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DaemonBane's Guide to Owners


by stargal145

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Hello, and welcome to my guide to owners. My name is DaemonBane and I am a Lupe. I have written this article, because, after years of living with us, my owner turned up one day at our neohome door with black, short hair, and glasses. This might not seem a big deal to you, but beforehand her hair was really dark blond and half way down to her knees, and she’d always claimed to have 20/20 vision.

What’s this got to do with an article, you say? Everything. I feel, as a Neopian citizen, it is my duty to warn other neopets about the ways of owners before they too, get grounded. Long story short, I didn’t recognise my owner so I thought she was a burglar. I activated the ‘Emergency Defence Grid’, meaning I threw sharp pointy things out a high window at her, while my siblings called the Chia police. I will let your imagination do the work from there.

Anyway, I have divided this guide into two main parts; ‘Recognising your owner’, and ‘Dealing with your owner’. ‘Recognizing your owner’ has several sub subjects; ‘Hair’, ‘Tanning & Sunburn’, ‘Glasses & Contacts’, and ‘Makeup’, while ‘Dealing with your owner’ has ‘If your owner looks better/just as nice’ and ‘They look awful’.

Recognising your owner

Hair

Sometimes, for apparently no reason at all, your owner will ‘dye’ their hair. What it means is one day your redheaded owner might come home with brown hair. If it helps, think of it as a new paint job. Except apparently most dye comes in bottles and doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Apparently there are two types of dye. Permanent and non-permanent. If you can’t tell what the difference is, you may need help.

As you can (hopefully) see, hair dye makes it very hard to recognise your owner. However, there are exceptions. Say, if your owner is one of the adults who play neopets, they might have dyed their hair its natural colour due to grey hair, even though grey is one of the most expensive colours you can be painted. Also, if your owner gets ‘highlights’ or ‘lowlights’, this means that they only dye part of their hair, normally in streaks, like the split paint brush, only in different colours. If this happens you should easily be able to recognise your owner. If not, you may need glasses. (See below for glasses and contacts.)

Signs that your owner dyed their hair are; it’s a different colour, and all (if they did it right and didn’t get high- or lowlights) of their hair should be the same colour. Also, if they did it themselves, they may have dyed their forehead or ears as well.

If this happens, look at how they wear their hair. Do they normally wear it in a ponytail? Do they have a favourite hair clip? Also, is your owner’s hair curly? Straight?

Also, there is the more common new hairstyle. This can be very confusing. Like in my case.

Hair cuts can range from a slight trim to total re-styling. Generally, though, hair will remain the same colour; what you really have to look out for is the evil hair cut and dye.

In the case that this should happen to you, look at the clothes. If they’re wearing your owner's favourite T-shirt, it’s probably them. If you don’t recognise anything, not clothes, hair, or even eye colour, it’s possible that it’s them, but way more likely that it’s an intruder.

Tanning & Sunburn

As you may have noticed, hair isn’t the only thing that comes in different colours. Skin colour also can be changed, albeit not as drastically, and it tends to take longer to do, at least, if they plan on tanning their skin. If you have a dark-skinned owner, you probably don’t have to worry about this, nor do those of you with vampiric owners who shy away from the sun. For the rest of you, here’s a short description of each.

Sunburn: only takes a couple hours of sitting in the sun, and they are bright red and peeling.

Tanning: means that your owner sits in the sun for a couple hours and their skin get darker.

See the difference? Good. Now explain it to me, ‘cause I don’t.

Both of them tend to wear off after a while, and shouldn’t cause you not to recognise your owner.

Glasses & Contacts

Even you should know what glasses are. In fact, I know neopets who wear glasses. Their names just so happen to escape me right now. Glasses are just pieces of glass, set in (nearly always) metal frames, that help your owner to see better. If you can’t recognise your owner in glasses, you may need a pair yourself. My case was special, because she’d also changed her hair.

Contacts. Often, you don’t even notice them until someone points them out to you, or quite a bit after you’ve already assessed who they are. They’re a lot like glasses, only the glass goes on their eyes, instead on in front.

Sometimes they’ll be coloured, meaning the actual colour of your owner's eyes change. They can even change the shape of their eyes now, so they look sort of reptilian. It’s quite creepy.

Contacts are purely a human thing, and I have never heard of a neopet wearing them. Personally, the thought of putting glass on my eyes is scarier than ghosts. Ghosts are very scary.

Make up

If you, a sibling of yours, or even a friend, wears make up, you should probably know what this is. Basically, it’s like putting paint on your face. *Shivers* Again, scary.

Generally, unless your owner feels the clown look is in season (which my fashion informed sister have told me it is definitely not), you should have no problem in recognising your owner.

Also, if your owner is male, you probably don’t have to worry about this. In fact, most of this guide won’t apply, because guys are way less likely to dye their hair, or wear makeup. Also, when they do get hair cuts, it tends to be the slight trim.

Dealing with your owner

‘Ok, great, I know how to recognise my owner if any of this ever happens. Not that I didn’t get along perfectly fine before I read this. So… Now what?’

I bet that’s what you’re saying right now. Well, I’m still working on that one myself.

As far as I can tell, you have three options, depending on the circumstances.

If your owner looks better/just as nice:

Treat them like normal. A couple compliments here and there for the first day or so, then life goes on. Just never, ever, ever, say to your female owner, ‘You look so much prettier now.’ Or other such comments.

She will turn around, very calmly and politely, and say, ‘What was wrong with the way I looked before?’

You’re on your own there, buddy. You walked straight into that one.

They look awful:

You can either say, tactfully of course, something like, ‘I liked the way you looked before much better,’ but you’ll notice the disclaimer at the bottom of this page.

You should especially not say this if whatever your owner did is irrevocable, or to do with their eyesight.

Or you can do absolutely nothing. If you’re anything like me, and have no clue what’s going on in the world of fashion, especially human fashion, there’s the possibility that your owner is at the height of fashion.

Also, saying something, particularly something that can be taken the wrong way very easily, tends to get you grounded, or yelled at, or served gross food for tea. This is the course I took.

Just, don’t tell Stargal that.

Disclaimer:Like you didn’t know it was coming. I, DaemonBane, or my owner for that matter, take no responsibility for the consequences coming with taking this guide seriously. Especially the advice under ‘They look awful’.

 
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