Love the unloved.

Ikuhara's Episode Commentary: 14: "The Boys of the Black Rose"

I saw a certain horror movie when I was in middle school. There was a secret mortuary in an underground chamber, and the dead were electronically transmitted (!), still in their coffins, to the “other world,” where they were forced into slavery.

The movie’s story was utterly absurd, but the division of the world into opposite poles of “living” and “dead” felt real to me, somehow.

Our world has been spoken of in bipolar fashion for ages.

In my student days, there was a popular book that compared the “affluent” with the “non-affluent,” and sorted everything into categories called “loaded” and “broke.” It was the bubble era, and the aim of the book was probably to get a laugh by saying “They call us wealthy, but our lifestyle’s practically in the trash can!”

But for some reason, I couldn’t laugh.

Years later, the phrase “the winning side” was popular in the media. I thought it was horrid. And sure enough, people started using the opposite phrase “the losing side” as a masochistic joke. I still couldn’t laugh, though.

One day, a girl I saw on TV said, “There are only two types of people in this world: the ones who are chosen and the ones who aren’t chosen.”

That gave me a start.

“To not be chosen is to die,” said the girl.

I decided to try my hand at that.

Cellar spiders consumed by engyodontium aranearum

multitudes

Animal Flask, late 7th–8th century, probably made in Syria.

Here's the other illustration I did for MTG Edge of Eternities, Xu-Ifit, Osteoharmonist!

“The living look was grown in sea-water baths over several months within a specialised nutrient gel. In collaboration with Chris Bellamy, the Pyrocystis Lunula algae were moulded into an protective membrane then attentively cared for in conditions to mimic their natural marine home, with humidity, temperature, and circadian rhythm all tuned to their precise needs. The chamber in which the living look is nurtured becomes, therefore, a microcosm of the ocean’s delicate balancing point. Caring for the garment, and for the 125 million Pyrocystis Lunula it contains, requires a symbiotic relationship and redefines the creation traditions entirely, as the garment is cultivated rather than constructed.”