will say that if you can fit the connection into the story instead of through the actual art on the page, I could get behind having more leeway in the rule. Like if all the art on the page is of a girl but the story explains why her pet version is a Sweetheart Kerubi, maybe that could count instead of having to show the Sweetheart Kerubi.

I'm kind of on board with the rule too. I'm here for the pets and I prefer the pets that win spotlight actually relating to Subeta-- even if all it is is seeing their pet form. I have literally no problem with human characters/OCs. I just think there should be at least some form of relation to the pet, even if it's just in story, as Darkrai said.

Idk half the fun for me is matching pets to characters. And I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea and can be difficult but. It is a pet website, not necessarily a character website. It should be expected to focus around pets. I would suggest having two categories maybe but when it comes down to it that just doesn't make sense so. It's kind of a Catch 22, because I can understand it's upsetting to find out your hard work has been set back, but I also don't know if it should really have been a surprise. Maybe next time though there should be some sort of discussion or warning from the staff (idk if there was one, I don't follow the staff boards much).

perfectly explained, I think

The majority of my pets are human. That said I've worked around the limitation by simply taking off pets that have no quad-based form off the pet spotlight rotation. It's not something I'm personally happy about and indeed, I was quite annoyed when it first went through, but it's also not a necessity that all my pets end up being in the pet spotlight. If it's a necessity in the indeterminate and permanent future that all pets have a quad based version then I can work around it and include a quad based version even if I'm not personally happy about it.

This rule doesn't affect me as I don't enter the Pet Spotlight, but what really confuses me about it is that when Spotlight winners are posted the pet is right there. Its on the news post. Before users even see the pet's name, let alone their profile and artwork/story/TC/whatever, they see what Subeta pet it is. It feels really unnecessary to force the image to be on the profile as well.

Originally I was like "well yeah its a pet site", but then I thought about the news posts and now I really don't see a point at all.

Yeah, this. I like making overlays for my pets so they look like their human designs. Most of the time, a character has been inspired by a pet on the site, so their design wound up looking like them.

I have barely any quad characters. I just put the overlays at the bottom of the story box if the pet image isn't a part of the layout, like Aksaith. It's just a 200x200 image of a fire horse, it's really not intrusive or anything.

Also the thing people don't seem to get: You don't have to display the image of the pet on the page in general. It's only if you want them to win spotlight. So like, if you wanna have your human characters and you're absolutely devastated by having to put an animal pic somewhere, just don't enter the pet spotlight??

I have a lot of feelings on this lol

As already said, you see the pet in the news post before you even see the profile and character. If you can't make the connection between a character being a certain color/species after seeing the profile/story/tc/etc., then I don't see how seeing the image on the profile is magically going to fix this. You've seen the image already LMAO.

I've said it before. This also hampers profile creativity (but no one cares about that, huh), because there are profiles that simply don't work with a pet image on them. And tossing a tab here or there wreck any sort of balance that profile had. I loved seeing all the unique profiles that went through spotlight, and some of them didn't have a pet image! It sucks to see that creativity within the spotlight being taken away. As someone who has designed hundreds of pet profiles for myself and others, I usually find that adding the pet image hampers my design process, and it definitely effects the level of creativity I can achieve on my profiles. Are there creative ways to implement the pet image? For sure. But there's also a lot of creative ideas without it.

There were other things that should have been fixed with spotlight, such as waiting for over a year to win or the fact that people can buy their way into spotlight without putting a lick of effort into their pet. I don't really understand why this was a chosen change

Regardless of your feelings on this, I think it's fair to say that pets who were already in the winner's queue should have been grandfathered in entirely. Not a single pet who won spotlight during the two week grace period was a pet without an overlay. So, that was pretty much worthless. If I didn't have a pet without an overlay in the queue, I would have probably assumed they just kicked everyone already. Let me tell you, though. It fucking sucks to have your pet kicked after waiting a year in the queue when you can't even add the pet image to the profile even if you wanted to. 8)

I have always matched my characters to their pet counterparts. A lot of them even have custom overlays. Does that mean I have those on their profiles? No. Not everyone against this rule doesn't work to have their pets accurately represent their characters. 😊

Maybe I love spotlight and still want to participate in it? :) Pet image isn't all that's part of a pet (and I work hella fucking hard on the other aspects), and as said before, you see the pet image before you've gone to the profile. A character without the pet image on the profile is just as much of a pet without it.

--

I love spotlight and I love creating pets. My desire to work on my pets here on Subeta has definitely been affected since this change, and I've been less excited about (and also spending significantly less time on) the site in general. But! Most people don't care about that, because it's "less competition" for spotlight ha ha! 8)

I feel like this rule change still doesn't really explain the connection between a human based character and their subeta pet equivalent. Like what would putting a hover of the subeta pet on the profile (since that's what is allowed to fit this rule yeah?) do better than what the news post of the pet's image is showing? Nothing. I think this rule is really random. Feeling sorry for those affected. :c

If the pet spotlight winners new post didn't show the pet image, then I could go along with this, but given that it does, I feel the requirement for a pet image to be on the profile page is really unnecessary. There's some excellent profiles out there that don't have a pet image (anthro or otherwise), and it's a real shame to insist that for the spotlight, they need to have the image on there :(

To elaborate since I rushed my previous reply...

I could add an image of a marsh legeica to Pemberley's profile, but would that really tell me why this clearly human character based off Jane Austen's novel is marsh colored and legeica of all species? ... not really. There's really no further a-ha moment in my opinion if you view the image instead of seeing the required text of "the marsh legeica." I could say I chose marsh because I wanted to be tongue in cheek regarding a certain quote about Pemberley and I just happen to like legeicas lol.

I keep seeing posts mentioning this is a pet spotlight, not an OC spotlight. Fair enough. But we all know it is a pet spotlight because there's always that "the ____ _____" blurb to remind us. If you want a pet spotlight, make anthro versions without an explicit and obvious quad form (like in the story / text, not just one tiny image hover) illegal. I could add a marsh legeica image hover to Pemberley, but ask yourselves this - does it make any difference whatsoever if my story is completely set as a human?

Now, I have no vested interests in pet spotlight. I stopped trying for it more than a year ago and enjoy working on my pets without the spotlight, but it doesn't stop me from asking what's really the point of this change? So yeah, my 0.02 for all they're worth.

At this point, I think the best solution would be a community vote. I think a lot of people are okay with it being mandatory, and some people would rather have it be optional.

So, I think it should be put up to poll, to gauge what the community in general wants. Personally, I don't like the rule, but I have a feeling most people do like it better this way, so I'm aware I might be in the minority, but I just want to know how everyone feels about it.

Nah, I like this new rule. I think it's really improved the pet spotlight to be honest! I agree with the first 2 posters 100%!

I honestly can't wait to try and get my "human" pets up to scratch to try and enter them! :)

I like that.

I've never been touched by this whatsoever, mostly because I always included very clear artwork and/or kept the Subeta pet in display somewhere. While I do love OCs profile when it DOES have a connection with the pet, I've seen countless times a pet choosen because it's pretty with an OC that had absolutely no sense with the pet itself. My guess is that the new rule is coming from this issue. But then again, would it mean that every OCS must have something representing their pet counterpart? Are we being thrown into a quad/fursona/anthro type of deal forever? What about "winged" OCS? How do you define limits on the rules ... But at the same time, it is a pet spotlight.

That's the reason why I'm 50/50 on both side. [Edit] Now that I think about it, my Undertale tribute pet is not fitting the criteria since I have a flower instead of a pet. Would including the pet image be enough? Ugh.

I disagree with the original poster, but people still need this in their life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTcVNyOhUc

The flower merely represent a character in the game. I have based my story on a sweetheart Ontra and made a recolour of the original overlay. However, the image itself (of the Ontra) is not a part of the layout, more like an "add-on" in the story box. Therefore, does it renders my layout incomplete? Will I have to display the pet as an integration to the layout?

(also, thank you for answering me)

As as I know, you can just bury the image in your profile, even in a hidden hover field and it should be fine. As long as it isn't thrown on there and it looks severely out of place.

That pun is not very skelliful. get out I see. Well that makes things very less complicated for me. Thank you for answering.