fluffedink

take me with you, or let me follow

was casually enjoying this series then Part 2 Ch 2 hit me like an unkissed brick and I found myself unable to stop drawing for it for the last couple days. I made a handful of concept work, and 2 fancy drawings below :) Thank you @grimmseye for making it a fun few days for me, I hope you enjoy these too ///sliiides tagging it for spoilers, but just in case any anime-onlys run into this, you'd need to have read up to Chapter 92 of the manga--scroll scroll fast and away if this somehow falls through

can you tell i had a lot of fun doing textures. textures are dope I need to do more of that Some concept art and extras under the cut:

i would have never known there was so much more to see than just the bottom of the ocean if you hadn't taught me⟡

☆art prints☆

when you look at that boy it feels like something inhuman looks right back at you...

What if the reason Qifrey is going blind isn't because he was blind before - it's because the silverwood tree literally bleaches him of pigment.

Walk with me here. Lack of pigment in the eye can cause photophobia (sensitivity to light, glares) and iris transillumination (excess light entering the eye). Both cause significant discomfort and severe vision issues even in normally lit conditions.

Both also have long-term adverse effects, as the retina is damaged by long-term exposure to light (source)(yes it's wikipedia, who are you, my highschool english teacher? sue me)

Qifrey's vision issues have to do with specifically light senstivity, after all.

And we can see that one of the adverse effects of the silverwood tree is leaching pigment - it's the first thing Qifrey notices about Custas.

We also know that these effects are made vastly worse by coming back from partial tree-ification: Custas' hair goes white after he nearly fully trees out and is brought back, and we know for a fact Qifrey has been pushed to the point of tree'ing several times and had his mind wiped several times before he is found in the coffin.

I thought I was being paranoid at first, but look at the covers Qifrey features on as well:

His eye IS getting paler. They're more silver than they are blue in the volume cover of 12 vs the volume cover of 3.

All this was started because it makes no sense to me why the silverwood wouldn't "fix" the eyesight the way it fixed his shoulder or Custas' legs if that was truly the reason why he was given the seed in the first place:

Now you could say "well he doesn't remember, that COULD have been the reason", but I genuinely don't think it is. After all, he has it to thank for both of his eyes.

By living with the parasite for so long, it's leaching everything from him - but it's also forcing him to slow down. Taking his eyesight is in the parasite's best interest in the way that it forces a person to settle. That's just side-faff though.

Another thing pointing to loss of pigmentation causing all this:

When the branches are healthy, they're silver white.