Neopets/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Jhudora. Is she evil or is she actually nice inside?
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Moltara. Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but not many people were expecting a Steampunk-themed world, of all things!
    • In a volcano, to boot! (Nod to the old Tyrannian Crack?)
    • MR.COCONUT HAS RETURNED.
    • Yooyuball has a mouse option again!
  • Anticlimax Boss: The eponymous villain in The Darkest Faerie is built up as being the toughest opponent in her game. If you decide to save your Nova Motes, she's nothing more than a pushover, and the 3 minute timer doesn't actually help her.
  • Creator's Pet: Aristotle A. Avinroo, the mascot of the Gamesmaster Challenge, is a symbol of the site's decline and focus on events rather than plots. Plus, his events have cut short the Return of Dr. Sloth (but thankfully only gave The Faerie's Ruin a slight delay).
  • Designated Hero: Oh my god, Hoban.
  • Dork Age: It went through one from around 2007 (when the NC Mall opened and the site got a revamp) to about 2010. Consensus among the fans is that The Faerie's Ruin broke the site out of its Dork Age... only for the Jumpstart acquisition to slam-dunk it straight into a second Dork Age due to the company's negligence leading to a big chunk of the site and most of the games unplayable after doing the bare minimum to prepare for the death of Flash in 2021. And that's not even going into the widely despised decision to throw all common sense out the window and chase the heavily controversial and unsustainable NFT market.
  • Ear Worm: Two words: Meepit Juice Break.
    • Ice Cream Machine and Hasee Bounce fits too.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: For a species that was introduced third-to-last in order, the Xweetoks have a fairly high population. To clarify, they're the fifth most popular pet, and the four before them are some of the first and most marketed pets with a five-year headstart over them.
    • The Xweetok also used to sell without any merch or characters to help promote it, but this thinned out gradually. Xandra also helped give the species a boost. There's also Lillian Fairwether from the Journey to the Lost Isle plot.
    • And then we have Neopia's first Big Bad, the Affably Evil Dr. Frank Sloth himself.
    • Some of the Faeries count, as well, especially Jhudora, The Darkest Faerie, Illusen, and the Space Faerie.
    • Many Altador Cup players, the big one being Team Darigan's Tandrak Shaye. Another example is Lost Desert's Vonde Cayle, who was originally supposed to be in the shadow of fellow forward Derbi Azar but ended up being the more popular of the two. Lastly, there's Jair Tollet, who has several NT stories dedicated to her thanks to her transfer from Maraqua to Roo Island.
      • Speaking of the Altador Cup, there's the Techo Super Fan, the bug-eyed, fist-shaking fanatic who roots for whatever team you do. He even got his own game!
    • Abigail Avinroo has this status, mainly due to having a much more likeable personality than her Creator's Pet of a big brother, AAA.
    • Mr. Coconut. When both him and his "GOOD NIGHT!" were removed from the Editorial, tons of users sent letters demanding his return. Site staff responded not by restoring the Running Gag, but making the search for a replacement a Running Gag in itself.
    • The Sharkaw was one of fifty "new pets" unveiled on April Fool's, 2005. It was in a poll to determine which of these would be an actual new Neopet, but the fellow Darkhorse Lamameeah won and became the Gnorbu, which got some major flak for changing too much from the April Fool's design and winning mostly because of a llama meme going around the Neoboards.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Judging by some of the fandom, Lord Kass, Ylana Skyfire, Captain Scarblade, Jazan (before his Heel Face Turn), Kanrik (See Jazan), Eithne, and Xandra get this.
  • Fanon: Occasionally fan work published in the Neopian Times will reach this status, at least within the circle of Neopian Times readers. This is how the pink Uni working at the pound came to be known as Rose, among other examples.
  • Freud Was Right: Zafara chest fur seems to fill out their clothes quite well. And yes, this also applies to males.
    • Every now and then, boards pop up debating whether or not certain items have arguably sexual designs. After several pages, it's rather difficult to get your mind out of the gutter.
      • This user's gallery (you might need to be logged in to see it) has some... questionable items in it.
    • You have to save some Neopets in The Faerie's Ruin plot by pulling them away from purple tendrils which are holding them and draining their life force. The tendrils can "waver strangely," "vibrate gently," "ripple oddly," "undulate slowly" or "pulse threateningly.' Also notice that they are not called "tentacles."
  • Fake Difficulty: Training your neopet for the battledome makes EV training in Pokémon look like a cakewalk. While your neopets do gain experience with each battle, the experience doesn't boost said pets stats at all. To boost your pets stats, you need to take them to the training school which asks for codestones (not that easy to get ahold of depending on which stone they ask for). However many codestones they ask of you will only contribute to the boosting of one stat per training session as well. On top of that, Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors doesn't come into play at all. So you can't arm you neopet with any fire-based weapons in hopes of improving your chances against, say, the Snowager.
  • Foe Yay: A weird, fan-specific example: the Neopian Writers and the Help Chat had a bit of a Tsundere relationship for awhile. It fizzled out, due to the HC loosening up a bit and the NW learning the merits of personal space. Either that, or both sides just got bored.
  • Genius Bonus: There is an aquatic Petpet called the Ghoti. According to The Other Wiki, "ghoti" is pronounced "fish".
  • Ho Yay: The epilogue of The Faerie's Ruin. Jazan is shown with his wife, Nabile, who is his 'second favourite Ixi thief'. Second favourite?
  • Internet Backdraft: The revamps, ho boy. The site's many design changes have been the source of many a controversy for years, but when the Neopets themselves got slight redesigns to make them easier to customize (AKA make players spend cash on Neocash Items) all hell truly broke loose.
  • Jumping the Shark: Many former Neopets users thought Neopets Jumped the Shark with its radical new layout introduced in 2007.
    • For others, it was the Customization feature. Sure, it gave clothes a purpose beyond Vendor Trash, but to many the change in pet art as well as the homogenization of the formerly unique Paint brushed pet designs weren't worth it.
    • Or when they sold the site and started putting ads everywhere.
    • General consensus is that the site Jumped the Shark the day it was purchased by Viacom. Many thought things were swinging the other way thanks to The Faerie's Ruin not being rushed to an early end for the GMC... and along came Jumpstart.
  • Maraquans Love Elon Hughlis
  • Memetic Mutation: During a site event/minor plot for Krawk Island in 2011, users on the boards played a game they called "Put Something In McGill's Hand"... where they 'shopped random things into McGill's hand, due to the odd way he was drawn. It spread like wildfire, with most of the boards reaching the maximum number of posts.
    • "That stupid fist", the much-maligned pose many post-conversion Neopets took where their unique poses that conveyed a lot of personality were changed in favor of a static pose where the pet in question is clenching a fist (or the closest approximation of one).
  • Memetic Sex God: Did you truly believe that Neopets of all things would be exempt from Rule 34?! Certain pet species have big furry followings, including the dainty, feminine Aisha and the Big Badass Wolf Lupe.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A sort of meta example: Neopets was launched around the same time as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (coming into effect in early 2000), meaning that it was one of the first major websites to have to deal with laws concerning the collection of personal information from minors. Specifically, users under 13 had to have their parents fax a signed form indicating that the child had permission to sign up and use certain futures of the site (such as Neo Mail). The prompt and decisive response from the preteen would-be userbase was to simply lie about their age when creating their accounts. Fast forward to circa 2006: Neopets implements a birth date check in their login form. Now, what fake birth date did you enter on a whim some long-passed Wednesday back in 5th grade? ...Yeah, that's what I thought. Cue the anguished cries of thousands of nostalgia-seeking teenagers as they're simultaneously locked out of their childhood. Oops.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • The Transparent color. This is what happens. Sure, Invisible was literal... but this is what happens when your pet is stuck in an X-ray.
    • There's actually a lot of this. The entire Haunted Woods probably counts, if you go into detail. There's a tree with a brain and a face there.
    • Some of the Mutant forms can be kind of disturbing, but the Mutant Kau takes the cake, especially compared to a normal Red Kau...
    • Beware, all users with laggy computers, or who dare to wait between levels on certain games (looking at you, Typing Terror). You might be surprised by something.
    • Were you expecting the uncased Robot Poogle to look like this? Yeah, didn't think so.
    • Then, there's this little beauty.
    • The loud sound effect that always plays when you lose Darigan Dodgeball and considering the type of game it is, losing is inevitable.
    • The Jump Scare at the end of Lair of the Beast. It's just a pterodactyl and can't do anything to your pets and/or account, but still.
  • Scrappy Level: The code breaking in the Return of Sloth plot, and the Tarla plot.
    • From the Faeries' Ruin plot, the Barrier Shield Reinforcement step. The four tasks are already challenging, but because you have to cooperate with three other players (who may or may not be competent) while dealing with the site's horrendous lag, and the fact that it's timed sends it straight into Fake Difficulty territory. Slightly mitigated by the fact that you can form groups with users to do this step, thus ensuring a level of competence.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Certain random events that result in you losing an item, a bunch of neopoints, or in the case of your Pets, health or even stats are this because true to the name, they come completely at random with no way to prepare. You can't stop them, and save for your Pet's health, they're gone for good.
    • Before they got an overhaul, certain events permanently messed with your Pet's color. Boochi would turn your active Pet into a baby, while another event would literally turn them blue from sadness. You have to drop an insane amount of Neopoints on paintbrushes, and the blood, sweat, and tears you put into pouring your funds together could be rendered all for naught if RNGesus was feeling particularly spiteful that day. The blue event was especially bad since Baby pets are at least appealing enough for people to want Boochi to zap their pets, but blue is one of the four generic starting colors, something you generally want to your pet to break away from unless you particularly like that color.
  • "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: The Altador Cup. If you join a popular team, an unpopular team, or submit less than 100 wins per day, you will be mocked on the forums for it. Guaranteed.
    • But the best prizes are worth millions of NP, so actually trying is somewhat worth it for the poor.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The site underwent a major revamp in Year 9 (2007). Heck, some users quit the site because of it!
    • More commonly expressed as "Viacom bought it, now it sucks", and later on "Jumpstart bought it, now it sucks".
    • The new Yooyuball... Has not been well received thanks to the controls being unnecessarily simplified. We want our mouse controls back!
  • Ugly Cute: Mutant and Darigan pets. (The ones that aren't Nightmare Fuel anyway.)
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Several of the players in the Altador Cup. Specifically, Jair and Lilo from Roo Island.
  • Villain Decay: Dr. Sloth
    • Curiously, a lot of this Villain Decay was helped along by the fans of the site. Go figure.
  • The Woobie: Grey Faeries are intentionally like this.

Plots provide examples of:

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Neopets/YMMV?oldid=1972411"