Neocities Cyberpet Shrines

[malymin]

As Neocities is still blocked by Bing (and search engines that use Bing's indexing, like DDG), I used Google to find these sites.

The Meerkat's Burrow

Dee Dreslooh's dragons used to be all over the web. Good to be able to place a name on her. You'll also notice elsewhere on the page that (pre-brony) MLP sensibilities were part of the cyberpet scene, alongside the influences from Japanese media, and of course the giant influence of Anne Mcaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern - the novels about psychic, alien, color-coded dragons that wholesale invented the trope of the dragon-rider.

Shywell

"Jona's Weyr" has haunted me for decades - I had remembered the art close to crystal-clear (unusual for me, on account of my awful memory issues) in my mind, yet the name of the website and artist eluded me the entire time; only now, finally, can I reach catharsis, thanks to Shywell's own memory and records. While there don't seem to be any real direct records of Jona's wyverns left online, as the site had already shrunk into a shadow of its former self by the time Wayback first captured it... I remember those wyverns clearer than most things in my life: wings half-folded in front of then in midair, serpentine, small and legless. (This was before Dragonology, published in 2003, popularized amphiptere for winged, legless dragons.) The background image of the waybacked 2002 version of the page is evidence my memory failed me less than usual. The only thing I misremembered, it seems, was the heads being snakelike, instead of fully draconic.

Her "crystal wyverns" my first exposure to the concept of wyverns, and I've longed for those serpents ever since. I have no idea how old I was when I first found the site. Considering when I was born... I was probably very young. Her website, according to one of her affiliate sites, went down in 2005.

Arborwin

Don't remember these pets as much, but evidence that traditional art cyberpet agencies existed. For a scene I largely associate with the dragon/cat/wolf cluster of creature enthusiast, I forget that a lot of horse enjoyers were making pets too: pegasi and unicorns ranging from MLP-like to shockingly realistic. Naturalistic coats that display a love for the colors and patterns of the equine race, in addition to rainbow and pastel.

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Unrelated to cyberpets, but related to the overarching Y2K era fascination with "virtual pets," "artificial life," and technology-based animals in general, I also found a fansite dedicated to a specific operating system of pseudo-Tamagotchi, known unofficially as the "bunnyrom" or officially as Jia Yuan.