So I've been on Subeta for nearly three years now and I'd finally like to get around to actually making a proper pet (or several) because I haven't done so. The problem is, I don't really understand what we're supposed to do, precisely? I've looked at the Spotlight rules and tried to go through the "useful threads" links but they're all dead so they're not all that useful.

Is the point here that we're supposed to make an original character? And they don't technically have to be the pet itself? Like I've looked through some past winners but the story says or implies that the character is human and not a pet, so they don't actually have to be, say, a bee if the pet is a Bumbus? If that's the case, how do you know the pet is the right species/colour? And what is an acceptable idea? How do you know no one else has done something similar (or is that not a big deal unless you're straight-up plagiarising)? How long does a story have to be or how long is too long? How specialized does the pet's "theme" have to be? How many items are you supposed to put in a TC? Does it matter if the pet has decent battle stats (assuming the story doesn't say otherwise)? Do books read/foods eaten/etc. "count" towards stories? Are there things that are technically fine under site/Spotlight rules but are considered unacceptable by the pet-maker community that I should know about?

If someone would be kind enough to explain the basic process of making a pet on this site I would really appreciate it because I'm baffled as all hell but I'd like to actually use a pet site to make pets, lol.

There is no rule in creating a Pet character, really. At least to me.

If I create a Pet, it is always based on a human character (or even only based on an exsixting person / character from a tv show or book - which is then called "fanpet"). I can work better with human characters. It gives me more freedom to work out the story and the Treasure. If I have the overall theme of my character I most of the time pick a species/color that fits the story and/or the character.

But I also do enjoy the "animal" Pet characters, even though I could never create one myself I really love reading their stories. I'm always really amazed by the people who can really work something out with that kind of character.

For the length of the story there is also no "rule". Though I personally to go on tl;dr mode whenever a story seems too long for my taste. I often cannot concentrate for too long on something, which makes it a very hard task for me to read a story that is really long, so I prefer 4-5 paragraphs. But it is all a matter of personal taste I think.

Actually I often find it quite amusing that if for example a Pets' story is written about how clever the Pet is and how much it reads, and the stats on the Profile say "books read: 0". But maybe that's also just me.

But in the end, there is no golden rule about your Pets as long as you're happy with them. :)

(And most probably this wasn't helpful at all now lol)

HAHA did you guys know there is a character limit to posts? I do now! I hope some of this helps a bit, I rambled, but it was really fun to think about all your questions.

All of this varies wildly person to person, I know a lot of the spotlight winners fall under certain categories because that's what was popular when the spotlight was introduced. The point of pets for me is to be creative, it's like an art, but some people like pets the way they like galleries or achievements on this site. Make them look impressive, decorate them, improve their stats. Some collect cool pets and want their entire pet collection to look nice and pretty on their profile, and get as many pets as they can. It's just about what you personally find enjoyable. It's all great if that's what you're into. Any of those strategies can win you the pet spotlight if you meet the minimum guidelines.

So I think the process depends on what interests you. Any specific pet art that seems attractive to you, get a pet in that color. Train or read to them if that seems fun, add items that you like into their TC, items that match them. Find minions that match, seem cool. If you're into making art or writing then try that. And whatever of these you find you really enjoy, continue to do it and develop it, and set goals. Ex: 100 TC items, 10000 words of prose, all angelic pets, all pet names start with e. And just keep adding it to their profile. Eventually you might find a "direction" you want to take things, or you might think of an especially interesting idea and run with it.

I'd like to see more new ideas and fresh perspectives in this community. Like you mentioned, lots of pets who win the spotlight have this human character angle, which is lovely, but I'd like to see more variety. If you have ideas that are not especially popular in this community I'd encourage you to try them anyway.

Thank you both (especially for that giant post, wow). It definitely cleared up a lot for me :D

Can't wait to see what you do with your pets if it's something you end up sticking with! Good luck

I'm going to see if I can answer these one by one.

1. characters do not have be animal in nature. If you have characters off-site you can certainly graft them onto pets on here and a lot of people do that. I only write stories/create pet characters for human characters personal partially because I like drawing and I suck at drawing animals and secondly, I simply can't relate with animal characters in most cases. However, if you're more comfortable with animal characters or wish to create animal characters you certainly can. It's really all up to you and your personal preferences.

2. The point of pets is that they're really blank slates. As long as they're not overly gory, don't involve excessive amounts of nudity, etc. and adhere to the pg-13 rules as stipulated on site, it's pretty much a free for all as to what you wish to do with them. As for developing characters, use off-site ones if you have any, look at movies, books, anything in real life that can serve as an inspiration. A lot of mine are based off of time periods or stereotypical characters from certain time periods simply because it's what I'm the most knowledgeable about.

3. TC. I don't think there's a limit to the amount of TC items you want to put on a pet, that's personal preference. As for foods eaten and relevance that depends on the individual person. Some people like to have foods that their pet eats that has some personal relevance to the pet's storyline, but it has no effect on whether or not that pet will end up in spotlight or not as far as I know. It's the same for other achievement based stuff like books read and things of that nature. Battle stats don't matter. I usually have battle stats and pet friends taken out of my profiles simply because I have no use for them.

4. I like short stories, and I usually write short stories. All the pets I've had that won spotlight usually only had a story that was about a page in length, but it's because I like to keep stories short and concise because I figure it's easier to read, both for me and for others as well. Generally, I think that keeping a story to about a page or 2 in length( and by a page or two I mean in a document program like Microsoft word is) is sufficient because I think it's easier for other viewers to read if they wish to, but if the story is much more complicated and can't be contained within 1 or 2 pages it's very possible you could go past that length and that's not an issue. In general you want a story that's pleasant to read to the viewer and in order to achieve that there's not really a necessary page length so much as personal page length and what you, yourself, are comfortable with.

The only thing that's required for pet spotlight stat guidelines is that you cannot misrepresent pet stats. That is, do not say the pet is a glade color when it is in fact an arid pet. Likewise, don't say your pet is a jollin when it's an anyu, same goes for battle stats. Pet name, color, gender always needs to be shown though it doesn't have to be in the original stat formula. I usually do that because it's easier, but you can have the pet's name as a written script on the profile as long as it's visible though.

Thank you!

I'm a little late in replying to this but I also just wanted to add that if you decide to do a fanpet, sometimes in the past I've seen staff be a little more strict with those. They either wanted a really GREAT TC or a story that was something more than "Buffy found out she was a slayer, she fights vampires with her friends, fell in love with a vampire.." etc. Interesting POVs or making up something to add to their story generally go over better- the kind of thing fanfiction readers might find interesting.

mackenzi and normandy already covered a lot of really good points that probably answered your questions, but i thought it couldn't hurt to offer my own two cents. (this ended up being pretty long-winded, sorry in advance.)

as has already been stated, a tc doesn't need to be huge or even present at all if the rest of the profile/story/etc is really solid. my pet frosix won the spotlight, and he only has five different items in his tc (one of them is repeated four times). his story pretty short, only a couple of paragraphs, and the profile isn't particularly complicated; it's just an edited version of a base profile by . his character isn't based on anything; i just thought the galactic jollin was really cute so i made him one, then built a little story around the idea of space and stargazing. everything about him is very simple, but cohesive, and i figure that's why he was able to win the spotlight.

another one of my spotlight winners, veranda, also uses the same base profile, but with a little more editing to make way for her much larger tc (it's still not as massive as some others out there, though). again, simple profile, short, simple story. same goes for pinafore, although she also has a fancy custom overlay. i pick a theme (space, tea parties, fashion design) and work with it.

my final spotlight winner, bow tie, is probably one of my favorites because i made everything for her from scratch. she is a fan pet of a my little pony character from the 80s, and again, her story is quite short (only a few paragraphs, and mostly dialogue), and her tc only has 25 items. no fancy profile with hovers or anything, but i made it myself so i'm quite proud of it.

with regard to battle stats and books read/food eaten, i don't care about those things so i leave them off the profile completely. if you don't think they are important to the character of the pet, i'd suggest doing the same. but if you think it's important for people to see your pet's stats (maybe they're at certain numbers that are significant, or maybe you just want to show off how high they are), or if you use the books read/food eaten to reflect the character/story, then you absolutely should include those things. it is by no means necessary, though; many pets that win don't have those things on their profile.

basically, my process boils down to:

1. come up with idea for character

this usually happens when i spot a pet in the adoption center with a cool name that inspires me to make a character/story around it, but in the case of frosix the name had nothing to do with anything (i actually originally adopted him because he was a cool experiment pet, and i kept him because he had pretty high stats, but i eventually decided to nix the experiment and make him galactic because i wanted a galactic pet), and in bow tie's case i just wanted to make a fan pet based on one of my favorite 80s my little ponies, and bow tie was the only unused name i could find (i was actually pretty surprised that no one had taken it). you might also already have an original character, and you can make a pet based on that as well.

picking an 'appropriate' color/species combo can be a bit challenging, and it's really a matter of personal preference. for example, i had no idea what to make pinafore for a long time. there just wasn't an existing pet that embodied the idea/feeling i was going for with her. then the nostalgic devonti came out, and i was struck with the idea to make her a variant of that, and so i made my own design and got a custom overlay (she's actually just cream, but the overall design was inspired by the nostalgic devonti). usually i just go with a pet whose design/pose seems to reflect the personality of the character i've come up with, but you can also do it the other way around (picking a pet you like the look of and then basing the personality of the pet on its appearance). i also like to pick a minion that matches the color/theme of the pet, and give it an appropriate name (this isn't necessary, but if your pet doesn't have a minion you definitely don't want to have a blank 'minion' section on the profile so you'd want to leave that bit out).

2. make a profile based around the character/design

for most of my pets, i've used chen's profile base because it is simple and lends itself to lots of customization, but in bow tie's case i did everything from scratch. i pick a color scheme for the profile based on the colors of the pet (for example, dark blue, light blue, silver, and gold for frosix) and a background image that goes with the color scheme and the theme of the pet/story (for example, a starry night sky for frosix or flowers for veranda).

3. write a story that portrays the pet's character/personality

as you've seen, all my pets' stories are quite short. they're just little snippets or scenes or conversations that i feel get across the personality of the pet. many of them consist largely of dialogue, but you can write full on exposition of your pet's background and life and memories if that's what you'd prefer to do.

so yeah, that's pretty much my process for making pets. obviously it's not going to be exactly the same for everyone, but i hope it's a helpful starting point for you.