The video game history foundation has just finished scanning every copy of the neopets magazine and added it to their archive. Super cool!
It might be a little silly, but Neopets Magazine is an important slice of a different part of gaming culture.
During its four-year run, Neopets Magazine covered the latest news and strategies for the influential 2000s-era web game. It also had a lot of articles about Neopets merchandise and trading cards. In fact, it’s mostly ads for Neopets products. Or long articles about Neopets lore. At best, it is mostly an off-topic magazine.
So why did we focus on this magazine of our archive? Simple: it’s about the game’s audience.
Neopets was, arguably, the defining girl game of the 2000s. An entire microgeneration of girls got their start in the world of digital entertainment by raising virtual pets and playing Flash games to get Neopoints.
[...]
Notably, many of the magazine’s articles are about creativity and customization. There’s shades in here of the gameplay styles that have become more popular in the last decade with the rise of cozy games and farming sims.
My favorite quirk of Neopets Magazine is in the audience survey that came with some issues. In one survey question, they asked whether readers bought this magazine at a clothing store! That would have reached a completely different audience than we usually associate with game magazines. Can you imagine PC Gamer being sold at a Charlotte Russe?
The point is that Neopets The Official Magazine represents a different slice of gaming culture, one that we know matters to researchers and to our extended community.
would you believe me if I tagged this as neopets plot spoilers? and would you believe me if I said what actually happens next is she tells fyora to beg?
When I first read Chapter 14, page 12 of the plot, it kind of bugged me when Fyora said “You aren’t a Dark Faerie, Drakara. You never were—not a real one. Just look at your wings!” followed by “You may act like a fully fledged dark faerie, but those feathered wings betray you—as does the use of your old name. There's still some of the Drakara I knew in there.”
Come on, Fyora. Can’t a dark faerie have cool unique wings? And what does “act like a fully fledged dark faerie” even mean? Are you implying that acting like a dark faerie is synonymous with being evil???
"That's very rude of you, Fifi. Just for that I'm going to stomp you a few extra times."
Given that it’s stated elsewhere that Fyora doesn’t think all dark faeries are evil, that seems out of character.
But there might be an alternate explanation.
Fyora may not be saying that Drakara isn’t a real dark faerie because she’s still a fire faerie deep down, or anything like that.
She might actually be saying that Drakara is literally not a dark faerie at all because Drakara is still grey.
Note: I'll be discussing a particular trading card that may spoil upcoming plot elements; if you're wanting to avoid any TCG-related spoilers, you may want to stop here.
The Void Within Battledome trading card set has an interesting card showing an item that hasn’t shown up in the plot yet (though I’m excited for when it does!):
Ooh, shiny!
Drakara, it seems, is capable of crafting artificial faerie wings. Notably, the light faerie wings as shown on the card have a feathery appearance. Drakara’s wings are also, as Fyora notes, feathered.
Despite the fact that Baelia’s original wings weren’t feathery, her wing-stubs appear to be little grey feathers. There seems to be some connection between grey faeries and feathers.
Plus Drakara's color scheme appears pretty grey overall; she has some purple accessories, but she herself still has a greyish skin tone.
And then there’s the matter of Drakara’s name.
In the original Neopedia article that introduced Baelia and Tavi, Baelia says “I am powerless without wings. In order to get new wings, I must get a new name.” And when Fyora orders her guards to inflict the Grey Ritual on Drakara, she tells Drakara “Once you have found yourself… Found an identity outside of your… obsession, then you may return.”
But Drakara hasn’t found a new identity for herself. She had a new name given to her by her own mysterious patron. (Okay, maybe not so mysterious; that flame pattern on the dark faerie’s sleeve seems awfully familiar…)
"Need a hand?"
On page 12, Drakara says “I followed the voice. I obeyed it. And soon, once I had proven myself worthy of Her grace… She gave me what you took from me.
“Wings. Power. A name… She named me, and I was reborn. No longer a Grey Faerie, or even a Fire Faerie—a Dark Faerie. Who I was meant to be all along.” (Bolding mine.)
This aspect of Drakara’s backstory seems to mirror Ozzy’s. She felt cast out, alone, and abandoned by the person she loved most, and so she was left vulnerable to someone else’s manipulation.
And if her patron, a dark faerie, provided the magic needed to empower her fabricated wings, then naturally Drakara would possess dark magic by wearing those wings.
As Fyora notes, Drakara still seems to think of herself as Drakara, not as the new name she was given (which is almost certainly “Jennumara”). The prose sections in pages 10-12 of the chapter seem to be written in third-person-limited perspective, with Drakara as the viewpoint character, and even if Drakara tells Fyora not to call her by her original name, the narration still refers to Drakara as, well, Drakara.
Plus there's the fact that all Drakara's stuff seems to be labeled with her original name.
The cutest little musical instrument to ever obliterate my pet in the Battledome!
This is in contrast to Ozzy in Chapter 12, who almost always thinks of himself as “Ozzy” rather than “Oizys” (though there is a point on page 16 where he tells himself “Get a hold of yourself, Oizys!”, so even that doesn’t seem to be a name he’s fully rejected internally).
Ozzy is the name that Ozzy chose for himself. But Drakara didn’t choose her new name. It could be that her new name doesn’t represent her any more than the title “Grey Painter” represents Ozzy’s true identity. “Jennumara” may be who Drakara’s dark faerie “patron” wants her to be, just as the Grey Painter was who Drakara wanted Ozzy to be. But those are both labels someone else placed on them.
"I think I'm going to have to switch career paths."
When Drakara claims that being a dark faerie is who she was always meant to be, I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to take that at face value. Maybe she could become a dark faerie if that path genuinely called to her (though I think there's another, more likely possibility I'll get into later). But as things stand, it seems like she’s been pushed onto her current path by someone with ulterior motives.
Drakara, for all her power and centuries of life, may still not have a solid sense deep down of who she is and who she wants to be after Fyora took her wings and magic. It seems like Drakara went straight from serving one ruler to serving another; when Drakara lost her original chosen purpose of protecting Fyora (even when doing so, in her mind, meant going against Fyora’s orders and delving into dangerous forbidden magic), she was scooped right up by a patron who was more than willing to provide her with a new purpose.
Not that Drakara doesn’t have personal reasons to want revenge on Fyora, but the form that revenge has taken was probably influenced by the dark faerie Drakara mentions in her backstory.
Tavi even says, early on in the plot, that she’s tried to come up with new names for Baelia, none of which stuck.
"We went through every book of baby names I could find, but no dice. It sure would've been funny if 'Tavi" had worked, though!"
That might have been meant as foreshadowing that a grey faerie has to find her own name and define her own identity in order to regain her own internal magic (vs. having magic granted by an external power source).
In other words, when Fyora says “You aren’t a Dark Faerie… not a real one,” she isn’t saying “This isn’t you!!! Darkness isn’t your heart!!!”
She might just be saying something more along the lines of “I can see the glue on those wings.”
Which still isn’t a very nice thing to say to the faerie whose magic you took away, but in fairness, Drakara is trying to beat her up at the time, in addition to, uh, everything else she’s been up to.
"If I hadn't already been planning to throw you off the balcony, that certainly would have done it!"
Switching gears a bit, I’ve mentioned previously that I think it’s possible that Baelia will end up becoming a dark faerie.
It might not be the strongest evidence, but Baelia's very first appearance, and one of the few times she's been visibly happy during this plot, was when she was enjoying the sight of the night sky. Plus, darkness is the opposite of light, and if she really doesn't want to be a light faerie, perhaps she'll find she prefers the opposing element.
If that does happen, I think that might be used as a deliberate thematic contrast to Drakara.
Drakara was pushed towards darkness by a dark faerie who likely had her own reasons to want Fyora struck down. Likewise, I think Drakara may actually push Baelia back towards light. The Fabricated Light Faerie Wings from the trading card may be intended as a temptation to get Baelia to cooperate with Drakara’s plans, much like Drakara tried to tempt Vira with becoming beautiful again.
In both cases, Drakara would be offering her victims what she thought they wanted, but not necessarily what they actually need deep down. (Just as Drakara’s patron may have done to her, in turn.)
But Baelia already has experience being pushed down a path that wasn't right for her. Not only has Baelia apparently never felt fully comfortable being a light faerie, when Fyora tried to guide Baelia into becoming the next Faerie Artificer, Baelia realized that wasn't what she wanted and was planning to leave that role before she was captured by Drakara/Jennumara.
"On the bright side, I guess getting kidnapped and turned grey spared me a really awkward conversation about quitting my job. Silver linings, right...?"
For Baelia, if she does become a dark faerie, I think it would be as an assertion of what she wants for herself, independent of how others might see her or the plans they may have had for her. If so, her name, whatever it might be, won’t be provided by Drakara, or Tavi, or anyone else: it will be hers and hers alone.
And as for Drakara… it certainly is interesting that Drakara’s Brambled Lance uses both dark and earth magic, as well as how much of Drakara’s Battledome quotes and internal dialogue reference woodworking. If Drakara is still grey, I think, perhaps, an element other than darkness might call to her her more strongly.
And just as light as the opposite of darkness, earth is the opposite of Fyora's original element, air.
I got a strange bugged Battledome message in which my pet apparently decided to hide under the Malevolent Being's robe while said Being was still wearing it, creating a very funny mental image:
kaledo-art
2087
gummygunk
blakekathryn
titsay
annaxmalina
pixelskylines
