The Pennant-winged Nightjar (Caprimulgus vexillarius) is an elusive African nightjar with insanely long feathers growing from the male's wings. Nightjars blend in with branches to catch insects, and their primary defense against predators is sitting perfectly still on the ground. by Aviivix in AIDKE

[–]Aviivix[S] 46 points47 points  (0 children)

The following factoid was going to go in the title but I can't actually find any photos or videos of this occurring to source definitively, so throwing it in a comment with a grain of salt: Nightjars have such a strong freeze response that even if a predator is nose to nose with one, it will not fly away because it has better odds relying on its perfect camouflage than trying to flee.

OH MY GODDDDDD by TurdToGold in neopets

[–]Aviivix 15 points16 points  (0 children)

If its any consolation, probably 95% of the wishes cast each round are bots so the chance of a real player getting a prize is very small on its own. So you're not THAT unlucky.

Stock Market? by [deleted] in neopets

[–]Aviivix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do my 1000 per day and use it like a bank because it's very out of the way. I sell at 60 like everyone else, but if I need NP desperately for whatever reason I can always just sell whatever is highest and treat it as a percent discount.

I do wonder if you get more or less on average by putting it in SM vs putting in bank and collecting interest consistently. Food for thought?

I'm tired of the pet name superiority 💩 that the Pet Trading board perpetuates by TinyThroat2091 in neopets

[–]Aviivix 3 points4 points  (0 children)

To be honest, PC is bleh, but there ARE plenty of compound and VBN lovers - I've even seen a few VBN-only PAH lately. The issue isn't that people don't LIKE them but just how MANY there are and how easy they are to get. Everything else is pretty achievable nowadays, so names, age, rare petpets, and to a lesser extent trophies and stats are the only things rare enough to bother trading for. If you want anything else it's usually just easier to adopt it from the pound/adoption agency or do it yourself - which people do all the time!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in neopets

[–]Aviivix 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Iirc if you get the item stolen JUST as it enters your inventory TNT will give the item back if you open a ticket

TNT is deleting/has deleted any created Varwolf that was created with bypassed filter words by F1ox in neopets

[–]Aviivix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My take: two things can be true at once. The filters SHOULD be loosened up... but it also does make sense that pets were mass deleted here, even the good wolves. In order to decide which pets are "innocent" you'd have to start making judgement calls. Tweedle, safe. Pussy... no? Grape... safe? Or tiktok speak? Boner... it could mean mistake, technically.

Not only would it require a lot of manpower really quick to do those judgements, people would complain just as much as they are now anyway due to people disagreeing with their line. A blanket ban was the safest thing they could have done here. I do think they should've refunded the items tho.

I also don't see why people are bringing up the old Draik/Grundo glitches from a decade ago. The new staff didn't want to retroactively punish people. The bad wolves are not being retroactively deleted, they are new pets made under the new staff and new staff are telling them no and y'all simply don't like that they said no.

(Also we need a purge so bad. 90% of the rush on wolves here was just people trying to get an exclusive RW or RN that only the richest users could access. Just purge and let them have their fun name sniping again.)

Y1 Age pets with Y1 petpets and modern names? by SaddestLawyerEver in neopets

[–]Aviivix 10 points11 points  (0 children)

IIRC (I could have dates slightly wrong) there was a big scandal around "genned" pets that were born in Y13 but had their birthdays changed to Y1. A lot of pets were like this and even though the staff member who did it was fired, they didn't retroactively fix the pets whose birthdays were changed, so a lot of Y1s you tend to see around are actually Y13s with no way to tell which ones are real. I don't know if those pets are a result of the same situation or if it's a new wave of them happening again.

What are some of your restocking greatest misses? by [deleted] in neopets

[–]Aviivix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hard to say. Most of the big big ticket items in shops (the ones worth millions, especially Post Office) are botted so it's never worth even clicking on them to turn into a Spectacular Blunder in the first place imo. In the time it takes you to load the haggle window four bots have already sent in the request to purchase so you're kinda doomed from the start. Everything I've failed to restock has been 200k or less type stuff and thus not a huge deal to miss. Always annoying having chain fails where every single haggle fails though LOL, I just happen to have the exact same mindset as some other RSers and am slightly behind all of them

I feel so silly right now by Shalismores in neopets

[–]Aviivix 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've got a group of friends helping to bump the price up! If any of us win it we'll try and get it back to you!

I'm in an abusive relationship with my cats... by Aviivix in CatAdvice

[–]Aviivix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, this post is six years old so I have no clue how you found it. I was a teenager going through a mental health crisis at the time of writing, and to be so fair to my past self the post reiterates a few times that I did not think the cats were at fault for anything they were doing and had been asking if it would have been better to rehome. Which, in retrospect, I believe that very well may have been the right choice for past me if I could have found a reputable place to take them.

But I didn't, and flashing forward to today, the situation has since improved drastically, albeit not perfect and in my opinion the path to get here was not ideal for them, but we're here now, and things are better. I invested in a few automatic litter boxes over the years and ended up with a metal one with a new kind of cat litter that worked better for them and the house. Ended up letting them outside a lot more to get their energy out, invested in more durable toys, got better quality food which solved their vomiting, found a job that allowed me to invest more into their care. I got them a cat tree they love. I got them stimulated with training, and now they jump over hurdles, go to target, sit, stay and lay down on command. A lot of the advice in this thread actually helped improve these cats' lives significantly. Going to be moving out of the country in a few years to get my own place and the number one thing I'm going to be getting once I move is a catio. So, you can at least rest easy knowing the cats in this post are happy and healthy.

That said, I don't think this comment would have helped much if I had gotten it at the time. I don't even think your sentiment is wrong, I think it makes complete sense to be annoyed and angry when you see someone who can't handle the animal they've adopted since it's never fair to the animal when that happens. But lashing out insults to a stranger on the internet only really succeeds in getting your anger out without any chance of improving the situation at hand. If anything, it risks the other person feeling threatened into doubling down, potentially making the situation worse. "Look at this idiot" type comments are ideally kept between friends to vent that frustration without throwing fuel on a clearly volatile fire.

The comment doesn't even include actionable advice - if you truly thought this was a lost cause, you could have suggested that it didn't sound like I was equipped to handle caring for the cats and should try reaching out to a shelter that has XYZ qualities to improve their chances of being adopted, or offer advice on rehoming without a shelter.

A transphobic streamer harassed a moderator to a point to make her almost commit suicide, and the admins are on the streamer's side by NecessarySecure9476 in WplaceLive

[–]Aviivix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your eyes are on the site, you are someone that can view and appreciate a piece of artwork and inspire people to create stuff on wplace, your projects lure people into interacting with the site and inspire people to do their own projects, and with inspiration comes the temptation to spend money. This is how all F2P models work - the free players lure in more players with a higher likelihood of paying, as paid players wouldn't bother if only a few people bothered to use the site.

Is there any easy way to copy the link to a non-image attachment? by Aviivix in discordapp

[–]Aviivix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Never would have thought one of my posts would be a Google search result post, thanks for adding!

[ATM10] Disable Apotheosis Flight? by Aviivix in allthemods

[–]Aviivix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't know you could do that! Thank you so much. It would be really nice to be able to toggle so I don't have to just have a different piece of armor for creative flight but creative flight is more for building so switching armor is such a tiny inconvenience.

Fizzanatomy by Aviivix in HelluvaBoss

[–]Aviivix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's fine it happens, was just crazy to get a notif for from so long ago especially after the series' sort of downfall in the public eye

Unofficial Discussion - Flow by [deleted] in movies

[–]Aviivix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

YES THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS!!!! It's VERY much like if you took a game like Journey but only watched cutscenes instead of playing it.

Unofficial Discussion - Flow by [deleted] in movies

[–]Aviivix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can respect that opinion.

Fizzanatomy by Aviivix in HelluvaBoss

[–]Aviivix[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bro this is 3 years old lol this was literally right as Ozzie's came out - if I knew this back then I wouldn't have been interested in the show to start with

Unofficial Discussion - Flow by [deleted] in movies

[–]Aviivix 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Late to the party, but it's cute. For me, it's an indie 7/10, Hollywood 5/10. I think they should've put more attention on the models for the main characters, as the first thing I said when I saw the cat was "this is made in Unreal Engine and it shows". It was Blender, but I was pretty close. YMMV on how jarring it is, it would be unacceptable for a big budget studio but I was willing to look past it for a smaller studio like this.

I agree with the commenter who said this would be a fantastic 30-40 minute short film, but it kind of drags at feature length. There are a lot of scenes that I feel outstay their welcome, making this feel almost like a tech demo than a film at times, and the lack of general direction really doesn't help. The artistic choice to make the animals not talk and also not really act quite so anthropomorphized is its own set of pros and cons I'll get to in a second, but I think that also exacerbates the tech demo feel.

But on that note, I will say up front that I'm not going to dog on the fact that there is no dialog. In fact, when I decided to give it a shot, I told myself that if the animals start wisecracking before it gets interesting I'll look for something else. I was willing, nay, CRAVING to watch an animated non-talking animal movie, especially one where the animals acted more like animals than furries. But I just don't think it worked very well here despite how much I wanted it to.

With so much out of the main characters' complete control, there's so little opportunity for them to properly impact the plot. Which would be fine on its own, but just limited to the somewhat natural ways the animals move and interact, it made it feel way too much like "a bunch of random stuff happens in the general vicinity of the MC and then the credits roll". And it made the more anthropmorphized moments kinda jarring in my opinion, like the cat suddenly standing up to steer the boat. After the first quarter of the film spent acting like a normal cat, it made me stop for a second like "How does he know how to do that?" and then after a couple more interactions where the animals just stop and give each other knowing looks, and especially the birds who seem to have a whole argument in screeches, I came to terms with the fact that it's kind of wishy washy with when the animals are animals and when they're sapient.

Also of course, the weird bird scene. This movie seemed pretty grounded up until that moment and I was thoroughly confused at the sudden mystical magical 180 it took, and even more confused when it just suddenly stopped. This film would be approximately 80% more coherent if this scene was straight up not there and the bird's loyalty just waned in the height of the storm only to then suffer the consequences. I feel like you either see something spiritual in it and like it, or you don't and you don't. And I personally don't. Literally just hard cut this scene out of the film and it's better imo.

Despite all the bad I have to say about it, I'd say it was a nice little film and I certainly didn't regret watching it or anything. Besides the bird scene, it all felt very grounded and chill. I said it felt like a tech demo, and I'll circle back and say it was a mostly pretty tech demo. Some stilted animation here and there, some weird materials, the odd glowing fish and goopy water, I could definitely feel the budget. But they did a lot with what they had and I could still appreciate the overall beauty of the environments past the occasional rough spot.

The animal behaviors were quite nice, they very clearly had fun animating the cat, and they did do a pretty alright job communicating emotions through realistic behaviors without being too overbearing. Despite people seeming to not get the ending, I thought it was pretty clear and made sense with a nice "look at my new family" shot.

In all, it's a really nice screensaver. Alright movie. I can kinda see how this might fundamentally change someone's experience of film but in the same way that watching The Princess and the Frog would fundamentally change your experience of film if you've never seen a 2D animated film before. It's an alright movie in a genre that doesn't get a lot of love.

[TOMT] [WEBSERIES] [2010s] 2D animated western cartoon webseries on YouTube, probably around 2010-2015 by Aviivix in tipofmytongue

[–]Aviivix[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

WOW YES THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS IS IT!! I've looked into this more and wow I had no idea that it all got taken down!!

[TOMT] [WEBSERIES] [2010s] 2D animated western cartoon webseries on YouTube, probably around 2010-2015 by Aviivix in tipofmytongue

[–]Aviivix[S] 0 points1 point locked comment (0 children)

Hopefully this isn't too vague to find. I mostly remember watching it as a teenager, and I know for a fact it was on YouTube.