June 2024

Issue #20


WHISKERWICK PETZ FORUM 📚 Book Bingo 2024 (Jun 2) PETZ LIFE (18+ Discord) 🌞 Summerfest (Jun 17-Jul 21) MILK BABYZ FORUM 🛸 Space Camp (Jun 14)	Poppyhill/Dandy's A Force To Be Reckoned With "Gravity" Owned by Penny @ Just Dandy	Cargo/Shenzai's Tomb of the Zebra Queen "Tomb" Owned by ShenzaiBird @ Shenzai's Petz Site	Wild Road's Skirts and Plaids "Tartan" Owned by Nightwish @ Wild Road

📰 Interview with Lacey

It is a sad time for the community, if you haven't heard - PUGS has closed for the foreseeable future. For those of us who frequented the site, we will miss it greatly <3 More info has been shared on WW, Petz Life, and Petzcord. There is something in the works for our capitalist-needs though, so keep your eyes peeled!

Have an upcoming event in July you'd like featured? E-mail xoops@fantazzled.com!

Toesocks! toesocks.cuddle-fish.net		Teethwings! teethwingz.carrd.co

Special spotlight this month featuring the owner of Milk, the Babyz Community forum - Lacey!

When did you discover Babyz and Petz and what drew you more to Babyz?
I discovered Babyz when I was 11. My mom and I were shopping in a store called Ross - I think it's still around - it's kind of like TJ Maxx. Back in the day they had a section for PC games. I asked my mom to buy it for me and she did! I always loved dolls and babies as a kid, so it was right up my alley and I became obsessed. I liked animals too, but I would almost always pick a Barbie over a Littlest Pet Shop, for example.

The closest thing to a virtual pet that I ever had was a Tamagotchi or a Furby. So naturally I just gravitated to the game about babies over the game about pets as a kid. I was definitely a 90's/00's "computer kid," so eventually I wondered if there was an online community. I was so excited to find the BC in a google search, and here I've been ever since!
Interestingly, I didn't discover Petz until I was already an adult. I think I might have known that Petz existed since a lot of Babyz players were also Petz players, but I never really knew anything about it until I became friends with someone who had just come from the PC and she formally introduced me to it. Even then, I was very in and out of the PC until we made our Milk discord and I discovered the Petz discords as well. Discord made it easier for me to juggle the PC and the BC since I was always on Milk's discord anyway, and it was easier to remember to check a Petz discord than a Petz forum. And now that I have my own pets in real life I love both games!

Tell me something you love about each of the games, and the communities?
I think my answers would be the same for both games. I love the hexing aspect of the community and how its kept both communities alive. And I love how advanced they were for their time! I've always marveled at the fact that Babyz came out the year before the Sims 1, but both have that artificial intelligence aspect programmed in. Babyz feels like it was ahead of its time and to this day it's interesting to me that we haven't really been able to figure out how the Babyz personalities "work" quite as solidly as we have with Petz personalities. I really wish they had kept working on Babyz and making more of them instead of just giving up on it after the first game!

As I mentioned, I have been in the BC much longer than the PC - I've basically been in the BC for my entire life. The BC has always felt like a safe space to me and a place where I could be creative and express myself without being judged. Even back when we were all bratty kids arguing about copyrighting names, I always felt a sense of belonging. From being bullied in school when I was younger to going through bad relationships when I was older, the BC has always been my biggest escape, and I think a lot of people feel that way about it. I think there are very few places on the internet where you can find that kind of long-lasting community. Though I wasn't in the PC as a kid, I can imagine that it felt and continues to feel very similar.

I always find people's favorites interesting - do you have any original game favorites?
For Babyz: I always liked the clothes closet because I love dressing up my Babyz and always have, plus that is where I get the best poses from my Babyz. Ever since discovering hexed clothes I have basically never had the "game" clothes in, but I do like the daisy pattern - which I believe is in Petz as well.

In general, I feel like the PC has always been a lot more sentimental about the original game objects than the BC. We all just like our hexed stuff instead, haha!
For Petz: I love a tiny angry kitty. Give me an Alley or BWS and I will cherish them. They are so funny to me. I love the backyard and clothes closet. The treats are cute, and I love watching petz run after the yarn ball! Like real life, I am definitely a Catz girl over a Dogz girl.

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When become interested in being a mooderator and/or running Milk?
My love for events and community engagement goes back really far in my history with the community. Before we had Milk, we were on a few different main Voy forums, and though we didn't have structured events back then like we do on Milk, we still found creative ways to make Babyz feel alive. Things like daycares, camps, and pregnancy programs (where you would fill out a form with your genetics and your crush's genetics and a hexer would create a baby that looks like you and make fake ultrasounds for your "pregnancy") were insanely popular in the old BC and generated a ton of engagement and fun for us as young Babyz players.
When Milk was created, the founders (lovely ladies named Jen and Kennedy) had a vision to create a super engaging and fun place for the community, and that included structured events and activities. I always had so much fun participating in these events, and they are some of my fondest memories as a kid.

I eventually got a spot on the Moo-derator team where I learned a lot about Proboards and how the forum worked and how the events were run. This behind the scenes look really inspired me. I was back and forth on the staff a lot and started my own roleplay forums on Proboards using the experience I had gained from being on Milk's staff. Eventually, I became sort of an "Event Manager" for Milk where my role was to come up with and put on forum events, and then later down the line I was offered co-ownership. The founders eventually moved on from Milk to focus on other things in their lives, at which point I became the primary owner and forum runner. I am still in friendly communication with Jen and she does pop in from time to time to say hi and see what's going on with the community.

There's always been some overlap between the BC and PC, when do you think that crossover became more popular and what impact do you think it's had?
As you said, there has always been some overlap between the communities since a lot of BCers and PCers have played both games and participated in both communities. However, until fairly recently, that was more of an individual experience and the communities didn't have much direct interaction.

       I touched on this above, but I think for me, one of the things that really brought the communities closer together was Discord! I had tried before to bring the communities closer, advertising Milk on some of the Petz forums and posting Babyz and Petz in both communities, but with so many Petz forums in addition to running Milk it was difficult to keep up with it regularly. I didn't really get into the PC fully until I found the Petz discords and realized that it made it way easier to keep up with both communities. Once a few of us started hanging out in both communities, it started bringing attention to Babyz in the PC and to Petz in the BC, and it sort of naturally spiraled from there with members from both communities hopping back and forth and growing that sort of "sister community" vibe that we really always should have had!
       I also think that over time the communities have gotten a bit smaller and more tight-knit as many of the members who played the games as children have grown up and moved on with their lives. I think that has also played a part in the communities coming together - looking for others who share our continued interest in the preservation of these wonderful, quirky, nostalgic games.

I've loved some of the petz inclusion in BC events, are there plans to include petz in future events?
       I would love to continue including Petz in our events! I think there are still some gaps that we will need to find creative ways to bridge since both communities have been around for so long and have done things the same way for so long. However, I have had a lot of fun coming up with ways to give Petz a bigger spotlight in some of our events. I think it would be really cool to have a "Petz person" on staff someday to help with ideas for incorporating Petz even more in the future.

I see there are also plans for petz pageants, can you tell us more about that?
This idea is still sort of in the works, but since the communities have started interacting, I've noticed that a lot of Babyz players are wary of the sort of "pixel perfect" system of Petz show posing after coming from Babyz pageant posing - which is a lot more subjective. I thought it could be fun and interesting to apply the Babyz pageant system to judging Petz! There are some planning and logistics to figure out, like whether this will be a forum activity, or a discord-based thing since that is where the rest of our Petz stuff is. But keep an eye out for it soon!

Thank you so much Lacey! I can't wait to see the communities continue to come together and I am super excited for the upcoming Space Camp event on Milk!

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