If you look at winning petpages, pets talk and act as if they are as intelligent as people. Ruffies may be just dogs and torrents may be just fish UNTIL someone owns them. TBH in RL some of these winning pets are smarter than some humans I have met. So lore-wise, Subeta asserts nothing about how sapient or sentient a pet is, otherwise these petpages would not win.

There's been talk about allowing more than one minion per pet. This makes it seem that minions can be gregarious or more biddable. I don't have a problem with minions being both animal-like or more human-like. Maybe NPC Maleria or NPC Merana cursed them and all they need is a kiss or a belly rub or something, but nobody thinks to do this.

Just because a minion looks human/humanoid doesn't make them smart.

We don't know how big minions are, because there are no shadow comparisons of them in relation to the HA. The is really really small. The chinese zodiac minions are to my imagination as big as the sky. In China's bigtime new year celebration the year-animal in question is usually depicted as quite large in effigy even though a RL one may be smallish.

I love the ideas of Dannica and Poetry. Both give the minions a role in the world different from that of the standard pets, which is sort of like a middle ground between person and pet, having jobs and stuff but also needing to be fed and whatnot by their caretaker. (Also yes please, Nicole Richie must be preserved for future generations.)

If it was trying to be a neo clone, then I treat the lore as neo lore. Tbh...when speaking about minions I often still call them 'petpets'

i always supposed our pets were bigger and more sapient than average since they can speak, read and use big weapons ? the minions are either small companions they could summon when bored or more average pets for me

Nope. Pet can be non-sapient and small. Check the Subetapedia entry for Illumis and Torrent and you'll see that.

It's hard for me to believe that something is non-sapient (no matter how small it is) if you can get it a job as a designer or a mad scientist, though.

Yeah, that's a bit inconsistent. But the Subetapedia says it. Maybe some are sapient and others aren't.

The Subetapedia isn't exactly canon.

I mean, it is in the way that it is an official written description of the pet. However, this doesn't mean that all the species adhere to the descriptions therein, and it of course doesn't mean you have to apply it to your own pets. Some pet species were written years after they first appeared in Subeta too, so they existed in people's imaginations long before they had anything "official" written about them.

Speaking of illumises, they have an interesting relationship to minions, as there is the which is like a little baby version of the illumis. If you hold to the view that minions are non-sapient, and the illumis is also non-sapient, you could say that the illumis is just a larger/adult version of the minion Illu.

bigger and more sapient than the average member of their species, sorry for not being clear ^^" (the "our pets" meaning the ones we have as users and not the ones the npcs have). they are anthro version of them after all

This is a common issue on a lot of petsites. Flight Rising's familiar lore is so dark, you can't even discuss some aspects of it on site because it breaks the PG-13 rule...even though it's canon (FR has a lot of issues like that, they don't think stuff through).

I arrived at a theory I've stuck with on every other petsite since. The "pets" form a specific culture, and the "minipets" form a [i]different[i] culture. There aren't really any good examples of this outside of fiction, but think of klingons and vulcans, hobbits and elves, that kind of thing. A culture divded not just socially but by certain biological differences.

Pets all share one common ancestor (or creator); minipets another. This informs their culture and their genes, which each inform the other.

- wow. Just wow. If it's on your site, you should be able to talk about it on your site. (another reason I will never play that game, they're piling up!)

When it comes to sapience and personhood, if objectively observable fact contradicts what scripture says/appears to say, scripture got it wrong, or at least our interpretation thereof got it wrong :)

At the risk of turning this into a mean-gossip thread, my own reasons for not playing FR are a sky-high pile at this point. And yet, I still play. It's my "main" petsite and for all it's failings, it has features no other petsite I've ever found can match.

(Also the thylacine in your sig is adorable)

Thank you! Thylacines are my favourite. This is the only petsite I'm on--I'm an avatar person.