Crit goes here! Comments are screened until I reply to them, after which I will leave them unscreened (unless you specifically ask me to rescreen your comments for you.) Note: I generally do not accept criticism on inter-character relationships unless said crit is using the relationship to explain a deeper characterization flaw. I will gladly explain anything you like! But I do kind of get irked when people say "I liked this relationship better in canon" or "you're making this dynamic too fast/slow/mushy/whatever" unless it's extremely OOC.

ffffff I am not going to have time to run a mid-week post for my mushi plot, sadly.

So! If you wanted to get your character deafened, just go ahead and handwave it. ... or hit me up with a link if you want someone on the other end to send snails in your direction. Final post will go up during the weekend; after that, you can assume that Ginko's available to cure people.

HEY GUYS HEY GUYS

I'm running another mushi event! In much the same way as my previous mushi event, I'll post a handful of framing posts during the week, which you are free to use to react to the mushi, react to other people, etc. I will be running the mushi itself via cuebattlemusic in addition to playing Ginko. (However, I have something special in mind this time to prevent Ginko from getting too involved in the mushi business this time around.)


( Important Information! )


Questions? Concerns? Drop me a line! I'll be posting this as soon as I gather up a few pictures and icons and stuff.

For dareyuudream, because we started talking about it and she enabled me. I love how well xxxHolic and Mushishi cross over with each other. :|d

( Ginko is not unfamiliar with the thin places of the world. )

WHOO more OOC notes and blather time. o/

( the fiiinal countdoooown )

So I don't have to have a super-long OOC note:

- Listening to the shells causes the sezuri-kai mushi to enter affect the listener's body, causing them to lose their voice. The effect is not painful. (ETA: duhhhr I was remembering wrong. The effect is internal, but it's not an infestation.)
- The shells sound like birds rather than the ocean. It's actually quite pretty!
- The effect will fade on its own within a week or so, which is when I am planning to officially end the event. As always, it's up to the player how long they want their character to be affected, and how. If you'd like this to affect voiceless characters differently, then be my guest.
- This is the first of three posts. Ginko will have his own thread in all of them (except the last one maybe), and everyone is absolutely welcome to come talk to him, but he will not be commenting to people in the post unless he has good reason to start a conversation.
- I might borrow the boss journal in order to run the "shells," for those who want to play out picking up the shell and listening to it, but overall the post is intended to be a mingle post.
- If this goes well, I am totally going to run more mushi events in the future. :|d

Thank you to everyone who voted and gave me input! I'm going to run the Sezuri-kai (voice loss) mushi this week, I think. Tentative schedule is as follows:

( wheeeee )

I've been wanting to do something with mushi in camp for aaages. There's a couple options that would work really well in camp, I think, in that they're a) not too much stronger than a camp effect, b) limited in scope, and c) have cures won't necessarily require Ginko to attend to everyone afterward.

So! This is a preliminary poll-type thing to figure out what people would most be interested in. Then, within a week or two, I'll probably throw up a more official post to hammer out details. ... or just post something with a very long OOC note. idk. I just wanted to do a wee little spooky event a la the Medicine Seller's creepy posts. For most of these, there'd probably be one post for setup, possibly one post for the effects (if there's something larger or more dramatic going on), and one to get people cured, if necessary.

( deep derp descriptions go here. )

Poll #1378190 Mushi mushi mushi~
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

Which mushi event(s) would you be most interested in seeing?

Okay, so! As anyone who's familiar with Mushi-Shi knows, Ginko is a helper. It's his job! He likes being nice! And also it gets him shinies to sell back to Adashino and/or study up close, but that's beside the point. Playing him without that aspect of his character would be a very sad and horrible thing, especially since there's so much hilarious potential to be had. So! Here are my thoughts on what I'd like Ginko to do in camp:

Investigate and/or fix camp stuff. (Temporarily.) Showers spurting blood, camp effects, zombies, mistletoe, that sort of thing. He'll be poking anyone who's obviously affected anyway, because it's interesting, but I would eventually like him to be able to fix an ailment or two. ... through some sort of horribly embarrassing and/or cracky cure, but effective nonetheless. Probably what would happen there is, should the situation come up, I'd ask someone in PM if they want help from Ginko or not. For more general camp things, fixes would either be temporary (fixing the showers, only to have them spurt blood again within a week), ineffectual (one zombie fixed out of over nine thousand), or localized (only if someone has a specific request for me to do stuff.)

Investigate and/or help people. This would be a lot more permission-intensive. If he senses something odd about you, he'll ask questions, certainly, but he's a polite type; he won't really get into it if it's clear that you're not comfortable. And OOCly I won't let him pry too far unless I already know that the other party is cool with him being pokey. Actually affecting people would probably be extremely rare. I'm envisioning him as a Yuuko-type -- something we can roll with if you want something specific to happen, but otherwise he's not going to meddle in srs business.

In both cases, I'm assuming that he would try to classify effects in his own terms (AKA ICly he thinks that everything is caused by mushi, but OOCly that's not necessarily the case) and might even have some information to start with, depending on how cool the other party is with him knowing about it.

... which is all a very roundabout way of coming to my permissions-y question: Does your character have a supernatural condition? If so, what is it? What sort of information is Ginko allowed to know already? This is basically the same as my polls for Ishida and Watanuki, except that Ginko is more likely to actually know what's going on, as opposed to just sensing it on the spot. As an example of what sort of info I mean, here's a post about what he knows about the camp phenomena I bastardized in his app. :|d

For those of you out there who care, I am taking Ginko primarily from the anime at the moment. ... this is due to the fact that one-manga only has up to Volume 3 UL'd right now, and I can't seem to get my hands on a copy of Del Rey's translations of volume 4. :|a This should change once I snag the Japanese volumes, however. I'll do a more in-depth post once I have all of his canon, but even then he'll be very anime-centric. Just 'cause it's pretty and wonderful and also what I saw first. (Not that it matters, anyway; the differences between the manga and anime versions are negligible at most.)

Also, while I've seen the movie, I'm generally not going to be including it in my headcanon, save for a few small details and timeline suggestions. (So Maho is still a boy, k.)

Name: Ginko! This is technically not his "real" name, but it's the only one he's familiar with.
Age: 21. The timeline in episode 26 says he's about ten when he joins the wandering troupe; the troupe visits once a year after getting him, and then we see Ginko again in the regular timeline ten years later.
Hair: White, shaggy, and messy, but about as clean as it's gonna get for someone who wanders around in Meiji Japan. It looks like he probably cuts it himself. The live-action movie gives him facial hair, but I think that looks kinda funny on him, so here he's clean-shaven.
Eyes: One eye is a strikingly bright shade of green; the other is ... um ... absent. There's a black void in the socket where the eye should be. .| Generally, though, he keeps his hair brushed over his absent left eye, so most people probably won't immediately notice that something's missing.
Height: Tall and stocky. I'd put him at around 6' or so.
Weight: He's built solidly, but he's not super-huge. 175 or so? I suck so hard at estimating weights.
Bloodtype: My canon isn't quite anachronistic enough for Ginko to know his own blood type. ... yet.

Medical info: Missing his left eye; he also got stabbed with a kitchen knife a few months ago, although he's mostly healed up by now. Also, albino. o/ Otherwise he has a clean bill of health.

For the spiritually inclined, you can probably tell that his albinism is caused by exposure to a mushi, which ... isn't the most healthy thing in the world. It might even kill him eventually. Maybe. ... but that's a couple decades away anyway.

Physical Traits: Since he kind of has to hike up and down mountains with a huge box on his back, Ginko's in pretty good shape. He isn't really a fighter, and he's not overly muscled, but he's got enough strength to cope with most of the travel dangers that would crop up in Meiji Japan. Also, tall. He's ethnically Japanese, but between the white hair, stocky build, and big nose, he probably doesn't look it. (I totally thought he might be a foreigner until we got the episode with his backstory.)

What's Okay to Mention: Just about anything! He'll make funny faces at you if you bring up the whole Yoki/Sui thing, or otherwise puzzle him, but hey, it's Ginko. He's pretty laid back about things.

Notes For the Psychics: Very, very calm. Very pleasant and soothing. He also tends to ( inner monologue ) every now and then, so feel free to pick up on that if you'd like.

Abilities: Physically? Nothing much. He's not completely worthless in a fight, but it's really not his thing. ... spiritually, he's got some stuff going on. Like Watanuki, he has a special non-human attracty-thing going on; unlike Watanuki, however, it's not nearly as personal as Watanuki's is. Unusual things tend to gather around him, eventually, but mushi generally don't come up to him and say HEY I'M YOUR NUMBER ONE FAN :DDDD or anything like that. If Watanuki is delicious cake (which you must eat), then Ginko is more like embers in a fireplace. They feel nice, and you might hang out closer than usual if you're lacking a more comfortable place to be, but it's not a strong attraction. And anyway, the effect is mitigated by the fact that he smokes a kind of cigarette that helps cut down the unwanted attention.

In addition to that, Ginko is a doctor. ... sort of. Kind of. He knows a lot about how the human body works and how mushi tend to affect it. But it's generally supernatural / folklore type medicine, so don't expect him to perform surgery any time soon. :| He also has a few small tricks up his sleeve, like taking the mushi express through the earth or binding things with his cigarette smoke. Otherwise, his primary asset is the giant box he carries around, since it's got info and medicine and all that great stuff.

Shapeshift/bodyswap/etc.: Ask me and we'll plan something!

Hugging/Kissing/Nicknaming: Feel free! He'll probably just ;; at you and indulge you, but it's a-okay with me.

Fighting: If you want, sure! He's pretty non-confrontational, though, so I doubt he'll get himself into trouble.

Maiming/Killing/Death: Sure! I don't foresee it happening, but I'm cool with it.

Healing: Healing/treating injuries acquired in camp is fine; healing his permanent attributes (missing eye, coloration) is not. Unless we're doing it for crack or something.

Stealing: DO NOT TOUCH THE BOX OR THE SMOKES. seriously I will cut you. :( This is partially because ... I don't know what's in the box, exactly! And partially because it's filled with irreplaceable things that'd be difficult to work around ICly. Humorous stealing is okay, but only if he gets his stuff back afterwards.

Cooking: Eh, he's probably okay. But not amazing.

Character: Ginko
Series: Mushi-Shi
Character Age: Canon is ambiguous; however, calculating the timelines given in the final episode puts him at right around 21 years of age.

Canon: Mushi-Shi is a beautiful, atmospheric series centered around an albino hobo who studies sparkly bugs for a living. … no really, that about sums it up. The bugs, or “mushi,” as the series calls them, are responsible for all things great and supernatural in the world, ranging from eye-eating parasites worthy of a CLAMP series to huge dragon-like spirit guardians who are responsible for all the wildlife on an entire mountain. Naturally, when humans interact with these mushi, things are bound to go just a tad bit wrong — which is where the bug-studying hobos, aka “mushi-shi,” come in. It’s their job to deal with the many supernatural problems that mushi cause, such as the aforementioned eye-voring types, as well as educate people in ways they can live alongside the critters without getting themselves homph-gomphed.

Ginko is the titular mushi-shi of the series. A quiet, laid-back young man, it’s rare to see him worked up about his job, save for the rare life-or-death instances that punctuate his otherwise quiet existence. And even then it’s more of a “:| god you are so stupid” moment more than outright panic. Most situations are handled with direct (if sometimes blunt) wisdom or even amusement, with the occasional moment of deadpan snark. Unlike most of his fellow mushi-shi, Ginko follows his own sort of prime directive; he generally tries to avoid killing the mushi when he can, and refrains from interfering in cases that aren’t doing anyone any harm. Which suits him just fine, in the end; he can’t settle anywhere particular, as his magical hobo abilities draw in the sort of unwanted mushi attention that makes staying in one place a rather dangerous pastime. He remains a mysterious figure throughout most of the series, leaving all the most important questions up in the air even at the end: Who is he, really? Where does he come from? And how the hell did he get a trenchcoat in the middle of Meiji Japan, anyway?

Sample Post:

Hold still for a moment. I don’t want you to lose that eye just yet.

You can feel it, can’t you? The mushi moving behind your eye-sockets. I imagine it’s been making life difficult for you lately. Corpses aren’t supposed to move around this much after death, so it’s no wonder all your limbs are falling off. It’s not your fault. If you had a choice, you’d be lying down somewhere comfortable instead of shambling around like this. That’s the zonbi-type mushi at work. Normally, it feeds off the weaker meme-types that cling to mammal brains, but without a wide enough variety of fresh food, it’s too small and weak to get the stronger ones that hide in the middle of the brain. So instead it takes up residence in an empty body and uses that to get at the brains it needs to survive.

“Braaains,” that’s right. Relax. This is going to take some time. … to be honest, I didn’t come entirely prepared for this. The Director’s letter laid out some of the details, but other than the village’s name and some directions, there wasn’t much. Saying that the mythical village of O-shi Fuudai has nearly ten thousand kinds of mushi was impressive, yes, but the list was a little vague. Reports of a takoiyaaaan-type living in the lake. Rumors of mushi turning the local bathwater into blood. … and 9027 counts of zonbi infestations. Maybe I should have paid less attention to the offer of free food every Tuesday. I hadn’t seen one zonbi in my travels up til now, much less over nine thousand of them, so I thought that any detour or inconvenience would be worth it to see that. Which is fortunate, considering what I had to go through to get here. No offense to your Director — it’s just the first time I’ve had to climb into a rabbit hole when entering a village. And the birds afterwards were … ah. There’s a first time for everything. Even hearing a sudden burst of music in your head. I’m beginning to wonder if everything here is some sort of mushi, or at least strongly influenced by them somehow. A great “Circle of Life,” according to the birds.

Keep holding still, there. We’re almost done. You have some damage in the eye sockets already, probably from the villagers fighting back against the mushi. Though not with arrows … maybe some kind of gunpowder explosive? Hmm. Here, you can hold your eye while I reach in there —

— like so. That wasn’t too hard. I’ll get a proper burial arranged once I’m done here. And in the meantime, he won’t mind if I borrow this zonbi-type mushi. It’s still just a little too rare for me to pass up at the moment. … even though I think I’m going to change my mind within a week or two.

One down — nine thousand twenty-six to go.

(( Voting went here: 51 IN / 1 OUT: 98.1%. ))