y'know I think the only thing more annoying than seeing people totally misunderstand the flavor of the Neopets setting in the context of the TTRPG drama is seeing currently-active Neopets players be weird about furries
MY SIBLINGS IN DEAD CHIA YOU ARE ON. THE FURRY PIXEL PET SITE. IN 2026. YOU ARE DROWNING IN AN EGYPTIAN RIVER
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 !
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?
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
