Pets as NPCs
It’s almost as egregiously done with muses’ pets, and other animal companions (I don’t mean it like that, we actually don’t support that on this blog), as it is to their human children; the I’ve never met an actual dog/cat/human child in my whole damn life thing. So, let me help you with that.
Below the cut, there’s information on how (and how not to) write your muse’s pets as a more realistic, accurate, and interesting muse in and of themselves.
If your muse is a canon and has a pet or other animal of significance in their canon, you should be including them. If you have given your OC a pet in their canon, have decided to give either muse type a pet in a thread, you should be including them. You should also be including them correctly, though.
Which is to say, the pet makes sense, is written accurately and realistically, is consistently a part of the muse’s life, not used purely for display purposes (your muse’s traits, or just to be a neat, decorative item), and not using them for immature, rude, reasons that interrupt the thread.
Ask yourself some questions first:
Is it a natural/normal/reasonable moment in the thread to have the pet/animal be present? If not, why do I want it to be? Is this type of pet even appropriate?
While you should be including the animal, if it doesn’t make sense for it to be there, don’t. For example, if your muse has a pet guinea pig, but is at a café with another muse, that is nonsensical as hell. Unless, you want to also explain that your muse has come back from taking the pig to the vet, and then...why did it need to go to the vet, but is fine to be drug around to the café like a toy?
You see the issue here?
The issue is that animals in RP are often treated the way they are offline, as toys or decorative objects.
If you’re only throwing in the animal to make up for your muse’s lack of personality, just stop right there and go develop your damn muse. This happens most with “exotic pets”, typically those of the big and carnivorous variety like wolves and big cats, but can also include “quirky” pets like ferrets and rats.
Thankfully, unlike those animals in reality who are purchased for the same reason, a lack of personality on the owner’s behalf/a need to make up for utterly lacking badassery/to be the center of attention and let everyone know how Fun and Quirky they are, the RP form at least isn’t being cruelly driven into an early demise. They’re just driving the rest of us there through boredom and the obviousness of your poor choices. Or how awkward and weird you’ve made the thread by needing to drag your pet cat through a zombie apocalypse, or having your muse’s “pet” leopard on a leash going to work with them, or...I trust that you get what I’m getting at, intelligent reader.
Please consider why you want your muse to own a “pet” wolf or wolf hybrid, then consider how this realistically fits with their life. If they are never home, they should own, maybe, a succulent. Further consider what you actually know about real wolves (not cartoon ones, not the projected imagery of a wolf and the emotions it evokes, but legitimate animal behavior) and if this animal still fits in with your muse and their life, whether you can accurately portray them.
As an important aside, “NPC” used in written RP terms can be a bit of misnomer.
When we say it here, we don’t mean a character generated by the game that our muses interact with. We mean that one mun has created and is in charge of handling that character. When that NPC is a pet, that means that no, you shouldn’t control anyone else’s pet; treat them like another muse you’re not controlling, because that’s literally what they are! Your muse’s pet is a muse too. And if the pet is your muse, then you need to be treating them as a damn muse.
That means doing research to be certain the animal is being written with appropriate actions, behaviors, and yes, thoughts too.
Animals have inner lives and emotions. It’s necessary you flesh out the animal muse properly too with thoughts, feelings, a backstory that has impacted their behavior and emotions, and so on, like you have with the human muse. That also means not anthropomorphizing the animal to such a point that it is a literal human being that looks like an animal and doesn’t talk. That...is also wrong. And creepy, uncomfortable, awkward, please stop with that.
If you own a pet, if you work with animals, you know they have thoughts and emotions. You also should know that these thoughts and emotions are often complicated by us when we superimpose human logic and emotions onto them. For example, I hear this a lot IRL, that “my dog is so guilty when I come home and he’s done something, he knows he’s a little shit!” No. Actually. That isn’t how that works at all. Your dog isn’t guilty because he took a shit on the rug and ate the sofa.
Dogs can show a variety of complex emotions that we’re genuinely not just lending them, but the lending usually is the case when we start using thinking/saying a pet is experiencing things like guilt in the same way we do.
It’s infinitely more likely that your dog is extremely bored, hasn’t a proper outlet for mental and physical activity, is young, hasn’t learned housetraining flawlessly yet, and so, this has happened before. He doesn’t get yelled at until you get home. You’re now home, he’s expecting to be yelled at, but wants to be excited about you being back too. There’s conflicting emotions and drives, and a ton of misunderstanding on both sides, going on here. Guilt isn’t it. I promise you, your dog doesn’t feel an iota of guilt for shitting on your rug while you were out, he feels upset that you’re upset with him, probably isn’t sure why exactly, and knows that there’s a correlation between you coming home and being upset. So, don’t simplify, but don’t over-complicate either.
Say the dog “looks guilty” (and actually describe that appearance), even have your muse make this super common assumption, but explain what the dog is really feeling. A mixture of confusion, dread, and excitement over the event of the muse coming home. It’s fine to have a muse misunderstand the pet, it may even be preferably and more realistic, as this is so common. Furthermore, your muse doesn’t know the thoughts and inner-workings of any other muse, that is the same here too. It’s not fine to write the dog feeling that way. Write the dog accurately, no matter what your muse thinks is going on.
You have things to learn in order to do that.
This means that you probably need to educate yourself not only on the behavior of (let’s keep using the example of dogs, substitute animal type as necessary) domestic dogs, but specific breeds and within specific ages, circumstances, etc. Your muse owns a mixed breed? Congratulations, prepare to learn what is sorely lacking in rescued animal education: the breed mixture matters. Dog breeds are not just aesthetic differences, they are often drastic differences in behavior, cognition, and activity level.
The easiest way may be to think of breeds and breed types as a blueprint to build from. Learn at least the basic personality and behavior of the breed you are interested in using, as well as the potential problems owning and training one. Actually bother to go research this as though you were interested in owning this breed, by reading what breeders and real life owners have to say about them. And don’t forget that this does mean both negatively and positively. It’s important to know what might rule out a breed for your muse, or prove a complication to ownership that you need to accurately write about. It may also mean that the necessary effort to portray the dog accurately is too difficult with that particular breed, you need to pick another you can write better.
For mixed breed dogs, it might simplify things for you somewhat if you pick a breed type. Herding, terrier, hound, spitz, and retriever are examples of breed types. These are breeds that fall under the same purpose-based category, they were developed for the same purposes, and therefore, can have common behavior and appearance possibilities. For example, most herding type dogs are very mentally and physically active, intelligent, kind of intense, not ideal for all or novice owners. They also tend to have coats that are weather resistant, and specifically geared toward the region and livestock worked. If you have a basic idea of how you want the dog to look and act, you can look at overviews of breed types and at least nail down more specifics that way, without picking a single breed.
Again, for purebred dogs, please use actually purebred dogs. “Designer dogs” are mixed breed dogs, and like all other mixed breed dogs, you cannot be as certain of what their “blueprint” is going to be. This will make your job easier in the end. There are breed registries who will allow people to register anything, those are not reputable and should not be used for your research. If it allows registration of “breeds” like “Morkie,” that means you need to keep moving on. (I will be compiling links to good sites relating to dog and cat breeds/types, behavioral basics, and information on other animals likely to come up in RP situations. When it’s done, I’ll link it here!)
If you have never owned the type of animal, or so much as been around one, you have more research to do.
If you have never had your own cat, haven’t spent quality time with anyone else’s and bonded with it, all you know is shit from the internet, you honestly have no business writing a cat from this perspective. They’re not a meme, not “furry little bastards,” demonic entities, living emoji, hateful, or antisocial. Cats are just not dogs, and shouldn’t be held to the same comparisons. They’re also not “a perfect pet for my muse, because she’s never home.” Your muse needs a stuffed animal, not something living. Cats do actually need their people around to interact with them, not just throwing food into a bowl and leaving town for days. They become stressed, anxious, and depressed when routines change and their people are gone.
When it comes to less common animals like reptiles, birds, rodents, equines, and even fish, it’s increasingly more likely that you haven’t had any meaningful interactions with them. As you may have noticed, I don’t really have anything nice to say about throwing in animals like wolves and tigers as “pets,” but there are situations where they may come up otherwise, as wildlife and so on. It’s even more likely that you know nothing about the accurate behavior of these animals. Most people have a deplorable lack of knowledge on the native wildlife in their own backyard, so exotic wildlife is even more challenging.
In fact, though I see it plenty with the most common pets, dogs and cats, it’s more often than not that I see these uncommon animals and wildlife being written as though the mun has never even seen one moving around normally. They might as well be writing a mythological creature, because they cannot write something as simple as a bird flapping its wings while sitting on a perch, a big cat flopping over, a wolf walking, or a horse sleeping.
Don’t stop your research at how the animal behaves and thinks, or how it fits or doesn’t fit into your muse’s life, also watch videos of them behaving in a variety of ways. I mean real videos of the animals, not things from tv and movies. I also mean a legitimate variety, not just funny cat and dog videos, trick videos, or confirmation shows. Those can all be relevant, but shouldn’t be your single idea of how the animal moves and behaves when creating this muse and writing it.
Where possible, find out about the real experience of owning and working with these animals from people who have them. You share your life with a pet, there’s no better way to understand some of that experience than reading and watching the experiences of others. If you have friends or mutuals who own an animal similar to the one you are writing, ask if it’s alright if you come to them with questions you might have. People generally love to talk about their pets, and will tell you the sort of things that allow you to make your muse’s pet real.
Reality is in the little details like the unique way a pet reacts to bedtime, for instance. Do they start luring the person to go to bed at the usual time, bury themselves in blankets, need to take a toy with them? That sort of thing.
Have the animal react to the other muses/situations properly.
Again, this is a muse you are writing, and their interactions with other muses and their environment are important. This is another reason why laying a realistic framework for the animal is good! Just like you know your human muse is reserved and may not appreciate someone running up to them, hugging them, and making a scene in public gives you an idea of how they’d react to a very gregarious, outgoing, extroverted muse. If you know that your cat muse is extroverted, you know they are the sort of cat that comes to check out company and interact right away, may keep needing to be in the middle of the action by lying atop laptops and board games, rubbing on legs during a meal, or just repeatedly going back and forth between laps.
Have the animal react accordingly to the other mun’s muse’s behavior, interaction, and very importantly, body language and scent. Most animals you will be writing as companion animals are not visual like human beings are, they rely more on scent and hearing than we do, but also tend to be more aware of communicating with body language than we consciously are. The way another muse immediately stoops to pet your dog on the head, speaking in a high pitched voice, and smelling of alcohol is almost certainly going to make the dog at least take a step back, as an example.
Think about it, your human muse reacts to different settings with changing moods, thoughts, and behavior. They are impacted by the stimuli they are experiencing, and your animal muse absolutely needs to be too. Including keeping in mind that most animals are more easily overstimulated, are picking up additional things in the environment that a human wouldn’t, or literally couldn’t, perceive. Have them react accordingly to their species, breed, and life experiences (or lack thereof).
When there is another animal involved, that needs to be accurate too. Whether that animal is something like a squirrel running across the road, another dog on a walk, or introducing your cat to the dog of the muse you ship with, it needs to reflect how you’ve fleshed them out as a real animal.
Are they the kind of breed, very young, not yet well-trained, who is going to lunge forward and drag your muse/take off after the squirrel?
Vocal breed, so they’ll stay put, but will whine and bark? How about the other dog they meet, is your muse’s dog socialized with other dogs?
A breed-type that tends to get on well with other dogs?
Or have they had negative experiences, been under socialized, or are a breed that tends to do poorly with other animals?
How about the factor of the dogs interacting being different genders, both altered, only one altered?
-Dogs do react differently to different sexes and being spayed/neutered, your unspayed female (which, btw, it is okay to say “bitch,” that is literally what she is, it isn’t offensive!) coming into heat may not react well to another bitch.
There is also the factor of how the other dog is being written to behave. A dog barreling up onto your muse’s is likely to be perceived as rude or threatening, for instance.
And then there’s the cat…cats who have never been socialized with dogs, or who have only had negative experiences with them, are likely to react with fear. It doesn’t matter how much you want the dog and cat to be best friends because your muse is so in love with this other muse, if the cat has no good experience with dogs, isn’t confident and laid back, or the dog is excitedly all over it, trying to chase it, or even wanting to treat it more seriously as prey, they’re not going to have a nice interaction.
Don’t write it that way if it isn’t accurate, the muses are going to have to have a real relationship moment and address how to get the pets to get along safely. That isn’t a bad thing!
Don’t make animal muses into perfectly behaved robots no matter the situation, humans, or other animals around them. I get it, you want your pet to like the muse you ship yours with, but that isn’t always the case at first...or ever. If your muse’s pet never cares for their significant other, that’s not all that uncommon. That can be anything from biting the SO muse on the ass every time the muses hug standing up to ignoring the SO muse’s commands and attempts at attention, and plenty of things in between. Real people work out these issues, it’s good for your muses to do so as well, it’s part of being in a legitimate relationship when you both have pets, and you’re writing a legitimate feeling relationship.
Don’t bring an animal into the scene, then ignore it.
Yes, you should be including interactions with the muse’s pet, especially if they are at home where that pet is, but not if you’re just going to have it walk into the room, be a conversation piece, then mysteriously vanish. Or if you’re going to give it unrealistic behaviors in order to stop having to write it.
This is where cat muses can come in handy, as mature adults, they do tend to sleep a lot. Furthermore, where some cats are extremely social and want to be in everyone’s business, very few cats remain that interested and in your face if you’re boring them. Having a cat curl up on the muse or the couch and go to sleep after a little bit is realistic. So is having them decide that it is snack time, they heard an interesting noise, want to relocate to a sun patch on the rug, and so on. So long as the cat doesn’t appear simply for your muse to comment on, usually in an “affectionately hateful” way, then immediately run off.
It’s also where small animal muses who can be returned to their habitat, or that can visited there to start with, are handy. Again, these animals need to still exist as real animals. They make noise in those enclosures! Water bottles and wheels make noise, digging at bedding does too.
Reptiles also can and do make noises; they rub against rocks, dishes, and wood to shed. Just because they don’t tend to vocalize like a dog or cat doesn’t mean you cannot hear a pet reptile.
Fish tanks bubble, you can hear water moving from the filter, they sometimes splash or smack their lips at the surface, and there is no such thing as a totally quiet air pump.
Additionally, if the only time we hear anything about the small pet is when it is convenient for you to pull my muse over for one sentence of dialogue gushing about it, you can do better. The muse need to think of their pet throughout their day, have pictures of it on their phone, reference it in conversation.
Dogs are hard.
They are scene-stealers and take a lot of effort to write as real characters. And since they don’t have such a high tendency to just go lie down or become preoccupied elsewhere, you are effectively writing two muses in one thread for an unknown time frame. If that isn’t something you can handle responsibly, reconsider giving your muse a dog as a pet. Especially if you want the muse to have other pets and children you may need to be writing as well, all in the same thread. It can become overwhelming quickly, and you don’t want that!
If you have a canon character with a canon dog, be canon divergent in this and give an explanation for what happened to the dog. Your first instinct may be to tragedy this up with death (not unrealistic, dogs unfortunately do die, they have accidents and illnesses that seem to come from nowhere, they get old), but if the muse already has a ton of tragedy or you’re not going to be committed to writing them being upset about the loss ever/getting over it immediately, consider other options.
If not deeply important to character and story development in canon, the dog never happened at all. If the dog was a major factor though, perhaps give the muse a realistic life-circumstance that negated responsible ownership - they had to rehome the dog. Often, there is someone in your muse’s canon who would love and care for the dog, and this displays that your muse is a loving, responsible pet parent who did a difficult, but right, thing by their friend. You’re giving complexity to this, it is painful, but the dog didn’t need to be fridged. Think you can handle writing the dog? I believe you can! But give yourself a break in some ways by giving them a dog that allows breaks.
Make it a well-adjusted adult dog they’ve had for a while, one who is more inclined to know that when we have company over, I need to go to my dog station and play with my toys more than I need to be in people’s faces. One that can be given a puzzle toy or chew, thus on the periphery of action for a bit-you can just mention here and there that the toy/chew makes a sound, the dog is deeply invested, looks happy, sees the muse looking over and tail-thumps about it, but keeps chewing. That sort of thing.
Don’t give the muse a six month old Siberian Husky puppy that has never been worked with a day in its life unless you want to write your muse and your writing partner’s muse being flailed on, bugged constantly, a dog launching itself off the back of the couch, perpetually getting into things it shouldn’t, and chewing on hands and arms. If you create a dog who needs constant attention from your muse, they’re going to need constant attention from you as a writer too. This comes back to choosing and constructing wisely.
Literally, no pet is impeccably well-behaved at all times.
As I said before, don’t make a pet a perfect little robot. The very best-behaved pets still do things that are annoying, gross, and distracting. Your muse’s pet should be like that too.
It doesn’t need to be anything terrible, it can be very common things like a dog who starts barking when they hear knocking or a doorbell on tv. A cat who has an issue with eating too much, too quickly, and having it come back up. Dogs who are afraid of storms. Cats who need to claw this one arm of only one chair when they wake up, for no apparent reason. Dogs who dance underfoot when you come home carrying something. Cats who knead too hard.
These are all realistic, common things that are not big issues, just things that even the most well-behaved, relaxed pets can do. Keep in mind that, like human beings, animals are living variables. They have good and bad days, get rushes of energy and excitement, and make mistakes.
Also keep in mind that, while it is very realistic, things like the cat eating need to be handled carefully. Not only does exactly no one want to read a graphic description of anything being sick in this manner, some people may be extra-sensitive to it. Don’t graphically describe a pet being sick or using the bathroom on the floor, or the results thereof. You can simply state that it happened, or that the muse was late because they were cleaning it up, without going into that much detail. Please, as you should be doing anyway, check your writing partner’s rules for issues they may have with such matters. If they have a serious problem, just avoid that and find another realistic pet problem to occur instead.
Remember, the pet exists when you can’t see it.
I mentioned this with the small animals, who are as easily forgotten in RP as they are IRL, but it’s relevant to all pets.
Maybe you don’t have a pet, or haven’t had one as an adult, but it’s typical to think of the pet throughout the day, bring it up in conversation, have to drop in to let it out to potty or feed it. This is part of the commitment to writing in a pet for your muse, it exists even when it cannot be gushed over or used as a display of how Interesting, badass, kind, or Actually Human your muse is.
Try things like:
wondering about the pet’s well being when stuck away from it longer than expected
thinking about what the pet is doing right now, especially if your muse is upset or hurt; pets are a great source of comfort, your muse will naturally seek out that comfort in times of distress regardless of the pet being present
needing to bring up to other muses that they can’t do something at a specific time, have to go home first, can’t stay overnight, etc. because they have to care for their pet
a poor muse struggling to care for their pet, a wealthy one thinking of a great new item they can get for the pet
muse to pet comparisons, not just things like how they look alike, but rather, how their situations in life might mirror/have been similar at some point, and/or how their behavior is similar or in contrast to each other
bringing up the pet in the natural course of conversation, sharing pics and vids, and not just that the pet exists but als how we normally speak of our pets, giving funny stories, talking of their personalities, the joy and vexation they give us
Remember that your muse has a relationship with their pet. Pets are part children, part best friend, you wouldn’t forget that your child or your best friend and roommate existed unless you could see and interact with them at that exact second. You also mention both in common conversations, have pictures with them, and are going to similarly share this bit part of your life with others too.
As a final note, don’t use an animal NPC to force an end to a conversation, or otherwise interrupt the natural flow of a thread if you’ve not discussed it with the other mun first.
No NPC should ever be used to end conversations you don’t like because they are confrontational or you feel they are boring. Muses disagree, have misunderstandings, and discuss unpleasant things. If you can’t handle legitimate interaction between muses unless it is going smoothly, reassess why you are writing something other than fics that you can keep within your comfort-zone better. If you continually find the conversations with this muse boring, instead of being relationship and character development, reconsider writing with this other muse. If this is the case with all other muses, again, fic may be what you need to do, not interactive, multiple person storytelling. (As someone who also writes fic and enjoys reading it, I do not mean this as a slight to fanfic. It is simply better for some people who might enjoy or feel more comfortable in a more controlled environment!)
Furthermore, a pet coming into the scene shouldn’t be a total disruption from the conversation anyway. You continue to talk and interact when a pet is in the room, it doesn’t devolve into just the pet and stay that way. By doing this, you are ignoring what your writing partner gave you, it’s immature and rude. Not how we do cooperative storytelling.
No NPC should ever be acting as a chaperone to keep your muse from adult behavior either, if you need to not write the thread in the direction it is going (smut, foreplay, etc.) it is your responsibility to have a conversation with the other mun. It’s additionally your responsibility to have made it clear from the outset that you don’t write these things and will need to avoid them. Already discussed with your writing partner and in your rules, you should be able to transition this to a scene after the action. Additionally, you can find plenty of reasons for your muse to not end up continuing with this interaction; they’re not at the same place in this relationship as the other muse is, they’re not in the mood, etc. Your muse should also be able to tell another muse “no,” if your writing partner isn’t going to accept that, you are better off getting rid of them!
There is no need for a pet muse, or any other character you are singly responsible for, to exist for the purpose of diverting a thread’s action or dialogue unless it is discussed and agreed to…and not recurrent.
You can write your muse’s pet better, and this is a good start.
Just remember that including a pet is a serious undertaking when you’re writing realistically at all. If you cannot commit to writing two muses at a time in a single thread, this isn’t the right choice. If you cannot handle having your human muse be an actual pet owner even when the pet isn’t in the scene or doing anything to imply a trait your muse has, this isn’t the right choice. And it isn’t the right choice if you’re not going to put the work into necessary research in order to develop and write the pet muse.
Choose and develop the pet wisely, not based purely on what you want to display about your muse. Go for what you can handle writing consistently and accurately, and what is going to work out best with your muse. Do the appropriate research, take the time to learn how to portray the pet muse and develop them realistically.
Make it fun, reward yourself!
When you’ve developed the pet muse:
do a post about them or add them to your muse bio
even give them their own page on the blog
introduce them in a post with pictures: give their basic information, and a write a little bio
make them their own tag, then post and reblog things that remind you of the pet, such as pictures, videos, and even pet quotes
include them in moodboards, or make them their own
This helps not only introduce others to the pet, it helps you get a feel for them too, and it’s fun after the effort you put into creating them.
Remember, every time you write this NPC, it’s just like any other NPC: this is a process of developing them. Unlike your primary muse, this one isn’t the star of your show or occupying as many of your thoughts for headcanons. Their development finishes out through writing them, and that’s alright. It’s alright to take a few bad turns while you figure this out!
I will be adding a link on this post to one containing helpful resources on common pet choices, so please check back!
