Itâs been kind of a hot mess since the beginning? I donât wanna blame it all on the judges but like itâs clear none of them have experience running shit like this, and the whole premise is sort of muddied. Is it modeling? Is it fashion? If itâs modeling, why say art skills donât matter? If itâs fashion, why restrict body types?
It sort of came to a head this week bc this round is based on bands the judges assigned to people (apparently arbitrarily?) to make an outfit for. Except the prompt was like.... not great. The way they worded it was like âmake an outfit this band would wear on stageâ which is cool for like, Wock Til You Drop, but
Well. Not so much for others. Doesnât help that the judges took like, Jazzmosis and shit and assigned random bands to each contestant. Hollis wound up with the Neopian Philharmonic, which is Just Tuxedos but more of a pussy out look.
Hollis unfortunately canât listen to classical music without like, crawling anxiety, but they were like âyes okay power through itâ and started brainstorming. Discussing their process, posting cool ref images, going apeshit. And their design fucking slapped. But the judges pointed out that it wasnât something the band members would wear, so hollis took down their wips and went back to the drawing board disheartened but determined
Except people were kiiiiinda pissed about it. The whole point of NNTM is ostensibly making cool outfits for your characters, but here the judges were like âactually, make an outfit for this other character. and make it less creative, it needs to be a tuxedo.â Like itâd be one thing if theyâd prompted people to like, draw some formal wear! But giving people bands in the way they did meant they lost a lot of space for the artists to explore.
Anyway the board blew up a bit. People started voicing complaints about the way the contest is run, about the secret crits-on-request & the often conflicting words from the judges. & the judges.... did not handle it well. Eish was the first on scene, and was immediately defensive & basically told people if they didnât like it they should go make their own contest, eventually disengaging and telling people like âif you need to think of this as a victory feel freeâ as if thatâs like. A cutting thing to say & not a hilarious deflection.
Shoy, judge 2, was actually hella chill. They listened to people, addressed their concerns, and explained the reasoning behind some of the more mystifying policies. Shoy is the only motherfucker in this house I respect.
Judge 3 (Krystal? I want to say Krystal) showed up, and talked for a long time without saying much substantial. She was sort of a middle ground between the two, defensive but trying to listen. She basically said sheâs really busy & doesnât have time to dedicate much of herself to NNTM, which would be cool if they didnât warn every person signing up that itâs a HUGE COMMITMENT and you canât back out now!!
Oh, and all their prompts seem to be stolen from an earlier competition called Runway Rumble, which Eish initially denied knowledge of until the judge of RR showed up with Eishâs entry for the very same prompt NNTM is now working on.
So things werenât really getting anywhereâthe judges needed to talk, Hollis was working on a new conceptâwhen out of the blue in comes our old buddy Alyson, calling everyone who voiced a complaint a bully. Which, yeah, tracks for her, but didnât really match up with what happened. She talked for a while about hollis being like, despicable or something & didnât address any of the concerns that had been raised, so Iâm thinking either she didnât read replies that werenât from Hollis or she got laser-focused on continuing her abandoned tirade.
She fucked off after that though & things calmed back down a bit. Seems like the current state of things is making the remaining contestants feel iffy about their future participation.
The thing about neopets drama is if youâre not already embroiled in it, it feels like jumping into a soap opera in season 8. A lot of âwhoâs this bitch? What happened?â and missing context. Me, I just want to see my friends get excited about designing, you know? Itâs no fun to fight on neo, you canât even swear
