Ginko (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iattractmushi) wrote2020-02-20 08:28 pm
iattractmushi) wrote2020-02-20 08:28 pm
Known Mushi
This post is a WIP. Please don't mind my dust as I slowly work on it... I have finished up to where the links on this post end, and I will be trying to add more pictures and the rest of the mushi soon.
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Ginko is a mushishi, or mushi Master, meaning he knows how to recognize, control, use, and exterminate mushi.
Mushi - they aren’t quite insects as their name would have the casual reader believe, but rather something far more basic and ancient.
The way that Ginko describes them is like this: "if the four fingers on my hand represent all of the animals and my thumb represents present-day plants, then people would be at the tip of my middle finger, the farthest place from the heart. The inside of my hand represents all the other levels of living things below us. As you follow the veins downward, it all winds into one large artery. About there are the fungi and the microorganisms. As you go farther down, it becomes harder to tell the difference between animals and plants. But there are things even below that. You can trace all the way down the arm and past the shoulder. And when you reach your heart, that’s where the mushi are. Some call them ‘the Green Things’; they’re very close to the original forms of life."
They can look like nearly anything, from people to snakes to rainbows to floating, glowing jellyfish, or even simpler forms like a chain of rings or a segmented line floating through the air. They do equally as many things, some useful to humans, some harmful, but most all of the things they do are utterly bizarre and meant for the mushi’s survival. They exist anywhere and everywhere, especially where life thrives. Not everyone can see them; in fact it seems that most people can't. The pattern of who can and can't see them seems to be almost entirely random, though sometimes people start seeing them after being affected by mushi.
I did these in the same order as the manga chapters, which differs from the anime order.
Kouki ('Light Wine') - Possibly an eye-squicky image.
Weakened Mushi
Gods/Masters/Guardians
Fuki, pseudo-Kouki
Rule of Nature/mushi banquet
Un and Ah
Imenonoawai ('within the field of dreams')
Manakonoyamimushi ('darkness of the eyes mushi') - Content warning for possible eyesquick.
Suiko ('mushi water')
Mugura ('creeping vines')
Kuchinawa
Shimi ('paper fish')
Forbidden Mushi
Bikuu ('mushi' and 'body cavity')
Nagaremono ('flowing things')
Watahaki (and hitotake) ('cotton breathed out' and 'person mushroom') - Warning for child death, born and unborn.
Yasabi ('wild rust')
Dragon mushi
Narazu seed ('mustn't happen' seed)
Kumohami ('cloud eater') - mentions of people freezing to death.
Tokoyami and Ginko ('endless darkness' and 'silver mushi')
Uro ('empty' or 'hollow')
Nisekazura ('false vines') - warning for animated (though quiescent) dead people.
Usobuki ('false bud')
Magaridake and Oniko ('false bamboo' and human/mushi hybrid)
Dragon Shrine - Warning for mention of drowning.
Ganpuku - Warning for eyesquick.
Ubusuna (roughly, 'to cultivate the earth')
Kagebi and Hidane ('false fire' and 'fire seed' or coal) - Warning for freezing to death? Idk.
Kagedama ('shadow soul')
Anything past this point in the comments is to be edited later, adding pictures when I manage to get some and prettying it up in general.
The different mushi will slowly be added as comments to this post, including mushi and other creatures from the manga-only chapters. Warning for spoilers, of course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ginko is a mushishi, or mushi Master, meaning he knows how to recognize, control, use, and exterminate mushi.
Mushi - they aren’t quite insects as their name would have the casual reader believe, but rather something far more basic and ancient.
The way that Ginko describes them is like this: "if the four fingers on my hand represent all of the animals and my thumb represents present-day plants, then people would be at the tip of my middle finger, the farthest place from the heart. The inside of my hand represents all the other levels of living things below us. As you follow the veins downward, it all winds into one large artery. About there are the fungi and the microorganisms. As you go farther down, it becomes harder to tell the difference between animals and plants. But there are things even below that. You can trace all the way down the arm and past the shoulder. And when you reach your heart, that’s where the mushi are. Some call them ‘the Green Things’; they’re very close to the original forms of life."
They can look like nearly anything, from people to snakes to rainbows to floating, glowing jellyfish, or even simpler forms like a chain of rings or a segmented line floating through the air. They do equally as many things, some useful to humans, some harmful, but most all of the things they do are utterly bizarre and meant for the mushi’s survival. They exist anywhere and everywhere, especially where life thrives. Not everyone can see them; in fact it seems that most people can't. The pattern of who can and can't see them seems to be almost entirely random, though sometimes people start seeing them after being affected by mushi.
I did these in the same order as the manga chapters, which differs from the anime order.
Kouki ('Light Wine') - Possibly an eye-squicky image.
Weakened Mushi
Gods/Masters/Guardians
Fuki, pseudo-Kouki
Rule of Nature/mushi banquet
Un and Ah
Imenonoawai ('within the field of dreams')
Manakonoyamimushi ('darkness of the eyes mushi') - Content warning for possible eyesquick.
Suiko ('mushi water')
Mugura ('creeping vines')
Kuchinawa
Shimi ('paper fish')
Forbidden Mushi
Bikuu ('mushi' and 'body cavity')
Nagaremono ('flowing things')
Watahaki (and hitotake) ('cotton breathed out' and 'person mushroom') - Warning for child death, born and unborn.
Yasabi ('wild rust')
Dragon mushi
Narazu seed ('mustn't happen' seed)
Kumohami ('cloud eater') - mentions of people freezing to death.
Tokoyami and Ginko ('endless darkness' and 'silver mushi')
Uro ('empty' or 'hollow')
Nisekazura ('false vines') - warning for animated (though quiescent) dead people.
Usobuki ('false bud')
Magaridake and Oniko ('false bamboo' and human/mushi hybrid)
Dragon Shrine - Warning for mention of drowning.
Ganpuku - Warning for eyesquick.
Ubusuna (roughly, 'to cultivate the earth')
Kagebi and Hidane ('false fire' and 'fire seed' or coal) - Warning for freezing to death? Idk.
Kagedama ('shadow soul')
Anything past this point in the comments is to be edited later, adding pictures when I manage to get some and prettying it up in general.
The different mushi will slowly be added as comments to this post, including mushi and other creatures from the manga-only chapters. Warning for spoilers, of course.
Weakened mushi
These appear to be everywhere in Ginko's world, depending on the area he's traveling through. I suspect he sees more than we know about, given their density in any given area when he chooses to pay attention to them.
These seem to have the most variable shapes out of all the mushi; perhaps that's because any mushi can get weak and fall into this category--though many of them tend to look like flowers or snakes, perhaps because many mushi happen to look like that already.
There are a couple I would like to especially note here; one of them is more headcanon, and the other doesn't have a lot of information about it.
This type appear once, in a flashback. I believe they're something akin to will o'the wisps, in that they may lead travelers astray, should they choose to follow the light... but it's nothing malicious. They're just glowing jellyfish things that float around randomly in the forest.
Ginko's mushi-smoke.
Ginko appears to have the ability to manipulate the smoke he exhales. At one point he claims it's a 'friendly mushi' but nothing is known why that mushi in particular likes the smoke that all other mushi are supposed to hate, or how Ginko controls it, or why it doesn't hurt him when he inhales it. It's possible that this mushi is the real reason behind why other mushi don't like the smoke, and also what keeps Ginko from getting sick. In any case, it's pretty neat, though I usually don't reference it simply because so little is known about how it works. It doesn't show up again after the first episode.