michikirah

[michikirah]

a comic i started in november 2023, then didn't know how to finish as the numbers kept growing higher and higher. then they grew too high not to finish it

[michikirah]

(trying to give relationship advice) from a narrative perspective i think both of you dying together would be the most emotionally satisfying resolution but i’m guessing that’s not what you want to hear

[michikirah]

Working out when you’re not a middle schooler with horrid case of body dysmorphia is actually so fun. Yeah I’m gaining muscle. That’s the point! It’s so good to be healthy and strong so I can set myself up for more comfort when I’m no longer in my prime!

Dysphoria is still a thing though give me top surgery NOW.

[michikirah]

Cleaning gets easier when you remember it's a thing you're doing to make your life less miserable, and not a thing you're doing as punishment

[michikirah]

‼️COMIC ANNOUNCEMENT‼️

JOURNEY TO THE ORIGIN: PILOT COMING THIS JUNE

➡️will be on Tapas and Webtoon Canvas⬅️

This story project is set in a civilization of insectoid androids living on an exoplanet long after humans have passed. The story follows Kleo and Sinthe, two droid teenagers trying to find out the truth of their existence as well as emotional stability in their ever-changing lives. What is their place in this world? What is the Origin? And lastly, why do they feel so… human?

Genres: Drama, coming of age, character study, sci-fi with fantasy and horror elements

Warnings: May deal with emotionally heavy situations and toxic relationships, as well as some body and psychological horror

Due to other life events such as school, I am unsure if I will continue the series past the pilot. In fact, creating the 41 pages of the pilot alone took a year of my time. This is also my first time uploading a comic to the public, so expect a few bumps along the way!

Preview:

[michikirah]

I've just. I've got feelings about Mensah and Murderbot in ep 6.

She's obviously mad. She's got the disappointed mom voice in Full Effect, the one that makes you wanna go "hey I gotta go be. Anywhere else. Where you're not looking at me." From her perspective, this SecUnit's voiced that it doesn't particularly care that the others are in danger, it's dumped helpful data to make room for trash TV, slacking on its job and now endangering everyone's lives. She's understandably furious.

I don't think the episode of Sanctuary Moon calmed her down. I think the realization that Murderbot was doing its best, for her, surprised her enough to shake her out of it.

I mean, first of all, it starts singing the theme song. We've already established this is weird enough to make a combat SecUnit stop and go "what the fuck," and Mensah definitely has the same reaction. She's upset because to her, this is just SecUnit caring more about its shows than about the team again. But then it's picked a "calming episode." More than that, it's picked one specifically to help her current issue. It's breathing along with the show. She's watching, in real time, how it uses this trash TV show to better understand humans, and is now trying to use it to help her, specifically, with her exact needs, right now.

I think at this moment she realizes SecUnit isn't good at being a person the way she thinks about people, expects people to be, and recalibrates her understanding of it as something that is very much not a person, but trying to interact with her in a way that she understands, when she hasn't been doing so for it as much. I think this confusion and realization stops the initial anger and fear long enough for her to recenter and for them to move forward.

[michikirah]

fawn

insta / patreon

[michikirah]

An Eye for an Eye

Rereading some older Witch Hat Atelier chapters on my flight yesterday and I think some of the mystery pieces are starting to connect. Spoilers up to Chapter 87 (most recent of this writing) throughout.

We have two big lore mysteries that seem to have something to do with each other. First is the identity and intentions of Iguin, the masked witch who caused our inciting incident by giving Coco the magic book and wand:

And the other is the mystery of Quifrey's past and the fate of his other eye:

I think that the revelations of the most recent chapters gives us enough material to partially solve these mysteries.

First, the eye.

When Quifrey was found, his eye had been taken away completely and he had been buried in a box in the ground. Planted, you might say. Now, his eye looks like this:

It's been sealed over in a way that's very similar to the way the parasitic silverwood seals over missing body parts:

(note that the person who explains the function of the parasitic silverwood to Coco is Quifrey, and he claims that he's probably the only person who understands how this works)

If it's true that Quifrey's eye has been replaced by a parasitic silverwood growing in his head, it would also explain why he feels the need to hide the truth from Olruggio - if he gets too comfortable, it will literally kill him. His goal of stopping the Brimhats is sufficiently important to him that he can't let himself be comfortable until he succeeds.

Notably, though, Quifrey isn't particularly concerned for his own sake (the implication of him not allowing himself comfort until the Brimhats are foiled is that, once he does, he knows he'll die). It's the eye he's worried about.

So it's not just that they took his eye out - they did something specific with it. I wonder what?

Let's now turn to our second mystery.

The thing that made the pieces start to connect with me, upon this reread, is this scene here:

This is the bit right after it's revealed that Iguin gave Coco some very powerful ink as a gift. The ink, it turns out, is Iguin's own blood. Metal! But we know where magic ink comes from - it comes from the silverwood tree. Indeed, Coco was able to use Custas's sap as ink in the most recent chapter:

We know that the parasitic silverwood can regrow limbs and patch over scars. And we know that its sap is ink.

So the question is: how much of a person could it regrow? How much can it replace? And most importantly, why is Quifrey on the lookout for a guy who looks just like him?

I think it's pretty clear that Iguin is a being grown from Quifrey's right eye by a parasitic silverwood tree. He wears a mask with just an eye on it because he's... literally just an eye with a body grown around it. He and Quifrey form a literal yin-yang symbol - a tree eye in a human body and a human eye in a tree body.

It makes sense for the parasitic silverwood to be such a central part of the plot of the series. It's really a perfect little bit of worldbuilding for the central theme of the series - that comfort is both the most valuable and dangerous thing in the world. Pointed-cap society has a set of rigid rules that, when applied indiscriminately, do a pretty good job of giving (most of) them a comfortable world to live in. And yet, the comfort of their rigid ideology is rotting away their society from within. They fail to see the people who are harmed by their ideology because it would be uncomfortable to do so.

We haven't seen as much of the Brimhats, so we don't really know what life is like for them, but I strongly suspect they're the opposite side of the coin. They have all the freedom and power they want, but only because they are miserable. In the most recent chapter Ininia says this basically flat out:

Their ideology is just as rigid, but it's designed to be uncomfortable, not comfortable. That's the only thing that keeps the silverwood at bay - that keeps magic from consuming them. They need to keep hating and disdaining the pointed caps because it's the only thing that keeps them going. Custas' love for his father was enough positive emotion to destroy him. How miserable must the rest be?

So, we have Quifrey and Iguin as Coco's twin teachers, each giving her one side of the coin. It's up to her to find a third way.

[michikirah]

this summer you can find me laying in the grass for long hours. u can find me at sunrise watching the sky getting dressed in purple & pink & orange. u can find me reaching for my books and crying over poems. this summer i'm befriending the world and the trees and my pen and every blank page i encounter. this summer i'm loving and i'm running and i'm trying !

[michikirah]

i just feel like friendship is one of the most expansive and beautiful forms of love you can ever experience and i wish we gave it more credit

[michikirah]

A witch puts a spell on a girl, a sleeping spell that promises the girl shall wake through true love’s kiss. Men come and kiss her. She slumbers. Women come and press their lips to hers, but still she sleeps. Many years past, and the girl remains still. One bright morning,  a lost little boy finds her resting spot and clears the dust and grime from her face. He offers her a kiss on her forehead, and her eyes flutter open. She never feels romantic love for a man nor a woman, and she cares for the boy until the day she dies.

A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.

They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.

There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.

Many kinds of love exist. It doesn’t all have to be romantic.

[michikirah]

thinking about all the “small” art that’s ever existed. songs that were only ever sung in one village. stories written by children that got lost in the shuffle. personal paintings that didn’t survive the test of time. how they affected the lives of just a few, but still existed, still mattered to someone.

[michikirah]

Nice people make the best Nazis. Be mean, be tough, have a fascist tooth/skull collection.

[michikirah]

You know what I like most about the Murderbot/Gurathin dynamic at this point in the series? They’re both broken, both hurting, and both WRONG.

Gurathin has background we don’t yet know, but he is clearly traumatized after his experiences in the Corporation Rim. He is understandably suspicious and hostile toward anything coming out of the CR (see him reacting similarly to MB and LeeBeeBee). He sees SecUnits as a tool of oppression, as rent-a-cops (and rent-a-guns) of the corporation, and his reaction to having to be in close proximity to one is understandably suspicious and hostile.

But it’s so suspicious and hostile it tips into paranoia. He is so damaged by what happened to him that he can’t see what happened to someone else. He can’t see that it’s in a very similar position as he likely once was, with just as little choice. He can’t extend grace to it, can’t even extend personhood to it, because he finally has something to direct his fear and his pain and his trauma at.

And SecUnit absolutely responds in kind. It is an enslaved, constructed being owned by a corporation that would melt it down at the first opportunity. And this person (whose opinions it frequently agrees with), is openly suspicious. He’s performing what he might consider a stress-test on the SecUnit, which MB experiences as an excruciating stare-off. And from there, MB has the first human it’s openly allowed to loath. All of its own pain, its own trauma, has an outlet.

And its frustrations bubble over into a physical assault. It doesn’t matter if it was completely in control, if it had no intention of actually harming Gurathin. Gurathin was an asshole to it, and so it used its far superior physical strength to throw him against a wall, hold him by the throat, and aim a charged weapon at his face. Its reasons are understandable, but its actions go too far. Both their actions go too far.

They are just such a delicious example of “hurt people hurt people”. You can see the line of their reasoning, and when they step over the line. You can see that they go after one another because they’re both outsiders to this group, both damaged by the same source, but turning on one another in their pain.

It feels so real. This is what people do. This is what messes people are. They don’t turn their pain on its source, because they can’t reach the source. They turn it on the first target they deem acceptable, and they cross the line from trauma to traumatizing.

[michikirah]

As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.

[michikirah]

link: https://bsky.app/profile/brainvsbook.bsky.social/post/3llc72lyhu22j

google translate defaulting to chinese at first

okay but for those of us with interests in both the murderbot and the daomu biji fandoms this is kinda hilarious

(english-side-only really, i get that the kanji and hanzi are completely different)

our good (air)ship murderbot! thanks google

[michikirah]

poking at you with a stick. Cmon buddy let’s share to the class they’re not gonna bite

shoutout to one of my best friends for braving the initial tumblr shock and learning how to tag and reblog

well I hear you’ve learned I have yet to see it happen

patiently waiting for you to make that first post