i have never liked the default kelphi paws, they kind of ruin the entire base for me. with the fox paws, the sea kelphi becomes my fav or second fave in the listing.

lots of people don’t like the dog base for some reason but i really like the dog base?? not sure i like it BETTER than the other ineki bases but it’s at least as good as the other two.

i haven’t ever been able to really connect to the dras coats, in either pose. i think i find the tuft of hair pretty silly and out of place? or maybe it’s the ears?? *drags hands down face* idk but the dras goes on the bottom of my personal lists.

Rather than go in order of appearances, I’ll be ranking the Ineki in order of a smart design feature. I call it 1, 2, 3 Ineki. Dog ineki has one tail, cat ineki has two, fox ineki has 3. It’s just a little something that I picked up on and liked.

SO Angelic Solstice, Entropy, Capricious Sun - “default” River kelph coats, absolutely adorable. One thing I’ve noticed when trying to work with this coat was actually trying to make the transparencies work and look nice which is a little bit of a challenge, it’s good!!  The biggest struggle with River Kelphs is that their back ends often suffer a bit from lack of apparel options - broad tails, large back feet on long back legs, a waist area begging for more belts and sashes - it’s prime visual real-estate.  Would love to see a “default” River Kelph with opaque fin designs and a lot of focus on designing the fin in particular - Entropy does great with focus on the fins on front.

Starstruck Sea, Shoreline Sage, Purple Shimmer - default Sea Kelph coats! The bulbous tail is obviously the most contentious part of their design and I think that on lighter coats it works alright, such as Starstruck Sea.  But the star of the show for these guys is the fins, which are absolutely a delight… almost makes me wish the tail was just a huge bushel of elongated fins.  Complex but beautiful, love the trend of varying the colors of each of them. I’d love to see something simple like a version where the fins are transparent!!  Also more wild sea-critter like patterns that really fit that lionfish look.

Moon Phase was a really lovely and interesting event kelph, and attempts to slim out the tail… I think it’s a bit wonky looking but I am very glad the fins remained on that one! The greatest misfortune is that the horns are chopped up and don’t layer nicely with wigs and such, which is a beautiful benefit of newer coats.  But the eye and muzzle edit give it so much character and I adore that immensely!!

Death’s Embrace was a beautiful OotS and the first super toggle-able Kelph iirc, and that allowed for so much customizability that it’s just wild.  Lovely edits that stand so well on their own make it difficult to not own as many as possible!!  Let alone the fact that they drift so darn well.  One of my absolute favorite Rhyme coats of all time.

Blood in the Water is REAL CUTE.  The tail edit is beautiful and the way the event wig matches it perfectly is just sublime!! Once again expression edits give the coat so much character and individuality.  Toggle-able scars were so choice for characterization and toggle-able fins so excellent for apparel layering!!!  BLESS.

Crystal Catalyst tackles the sea kelph tail replacement splendidly and I love the way the tail loops around like it’s the frame of a BG.  The crystals instead of fins look beautiful, its driftability is quite nice, and it’s just lovely in flower, baby and grown forms!

Eden is absolutely fluffy and delightful and I almost felt spoiled getting this for a seasonal!  It’s a little tougher to coordinate with items but I think that’s due to the fact that it can almost stand entirely on its own like a lot of customs.  The fluffy large tail actually makes the tail scales work quite nicely - and I think it’s just because the base of the tail no longer looks too skinny to support the weight of the tail.

Seraphine is an excellent coat using the new default paws!!  The layers and layers of the hair offering a bajillion options reminds me of the Enchanted Stone coat, which did something similar - which is absolutely a delight.  I’m glad there’s a site coat with the paw edit, and for Dras fans I’m rooting for them getting an event coat with the common leg-down edit!

The site Kelphs have all been nice and it’s been a ton of fun exploring different ways to dress them up and drift them and make wildly different characters out of them!!  I love them and I look forward to every new coat.

Okay so like. A lot of people don’t like the dog base? I don’t know much about it because I kinda really like them? I dunno, I prefer them over the fox ones, but I’m just odd I guess.

I do tend to pick the active ineki lines over the upright ones. It’s really honestly for one reason. More visibility on markings. Because it feels like a lot of the time (though this is true to nature as well) the belly areas of the pet designs are always left simpler/blank and… that’s the majority of the pose on the upright lines. Like, it makes sense. It’s just that when it’s like that and Mycena artists do really nice markings, you end up defaulting to the active lines for the sake of those markings.

I love kelphs. Both the kelphs. I do not have enough of them. I cannot afford more of them. I love them though.

....... I think Dras ranks the lowest with me. This is ironic because I adore dragons. Usually in all shapes and forms. But those lines just never clicked. I don’t actively hate them or anything of that sort, but the unedited based just does not appeal to me and I feel nothing when I look at them. That’s a huge difference from the usual ‘I want that’ with other pets.

For me personally I LOVE the unedited upright dog ineki but something about the face of the active dog has ALWAYS looked super off to me and I hate it. Hate it so much. The only time I’ve ever gotten active poses is when it’s a drastically different design or back when the poses were tied to male/female and I wanted a male for a character or something.

For the most part I prefer active cat ineki over upright, I think the bigger chest fluff is more appealing to me and the fact the active pose feels more…active is just overall more attractive. However if I had to pick a species/base where I enjoyed both poses/versions more or less equally, it would be the cat ineki.

Now when it comes to fox ineki, I don’t outright hate upright foxes, but usually I don’t enjoy the positions their ears are set in and the tails overall end up feeling kinda…too busy for me in the space of the pet. So I’d probably say I usually opt for active fox over upright ones because they fit more of my characters.

Then comes dras. My favorite pet on site. As long as it’s active :’) When I was brand new to Mycena I preferred the upright dras but by the time my first event even rolled around I decided I hated upright dras and refuse to ever own one unless the coloration is super different (ie Twelfth Hour) I think it’s just how the limbs look to me, since I can definitely say their faces are cute. But active dras will forever be my favorite <3

Last, and probably least, is kelph. I hate kelph. I’ve always hated kelph. From the moment they appeared on site I’ve hated them. (Somehow one of my favorite sprouts on site is actually a kelph but it got lucky). The feet bother me the most, followed by their pose. I get WHY these things are the way they are, but I’m allowed to still not like them. If I had to choose between river and sea kelph I generally lean towards river because I do like the fins and tail a lot more (though if colored right I think the sea kelph can actually look pretty nice. Minus the tail. I don’t like those tails.)

Cat Ineki: Overall, it’s a cute base. I like the upright cat base a lot, and the active generally has a nice feel to it, although the unedited open mouth on it bugs me so much that I almost always go for the upright pose. While I like it, I feel like we, uh…don’t need a heavier dose of it, if that makes sense? |3;;;;; It feels like there’ve been a lot of cat Ineki coats released in general, and they’re kind of all over the place, which is fine — again, I see why they’re so popular — but I feel the amount that are released per year is fine as is since if there were more we’d be drowning in cats.

Dog Ineki: I’m one of those weirdos who’s not really a fan of unedited dog Ineki, active or upright, and I’m…not totally sure why? It might be something about the face fluff (to me it seems like it’s arranged strangely) or the tail (which is less visually interesting than cats’ and foxes’ tails). Or maybe the mouth? Its curvature on the active just really throws me off, and on the upright it looks like the corner of the mouth’s about to stab straight through the eye or I’m just overthinking things. ANYWAY while I may never permanently own one, I do like that they exist and hope that they continue to exist — actually, I’d be a bit sad if the amount of them released per year were trimmed down, but I’d deal. (Besides, there’s a good deal of potential with these guys when you edit the base….)

Fox Ineki: I love these guys. They’re fluffy and adorable and over half my pets rn are foxes (with the other half being cats). Both the active and the upright poses look so excited and happy, and although the upright can have the same issue as the upright dog where it looks like its mouth is gonna poke into its eyeball, it’s a small thing that I can (usually) overlook.

Drasillis: While the Dras base has a lot a lot a lot of potential when edited imo, there’s never been a single unedited Dras site coat that I’ve been tempted by. I’m not really a fan of the droopy ears, the sharp fangs, the lizard nostrils, or the leggy up. That’s not to say I wouldn’t kill hit someone repeatedly in the face with a horseshoe crab for a cute fluffy Dras site coat BECAUSE I ABSOLUTELY WOULD, but the unedited Dras lines just don’t interest me at all. Also!! I’d be curious to know if Dras might become more popular if there was a new Dras sub-species — I’d love to see that~ It could add some (imo, much-needed) variety to the Dras coats on site! Right now, they all have practically identical lineart, except the super-edited ones, and it can get a bit bland seeing the same exact lineart over and over.

Kelphi: Sorry, River and Sea Kelphi, I’m lumping you both in the same category because the reason I don’t like you is the same for both sub-species deal with it. The Kelphi get far more realistic treatment of figure than any other base. Ineki and Drasilli are cartoonish enough that I can suspend my disbelief about the fact that they physically wouldn’t be able to walk without falling on their faces, but with Kelphi…because their proportions are more like that of a real-life animal, I just can’t. While there are some Kelphi coats that I think are adorable and I kind of want to have, I don’t know if I could see it on my profile every day without desperately wanting to take it to a chiropractor.

TL;DR: I’m incredibly picky, I think Dras could use a subspecies (which could be a gateway to more in number and more popular Dras coats), and I can’t handle Kelphi (sorry).

General ranking —> Active fox, active cat, river kelph, active dras, upright cat, upright fox, sea kelph, active dog, upright dog, active dras.

As a general rule, I prefer active coats, both in ineki and dras. I find the paunch on the upright ineki unsettling, and they seem to have less detail than the active (Like the Elysium, Herbal Hex, Vintage. etc.) due to their backs being hidden. As for the dras, the upright pose looks awkward and the back ear jutting out behind the head just looks really strange.

Given that I am more likely to go for the active base, the reasons for my preferences are based on that.
The fox base is easily my favourite. I just really like the face shape and the ear positioning is really appealing to me.
I love the river kelph base. I want to love the sea kelph base, but the thick tail just doesn’t work. The spines are beautiful, and I love the detail of the belly scales.  I actually prefer the unedited kelph feet to the fox paws.
I don’t really have any strong feelings with regards to the cat/drasilis base.
The dog base is my least favourite. The way the tail curls puts me off, and I’m not a huge fan of the face and ear shapes either.

I think the hair is what does it for me; I like to be able to add my own hair to my pets, and the preselected hair is just not the style that I really like. I know with toggling now, though, I can turn it off, but then the problem lies in that the dras looks bald, or just really weird without the hair. Same with the upright dras, it just looks really weird. I think it’s because they don’t have fur, or a leg in front of them, so they just look “exposed” lol. I don’t like it :P

I think someone mentioned it, but I really cannot like the kelph with the way the feet are. The front one that’s lifted looks so unnatural the way it’s positioned. Why is the paw facing upwards? The back legs as well look very stiff; I feel like the feet would be more relaxed, or at least one of them, like having it tilted down a bit more instead of looking like they’re being flexed.
The tail on the [sea?] kelph looks very weird as well. The base is so thick compared to where it connects to the body, it just doesn’t look normal.