In Neopets, the main difference between pets and petpets is that pets are sapient, while petpets aren't.

What's the difference here in Subeta? The encyclopedia entries state that most pets are just animals. Archan is sapient, while Ruffie and Torrent are just a dog and a fish respectively. Is it there any canon difference between this?

I assume that every subeta pet has some level of sapience, since your pet will speak to you upon interacting (feeding, reading, playing games/toys etc).

Though looking at every minion... It's not clear what makes them a minion. Minions are capable of being much larger than the pets, as well as an assumed sapience that comes with being humanoid, and possibly just human altogether so....

I hate to say it's just a leftover from subeta's early days of trying to be a neopets clone and make their own version of petpets without concrete rules but uh... Yeah it's unclear.

Looks like Neopets thought it through tho, and Subeta did not. We eed an official statement, NOW. The suspense is killing me.

i've also thought about this! it... doesn't really seem like there is much difference, and there are some minions that resemble and are described as being closely related to existing pet species, so what if anything in-universe determines which ones "get" to be considered pets as opposed to minions... i don't know.

So that my pet can plot world destruction with its minion while I'm at work.

Even the pets are really unclear, because as you said, Torrents are just fish....unless they're Shengui Guo Torrents...

These fish have arms and legs.

That said, I just consider the minions as /smaller/ pets than your average "Subeta pet" Those humanoid ones someone posted, well I can't explain those. Though I'm thinking they'll probably get rid of them/change them one day. Especially the Nicole RIchie...

I personally think that pets can genetically be changed into any of the colors, but minions can't. While some minions can sometimes come in specific colors and a few can come in many forms (such as blob kitties or [dark] matters), they still differ in their own ways. Technically, all minions are a pet. We keep them, we give them to our pets (thus making them our extended pets), we 'own' them. Cats are widely considered pets, chickens can be pets, a caterpillar is "I mean, I guess if you want it as a pet ?" pet, and a tiger isn't a good idea as a pet but if you want to risk it... Still don't.

Well, about smaller pets... Torrent are extremely small, and so are Illumis. So that cannot be it, sadly. For a second I thought you had something, but no.

That's one way to see it. But how does that explains experiments? They can only change to two/three different colours. Are they still full pets? And we don't really take care of the minions. The pets do that. Maybe something in a minion's DNA makes it WANT to serve a pet? They must be called minion for a reason.

Experiment pets are different. I think they had started as experimented-on-existing-pets and evolved to be their own class. But I might be wrong there. Any way you slice it there will never be an explanation that is going to satisfy everyone. There's always going to be a "but this !" and "why not this !" and "explain THIS !" The only real reason is that we cannot expect the artists to create pets based off of every idea and minion thought up. Some things are simply the way they are. So I came up with my own head cannon that satisfies me; and I like seeing what others come up with (even if I don't agree/see it the same).

Not saying that this is an explanation, but in my head, pets are larger, and minions are like...tiny little critters. Not sure if it adds much to the discussion, but it's something.

It might be the difference between domestic/wild. Minions might be wild, whereas pets are domestic?

Personally, I rather like the idea that pets are human-centric in their desires - they enjoy spending time with humans and want attention from humans - while minions are more pet-centric and enjoy the company of animals, but would rather minimize outright human contact.

Like it said, i can't be size. Illumis is SMALL, and so is Scootle.

I like more. I guess all we can do is speculate until the devs give us something.

I don't really think of minions as the "pets" of pets...they're more like their "familiars", if you will. Or patronuses. Basically I think that they're connected on some deeper level to the pet and may visually represent something about the pet, such as a characteristic or a quirk.

On occasion I've used minions to represent minor characters in my pets' stories, but usually I go the familiar/patronus route.

I'm not sure what the relationship between them is (haven't thought of it much), but is the word you're looking for is "sentient" rather than "sapient"?

re: anthro pets, did we ever get a lore explanation for it? I think some plot had a brief mention (maybe in regards to the pirates?), but I would love more of an in-universe explanation for the different degrees of anthro-ness we have in the pets. :)

No. Sapience is something else. Sapient = Has intelligence levels equal to humans. Sentient = It's alive and can respond to stimulus. Something can be alive and not be sentient. Like plants.

Honestly, I have no idea. I've been on hiatus so many times I don't know what's what. lol

Oh, cool. I tried to find a definition of sapient and had to scroll down like halfway through my google searches to find it. :P Nice to know.

i think it's a grey area in the lore but tbh i really like how that leaves it open to interpretation for creative purposes like this

The Nicole Richie is a very important relic that must never be altered