Something I sometimes stop and think about is how we keep all these fictional digital species as "pets" and then pretend them to have intelligence and independence. It's often just kind of hand-waved away, haha~ Sometimes I've seen people have their pets call them "mom" or something like that, other times the pets live as separate characters - even separate to the very universe they're from. All is well and good... But right now I'm wondering how to approach mine.

What I usually do is have them be quad, yet still capable of living human-like lives for the most part. It seems to be how it generally works? But I've grown somewhat so imagining four-legged critters without opposable thumbs deal with opening cans or putting on accessories is a bit ???? So I'm thinking of going anthro with my pets on subeta.

But since I haven't been an active part of the community here, well, ever, then I kinda wanted to ask and see what the "norm" is, so to speak. My current assumption is that people just use the pets as a sort of platform to build totally subeta-unrelated characters or have them be somewhat vague and lead vague, metaphorical existences.

I don't think there's a norm here. You are free to do what you like with your pets, and I think that's really important. If you are comfortable with quad or anthro characters, I'd say go for them!

For me, I'm using my pets mainly for subeta-unrelated human characters (or mythical creatures in human forms), and half of them are fanpets from various shows and films. I'm not sure how I have no problem relating the image of a horse or lion to a human character xD, but probably because human characters are something I like and good at developing. but I do recently have an idea of having a pet that's based off his subeta species, which is Raider (a big butch mortiking).

Except for two Pets all of my characters are human so you can say that I use the Pet profiles as their showcases.

naturally, I'll do what suits me most in the end :'D To be fair, it can be fun to incorporate a character into a pet design eheh~ And I mean sometimes it just feels like certain people resemble certain animals in how they behave or the meanings associated with the animals. I wish you luck with Raider~ mortikings are cooool

Oh, totally! I agree with the animal resemblance! I have a few OCs and fanpets that's actually closely related to animals (eg. spirit animals, symbolism, nicknames), so it's really easy to pick the species for them. On most other cases, I decide on color/species mostly based on the pet's attitude/look. Some of them just give out the right vibe for a certain characters.

Thanks! Good luck working on your characters too :D!

My pets are actually races from an alternate modern fantasy universe. :D Sphinxes asking riddles in YouTube comments and such, so I go with the species that fits the most.

I happen to have a ton of shape shifter OCs, which is what I base my pets off :) In fact, I'm slowly going through all of my characters to make them on here!

, ahh shapeshifter characters are great for Subeta pets! A couple of mine are based off of shapeshifter characters, too (Avow and Tiercel are shapeshifters, Bravado is a werewolf so...technically he does...shift shape?). Excuse me while I go creep around your pets for a bit :P

More on the topic, my pets all represent OCs. Some of them existed for a long time before I made them into pets (Pique, Avow, Tiercel, and Bravado, who are all from the same 'verse and have intertwining stories), while others are brand new and were created solely so I could have a pet/TC/something else Subeta-related that I wanted (Ciabatta, Havarti). My OCs are all humans, or supernatural beings that commonly take a human form, as I find them generally more fun to work with, so my Subeta pets consequently all represent humans. I tend to use their pages as showcases and a pretty way of piecing together their character.

riddles in YouTube comments?? i think that comment section is enough of a riddle tbh--- no, but, i really love when myths and legends get adapted to modern settings tho im not 100% sure what you have in mind aha~ (YOUR PETS ARE A RAINBOW!!!)

i c u guys are the OC crew :y well, it seems most of ya are so far. i guess subeta has always been a petsite with a weak emphasis on "pets" tho. but mmm yeah it's great that the community loves crafting characters. SO MANY BEAUTIFUL PET PROFILES. and wonderfully co-ordinated treasure chests fffss

most of my pets are animals, but like, independent animals with human-level sentience and intelligence. but i don't usually go into super detail about their day-to-day lives and i tend to keep the extent of their animalness vs. humanness very vague… like, one of my pets is a devonti who is also a fashion designer/seamstress… how does she sew with hooves? i have no fucking idea. what is the culture and society that they live in? is it just populated with animals, or are there humans as well? how do they do certain tasks? so i tend to keep it super ambiguous as to whether they are 100% animal or if they are somehow anthro, and leave it up to the imagination of the reader.

right now i only have one pet who is not actually an animal, but is a representation of a humanoid character, which is something i know a lot of people do. personally i always find it a little odd when people make their pets actually, well, pets. like their story will say "i was out for a walk with my owner" and i'm just like… wouldn't it be awkward to 'own' a creature with that kind of self-awareness? it reminds me a bit of neopets because that was very common on there too and, idk, i guess it's just not my preference.

I agree with on the making pets actual pets thing... I've always felt that it was awkward as well. On Neopets, my characters are anthropomorphic and live in a Neopia in which humans don't really exist (unless you count the faeries as humans). As a relatively new Subeta player, though, I'm still trying to figure out where my pets are in terms of how human/animal they are. I'm currently leaning towards animals with human-level sentience but I haven't completely thrown out the idea of making them more anthro. (Though the only one I currently have any desire to make anthro is my Glade Devonti).

Since humans are much more prevalent on Subeta it's kind of hard to ignore their existence which, at least in my head, makes it a lot more complicated xD I guess the way I currently see it is that the animal characters have human-level sentience and intelligence, and also live alongside humans but are not necessarily owned by them.

[-parade] and also, things get more complicated when you take into account the subetapedia entries for each pet… canonically, they are treated as actual animals with normal animal-level intelligence, except for a few (like the kora and escalade). so a lain, in subeta lore, is basically just a regular bird, and an anyu is just a plain old bear. they are wild animals, pets, or working animals, but they do not talk or perform human activities. so if you want to go by subeta canon, then they are simply animals. but then again, our pets talk to us when we feed or play with them, they can read books and use weapons… obviously the lore is a little fuzzy because it came about in bits and pieces, and wasn't necessarily all thought out at once. so it's perfectly expected for people to have different takes on how the world of subeta and the creatures within it work.

My pets are humans (or potentially other supernatural being) with distinct personalities and characteristics, and I choose their 'pet form' on here as what I think would suit their personality well (in addition to them being pets that actually appeal to me, obviously). They only interact amongst themselves and they belong to a separate world from any other characters I have.

And now the more I think about this, the more weird it gets, haha! It's like these characters have two forms, except one is just like an extension of their personality... gah.

Most of my pets are independent human-(ish) characters who don't really have any correlation to the subetan universe, so once I actually manage to write down their stories, I doubt anyone will be strolling down the streets of Centropolis. I've got a couple of fanpets/game OCs who obviously belong to their own universes, and then I've got a bunch of other OCs who I'm trying to keep somewhat relevant to each other's stories. Which I'm currently failing at, since after ditching antros years ago, I've rekindled my old affection for humans with animal/mythical traits. (so not really anthro per say, but more like merfolk and centaurs. Just don't know what to do with them yet.)

However, I also do like having their quad forms somewhere visible (and maybe someday actually designed), even if I won't be using them for actual story-purposes.

[-parade] Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant :'D We're keeping animals--- but they're smart enough to talk, read books and use weapons... Wait what??! It's definitely a thing that comes from neopets too - many if not all petsites do this same thing. Canonically, yeah, subetapedia describes them as animals... But then there's also the cybill pirate and the montre amazonian. I suppose my take on it would be that we literally domesticate intelligent animals lmao.. but there's also a portion that have developed in a more anthromorphic direction??? Tbh I was really hoping subetapedia would finally clear this up but I was sorta sad to see that, nope, the species are spoken about as if they're wild animals that we domesticate ahaha;;;

i mean writing them as animals is fun too and i might actually do that for some D idk i'm fond of the idea of working within the canon.

I think having alternate forms is a pretty good solution, if more time-consuming. Plus, working separately from the subeta universe opens up options.

And then, I haven't checked but, I assume the RP forums don't do any pet RPs so it's great to host the character profiles on pets.

It's definitely time-consuming :')

I'm not actually sure if I do it just because I can't decide which one I want to use / am a materialist and want all the options / or if it simply makes me feel less weird about still referring to them as 'pets' if they have some sort of an animal form even if it's just symbolic and irrelevant to their stories.

I kind of wish I could immerse myself into the subetaverse enough to have characters who are actually subetan, but there are too many open questions and not enough answers to satisfy my world-building needs. So instead I just insert my characters into other verses, and generally ditch the animal form in favor of human / partial anthro / mythological.

I haven't really been to the RP forums ( mainly because I'm a big chicken ), but that's.. essentially how I use my pet profiles, yeah. I'd love to start RPing properly again, it's been years since my last time.

- yes, they do make great "pets"! I love that they can be animals and actually represent themselves quite well. The profiles where the animals are turned into just humans... seem a little strange to me I guess? Though, don't get me wrong, most of those are pretty awesome too. I just like for mine to be somewhat accurate to the character AND the subeta pet. Which is one reason I have avoided adding some of my characters that just wouldn't fit any of the subeta species.

I have not gotten around to doing many of their profiles yet sadly D: Vere's is the only pretty complete one at the moment. I really need to get to working on the others more!

Most of my Pets (except for... 1 Anthro, 1 Alien, 1 good-natured [!!!] Werewolf and 4 animals) are "based" on humans, so I just pick what Pet/color fits them best. (:

I do both, ironically!

A handful of my pets are OC and unrelated to Subeta, but I enjoy giving them lovely items. I have a subset, however, that are Subetan in an early-2000s-Neopets-esque way -- I'm an overseer / close friend / adviser to said pets as they seek their own independence, returning to my estate only when they need me.

I've been a dying breed of virtual pet owner for over a decade now, though, so I don't usually tend to put up pet content -thumbs up-. Adds to my facade of being a name hoarder. ;)

yeah, i need all the world-building ;w; admittedly though, i haven't read up enough. i'll probably be perusing the subetapedia some more for inspiration.

"a dying breed" OTL but ahhh yeah, i mean, i count myself among that breed tho i usually remove myself from most of their life anyway. it's fun stuffing them all in the same place tho having them be roomies hahaaaa you should put up content for them too :'[