Frequently Asked Spotlight Questions

Q. Does the story have to be a certain length or presented in a specific way? A. The writing content can be however long or short you want, and presented as a story, original poem or song, news report, diary, journal, or anything else you can think of. A short story can still win if the rest of the profile is awesome. However, if the bulk of the story is unoriginal work, this may count against you.

Please note: Pets are required to have 200 characters on their profile before they can be nominated. This is to prevent blank pets from being nominated!

Q. My pet was showing up as nominated for a long time but it is now kicked out of the queue! What happened? A. Pets show up with the "Nominated for pet spotlight" message in three different queues: the nominated queue, the accepted queue, and the updated pet queue. Your pet was most likely in the review queue and was not accepted to win. Don't give up though! Your pet can be renominated in 7 days, giving you some time to try and fix whichever problem it had.

Q. I do not draw/code/write well on my own. Will I still be able to win? A. Absolutely. Whether you decide to commission art and profiles or work hard to make them yourself, you still have the chance to win. It is all about the finished project! Again, there are lots of helpful users on Subeta who can help you touch up your art, read over your writing and help you with a tricky bit of coding.

Q. Custom Wearables receive their own personal denials! Will we get these for the pet spotlight? A. We have begun to issue some basic denial reasons for the spotlight, and will be keeping an eye on how these work out. Custom Wearables are a paid service and so we are able to appoint dedicated staff members to work on them, whereas with Pet Spotlight this is a little more difficult.

Q. Can I submit a ticket asking why my pet was denied? A. Please do not submit tickets asking about this - the UAs will not be able to answer this question for you. Try heading over to the Pet forums and ask for some advice and critique from your fellow Subeta users!

Q. My pet won the spotlight before the rule changes. Will they have their trophy revoked? A. Absolutely not! The only time we remove a trophy is if we find out the pet was plagiarized. As long as your old work is your own, the pet is safe!

Q. Does the pet have to have its name, owner, color, species, and gender expressed in normal, Subeta provided code? Or can these be added into the graphics? A. These can be added into the graphics! They need to be laid out cleanly and not hidden in the story, but you may write them up however you wish rather than using the official Subeta wording for them. PLEASE NOTE - For the username, it must contain a link back to your user profile!

Q. Can you tell me what official information is required to be on pet profiles and what can be taken off? A. Sure! The following are required to be displayed on a pet profile: Pet's name, pet's color, pet's species, pet's gender, owner's name The following do not have to be displayed and can be 'turned off' through code: Pet's born/creation date, Pet's adopted date, battle statistics, and minion HOWEVER - none of the above may be falsified!

Q. My pet only works in certain web browsers. Is this an issue? A. It potentially can be. I do most of my Subeta browsing in Firefox and occasionally switch to Chrome. Most other staff members also use either Firefox or Chrome. If your pet works great in Chrome but not at all in Firefox, it could very well be rejected, and vice versa. It's always good to have a friend check it in another web browser for you just to be safe!

Q. My friend’s are telling me my profile is too ‘simple’ to win spotlight, but I think it’s clean and nice enough - is simple a bad thing? A. Simple definitely doesn’t automatically mean bad! As long as the profile has some basic coding so that it’s not like the default basic profile, it has a chance of winning - of course, a good story, art, appropriate minion and treasure chest can all help to elevate your pet.

Q. Do I really have to show the official pet art on my pet profile? It messes up the look! A. You don't have to show the official pet art (although we do enjoy that!) - you just have to show some form of quad or anthro art - basically, anything that's allowed in the Custom Pet Overlay rules is what we're looking for on your pet profiles. It can be background art, it can be hidden in a hover or a dropdown, you can even put the pet art at the bottom of your text box/beneath the story. We just want to see it somewhere on the page!

Newbie owned by - an excellent guide for new users of Subeta!

Fan Pets RD owned by - My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan pet. Presents original art and an original story, with a complimenting profile and a treasure that fits the character.

151 owned by - Mew/Pokemon fan pet. Presents simple but effective layout, original art, an appropriate treasure chest and a very simple but hilarious piece of text. Making us laugh is always a huge plus!

Illyasviel owned by - Fate/Stay Night fan pet. Visually beautiful profile and background art, well written story, appropriate minion and a lovely pet overlay. The use of the snow overlay against the background art was a simple yet really effective tool in making this profile really stand out.

Tribute Pets Whuffy owned by - photographs can be tricky to incorporate into a profile without looking busy or messy, but this profile has managed it. The photos are clean and tidily displayed, the profile looks great and the minion and treasure chest are appropriate additions.

Wyndell owned by - a lovely clean and simple profile that's helpful in including information on recognising heart disease in cats, as well a heartfelt piece of writing.

Suggestions and Guides

A selection of design guides and websites for getting the ‘make it look nice’ section of the rules right.

[li] Choosing the right font

[li] Choosing the right colors

[li] Colour scheme maker

[li] =1000u0kllllaFw0g0qFqFg0w0aF">Palette Maker

- pet friends are not a requirement, they are an extra feature that if done well could elevate your entry.

It may be that they were rejected before the system was in place. The denials were only added in yesterday. And we had stopped denying people for around 10 days before that (so we could add in the denials for any future pets) so your pets must have been denied at least 11 days ago. Unfortunately we can't go back and give reasons to those who were rejected before the addition of the denial reasons.

- thank you for your question! You are the second person with a tree-pet to come to me ( owns the pet Treehouse, who is also a sentient tree with no face) And also somebody whose pets we've long admired.

I'd like to go into some more details, so we can see how separated your tree-pet is from being an animalistic type pet. Does it move, or is it firmly planted in the ground? (A tree that stood up outside the ground would immediately point to being anthro) Does it have any more anthropomorphic features - for example, does it use its branches to pick things up?

To fit in with the rules, the simplest way from an art perspective would be to fit the aeanoid into the character's design somehow - carved on the tree, even! (A carving of an aeanoid, or a slight face as if to indicate there is more to this particular tree than just being a plant - it doesn't have to be a cartoon moving face, but something that just hints even, like a cloud that might look like a baby or a pattern in a tile could look like a face)

It's a tricky one with plants, because although they are living, they are by nature not able to move or sense unless we make them do so in our stories.

Another simple way around this through art would be to have an aeanoid silhouette made out of twigs, or carved into a cross section of wood, or included in any way that fits in with your profile layout and colours while pointing to pet or animal form that it is based off of.

But yes, if your tree looks like a plant moreso than an animal, at this time it would not be able to win the spotlight.

- yes, that's very similar (not in story, but in general feeling) to the other tree-pet currently confounding us. I'm glad I was able to help you with some suggestions!

- I believe it's because he's your own pet, because I can see the link to nominate him :) (Although I'd suggest filling up that TC, and his profile image is looking a bit pixelly and blurry - you may want to get a better quality image or have someone help you to save a better transparent version)

- including the quad form in an art section is fine by us! (As are hover boxes and clickable tabs)

- I do believe a pet has won with that premade profile before! THey're great for getting your pet away from the blank profile templates, but to win they need to excel in story/original art. You seem to have a good story going on, what I would say is that when using a simple small profile layout, it's better to use a less busy background. Otherwise the background overpowers the rest of the profile!

- Hello! Yes this is the right place to ask :)

1. I'm afraid you can't request a day/period for your pet to win, it's quite random!
2. Yes you do need to credit your own work - this is so we don't confuse you with people that are not crediting somebody else's work! (And yes, it's a new rule)
3. Credit as best you can - if the artist is frozen you can still credit them, if they've changed their username and you don't know what the new one is you can put what their old username was (just don't make it link to a profile in case somebody else now has that name!)

- it was very likely missed! That's a gorgeous overlay, and you don't need to correct anything :) (And yes you can reach out to me on issues like this, this is exactly what this thread is for!)

- it isn't required that you upload your overlay as a custom overlay at all! People tend to do that because then that's how they see their pets all over the site, and it is how the pet will appear to other people if it wins the spotlight and is in the news.

You are welcome to just use your overlay in your layout, or put it over your pet with coding. That way, it will appear in the news as the official Subeta art rather than your custom overlay, but people visiting the petpage will see the art. Your example pet looks great! We only want to see additional overlay art in some kind of hover if the layout image isn't obviously a "pet".

- that's a rules thing that doesn't fall under what I'm able to say is allowed! I don't think it is, but I'd make a ticket about that one. (Failing that, can you creatively cover the boobs area?)

- listing the credit as unknown won't work - that's still taking somebody's art from the internet and using it without permission or credit. You'd need to take your own photo of a cake, or find a stock image that's free to use, or find an image where you can credit the cake company.

I cannot tell you on this board whether your pet passes for spotlight, the only way users can know if their pet is in the win queue for sure is if they actually win. We can not put her back in the nomination queue, another user has to nominate her again.

- if your pet has not been nominated yet, any changes you have made to it will not further affect our spotlight decision making. Only changes made once the pet has been nominated may cause it to be shuffled around in our winner queues (if it's made it into the winner queue) - and even then, it only needs to a quick reevaluation!

- I must admit, even with you telling me that it took me two tries to find it! I'll pass this info on to who has been doing the majority of spotlight :)

- as EmphasisMine is one of our staff artists, this art belongs to Subeta and you are welcome to use it to recolour/edit for your pet! (You would only need to credit subeta for the work).

- I don't think so? It might be that that's as far as the achievement goes!

- it will bump them into the re-review queue, which we go through often, so they'll be back in the win queue shortly once we've checked that things still match up storywise!

- They sit in the nomination queue until one of our pet spotlight staff (usually ) can get through them and either accept or reject them - there's no coded time limit. But we do usually completely clear the queue every so often so as to avoid long waits - are you sure it's been two years? I'll have Destiny take a look!