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#ty everyone who reads these posts by us! We just love silly creatures!
isabelguerra · 1 year
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I am LOVING combing through all of your wizard au posts for never-seen-before lore. I've been reading the patented isabelguerra wizard au since 2020 and I have had just one (several) question all these years..... WHAT IS GOING ON WITH CODY AND LISA IN THIS AU!! What was up with Cody's boggart!! What was the traumatic event!! Why can Lisa see thestrals!! These two are so mysterious and enthralling and I've been thinking about their appearance in your boggart fic for sooooooo long. If any of this is spoiler free I would love to hear it.
Aw thank you!! god the 2020 era isabelguerra blog…. thanks for being here so long :’) Back then I just wasn’t letting the blog/au be something I could do for fun, hearing people actually LIKED them and came BACK is nuts (touching). its nice having something connecting you to a community. heres some answers for you:
Cody and Lisa in wizard au!!!!!!! So this AU was made before ch6, before Davy, and idk if the headcanon has died out now but people used to LOVE headcanoning cody+lisa as twins. That, plus my personal preference for their designs in ch1, meant that Wizard Au Cody and Lisa are twins and also Filipino. Different houses, same family.
And oh man Codys boggart. ok. You MIGHT be disappointed here, but. Codys boggart was a very subtle drawn-out jab at pnat’s then-recent canonization of the existence of vampires. I hated it. I was SO mad. So I did some digging on vampire lore and found apparently they can’t cross running water. So when Max overheard Stephen theorizing ‘oh jones has a water fear I bet hes some kinda vamp’, then getting yelled at by Lisa for jumping to extreme conclusions when REALLY he just had a very normal but bad experience as a kid, the underlying message there is me the writer going “vampires are the most nonsensical direction [canon] could be taking right now this makes no sense and in addition to hating it personally i’m going to make it explicitly clear that I will Never include it in my own story”.
Which is so silly. but you know if there’s one thing I love its literary symbolism. so whatever. That said, that was years ago and hey maybe i’ll change it! I’ve been working on rewriting boggart fic for republication and maybe i’ll mess around with it more. i’d love to hear your theories!!
As for Lisa seeing Thestrals, that part was initially added as an addendum to ‘Max wonders why nobody else can see Thestrals’, a bit i wrote to get an Angst Reaction before i realized A). it made no sense since isabels grandpa is literally dead B). i’ve evolved past shock value writing. so now it’s max, isabel, and lisa- max and isabel are obvious, but I really enjoyed Lisa’s pre-school store reveal characterization as ‘mysterious weird girl who just kind of knows creepy things somehow’ instead of ‘underground rebellion runner with tabs on literally everyone etc etc’. For this characterization purpose thestrals, as creatures only someone who has seen death can see, fit her really really well.
Essentially I liked her mystery and felt giving ‘Why Can Lisa See Thestrals’ an answer would be redundant in its purpose. Why can she see them? We just know she can. Maybe Cody knows, as her brother. Maybe Violet knows, as her best friend. But the story we follow as Max, Isabel, and Johnny has no reason to have that information. Much like the true nature of Cody’s boggart and the conversation they have following it, that’s a private moment we don’t have access to. Some things we aren’t meant to know. Some things don’t have an answer.
So that’s Lisa and Cody’s deal! I hope this was a fulfilling answer, I love getting asks about the au and I love writing it. Feel free to (as in please I’d love to hear them) send your other several questions! I love theorizing and I LOVE hearing theories others make about my work. Ty for the ask!!
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weirdmarioenemies · 3 years
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Name: Aphid
Debut: Real Life
Welcome to Funky Friday! This Friday is particularly special to me, you see, I get to talk about a creature I am very passionate about, if you know me outside of this blog, it should come to no surprise that Aphids are up there as one of my favorite earthlings ever! They’re part of my username, and hence, my internet persona, I even put little antennae on emoticons like this ==:) I’m obsessed! But I swear it’s all justified!
To protect the peace of those who may be afraid of bugs, I’ll be talking exclusively about Aphids in Videogames! They haven’t had the biggest presence, but in recent years they’ve made some lovely appearances!
Aphids. Just look at them! They’re very green, very round, and very small! They have very long antennae as well! Instantly checking off all the marks that make a perfect creature design!
Aphids are sap sucking insects, they just hang around in colonies sipping sap from plants, a very peaceful life, they’re incredibly good at just hanging out and slurping plant juice! So much so that they are sadly considered as pests by humans, but they’re just trying to get by! Like you and me, the way they’re vilified everywhere is really unfortunate, they deserve to live just like any other earthling, but whenever you google em you just get stuff on how to get rid of them, I believe their presence in art like movies and videogames can be very important to change this perception! 
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Name: Aphid
Debut: Bee Swarm Simulator (Roblox)
Let’s start with the face of the post, Roblox aphid! Look at this simple model! Just a pea with 2 red orbs for peepers and sticks for antennae, I love the charm of such a simplified bug! 
Bee Swarm Simulator is a lovely little farm game that has you collect nectar and breed all kinds of bees! While out in the flower fields, you may find an aphid while collecting nectar. Like all bugs in this game, they will attack you, but to be fair, you are very tiny, so it makes sense a giant bug could damage you, even if they don’t do anything particularly dangerous!
When your bees defeat them they can drop rare items! And as such, aphid encounters are quite a blessing, matter of fact, they have rarity tiers! And they change their appearance accordingly, there’s Rage Aphids
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Armored Aphids
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and Diamond Aphids!
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Overall very charming inclusion, aphids now come in new flavors! Every time I play this game I hope I get to encounter one of these sweet peas! Silly models of bugs are fantastic, so Roblox aphids make me very happy!
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Name: Aphid
Debut: Bug Fables
Now THIS is my personal favorite fictional aphid appearance in media ever! In the world of Bug Fables, they are livestock! And you even get to go to an aphid farm! Here, they keep regular Aphids for their honeydew, Cochineals for their red pigment, and Woolly Aphids for their wool! That’s right! This game gave us representation for TWO kinds of real life aphids! It’s such a delight!
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Everyone in the world of Bug Fables respects and loves aphids, people find them very cute! Some of them even keep them as casual pets! Could you imagine? A cat-sized aphid for you to hold? The people in Bug Fables are living my dream and I want in! I hope you can also agree they’re extremely cute, the artists nailed that sweet little drop-shaped face I adore so much! 
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On April Fools, the Bug Fables devs released a short game all about aphids! Aphid Festival! Here you can train and breed your aphids! Which allows you to get all kinds of different color patterns for your aphids! Can you believe this? If you told me “In the year of 2021 there’s a videogame that’s completely centered around aphids.” I would’ve never believed you!
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Name: Aphid Lurker
Debut: Jax and Daxter
Now I know what you may be thinking, “this is just a dog!” And yeah they’re definitely the doggiest bug I have ever seen, or is it the buggiest dog? Regardless of how you feel on the validity of their buggyness, you gotta admit it’s very impressive we have an aphid-based enemy in a game from 2001, most other aphid appearances I could find were very recent, was Jax and Daxter a trendsetter? Probably not, but maybe at least one kid out there saw Aphid Lurker and went “Woah aphid? What’s that?” googled them, and proceeded to fall in love with them! 
Regardless of their good impact for all of aphid-kind, they are very round, very green, and have antennae! So I really can’t dislike them, they even got spikes!! Which is something I like to see in my round creature designs sometimes, it just works!
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Name: Aphid
Debut: Grounded
Returning to modern games, Grounded is a survival game that has you shrunk down to the size of an ant! So you gotta survive among the towering grass blades in the middle of a garden! Fortunately for us, this means you get to interact with tiny insects very up close! Including aphids!
Don’t be fooled by the fancy graphics and realistic aesthetics, aphids in Grounded are arguably the cartooniest creatures you can find! They almost look like a real aphid, but they have a vertebrate mouth! Perfect for opening in surprise when you get close to one, they’ll jump, chirp with an extremely cartoonish expression, and then flop into the ground, before scuttling away!
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Now that’s a silly little mouth!
Aphids in this game are peaceful creatures, they’re a bit timid so they’ll run away from you but they will let you get close over time, they also drop honeydew, which you can use as food, so you really want to befriend and protect these little dudes if you can!
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Name: Aphid
Debut: Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts is a game where you can type anything and it’ll come to life! So the devs really tried their best at including everything they thought a player could think of, and they thought of silly bug fans like me! People who would type “aphid” in hopes an unloved little bug they love could appear in the game with them, and instead of being met with the usual disappointment, were met with a cute little rendition of this sweet green bug!
Design-wise, I’m a bit sad they added a neck, they have no necks! They’re funny teardrop shaped bullets! But they DID add the cornicles! (The two little horns on their butt). Out of all the videogame aphids I’ve shown you, this is the ONLY one to include the cornicles! Not even Grounded who went with a semi realistic design got it! So thank you Scribblenauts, for considering the aphid, as well as giving them their anatomically correct defense organs.
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Finally, I’d like to give a shoutout to Aphie from A Bug’s Life! Not a videogame aphid, but 100% one of the earliest aphid representations in media! And they’re very cute, just a little puppy! They got a puppy tongue and all, given ants herd and take care of aphids, having one of them keep one as a pet is a very cute way to humanize an ant!  Also Aphie has the cornicles!! Good on you Pixar, you did your research.
And that’s all for this special friday! Thank you reader for coming in this journey with me, here’s hoping there’ll be more aphid representation in the future! 
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