Is there a reason you chose the bugs you did or was it like a pick what was pleasing to the design
answering this before i clock into work but YES there is !!!! this is going to be pretty long since i have genuine thought out reasons so Bare With Me
there’s not specifics for species but for the specific bugs as a whole i rely a lot on symbolism for each individual character. you’ll find a lot of intentional symbolism in my art with insects and flowers and things just mostly because i find it fun.
moon’s choice for a ladybug came pretty easy to me just considering she already has red incorporated into her design with her marking and i thought it was neat. ladybugs very frequently symbolize protection and good luck. thought it was fitting.
pebbles i knew i wanted to be a pill bug. pill bugs are isopods and not insects which is why it’s called the arthropoda au and NOT the insecta au like originally planned. i wanted this and because him being able to curl up like that seemed fitting and also because hes just like me for real and so has the horrid hpd-bpd combo for days . anyways.
pill bugs are for new beginnings, hope, and change. the arthropoda au is set shortly after the end of the rivulet campaign and thus after pebbles collapses and though it WILL end happy i do want to say that pebbles has. Issues. and needs to get over himself to a degree . he’s gonna be a bit screwed up for a bit though. its fine itll be fine hooray for nsh
speaking of nsh… ouuu he was hard. i genuinely had trouble with him and in the end i had to go steadfast with beetle imagery. i briefly considered a deathwatch beetle due to its ties in folklore which you can read about here if you want ? but ultimately i ended up with a figeater beetle because Green. thematically i think if i’d gone with a deathwatch beetle at all it would’ve been given to sliver of straw. beetles in general however (unless they have other symbolic ties that disregard this) are typically for change and life’s essence, which i felt was fitting for nsh’s role in thw arthropoda au.
butterflies are a mixed bag due to their ties with both death and life as well as change and growth. there’s a lot of different meanings so i ended up cherry picking with seven red suns on this? but i went with the themes of hope, freedom and love. choosing a mourning cloak butterfly was actually a Process because initially it’d been a peacock butterfly. then i switched to a blue morpho because i find their intentional by design flight patterns incredibly interesting (and the underlining theme of difference and isolation that all the iterators seem to face) but mourning cloak was more fitting, considering how srs seems to be.
a dragonfly for unparalleled innocence seemed the most fitting. especially a butterfly dragonfly considering the previously mentioned mixed bag of butterfly meanings in relation to death (death of the relationships around her in her case) . part of the reason i chose dragonflies is because of the “devil’s darning needles” thing, which is derived from the superstition that dragonflies may sew up the eyes, ears or mouth of a sleeping child, usually one that has misbehaved. and i just …………… hough, you know? i also like the irony of the general symbolism of dragonflies being adaptability because of her respective role in the arthropoda au.
i know sos was lined up before grey wind but i want to do them first because there’s a bit more to say about sos.
anyways. moths are ALSO a mixed bag and similarly to butterflies they frequently have ties to life and death and change due to their life cycles. moths are usually associated with death more often than butterflies are (which was always odd to me, since butterflies are known to be attracted to dead organisms to drink the fluid from them) , but i didn’t touch on these with grey wind. instead i went for a less conventional theme from moths which is wisdom and self-knowledge. again a play into their role in this au.
FINALLY we get to sliver of straw and … ho boy.
first off cicadas represent resurrection, immortality, and spiritual realization. pretty sure there’s also spiritual ecstasy in there too. this is very much something tied to sos in this au. i’d argue that it ends up as a theme with a lot of fix-its involving sliver but considering the fact i’m not horrifically far into the world of rain world fix-its i couldnt tell you for absolute certain. i Will say that that is certainly a theme here though! more in a philosophical, metaphorical way than anything literal, but i think if you look at it the right way it’d be literal. there’s a reason its slugcat colony has lived and prospered the way it has.
you might have to bear with me because i don’t know how many people are into chinese mythology or enjoy religious symbolism in the same way i do but part of the cicada choice was influenced by the golden cicada. my mythos knowledge is a little rough because my hyperfixation has came and went and i’ve still been combing through fengshen yanyi instead of anything else for the past half year so pardon if my information given is rough and PLEASE correct me if im flat out wrong but.
if you know the journey to the west you’re most likely at least vaguely familiar with it. the golden cicada is considered an “antagonist” as it showed disrespect towards the buddha-fa. as such it ended up banished to the mortal world as punishment and had to suffer 10 incarnations in a row. one of these such incarnations was the monk tang sanzang, or tripitaka, who was the monk that travelled in the journey to the west. y’know, with sun wukong. jttw is arguably one of the most influential pieces of media i’d say considering its long standing effect on modern media even to this day and considering my adoration for religious symbolism and insects also i really Don’t think it’s a surprise that this ended up being my reason for the robot regarded as a messiah for Literally Dying in canon is a cicada.
if you got this far thank you for listening to my autism rant . i have literally 3 minutes until work but i appreciate that . heart. if asked to elaborate on anything here i WILL as long as it isnt arthropoda lore. if it is will simply grin and say something silly and be intentionally obtuse
