The Shift of Sentience?

[Dream]

I was wondering about working this into an article, but I want to know if other people agree with me first.

Hypothesis: there is a constant downward shift of perceived sentience in Neopian canon.

Explanation:

I've been looking at some of the older games and whatnot about Petpets, and seeing how they were once perceived. There are clues all over Neopia, and the picture when put together is this: Petpets were viewed as stupid, interchangeable and primarily instinct-driven. More complex actions on a Petpet's part had to be ordered by its keeper.

But then we've had a huge flow of games with Petpet protagonists. We've got used to seeing Petpets acting independently. They have names-- Jimmy, Woogy, Gwyl. They have personalities of a sort. We're more outraged than before at the thought of Petpets being endangered or treated as a snack. Nobody doubts that a Snuffly is smart enough to balance on a wheel, that Hasees can gather balloons or that a Faellie can navigate its way out of a maze. I've noticed games using "him" and "her" for Petpets rather than "it". Most recently, of course, we have Petpet Park, where Petpets are said to wander around without owners and wear accessories as Neopets do (although they're still of limited intelligence).

So where does the "instinct-driven but cute" label go? Petpetpets. It's P3s that are either a novelty or a hindrance depending on the Neopets' mood. No-one bats an eyelid at their being blasted with goo, and TNT joking about squishing Mootices is at worst bad taste. Quiggles eat 'em. They're pretty, sure, but all they do is bite Neopets when they're hungry and fly away from danger. They don't even have names. Nobody makes toys for them or tries to protect them from hazards.

And yet...

We have Mootix Drop and Cooty Wars, two games where P3s ARE given sentience, strategy, gender, and in one instance, a name. And TNT is said to be working on a game focused entirely on raising P3s. It probably wouldn't take that much more of a push for the perception of sentience to shift downward again, onto P3s. Petpets in that scenario would basically be language-less and childlike versions of Neopets, while P3s took on the label of semi-independent creatures.

What would happen then? Would TNT be forced to add another layer-- PetpetPetpets? It seems unlikely, seeing that the recent Petpet Park Celebration plot has revised the etymology of the word "Petpet": Neopets come from Neopia, Petpets from "Petaria". The link between "Pet" and "Petpet" has been somewhat obscured.

I know there's quite a lot of older players here, and there's one very obvious question I'm dying to ask. Were there ever any species of NEOPET that were once treated as less sentient than the standard?

Any other thoughts are welcome.

[Spoon]

I don’t know about the sentient side of things, but I know that, right at the very early stages of Neopia (although this may need backing up, as I wasn’t there), Lupes used to eat Chias, and I’m sure there were other examples of some species of Neopets being preyed upon or deemed inferior to others – rather like the animal kingdom. (I think there was a rivalry between Flotsams and Jetsams) Which does further your point, because that is clearly not the case now, and hasn’t been for a good few years.

It’s a very interesting point, and one that I hadn’t even thought of before – I’m intrigued. I do agree with you, thinking about it – there does seem to be an ever-increasing intelligence given to those further down the chain.

[Deleted]

What an interesting question! I've been on Neopets for 8 years now, and I never thought about it that way, but now that you ask-- yes, there did used to be more of an attitude that some Neopets were... not non-sentient, but expendable.

There used to be a thing about how Lupes loved to eat Chias, and would hunt them down and eat them any chance they got. While the link between the two species still exists (in items, etc.), I don't think the site makes nearly as many references to actual Lupes eating actual Chias anymore. In fact, I think there used to be a fair amount of Neopets eating each other mentioned casually here and there... something ate Aishas, I think...?

Ah, here we go! Here's a quote from the old default Tatsu petpage (Tatsus later became Eyries):

The ancient race of Tatsus are now quite civilized, most of the time. Their favorite food has always been Aishas, but now they restrain from eating them.

Stuff like that, and even more explicit stuff (although never gory, of course). Is that what you meant?

[Huntress]

Nov 26, 2008 11:31:51 GMT -5 Dream said:

I know there's quite a lot of older players here, and there's one very obvious question I'm dying to ask. Were there ever any species of NEOPET that were once treated as less sentient than the standard?

I'm not that much of an oldie, but I have noticed that sentience shift you're talking about, yes. Back on the days, Neopets actually were, youknow, pets. The focus was to play with them and feed them and groom them and so forth. Right now the focus is... well, I'm vaguely tempted to take this as my thesis subject and compare Neopets to the American success-driven society on the whole. Nowadays it's less taking care of pets and more the pets being the actual avatars in the game, earning money and fighting in the BD, and the site itself is geared towards, well, being successful.

...I could now compare it to the shift that occurred between the baby dolls the girls played with up to the first half of the 20th century, and the rise of Barbie in the 50s. Hm. This is starting to look like a very interesting thesis idea indeed.

My point is: sentience is getting more important on Neo on the whole, I'd say. There's less focus on creatures that have to be taken care of and more focus on creatures you can do something with, like furry buddies. But I'm not sure why it's getting geared on and on to petpets and petpetpets (and I'm not going to theorize on it either, or I'll end up comparing it to the psyche of the American Frontier and the constant need to expand and explore and seek new things behind the horizon... I swear, my education is starting to get on the way in everything I do >>)

Although frankly, most of that petpet and petpetpet sentience is only on the site game level, as in, the same level as the stock market with its Ferraris. It doesn't necessarily have to depict the way things are in the actual Neopian world.

[jdb1984]

Well, Grundos have that backwards speech in the past, and they come out of creation as "Dim-witted".

[Schefflera]

Potentially interesting side-note: I think there was a point when you could get a story into the NT where petpetpets talked and acted like "people," but not with the same behavior from petpets.

It's also possible that this was in the transitional period when the rule against having petpets talk (or at least, speak intelligibly to Neopets) in the NT had faded away but people still assumed it was in effect. There wasn't an official announcement so much as stories stopped getting rejected for that reason.

Part of the "drift," I think, is the result of the tendency that leads to people writing stories where real-world animals talk. We have Aesop's fables with talking foxes and so forth, talking animals in fairy tales (and I don't just mean Disney; they tend to add them, but didn't start the concept), Winnie the Pooh, and so on. But in the effort to make a semi-consistent world for Neopets, the Neopets themselves take on more human-like character roles (especially as actual humans are phased out, at least as site characters), and then petpets kind of slide into the role for animal stories and get anthropomorphized. Or Neopetmorphized, perhaps. *considers* Krawks may help blur the line.

And meanwhile, the whole owner/caretaker relationship gets steadily weirder.

[Pacmanite]

Hang on, would that mean that the layers upon layers of owners, pets, petpets and petpetpets are trapped in a continual loop? The owner of a pet starts as the sentient one, then the pet takes on the role of a needy animal. Then it becomes tempting to anthropomorphise the animal and romanticise its struggles through life, thanks to the tradition of anthropomorphising animals in the real world (which goes back even further than fairy tales, back to ancient legends about wolves and serpents and eagles). The pet then attains a new level of dignity and the animal responsibilities go to the pet's pet, which in turn becomes anthropomorphic and so on and so forth.

[Mookie]

Ironic then, that the Neopets non-canon is shifting the scope of sentience upwards - pets used to be unique, intelligent, etc, but now they're traded around like items. And now I begin to doubt the sentience of some owners... But meh. :3

Although I must say that it seems to me as if the pets are more like adults, while petpets tend to be more childlike.... although I could be wrong about that. So we have several games where petpets need saving either directly by the player or by a pet, while there are no games where you play as a petpet saving a pet.

Can't say I recall any intelligent p3s though.

[Lord Faerigan]

Neoquest has several PETS that appear as wild beasts during the game.
This isn't seen anymore, nowadays I think pets (in plots and games) are people, petpets are animals and petpetpets are parasites.

[Deleted]

Ironic then, that the Neopets non-canon is shifting the scope of sentience upwards - pets used to be unique, intelligent, etc, but now they're traded around like items. And now I begin to doubt the sentience of some owners...

Hahaha that last bit made my morning.

Dream, I think it would make for a very interesting article! You've charted the trickling-down of sentience very convincingly IMO. I think you should definitely take into account Mookie's observation and its implications too: pet trading reduces pets to commodities (albeit sentient ones?) and adds an interesting wrinkle to the neo canon's implicit declaration that neopets = people.

[Schefflera]

Nov 27, 2008 6:20:40 GMT -5 Lord Faerigan said:

Neoquest has several PETS that appear as wild beasts during the game.
This isn't seen anymore, nowadays I think pets (in plots and games) are people, petpets are animals and petpetpets are parasites.

Neoquest is an interesting example, especially bearing in mind that it exists as a game "within" Neopia for the characters to play. You've got a Lupe as the hero (who talks, of course), Lupes and Aishas and Skeiths among others as wild beasts, and creatures who look distinctly like Meepits as some sort of jungle pygmy tribe.

[Clocky: Activity is a Thing]

Nov 27, 2008 22:07:53 GMT -5 Schefflera said:

Nov 27, 2008 6:20:40 GMT -5 Lord Faerigan said:

Neoquest has several PETS that appear as wild beasts during the game.
This isn't seen anymore, nowadays I think pets (in plots and games) are people, petpets are animals and petpetpets are parasites.

Neoquest is an interesting example, especially bearing in mind that it exists as a game "within" Neopia for the characters to play. You've got a Lupe as the hero (who talks, of course), Lupes and Aishas and Skeiths among others as wild beasts, and creatures who look distinctly like Meepits as some sort of jungle pygmy tribe.

And Bearogs, Spyders (NQ2), unidentifiable dragons…

[Lord Faerigan]

Nov 28, 2008 6:13:22 GMT -5 Clocky: Activity is a Thing said:

Nov 27, 2008 22:07:53 GMT -5 Schefflera said:

Neoquest is an interesting example, especially bearing in mind that it exists as a game "within" Neopia for the characters to play. You've got a Lupe as the hero (who talks, of course), Lupes and Aishas and Skeiths among others as wild beasts, and creatures who look distinctly like Meepits as some sort of jungle pygmy tribe.

And Bearogs, Spyders (NQ2), unidentifiable dragons…

Possibly the original idea was that Neopets would be like Disney, where animal are animals and anthro-animals are people. Later they decided that (in plots) petpets would be animals and neopets people.