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.
Un and Ah
As mushi go, these are relatively harmless. They coexist with each other; Un eat sound and Ah eat silence, but the Un are far more numerous than the Ah. Often when winter has killed off their normal food sources, as animals hibernate and snow muffles the smallest sounds, they will move closer to human habitation, in order to feed off the sounds there.
A nest of Un.
Occasionally, they will even invade the body of a human or other animals, taking over one ear in order to get even more sound.
An Un moving into a human ear.
This doesn't hurt the human, but it does make them go (temporarily) deaf in one ear due to the Un eating all the sound the human would normally hear. It can be chased out by salt sprinkled around the home or saltwater poured into the ear; salt affects them like a normal slug or snail. Once the Un is gone, the human host immediately regains their hearing in the affected ear.
Ah, however, are a different story. Because they eat silence, a human body is not a comfortable home for them. When they do invade one in an attempt to get enough to eat, the human will sprout four horns on their forehead.
Ah horns.
These appear to be some kind of way to let the humans hear the mushi world. Letting the human hear more things would seem to be the opposite of the mushi's aim, but the mushi is using the sounds to overwhelm the human. The struggle for dominance between mushi and human seems to take about a year. If the human hasn't managed to get free of the mushi in that time, they are overwhelmed by the mushi's influence and they die.
The solution seems to be a relatively simple one--put your hands over your ears. But there's a trick to it. If you do it to try and shut out the sounds, it doesn't appear to work. You have to listen for a very specific sound--the small rumblings that your own body makes, as blood pumps and muscles shift. If you can hear it, and overwhelm the mushi, it will leave you.
Ginko accepting Ah.
And Ah leaving him.