spaceysneopets

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You simply cannot tell me that this isn't supposed to be Trixie Mattel

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this gif is fucking frying me

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how bout that lag, huh?

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Pokemon:

Free universal healthcare

Runs on the power of friendship

Most problems can be fixed by 10–16 year olds

Only known disease just makes you stronger

Can make money just by causal street battles

Strong environmental protections

Neopets:

Multiple wars

Multiple genocide attempts

Slavery

Unchecked magic users/mad scientists that will inflict all kinds of body horror on you

Rampant capitalism and inflation

Ghosts, zombies, etc.

Lots of various monsters that can and will kill you

Capitalism(TM)

[spaceysneopets]

really really want to see a valentines PB on the varwolf so I made a couple sprite edits so see how they might look~ which do you prefer? (these are both WIPs btw!)

editing "map" under the cut :3c

here is a "map" with easier to see/pick colors in case anyone wanted to make their own fan paint brushes ^u^ I'll upload a free layer PSD version to my ko-fi when I have a more free time between commission work !

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anyways.

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Transparent Pets and the Transparent Chia

for background, Transparent is a cosmetic option one can change their Neopet to. for the mostly mammalian cast of Neopets, this typically shows the internal anatomy of the Neopet as if their skin and cartilage were transparent, displaying their skeleton and visible internal organs.

there are some notable examples among them: the Transparent Lenny has bones in its primary feathers, explaining their hand-like dexterity with those feathers! (other bird Neopets, like the Pteri, do not have these bones).

there's also the Grundo's alien organs, and the Ruki, which is an insect and thus has an exoskeleton, has a much different internal structure from its mammal counterparts

there's a lot we could get into here with the perceived anatomical correctness of these designs; the number of bones and placement or lack of certain organs is definitely not one would expect in a detailed anatomical diagram. but none of that is really important beyond what these designs signify about the species classification-wise, and the one new major outlier: the Transparent Chia

the Transparent Chia is unlike all other Neopets who have received Transparent designs. it is green; it does not have bones; it has unique organs; it resembles a plant cell.

below is my attempt to label the Transparent Chia as if it were a textbook diagram of a plant cell. I'm only an amateur biologist, so I discussed with some friends, including professional biologist @stackedcrates who taught me a lot!

(footnotes are below)

1 - Root Hairs: As I've been told it, root hairs would typically 1) comprise the full green shape of the hair and not just the pink inside, and 2) a cell with root hairs would not have chloroplasts. So if we accept the hair as root hairs, this is either a "novel evolutionary adaptation" or possibly the Chia is comprised of two to four large cells and potentially a colonial organism, which I find exciting.

2 - Vesicles, Peroxisomes, Lysosomes: It's impossible to actually distinguish these things from each other so I labelled them half based on evidence and half arbitrarily. Lysosomes are typically larger than peroxisomes, but both could also be most any other 'some. (Vesicles are not 'somes but they look similar in this type of diagram).

3 - The Endoplasmic Reticulum & Large Central Vacuole: In normal cells, the endoplasmic reticulum would touch the nucleus, so this ER is in a very unusual if not impossible spot. We floated the possibilities that we were wrong about the nucleus, the nucleus was actually what we'd labelled as the LCV, and even that our ER was just the rough ER and the yellow noodles (now labelled "Cytoskeletal Structures") were a very unusual smooth ER. But it seems overly likely that we're correct about the LCV and the nucleus, so I preferred this admittedly unsatisfying option compared to the rest.

4 - Chloroplasts and Mitochondria: You might notice that the chloroplasts as labelled have two different designs: one is striped while the other is simply green. The committee found the two similar enough to group them together, and I'm told it's common for the chloroplast to be depicted either way (I found more than one diagram that this art seems to be cribbing colors and design choices from). As for the mitochondria, it's possible that we have the chloroplasts and mitochondria swapped, and it's just as possible possible one of the three labelled is some other plastid that we didn't consider.

5 - Cytoskeletal Structures: We have no idea what these are. They're not really the right shape to be skeletal structures. Oh well!

6 - Amyloplast: @stackedcrates suggested this was an amyloplast, for storing starch, but that it could be another kind of plastid.

this attempt has many issues, but the real purpose of it is to prove that the Chia very closely resembles a plant cell, rather than correctly identify each part. @stackedcrates also emphasized that biology is full of exceptions, and with the Chia necessarily representing an unusual example, it doesn't behoove us to be beholden to statistical typicality. a few mistakes or professional disagreements are okay! in the end, it matters more that the parts are roughly represented.

I think we did well!

What does this mean for the project?

we'll be hereforth categorizing the Chia as among Plantae rather than Animalia. there was evidence for this before as the Chia is the only Neopet to have the unique Magical Chia Pop colors. the Maraquan Chia is also an anenome, which is an animal, but definitely the most plant-like of the aquatic animals.

maybe one could argue the Chia is a fungus, or even an animal-plant hybrid! where does that go in our taxonomy? I don't know! but science is exciting, isn't it?

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yes

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here’s your sign to stop doomscrolling and do literally anything else

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reblog if you need a hug

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My fellow Neopians... a demographic survey (because the lore and mechanics on Neopet sapience and autonomy is WILDLY inconsistent)

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So just to recap yesterday on Neopets a new plot started which included an entire land going grey and Skarl turning into the definition of a sopping wet meow meow. there was originally a bunch of dialogue on the hub page that was broken and had characters talking to themselves which was then removed less than an hour after it went live. the hub page has the end prize shop visible already, except the prize shop has a bunch of very valuable old items in it so naturally there are a bunch of 1%ers fighting about it on the boards and complaining about how they can't lord items over other players anymore. and to top it all off TNT just dropped this thing on us with no warning

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"Your food is now depressed like you." -TNT probably

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I need to find that 1 comic I saw in the neopian times eons ago as a little baby, that had a lab rat lupe musing on its changing gender identity that I kept in the back of my mind for several years and did not unpack

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Normal Neopets players: so what are your Food Club bets for today? I'm thinking Tailhook but IDK

Neopets players that are invested in the lore: King Skarl should be assassinated

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hey who left this dirty big omelette here