Website / Subeta

Hello, I'm Titania McGee with Channel 5 Action News, your best source for Subetan tropes!

Subeta was created in 2004 by teenager Keith Kurson (14 at the time) as a retaliation against the strict rules Viacom was imposing on Neopets and because he failed in finding a better pet site. Like Neopets, people can play games and quests, buy and sell items, and adopt pets. But unlike Neopets, which is aimed at a wider audience, Subeta strives for an older, more niche audience and focuses both on your human avatar and on the pets themselves. There are also more human (and humanoid) characters featured around the website, but there are still quite a few characters who are anthropomorphised pets.

To this day, the site has over 100,000 members, with an average of 900 online at the same time, with peaks at 2,000.

---

This website provides examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Some character's names are average everyday names, while others are more exotic and fantasy-like.
  • The same goes for pets. A lot of the pets have unusual names... and then there's pets like the Dillema (albeit spelled differently), the Torrent, and the Blob.
    • One pet is even called a Charlie.
• Allegedly Free Game: Like most pet sites, Subeta has a Cash Shop, where you can buy account upgrades and special items with real money. However, the regular currency is easy to make, and you can use that to buy Cash Shop Credits from user shops. There are also other ways to get CSC from various site activities.
• Ambiguously Human: Most of the NPCs appear to be normal humans. However, it's hard to tell if they are directly from Earth or descended from human settlers. A few of them also have Pointy Ears like the native Saheric, Ji-Meneb, Tehb, and Islanders, and it's unknown if they are another race of native Subetans or if they're from a different planet altogether like Shinwa, Maleria, and the Oracle are.
• Amicable Exes: Fantine and Skitters dated for a while, with Fantine even getting herself infected and becoming a zombie, but broke up partly due to Fantine being unable to fully commit to life in the underground. However, they are still good friends despite their differences and Fantine taking the cure.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There are quite a few features that involve having to wait a certain amount of time before you can do them again. Most of these come with the option to set alerts to let you know when that time has run out.
  • When doing quests, the items asked for come with a link to a shop search results page for each of them, and if the item is in one of your own shops it will give the option to remove it from there.
  • When the Token Shop is stocked with items, they can sell out fast. For this reason, users can only buy from there once every 12 hours to give other people a chance to get something.
  • If you end a battle with 0HP, the page after will give a link to the Healer so you don't have to click through as many pages.
  • During Morostide, there are items that can be bought (either from the Cash Shop or from usershops) and used to increase your chances of finding minions in the Pumpkin Patch, or reduce your chances of getting hexed when trick-or-treat-ing.
  • Alerts telling you that your pet was denied for the Pet Spotlight will tell you the reason so you can easily change it and re-enter.
• Anyone Can Die: See Killed Off for Real below.
• Armor of Invincibility: Blackmoons War Plate is the strongest armor on the site and can resist a ton of attacks from higher-tier battle opponents.
• Art Evolution: The art on the site has significantly improved over the years. When a piece of art is revamped, some users will show a picture of the previous artwork for comparison so the improvements can be appreciated more.
• The Artifact: There are many items which seem to be nonsensical, even by Subeta standards- i.e, the Bomb-Disguised Surfboard. These were actually 'custom items' thought up by and named after popular Subeta users in '04/'05, which had to be quickly renamed when the user left. Some of these artifact custom items are still floating around with their original names intact, although they're hard to find.
• Author Avatar: Besides King Keith (who was the King of Subeta in the beginning), Sebastian Phoenix and Calvin Blackmoon (the Chancellor of Subeta and the Governor of Atebus respectively), were based (at least partially) on Keith.
• Awesome, but Impractical: There are loads of items that look good, but have no use besides being put on display in a gallery or a pet's treasure.
• Back from the Dead: Vernon Yun as of the 2013 Masquerade Plot thanks to time travel, and Jaxon Skelly as of the 2018 Morostide Plot.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Human avatars have no underwear or censorship when naked, but there's nothing interesting drawn.
• Bears Are Bad News: The 2014 Vesnali plot introduced the Tempest, a storm-like being in the form of a bear who users had to fight. However...
  • Beary Friendly: It turned out that all the Tempest wanted was to make friends, and only attacked people because they attacked her first. Now she's known to be happy and friendly and loves to give people hugs, often appearing in random events to do as as well as giving out storm-related items.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: The free monthly challengers of 2021 are NPCs who have been possessed by Princess Liara and compelled to create the Cash Shop challengers for their respective months, and must be fought to save them (it's completely optional though, so don't worry if your pet isn't strong enough).
• BFG: Natasha. Not to be confused with Natasha of the Blue Building.
• Big Brother Instinct: Dr. Asmodeus is stated to be protective of Quentin, and they are described as being like siblings.
• Big Eater: Pete, who wants to eat every type of food Subeta has. Yes, even the gross ones that couldn't be eaten in real life without causing health problems.
• Body Horror:
  • The zombie viruses and zapper effects (only available during Survival and Morostide respectively). Even certain wearable items can invoke this.
  • Certain pet colors fit this, especially Experiments and Graveyard pets.
    • Riftborn pets have teeth and eyes all over them. And any pets sent into the Rift that aren't yet available in this colour will become a Rift Amalgamation instead, one of which is covered in eyes, the other of which has a single eye in its mouth.
• Breakable Weapons: Of course, in the battle coliseum. Some of them only break for the rest of the fight, while others break permanently.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Elwood isn't having any of this "Fourth wall" nonsense. Played for Laughs in the 2016 Omen Island plot, where he makes continuous references to things such as Plot Armor and which characters have had art revamps, only for the other NPCs to tell him to stop talking like that because nobody knows what he's talking about.
• Camp Cook: Pete just looks like one.
• Chained by Fashion: Mori wears floating chains as part of her outfit.
• Clockwork Creature: The Steamwork pet color, as well as a few minions and one Experiment.
• Conjoined Twins: Bibi and Lilah. May also count as Creepy Twins.
• Cosmetic Award: Quite a lot of achievements don't give out any significant prizes. Others do, but some of the items are wearable and can be used on avatars. Some achievements also unlock different titles to use on the forums. Avatar borders (not for the full avatars but for the headshots) were also introduced in 2020.
• Cosmic Retcon: The 2013 Masquerade plot involved time travel, which resulted in the past being changed so that Vernon Yun wasn't killed, meaning the 2010 plot either didn't happen, or happened much differently.
• Cosplay: Often done with the Human Avatars in the forums, for contests or just for fun. EPICon, an event that took place in August 2010 had a full out public contest to go with the other activities and Fan Convention-like like feel. There was another contest in 2013.
• Creepy Child: Cinthia. An adorable little girl surrounded by cute plushies... who will ask you to fetch her weapons and unsettling magic and food items for her quests. And then she ends up as one of the 2021 possessed challengers...
• Cute Monster Girl: Merana and Maleria, though both are quite evil.
• Cute Owl: The Noktoa, especially the Chibi, Scribble, and Nostalgic versions. The Nightmare Noktoa falls more into Ominous Owl, though.
• Cuteness Proximity: Spoofed by the many minion descriptions.
• Cyberpunk: While Upper Ziara is mostly Steampunk, Lower Ziara has more aspects of this.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite the white and black magic practitioners being mostly aligned where they would supposed to, the Element Mage doesn't mind studying Dark magic, despite being an awfully kind Chai.
  • You can give your pet "dark colours" like Nightmare and its morality isn't ostensibly modified. Same with dark weapons and scrolls. Granted, most dark attacks sound nasty, but then again, so do some of the light ones.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Neopets, Subeta often has more mature themes and slightly more graphic violence. There's a reason it's aimed more at teenagers and adults. One plot even involved a child dying.
• Dead All Along: The 2014 Morostide plot reveals that Jaxon Skelly is a ghost, and has been for hundreds of years. The 2018 Morostide plot has him successfully brought back to life.
• Dirty Old Man: The Wizard. It's not uncommon for him to ask for underwear items for his quests. He even has a book called "The Joys of Bra Collecting"!
• Double Entendre: Aside from his ability to break the fourth wall, Elwood is basically a walking "That's What She Said" joke.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Major Drills.
• Drunk Rolling: Drunk Carl gives Fetch Quests. Occasionally the items you give him will make him pass out, in which case you get your reward for the quest directly from his pockets. This may happen regardless of what he asked for, which can include bags of coffee grounds, beef jerky, pastries, and boxes of tiles.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Several of the NPCs involved in the 2010 Masquerade plot showed up in the 2009 Masquerade shop as cute little dolls.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Since the website has been around for a long time, there are certain aspects of it that work differently to how they used to, certain characters who no longer serve a purpose or are not as relevant as they used to be, and some characters have changed in either appearance, personality, or both.
• Eccentric Millionaire: Saggitarius and Blake Steele, though neither of them are exactly nice all of the time.
• Elaborate Equals Effective: As is the case with some higher-tier weapons. However, it is played straight with the legendary weapons which are the some of the strongest weapons on the site and are also some of the most beautiful.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Rift Amalgamations, which pets sent into the Rift return as if they're not yet available in the Riftborn colour, which also qualifies.
• Eldritch Location: The Rift, a place beyond time and space, where time travel can be achieved and alternate universes can be seen. Any pets that get sent there will either return as Riftborn pets, or as a completely different creature.
• Energy Weapons: Certain items of both the Laser Blade and Ray Gun variety.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": A lot of characters go by titles such as the Wizard^note Allard, the Oracle^note Yaza, the Mage, the Hustler, and the Healer^note Selina. In fact, the Mage's real name isn't even known, and he is stated to occasionally forget it himself.
• Evil Weapon: There are a lot of them.
• Eye Scream: Can be invoked on user avatars with various items. The Darkside Eye Burrowers also fall into this.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The "Cranial Crustacean" avatar item.
• Fantastic Racism: The Living and the Unliving minority do not get on. This is what prompted the February 2010 plot: when the Living started putting on crude Unliving masks in an attempt to celebrate the anniversary of the Great Pandemic, the Unliving thought they were being racist and attacked anyone who came to Shadowglen Graveyard wearing a mask.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: March 2010's plot (the murder of Vernon Yun) was designed as a classic whodunnit for the userbase to solve.
• Faux Furby:
  • The Nostalgic color of the Cybill resembles an original generation Furby, minus the ear tufts.
  • There are also "Lurby" minions given out by the Hustler, which look like Furbys but are less fluffy and have different patterns, as well as round ears.
• Final Boss: Most of the plots end with a boss fight that takes effort from multiple users.
• For Science!: Ian Asmodeus' M.O. Or so he claims. Euclid presumably counts as well, having created many Experiment pets and also wanting to use his Zapper on humans during Morostide.
• Forgets to Eat: Dr. Asmodeus. When he does remember, he's partial to cheeseburgers and key lime soda.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Experiment pets. Could be Gone Horribly Right instead if you actually wanted your pet to look like that.
• "Help! Help! Trapped in Title Factory!": One of the Candy Hearts given out during Survival, the Emergency Candy Heart, has a message from someone in the factory asking to call for help.
• Hidden Depths: A lot of the NPCs have interesting facts about them that you wouldn't expect, which can be found in the Subetapedia, and sometimes seen in plots, events, news posts, or even just item descriptions. For example, Cinthia may seem like an adorable (if not a bit creepy) little girl who likes to play with toys, but she's also very good at mathematics, crochet, and has even built a few robots.
• Horned Humanoid: The Ji-Meneb, one of Subeta's native races, are identified with their green eyes and horns. It's unknown if Reischen, the Battle Quest NPC, is Ji-Meneb or another species as his eyes are more of a reddish purple. Mori also has horns, but this is likely the result of Maleria's curse.
  • There are plenty of horn items to dress your avatar with.
• Human Sacrifice: The natives living on the Omen Islands do this at the end of their yearly festivals in order to appease Merana. Most of the Islanders have no problem with being chosen, but in the 2009 plot, Amy was an unfortunate victim despite the pirates' attempts to protect her. As of 2016, it's implied they no longer have to do this now that Merana has been freed.
• Hustler: The Hustler, who lets you buy an unknown item from him once a day, though sometimes he'll run off when you've already paid. He can also randomly appear and offer to sell you items for Cash Shop Credits.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Manifesting Weapon is the strongest weapon on the site and deals such massive damage that may be considered overpowered.
• Item Crafting: You can do it to with Asmodeus' Genetech Lab, the Alcove, the Secluded Shrine, or Fantine's Bakery. These all have different ways of making different kinds of items. For example, the latter two are for making scrolls and food respectively.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Some of the NPCs are as mean or as rude as they look, but will still allow you to take part in whichever activity it is that they run and give you reasonable prizes, or buy from their shops.
• Killed Off for Real: Amy. As of the 2010 Masquerade plot, Vernon Yun.Marcel as well. Though time travel in the 2013 Masquerade plot brought Vernon back.
• Level Grinding: It can take ages to give a pet a significant raise in levels beyond training sessions, using stat booster items, completing Oracle quests (Which you can only be given at random), or getting them randomly from random events or collecting income if they have jobs. Battling has an EXP system, however, a lot of the easier fights will only give 10EXP at a time, and the price of the stats you want to level up by increase when you reach a new tier. You can auto-train your pets, but it's more expensive, can take over 24 hours, and isn't very useful after your pet's levels are past a certain number.
• Level-Locked Loot: Certain battle weapons can only be equipped if your pet is that weapon's tier.
• Luck-Based Mission: The outcomes from exploring the Fields and the Crypts are completely random, with no strategy to successfully reach the end.
  • Buying an item from Blackheart Hollow also counts. Whenever an item appears, it sells out quickly, and there is no set time for when it can appear. The only way you'll have a chance of buying something is to actively keep checking. Oh, and if you check the page too much, you might get sent away for a bit.
• Mad Scientist: Two of them, Ian and Euclid, who happen to hate each other to the guts. There's also a battle challenger known as the Mad Scientist, who can be unlocked with an item from the Cash Shop (she doesn't have much involvement on the site beyond that though).
• Majored in Western Hypocrisy: Matlal is a genuine MD, but he TALKS IN ALL CAPS, STUPID PIG DOGS, doesn't wear a shirt, and breeds poisonous frogs, because it's what people expect of a Witch Doctor.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Babette's cubs, a shy pink boy called Bloodhungry and a boisterous blue female named Brunhilde the Blue.
• Money for Nothing: While not completely worthless, sP is very easy to make.
• Money Sink: There are loads, due to how easy it is to make sP. The Millionaire center and Antique shop are the most blatant examples, but there are other creative ways to get sP out of the economy, such as it costing quite a lot to buy treasure slots for your pets or transfer them between pets, voting for certain things by "Donating" sP, paying for your pets to use a special pool at the Bathhouse that makes them hungry so you can feed them more food items (to be fair the main pools are free and the Bathhouse has to make money somehow), and buying items from the Subeautique. One achievement involves buying an extremely expensive item from the Millionaire Center... and then deleting it.
• Mutants: Experiment pets.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Played straight with Nico and the aforementioned scientists.
• Nice Girl: Sarah. As well as introducing new players to the site and helping them earn sP with her quests, she's very friendly to most people and has also been stated to coach sports for the children of Veta.
• Nitro Boost: During certain site events that involve event-exclusive interactions with other players, there is a chance that you can get effected with a buff that reduces the wait time.
• Non-Indicative Name: The "Lobster Face" zombie virus actually turns your head into a rose. Justified because the name was decided on before the end result was revealed.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Matlal, of all people.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Adriette Lockwell.
• Official Couple: Esther and Emma, Jaxon and Ian, Victoria and Mathis, and Dara and Jogoh. Fantine and Skitters were this until they broke up, but they remain on good terms.
• One-Steve Limit: A variant, Natasha is both the name of a weapon item and the woman who works at the Blue Building.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragarth, Magnus, and Rreign resemble Western dragons, while the Mahar and Paralix are closer to Eastern dragons and, unlike the former three, don't have wings.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Subetan zombies are Type P, but they're all sentient (albeit not too eloquent) and call themselves the Unliving. They live in the Shadowglen Graveyard and most of them resent the Living. In addition, they vary wildly in appearance, from traditional rotting-flesh zombies to Plant People to bioluminescent slug people to creatures that more closely resemble stone statues than traditional zombies.
• The Owl-Knowing One: Parodied with the Scribble Noktoa, who has glasses and a book.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The Masquerade forums that open during the event have all users' names omitted from their posts, and the alert if they accept your request to dance will tell you who they are. However, many users can easily be recognised by their forum signatures, or by having their avatar dressed in a specific way that makes them easy to recognise.
• Perky Goth: Quentin is a Horned Humanoid who lives by a graveyard and dresses like a goth, but they're surprisingly cheerful and friendly.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Liz and Nico.
• Play Every Day: The more days in a row you visit the Bathhouse, the better prizes you'll get. The prize increase resets and starts over after 30 days, however, the number of days in a row visited are still counted, and there are achievements for visiting up to 300 days in a row.
  • This is also encouraged if you plant a seed in the gardens. You'll have to come back to water it each day until it's ready to pick or it will die.
• Plot Armor: Discussed and namedropped. Elwood suggests that the player be the first to enter the (possibly cursed, almost certainly dangerous) temple because they have plot armor.
• Portal to the Past: A Rift opens in the 2013 Masquerade plot. In 2019, another one opened, though this one has not been used for time travel (however, it can give out retired items).
• Rage Against the Mentor: A lot. Subeta was created to succeed where Neopets has failed, according to Word of God.
• Raising the Steaks: Graveyard pets.
• Random Drop: Specific items drop at random times upon a battle opponent's defeat, usually the fifth defeat. Related items that can be aquired in other ways are also dropped.
  • Impossible Item Drop: Most of the time these items don't seem to make sense in relation to their nature. For example, how did a purple alien lion get hold of purple mittens and a time travel book?
    • Well, the time travel book in question is so ridiculously common on the site you can sell it for pocket lint, so it's entirely possible that he snags them out of recycling bins. Seriously.
• Robotic Reveal: Isaac Yun in the 2010 Masquerade plot.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Atebus is "Subeta" spelled backwards.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Maleria, sort of, as she can't really use her powers like she did in her glory times. Merana as well, until the 2016 plot freed her.
• Shoutout: Everywhere, mostly in the form of items including Volcano Bakemeat, Broken Bottles and Cranial Crustacean. And that's just the items. In fact, there is a forum thread that lists the majority of items that have some kind of reference.
  • The Scribble Rreign is an S-shaped wing-a-ling dragon with a beefy arm.
  • Many of the Nostalgic pets resemble various toy brands.
• Spell My Name With An S: It's "Saggitarius", not "Sagittarius". This was likely done to differentiate items relating to the NPC and items relating to the actual sign.
• Split-Personality Takeover: A girl named Mono Ri was cursed by Maleria and blessed by Shinwa, causing her to develop two personalities: Mori, who takes over at night, and Nori, who takes over at day.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Not only Jaxon Skelly, but Keith himself.
• Star-Spangled Spandex: A clothing item in the Sun/Moon themed Costume Trunk is literally this.
• Steampunk: The city of Ziara runs mostly on Steampunk technology. Technology strong enough to make an AI so real it passes for human. Daaaamn, Vernon!
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: During the 2016 Omen Islands plot, Saggitarius and Blake Steele took on this dynamic.
• Time Travel: Involved in the Ziara History plot of 2013. It causes the events of the 2010 plot to go quite differently.
  • The 15th Anniversary had a small event where a past version of the Wizard travelled forward through time.
• Toad Licking: The Subetapedia page for the Xotl species specifically warns the reader not to lick them.
• We Help the Helpless: Sarah and her Newbie Quests. Although sometimes, it is more of a nuisance than a help.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In 2018, the free monthly challengers were regular NPCs who became unlockable to fight in ways related to their fears. The Cash Shop challengers for those months would be based on those fears.
• Winged Humanoid: Melody, Maleria, Mori, the Oracle (Though she lost one of them), the Space Nomads, and most of the Tehb. It's unknown if any of them can actually fly with them, though. Subverted with Cinthia, whose wings are just a toy she likes to wear to show her appreciation for the Space Nomads and fairies.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Plenty. It became a Morostide tradition to fawn over Jaxon and see which other NPC he would bang, to the staff's despair. It's probably why they took so long to give him a canon boyfriend.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The plot in February 2009 involved people's avatars randomly catching viral strains and turning into horrific zombies. There was no way to reverse the change - the news played it up as a full on disaster, complete with increasingly crazed posts from Titania. A cure was released on Valentine's Day, much to the relief of dedicated avatar fashionistas, but many users chose to keep their zombie skins. This outbreak became an annual tradition, with new zombie strains breaking out every February, until a vaccine was created, followed by the release of the Volunteer Infection Program two years later. As of 2015, any zombie skin a user acquires is saved in their wardrobe and can be re-equipped at any time, allowing for users to create their own Zombie Apocalypse avatar whenever they like.

---