⚡️

So as part of The Void Within plot, Baelia has overcome their depression and become nonbinary, with a new appearance as well. I was kind of dreading Iridesia's design based on item leaks, but you know what? It's not half bad. Maybe I'm just biased because I like queer nonbinary faeries, but I like what's going on here, even if it has a few flaws.

Probably the main thing I like is how it builds off of Baelia's design. I've heard some people say it doesn't look enough like them, and I...don't really get it. They still have a fairly serious expression (side note, I'm glad TNT didn't make them too smiley), white hair, and a dark grayish-blue outfit with a strip of their old outfit tied around it. Even their male moth antennae are built on the thin butterfly antennae Baelia had previously, right down to the knobs at the ends still being visible. The wings patterns build off of Baelia's feathered wing remains. And it's also still mostly neutral palette-wise with just a bit of color added, rather than being overly in-your-face rainbow.

I also generally like their outfit; the cape and brooch are cute, I like their shorter hair (which looks more well-groomed than Baelia's ponytail), and it's nice to have some extra variety in faerie outfits. I've heard some people argue that they should've kept the dress because you don't need to be androgynously dressed to be non-binary, which is true—but I think that's less of a problem with this design and more just that Neopets should have a wider variety of nonbinary NPCs with all sorts of dress styles.

However, while I like the look as a whole I do think it has issues, namely:

Their outfit looks a bit militaristic; I think a slightly baggier, looser look to the sleeves and pants would've negated this a bit.

Their wings are way too complex, especially compared to all other faeries. I like the stained glass look and how it incorporates Baelia's wing shapes, but you could've removed 2/3 of the panels/cells and the design would be better for it.

The cape is cute in theory, but how does it work with their wings? You can tell the art doesn't know either, as it sometimes is behind the wings (somehow) and sometimes is...over top of them? It's weird. A shorter caplet would've made more sense and kept the same vibe.

The biggest issue, however, is color balancing. Iridesia's antennae and hair tips are ROYGBIV rainbow...but then their wings are pink/blue/orange only, and their hair is white but their outfit is dark gray. It's all over the place. Most faeries have one or two colors in their palette for a reason. And I'm not saying they needed to be two colors (they have "iridescent" in their name for a reason), but the colors needed to be better distributed. Here's three quick, sloppy attempts at re-balancing the palette:

Option 1: Just remove the rainbows and stick to the primary pink/orange/blue palette. This changes the design the least, but the rainbows feel like too important of an element to lose.

Option 2: Make the wings rainbow (did a simple gradient because it was fast, but you could make it "fit" the cells properly) so they match the antennae and hair tips, then make the outfit white to balance the hair and make the cape match the dark gray of their sash. This is fine, but it's a little washed out to me.

Option 3: Same edit to the wings, but keep the dark outfit and make the cape white to balance the hair instead. This one is the best I think; sticks to the original idea but emphasizes the rainbows while still resembling Baelia's old outfit and maintaining contrast.

While I'm talking about the plot, I might as well point out that it's very unlikely Drakara is dead. Those black rainbow-spotted wisps match the ones that are shown when she gives Baelia her fake wings earlier in the chapter:

And if you check her BD dialogue, she's talking about A) stalling for time and B) everything "slotting into place":

Given Drakara's puppet master kind of theming, I'd assume she made a fake illusionary copy of herself at some point like how she made Baelia's illusionary wings. This explains why A) her battledome dialogue refers to her as being the "true Drakara", and B) explains why there's a massive HP difference between her and the "malevolent being" challenger despite them being the same character.