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.
Kumohami
The name of this mushi translates to 'cloud eater.' Normally these are a perfectly harmless mushi, responsible for hail when there isn't a cloud in the sky (to normal people, that is). To those who can see the mushi, they look like pinkish clouds, but nothing more ominous than that.
Kumohami emerging from a child.
In rare cases, however, when there is a long period of time without wind, the kumohami will drop down to earth and go into hibernation, waiting for the wind to return. Because they can't eat or go anywhere without it, they don't have much choice. In even rarer cases, if the mushi happened to drop into a place like a cave where wind doesn't reach, their hibernating forms will petrify and turn to rock.
In this specific case, an inkstone maker found the kumohami stone and made it into an inkstone.
Whenever the inkstone was wetted and rubbed with an ink-stick in order to make ink, a little of the kumohami woke up and tried to return to the sky.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, many people who used the stone ended up inhaling the kumohami. The only way to get rid of a kumohami that has infected a person is to go high into the mountains, so the mushi leaves your body for its natural habitat. Because most of the people infected lived at a low altitude, however, the kumohami had no way to escape their bodies and ended up freezing them to death by trying to feed off the moisture in the human body and release it as snow and hail. In the end, Ginko was able to save the children that had been affected and convince the one who owned the inkstone to release the rest of the kumohami into the sky.