for background, Transparent is a cosmetic option one can change their Neopet to. for the mostly mammalian cast of Neopets, this typically shows the internal anatomy of the Neopet as if their skin and cartilage were transparent, displaying their skeleton and visible internal organs.
there are some notable examples among them: the Transparent Lenny has bones in its primary feathers, explaining their hand-like dexterity with those feathers! (other bird Neopets, like the Pteri, do not have these bones).
there's also the Grundo's alien organs, and the Ruki, which is an insect and thus has an exoskeleton, has a much different internal structure from its mammal counterparts
there's a lot we could get into here with the perceived anatomical correctness of these designs; the number of bones and placement or lack of certain organs is definitely not one would expect in a detailed anatomical diagram. but none of that is really important beyond what these designs signify about the species classification-wise, and the one new major outlier: the Transparent Chia
the Transparent Chia is unlike all other Neopets who have received Transparent designs. it is green; it does not have bones; it has unique organs; it resembles a plant cell.
below is my attempt to label the Transparent Chia as if it were a textbook diagram of a plant cell. I'm only an amateur biologist, so I discussed with some friends, including professional biologist @stackedcrates who taught me a lot!
(footnotes are below)
1 - Root Hairs: As I've been told it, root hairs would typically 1) comprise the full green shape of the hair and not just the pink inside, and 2) a cell with root hairs would not have chloroplasts. So if we accept the hair as root hairs, this is either a "novel evolutionary adaptation" or possibly the Chia is comprised of two to four large cells and potentially a colonial organism, which I find exciting.
2 - Vesicles, Peroxisomes, Lysosomes: It's impossible to actually distinguish these things from each other so I labelled them half based on evidence and half arbitrarily. Lysosomes are typically larger than peroxisomes, but both could also be most any other 'some. (Vesicles are not 'somes but they look similar in this type of diagram).
3 - The Endoplasmic Reticulum & Large Central Vacuole: In normal cells, the endoplasmic reticulum would touch the nucleus, so this ER is in a very unusual if not impossible spot. We floated the possibilities that we were wrong about the nucleus, the nucleus was actually what we'd labelled as the LCV, and even that our ER was just the rough ER and the yellow noodles (now labelled "Cytoskeletal Structures") were a very unusual smooth ER. But it seems overly likely that we're correct about the LCV and the nucleus, so I preferred this admittedly unsatisfying option compared to the rest.
4 - Chloroplasts and Mitochondria: You might notice that the chloroplasts as labelled have two different designs: one is striped while the other is simply green. The committee found the two similar enough to group them together, and I'm told it's common for the chloroplast to be depicted either way (I found more than one diagram that this art seems to be cribbing colors and design choices from). As for the mitochondria, it's possible that we have the chloroplasts and mitochondria swapped, and it's just as possible possible one of the three labelled is some other plastid that we didn't consider.
5 - Cytoskeletal Structures: We have no idea what these are. They're not really the right shape to be skeletal structures. Oh well!
6 - Amyloplast: @stackedcrates suggested this was an amyloplast, for storing starch, but that it could be another kind of plastid.
this attempt has many issues, but the real purpose of it is to prove that the Chia very closely resembles a plant cell, rather than correctly identify each part. @stackedcrates also emphasized that biology is full of exceptions, and with the Chia necessarily representing an unusual example, it doesn't behoove us to be beholden to statistical typicality. a few mistakes or professional disagreements are okay! in the end, it matters more that the parts are roughly represented.
I think we did well!
What does this mean for the project?
we'll be hereforth categorizing the Chia as among Plantae rather than Animalia. there was evidence for this before as the Chia is the only Neopet to have the unique Magical Chia Pop colors. the Maraquan Chia is also an anenome, which is an animal, but definitely the most plant-like of the aquatic animals.
maybe one could argue the Chia is a fungus, or even an animal-plant hybrid! where does that go in our taxonomy? I don't know! but science is exciting, isn't it?
HEY!!!! HI!!! I STILL DRAW STUFF I PROMISE!!!! i just haven't. in a while.
I'm opening up commissions because I've been meaning to for actual years and I need. yknow. money. There's a definite possibility my art program might change in the middle of this and it has many times! capitalism.
I'm taking payments through my Ko-Fi, and I can be contacted through my tumblr messages or my discord @ awfulq!
Examples and TOS under the cut!!!
TERMS OF SERVICE
Commissions that cannot be completed will be refunded in full.
Refunds in all other cases must be asked for before the drawing is finished OR if a full month without completion has passed.
Tumblr messages or discord is required so that I may send you thumbnails, sketches, and WIP images. You are free to contact me there to ask for updates as well.
I have the right to deny any commission I may not feel comfortable with doing for any reason, so please MESSAGE ME BEFORE PAYING ME!!
However in the case that you do pay me before finding out I'm uncomfortable with your subject, I will refund you the money in full! :>
I WILL do:
OCs, Canon Characters/Fanart, TTRPG Characters
Nonhumans/Anthros/Furries/Monsters
Horror
I WON'T do:
Mechs/Robots, sorry.
Gore, NSFT, Hateful Content
Certain fandoms of my own discretion but don't be afraid to ask- Worst thing I can say is "no, sorry, anything else i can do?"
I need to find that 1 comic I saw in the neopian times eons ago as a little baby, that had a lab rat lupe musing on its changing gender identity that I kept in the back of my mind for several years and did not unpack
once when i was ten, so seventeen years ago, i was on one of the neopets forums that was in 2006 frequented mostly by edgy teenagers with pete wentz urls who wanted to get around the ban on romance and gay talk to discuss mcr members making out. and it was well past midnight and i was secretly on an extremely clunky laptop the size of a modern desktop, sitting on my top bunk in the tiny room i shared with my sister. and i do not remember the forum topic at all but at some point one of the participants politely asked me, "hey, how old are you, anyway? twelve?" and when i honestly replied "ten," he responded:
"WOAH. Kid, you'd better get off the boards. Wandering the Neoboards at 2 AM is like walking nekkid through the Bronx with your wallet dangling from your nipplz."
and this frightened me so much i slammed the computer shut and went to bed immediately. seventeen years later i still remember this message word for word. including the filter-avoidance misspellings. i need everyone to know about this formative childhood memory. bronx wallet nipplz guy if you're out there hmu and tell me what ur deal was
theartofmadeline
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