Neo's Law II

Greetings, fellow Neopian! Azure here. I'd like to thank you for sparing a few moments of your time to check out my article. (: Now then, on to business!

As you have undoubtedly noticed, this article is titled Neo's Law II. In case you have not seen it yet, the original Neo's Law can be found in issue 272. Reading it will probably give you a better idea on what this is all about and perhaps make it all the funnier. The basic idea behind Neo's Law, though, is this: none of its rules are listed on any official site page as authored by an NT staff member. You know they exist but rarely think about 'em... until one suddenly decides to enforce itself. They are obnoxiously hard to violate.

After the original Neo's Law was published, I got quite a bit of fan mail; a number of these inquired the possibility of a sequel. At first I said no. I wanted to leave a loose end for some other aspiring young Neopian writer to pick up on and have fun with. After a year of inner deliberation, however, I finally changed my mind. I'm sure there is still way more than enough material out there to compile several additional lists of Neo's Law.

Without further ado, I present to you a few more examples of Neo's Law.

I. You've worked sooo hard on it and now it's complete: the Beauty Contest entry that is sure to win you first prize! You enter your pet and expect the votes to come pouring in like rain. Alas, in this situation, chances are you shall find yourself against a competitor of the same species with an INSANELY good entry--better than yours, in your mind--and/or someone with a huge guild, lots of Neofriends, etc. to back them up.

II. After pouring thousands of Neopoints into stocks you expect to skyrocket, chances are they're goin' down like a lead balloon.

III. A certain pet's day is coming up and you're SO sure that TNT is going to release it in a color you've been dying for. You can just feel it in every fiber of your being! When the day rolls around, the design will either fall short of your approval or elude you altogether once again.

IV. Remember when you lived in the games room for days or even weeks on end to save up for that icy snowflake and then chucked out all your NP for it? Yeah. Chances are you still hold a personal vendetta against a red Ixi. *coughTarla*

V. Other insanely expensive avatar items shall either befall the fate mentioned in IV or some other explosion of availability that'll make you regret not waiting for the price to fall so dramatically.

VI. You'll spend several minutes meticulously cropping, resizing, and compressing that lovely Beauty Contest entry of yours to make it fit the contest's size constraints and finally get to a point where you're still satisfied with the image, quality-wise. You will then proceed to bang your head against the nearest wall when you realize that it is 0.1KB too large. (As a side note, the Beauty Contest size limit is 20KB, not 17KB. TNT just hasn't updated the FAQ yet.)

VII. You'll play a full game of Pick Your Own! without collecting a single pile of dung... only to find you've fallen one short of the six items you need for the avatar.

VIII. It'll be a looong time before you finally reel in that elusive flask of Rainbow Fountain water... if ever. You'll be sure to score lots of fishing junk in the meantime.

IX. Once you do get your lucky little paws on that flask, it'll be sure to change your pet to a color you don't want it to or simply won't change it at all. (That is, unless you're just curious to see what happens and don't have a specific one you're aspiring for.)

X. The Beauty Contest board shall always have a number of "When will the next contest begin?" topics popping up, especially around Thursday and Friday.

XI. Aforementioned board shall also play unfortunate host to a number of "lyk omg im sooo boutyful ur all ugly lolol" topics. Nine of the ten n00bs who post them really will slaughter the spelling of "beautiful."

XII. Each board shall always have its own Jelly World following. Their level of activity varies between each. They're all looney, no matter how vocal they are. Jelly World? Pfft.

XIII. The intelligent Neopian won't get within ten yards of the Newbies and Other Worlds chats. Believe me when I say it'll spare you countless IQ points.

XIV. When discussing some important topic with other astute Neopians, you will get your/you're, to/too/two, and they're/there/their mixed up a few times. Hey, it happens to the best of us.

XV. Every now and then, you're bound to post a topic in the wrong chatroom or a reply meant for one topic in another by mistake. Oops!

XVI. When saving up for something very rare and expensive, there will come a point when you'll have *just* about enough Neopoints to buy it and go batty trying to scrape up those last few.

XVII. You've done it! You've just finished coding that bothersome user lookup and now it looks absolutely spiffy. You go to submit it to the spotlight... only to find that there have been several, several past winners with lookups eerily similar to yours in terms of layout. When it works it works.

XVIII. Same goes with giving your pets custom designs. No matter how original you try to be, there will always be at least a small handful of other pets with a similar look. You may not come across any of them for a while--if ever--but they're out there. Neopia is simply too populous to be unique in every way.

XIX. Remember when you first tried to create that account or pet with that awesome name but found that it'd already been taken by someone who left the site ages ago? You've been waiting for months on end for TNT to finally delete said account or pet and make the name available again. They've finally done it! Alas, in the lapse of time between deletion and your realizing it, someone else has snaked it. Ouch.

XX. When writing an article in which you're trying to compile a list of a certain number of items and you're making it all up off the top of your head with little direction, you'll lose it by the end and write something just plain silly.

Thus concludes Neo's Law II. Have anything else not listed here? Please do tell me! I deeply enjoy getting feedback on the subject.

Until TNT decides to publish my inane ramblings again, this is Azure wishing you a tolerable day and tidings of scheming Mee--er, cookies at your doorstep. Yes, cookies. *shifty eyes*