I have long wanted a pet that represents my myriad literary ambitions, and I have a couple of ideas of how we might do that.

First Option: Accessories

Some may argue here "but you could overlay that!" Well...me, personally, I could only do a little copy and paste and make it look like it sort of belonged. But in these examples I'm thinking of a bit more involvement between the pet and the object, rather than them side by side.

Second Option: Making Letter Shapes Something like this:

Most examples I can find look a little kindergarteny, but I think there's a way we could do it that doesn't look too juvenile. The letters could be chosen based on the name of the character, but that wouldn't actually be necessary.

Third Option: Letter/Word Patterns on Skin This would be similar to how sweetheart pets have hearts all over their skin/fur. Each pet would have a printing of letters in various fonts. Like this, but like way better than this.

Fourth Option: Pets Outlined in Words Like this: I think it's called a typography portrait.

I think each option has their own merit, and maybe the Pets of Letters would be a color like Nostalgic in that each species interprets it their own way.

There are three Suggestions here.

I don't like the first Suggestion here. Pets have never been about the clothing or the props and those pets that do are usually the special pose colors and not colorfill colors. If they have a prop, it's a special treat and not a regular thang. Adding props to pets is very much a "get an overlay" thing in my opinion however much the OP doesn't like this. Don't have the skillz to draw it yourself? Hire an artist! Subeta's got lots and their prices are reasonable.

I find myself all meh over the second Suggestion because it really does seem like kiddie lit. What about Arabic letters or Kanji or Thai or Hindi or Gujarati as letters, this would make it more sophisticated, but still....meh. On the plus side it would be adorkable and right now we only have the Chibi and maybe Harvest/Glade on the super cute side but lots of Nightmare/Graveyard/Darkmatter right now? But it doesn't work for me, so meh.

I LOVE the third Suggestion it's pleasingly abstract to me, but then again, I love Scribble which is an unusual taste here in Subeta. This idea has more flexibility and has room for more artistic development than the one before, and is also reminiscent of ASCII art (Maybe the Cadogre and Endeavor could be in ASCII).

When I was thinking of adding "props" to the pet design, I was thinking of something along the lines of glade/harvest, where they don't just have grass and bugs but the pet interacts with the grass and bugs (and flowers/leaves, etc.). Sweetheart has this aspect to it, too - in fact, I think you could combine my first and third options to have something relatively similar to sweetheart.

(Also I think you meant you liked the fourth option? :) The Johnny Depp option? Or did you really mean the third option which I didn't give an illustration for?)

has no idea who Depp is I don't see a distinction between third and fourth.

Cooked up an example for the first post so it's clearer.