Neopets Nerdery: Neopets Adventure Spotlight

 I used to play Neopets Adventures a lot. Neopets was by no means a small part of my life. I would be on that site for several hours a day. I've read the Neopian Times and I also played Neopets Adventures.

So . . . what are adventures? 

Adventures are basically a choose-your-own style thing. You click play, get a pop-up window, and get choices. Each adventure was made by a user. The best of these appeared in the Spotlight. However, the Spotlight had pretty much already been defunct by the time I truly got my own Neopets account (instead of just watching Noah play). Either that, or I was never interested. 

I had an intention to play and beat every single adventure in the spotlight. I thought every adventure appeared in the Spotlight at least once, but even though I'm older and wiser, man, would beating these adventures be good. 

What I really remember is a lot of "murder mystery" type plots, wherein you kinda had to guess RNG-style, and if you died, erm, you had to re-input all your inputs. 

So, let's start off by playing an adventure. This one being 

"In Space, No One Can Hear You Score" 

( Description: High above the lands of Neopia in the super futuristic Virtupets Space Station the Gormball tournament semi finals are about to begin. Hundreds of Neopets from all across neopia have entered the competition, but you, Usula Usul, are a favorite to go all the way. Can you make it to the tournament in time and beat the reigning Gormball Champion?) 

If I am correct, this one is actually where you explore the Virtupets Space Station and might even end up getting turned to sludge. 

Ah, black background with red text, so nostalgic. 

In all honesty, I remember putting these up a lot so I'd have another window so my mom didn't get suspicious if she ever walked past. I was never doing anything, but I wanted my mom to not know I was doing nothing. 

If you ever heard the term "liminal space", that's what I feel about these. They take up my entire monitor screen if I let them and I don't have to think about anything else. I'm just in another world. Isn't that why we choose to do roleplaying games? 

And, isn't the fun part about these types of adventures just that, even though you want to win, you can freely explore bad results? 

Here are my choices. 

Already, I have the option to try and snatch food from Grundo Cafe. Wait, life in the brigg? Isn't that kinda excessive? 

Ah, I see the first thing, is you are given a "hand" by a Grundo running through the vents. And if you reject him, you go earlier into the story.

So apparently, the quickest solution is just to wait for a teleporter to be fixed (however I did end the world once. *Butthead chuckle* Cool.) Anyway, then I get to "play Gormball". Kinda interesting, but like, now I'm against Thyassa and my options are to wait 2, 4, or 7. 

This is where I tend to dislike adventures as this is basically just RNG. Well not really RNG. But like, you just have to guess. Following that I could wait a long time and still win, I decide to wait the full 7 and . . . 

Well I did eventually get Thyassa out. Maybe I did with the 7, maybe with another option. 

So anyway, yeah, I beat that one.

But if you're curious about other options: So from what I can see, this one is fairly railroady, and that's not really that bad! A lot of adventures, the good ones, require you to work on logic. Almost like obviously incorrect test answers on quizzes. These are sometimes rigged in your favor.

There's only two "good endings". However, there's actually a slight difference between Dead Ends and "the End". The Ends basically don't let you repeat the adventure, meanwhile Dead Ends give you the option to go back.

 

Adventure 2: 

Shadows in the Light, on Page 19. 

This one is kinda weird to be honest. You start off as a "Lupe" who has a mysterious backstory, but your backstory is solved so quickly. I know time passes by quicker as an adult, but seriously? You basically question where your mom is, find her, then the story ends before you even find your siblings.

I looked through other options and this . . . isn't really Neopets? Like, this literally only uses Neopets images as options, but there's plenty of non-Neopets references. 

So I thought if I tried to lose that I wouldn't be able to, but turns out, you can meet some otherwise nice Lupe and she will just knock you in your ish for saying "oh I don't wanna tell you what's going on, sorry?" Though I do find one ending is quite ominous as you don't actually die, you're just getting closer to dying. I do remember playing this before because I can remember getting a victory where you get painted.

There's a couple different options with this one, but honestly gets boring. 

Adventure 3: 

This one caught my attention, from week 24, as I was looking through options.

(An Eyrie's Tale- The Tale of Kormarant and Tessy)

 Description: Kormarant and Tessy grew up together, and always believed they'd be together forever. But when the two eyries are sold to different owners, Kormarant must venture forth, with the help of some wild eyries, to save her from Gallion Industries who has been purchasing neopets for goodness knows what reason. But without even knowing where Gallion is, can he find her in time? 

Honestly, this one feels like this might be kinda sad to me. I'll try to win this one first time instead of messing around.

Wow, this one really throws you through the gauntlet. You can make bad choices that won't affect you for a while until you hit dead ends.

Anyway, after a wildly long time playing, I finished. Erm, not really an easy adventure by any means, but also drops an ad for Mannaseh (the creator's) Eyrie farm. Anyway, well, I was invested. Was this really all that good of an adventure? No. But for some reason, this affected me. 

 

Adventure 4: 

Page 226, A Trip Through the Haunted Woods

 Description: You are an island Lupe, parading the Haunted Woods with some of your good friends. On Halloween night you decide to see if the legends are true about the Deserted Fairgrounds. When ghoulish creatures chase after you, you and your friends get lost in the Haunted Woods and try to get out.

"A Trip Through The Haunted Woods" is a great adventure that anyone can play. It is a little creepy, but very exciting at the same time. The adventure is also not the easiest but not the toughest either. It's Just right. 

 

Not really sure if I can trust that anymore.

 . . . Nah that was easy. These are starting to hurt my eyes so I think I won't go on a deep dive for this one. Let's find one or two more and call this a night. 

There's actually one small tip. When you hover over a link, you'll notice in the bottom left of your screen a small tag that says where you're going when you click said link. A lot of times, people use the same "Dead End" screen, so when you see many options, you can just look over. There will be something at the end saying Node=Number. That Number is the Page Number. If you see two nodes with the same page number, then that usually means they lead to the same page, and that usually means both lead to a death or the same dead end. And you can even try to memorize the dead end nodes. Not that hard at all.

 

Adventure 5: Whispers

Description: Poor little Whispers! Though all her friends have grown up and become really cool and colourful, she's still just a baby and doesn't seem to be growing up any time soon. Guide Whispers along in a quest for colour, and see if you can help her grow up into the Xweetok of her dreams!  

Number 252. 

. . . There's so many options, and all are supposedly "good ends". I just think the creator didn't want to use Dead End even though you get eaten. My favorite ending is where you end up turning into a Faerie, but basically, you get a 50/50. Some fates are objectively awful, like becoming a guard for a prison, but are treated as a pleasant thing. 

I call this a just-for-fun adventure. You can do whatever you want basicalyl.

Adventure 6: 

 The Negg Quest.

Number 283

 This one is pretty meh.

Adventure 7: Mist Over

Description: Here, you play an island xweetok named Sylandria...although it doesn't say in my adventure. She's relaxing on Mystery Island, and when things turn unusual and upside down, she's totally unprepared for it; and she freaks out. *gasp!*

Number 259

Several okay choices in this one, I believe. Basically, you go to Geraptiku and fight various threats. 

Overall: These are interesting. Are they fun? They can pass an evening at the very least, but even the "best" aren't always that great. There's only so much you can do.

Mental Illnesses Aren't Random

Haven't said much for the month, but what I would like to talk about is mental disorders. People really like giving their characters mental disorders, but they tend to just think trauma = spin the wheel. 

People might not be logical, but there is usually a case of causality. As in, Cause-and-Effect.

For the record here, I'm not a psychologist, and I would severely recommend you look at this up on your own, if you are intent on portraying a character a specific way. However, that being said, how characters handle their own traumas is up to a writer. The amount of character trauma that is solved through legitimate therapy, where they have breakthroughs and realizations and learn how to process grief, is negligible. 

This is for a very good reason: They're characters in a story.

For example, if you asked any random person suffering Depression where that Depression comes from, very few of them could give you a straight answer. In some cases, Depression is just hardwired into the DNA. And even when you do get a straight answer, that answer is vetted by the person, so they automatically blame family, school, or work, when the reasons are multifaceted.

In stories, everything has a reason. I mean, sure, you can have a character who just has Depression, but for the most part, you want an explanation other than Depression for Depression Rep, wa-hoo! 

Okay, so I've throat-cleared a bit. Anyway, let's talk about your character's self-concept. This is ultimately what they believe about themself as formed by input on their lives. Mental illnesses typically revolve on negative self-concepts, such as "I'm worthless", "I'm fat", "no one loves me". (I won't get into some like Schizophrenia or PTSD, because those have a wildly different source).

Bulimia is created by people thinking they're fat. Maybe they were bullied for being pudgy, or maybe they think they can't be beautiful if they aren't skinny, or maybe their mom kept saying how fat they were. 

A person who thinks they're worthless because they failed to realize their dreams isn't getting Bulimia (probably), they're getting Depression (maybe). Depressed people don't eat because they lack the energy or think they're worthless. Bulimics don't eat because they think they're fat. 

"Emotions aren't logical". 

Oddly enough, they usually are. 

Let's take a character who suffers from low self-esteem. Why? Well, when he was young, his parents never let him help out around the house, afraid he'd break everything, and just took care of everything, so he has no self-sufficiency. And in-school, no one cared that he got good grades, so he never thought those mattered. 

I'm going to take one of my own characters, Misty, from "Vixen of the Dead". She suffers from Depression, and her real self-concept is "I hurt people and I'm not sure if I hate that or not". 

From her childhood, she was harsher and more driven than others to survive and win, maybe as a result of being abandoned by her father, maybe as a result of something else. As she grew up, others feared her power. 

Being a wilder, she wasn't allowed near people too often, and when she was, she couldn't understand them very well. What she knew was that hunting spirits felt good, and the best way to keep people out of the woods was to break their kneecaps. At least one. 

However, after her rageful adolescence, she reaches a more melancholic adulthood. Is what she did actually wrong? Why was she so violent? Is she at fault because no one loves her? 

Everybody does have their own personality, and there's not always going to be straightforward "mental illnesses". Honestly, some characters have clear mental disorders that the author isn't even aware of. 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and one more thing: Narcissism means more than just "I think I'm better than everyone else", and, in fact, that's not even how Narcissism works. Stop calling everyone you know a Narcissist, or I'm going to tell everyone you called your parents the N-word

Thank you.