Redraw from the storyboard of early version of Encanto – Isabela and her sweetheart Bubo.
Previously I had drawn some fanart based on concept art of Encanto couples, now it’s time to give equal treatment to my favorite semi-canon couple, Isabela and Bubo. And this time, it’s based not on regular concept art, but instead on the frame from animatic showcasing one scene between the pair from early draft of movie.
Isabela is always fixing his glasses (somehow always crooked). She's also the main reason he still keeps them; she thinks they're perfect (even when he's sometimes insecure about them)
Bubo stands up for Isabela whenever someone's putting too much pressure on her (or when she's putting pressure on herself).
At the same time, Isa defends Bubo from anyone who tries to say he "isn't good enough" to be with her (she won't stand for it)
Bubo likes wearing fun costumes. Isabela helps elevate them by using her powers to put fun colors/plants on them (they tear up the competition on a costume contest)
Bubo calls Isa "mi flor" (spanish for "my flower"), and Isa calls him "mi amor" (spanish for "my love/darling")
They LOVE spending time with one another; they're always doing activities together, or just spending a lazy day inside/outside
Bubo & Isa run the Encanto's community garden; they also have their own personal garden back home to experiment with new things.
Once they have kids, they're "all-in" parents. Very involved in their kids' lives, SUPER supportive, and encourage them to try new things.
Isabela also reminds her kids that it's very important to not try and be perfect all the time. She'll love them, no matter what.
(Their kids in my AU are named Beatriz & Inez)
How They Met (based on my personal AUs backstory)
Bubo, growing up in the Encanto, always knew of Isabela; the "perfect" eldest Madrigal grandchild, always blessing the Encanto with her gift of flowers.
Shortly after the ending of the movie, Isabela finds her way to a small shop in town, where she meets Bubo. She immediately thinks he's charming, and she continues to come visit him all the time until one day, Bubo asks her on a date (to which Isa agrees).
They kept their relationship a secret for a while, with the only person knowing being Mirabel, who caught them out in the woods together (based upon that one deleted scene where she catches them in the woods together).
Finally, they make their relationship public to everyone (both their family and the community), and the rest is history <3
They met not long after the events of Encanto and they were friends for nearly a year before they started dating.
Bubo is a couple of months younger than Isabela—he was born in September and she was born in August.
All of their kids were unplanned. They have four—a set of triplets and a little girl.
They love their kids but don't want any more.
Isabela despises Bubo’s family and never hesitates to chase them off when they dare to darken Casita’s doors with their presence.
Bubo is weird, even for the Encanto, but Isabela doesn’t mind. Mostly because she likes how he doesn’t mind her new ‘oddities’ like several people in the Encanto do.
Isabela also likes how he makes an effort to get along/bond with her family: he let Mirabel teach him how to sew, helped and encouraged Luisa to try out hobbies that others might find weird if she really wanted to, and so on. And that was before they even started dating.
Isabela was the one to propose: the elders in the Encanto didn’t like it but she didn’t care because she wanted to do it. She had a lot of fun planning it and recruited Mirabel, Camilo, Antonio, Luisa, Dolores, Faustina, Mina, and all of her in-laws (those who married her cousins and siblings, not Bubo’s family because honestly she’d rather drop dead than acknowledge such awful people) to help her in the planning.
The day involved Isabela experimenting with her powers as Bubo took notes, a pollen pod fight, one of her paintings, a fencing season, and lunch. So all in all, it was a very fun day even before she had her little potato people hold up the cue cards popping the question.
Bubo loved it. The grandkids were all ecstatic that everything went to plan. Raimi, Beatriz, and Félix laughed. Pepa cheered. Miranda, Julieta, and Agustín thought it was sweet as did Agustín’s mother, Valentia. Alma and Wilmer were bewildered but happy for them and the engagement went on.
They took their relationship slow and only got married after seven years together.
The two of them love fencing and gardening together as well as doing their own little art projects around one another.
Less than a year later, the triplets were born and ten years after that their daughter, Avila, was born.
I picture them as Morticia and Gomez Addams in a way in how they love one another.
Bubo supports Isabela in everything she does whether it’s regarding her experimenting with her gift, her greenhouse, or her hobbies. He’s even the one who got her into art and fencing.
Isabela, in turn, makes him more confident and helps him with the colors for his costumes. Giving him feedback on how to make them goofier or scarier, depending on what he wants them to be.
They own a shop together—it’s called Isabela and Bubo’s Oddities Shop and they sell her art, his costumes and props and special effects, and the plants she experiments with.
They also teach fencing classes together.
Bubo adores Isabela’s plants and experiments and potato people almost as much as Isabela herself does. He even made them their little costumes using the skills that Mirabel taught him to do so.
Out of Isabela’s family, Bubo gets on best with her father, Mirabel, and Bruno because well…they’re the family weirdos.
There was no shovel talk given when they started dating. Partly because everyone figured out Bubo’s life sucked and that he’d rather chew off his own arm than hurt Isabela, and partly (*cough* mainly) because Isabela threatened to make their lives difficult if they did.
As you said in your own headcanons, Isa is very “: I've only had Bubo for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I'll kill everyone in this Encanto and then myself” like in personality. If that makes sense.
Bubo and Isabela like gossiping together, as you said in your own headcanons. And boy do they gossip.
Bubo is allergic to potatoes, funnily enough, much to Isabela’s horror. Thankfully he only really gets sick when he eats them, which he doesn’t do much anyways after meeting the potato people.
He didn’t even realize he was allergic to them until he got to the Encanto… he only realized this after a family dinner gone wrong.
(His family are very luck that Mariano and Isabela have not come across them together because they both want to kill them for everything they put Bubo through).
People don’t really get their relationship but the people in the Encanto have mostly kept their opinions to themselves because the few who didn’t were very quickly shut down by not only Isabela but Mariano and the rest of the family.
Bubo thought Isabela naming their son after Miguel was a brilliant idea and still doesn’t understand why people act like it’s weird. Their brother-in-law saved Isabela and the triplets, so it’s only right he got one named after him.
Bubo is the one who suggested they give him the middle name of Melchor because it means ‘King of Light’ and he thought it was charming.
He also suggested Arlo because he liked the name and several of the definitions he found tied to it—Isabela fell in love with the name immediately and refused to even think of another name for him.
Isabela chose the name ‘Emo’ as a middle name for Arlo because she liked the meaning and wanted her son to know that there was no shame in being emotional.
Bubo choose the name Zoey because it means ‘life’ and he thought it was fitting, and Isabela decided that she should be named after her great aunt, Alejandra, because though she never got the chance to meet the woman she adores her based on what Abuela told her and thinks they would have gotten along.
Another reason they went with Alejandra as a middle name was because they both agreed that Alejandra was the type of woman they want their daughter to be like—and well, they thought Alejandra had been forgotten enough and it would be a great way to honor her memory beyond the statue in the yard.
Bubo is always creative with his gifts since if Isabela wanted flowers she’d just grow them and the oldest Madrigal grandchild adores this about him because it’s like every gift is an adventure.
Abuelitas contains NOTHING unfortunately but it's going to be Dolores going around to all the abuelas in town and getting marriage advice and also trinkets.
Flowering was going to be my Madrigay Days story for the "performance" prompt but I went all womp womp on that. It is, of course, IsaBubo, the party from "Same Boy" from Bubo's pov. I did not get very far since writing that party the first time almost killed me, but:
“Ok,” she whispered, then fluffed her short, thick hair. “Let’s do this.”
This was going to a party at Casa Madrigal to celebrate…well, her, and the few dozen other refugees who had made it into the Encanto a bit over a month prior. It was a big to-do, apparently, and Bubo knew she’d be underdressed in her baggy trousers, plain blouse, and oversized cardigan but it was the nicest ensemble she had. It made her self-conscious; the other newly-arrived women didn’t wear the flowy, old-fashioned garb of the locals either, but she still stood out more.
It was ok, she was used to that. Besides, Isabela liked the way she dressed.
Something I found ironic about the scrapped Isabela and Bubo plotline is that I felt like the dynamic was much better suited for a young Julieta and Agustín.
The perfect golden child of the Madrigals, set apart from the rest, and slated to marry the most perfect man her mother picked out for her. Only to fall in love with this sweet nerdy looking guy who actually sees her for who she is, a person. Rather than this perfect paragon everyone else sees her as. At first, their match is frowned upon. However, soon enough, it becomes clear that they make each other very happy together. I mean look at them.
