plantcomic

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Surprise update? Maybe. Enjoy.

#plant comic #comic #webcomic #chapter 24

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Happy easter, have a surprise update bc I really really really want to get into inking the next chapter hahaaah. Also end of chapter 23! This was another of those litte story nuggets/conversations I've been rewriting ferwently for months.. their pen pal cluster........ I used to call them orchids, but their fae and flower mix was very similar to Varpu's cluster.

#plant comic #webcomic #comic #chapter 23

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hello hi etc! It is part 3/4 of chapter 23, one more to go and I'm free of hiking for a little while.... It is easter soon, really looking forward for a 4 day mini vacation. I'm gonna cut up my monstera and maybe kill it, but it'll reach my apartment roof if I don't do that. So fingers crossed for that.

#plant comic #comic #webcomic #chapter 23

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Hello again, got the "being sick" part of the winter done hahaaahh, I'm a little bit late.

This update has a couple of spells, translations and little notes for those under read more. See you in a month again I guess, thanks for reading!

Bond with alder - spell

The red leaf of alder The slender finger of alder Strong is the power in your bark The anger of the woods in your curves

I sing you the song of fae, of milk hay's, of soil's child of May's child, of the spell maker of the bringer of golden spring

Give me a day, the time of one leaf The hazy time of the sun. Golden red from your treetop, one bend from your annual rings. A moment from inside your roots A moment from the deep waters.

Notes: Alder is known as "fae tree" in old beliefs, it has an innate connection to the väki of the woods. I was initially going to let Varpu call themselves "voikukka" (dandelion) here, but they might reserve it only for their favourite trees :) So there's a couple of older words for the same flower (mayflower and milkhay were some among many, many others. Dandelion was closely linked to agriculture and for cows especially, the finnish current name voikukka still literally means "butter flower".

Situational bond-breaking spell

Human flame, son of Ukko Leave us, this circle. For you the sunny morning, For us, the eternal evening.

Notes: Flame is a nod to the three-faceted soul thing, I've probably mentioned when bonding spells were last in the comic. It's a placeholder for löyly, which could've worked also, but I think I used fire imaginary in the original spell haha. Ukko is an ancient rain god, later renamed as a thunder god, but his reign and relationship to humans has been a bit different for other nordic-baltic sky gods. Here's it's just another nod for humans being Of Sky while fae is Of Soil.

#webcomic #comics #chapter 23 #plant comic

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Welcome to uuhh... chapter 23? Yeah! Chapter 23.... I don't have much else to say about it for now. Take care!

#webcomics #comics #chapter 23 #plant comic

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Thus concludes the summer chapter, just in time for midwinter and christmas!

Fun to spot people from Oulu in the comments! That is indeed the town I'm using as a reference for Ponsi. My night of arts usually ends at Tähtitornin kahvila around midnight, but decided to end this one in Åströminpuisto instead, a nod for many happy memories there.

Night of Arts has always been intertwined with Plant a little bit. An exciting summer evening, a feeble time between two seasons. Biking back home at night you can feel the change in the wind. Back when the story still existed as a rotating au in my mind, there was one specific song I heard once a year in night of arts that reminded me of the story. It finally got a proper online upload a couple of years ago and I was able to learn the words! Great moment for me (and my workmate that I forced to help me listen to the hard bits, I have poor hearing comprehension).

Here's to new year and better futures!

#plant comic #webcomic #comic #chapter 22

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Hello again for a surprise friday night update! I'll hopefully get this chapter wrapped up in next update. Winter has arrived in full and it feels both nostalgic and painful to draw summer memories...

#plant comic #comic #chapter 22

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Hello! Tried so hard to get this updated for yesterday as a birthday gift from me to uh- to me. But we had a craft fair and I went to do bobbin lace there for 5 hours accidentally and that's that.

Anyways, night of arts is forever. SO weird trying to draw summery festival now that winter is knocking on doors.

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You have no idea how HARD I tried to get this finished before my interrail trip last month! Didn't! Oh well! Welcome to the Night of Arts hulabaloo a month late!

Night of Arts, or White Nights in some circles is a summer happening very dear to me. So this chapters is quite unbashedly about some good memories from the years I've been attending, also about something else. We shall continue in the next update!

#plant comic #comic #webcomic #chapter 22

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Hi I'm back! Life's really busy huhh, I'll try to keep the once in a month update up haha :'D

If you follow my main blog (please don't), you might've seen a sketch comic of this chapter I did some time ago. Really liked it and it's easy and fun to do while gathering energy for something harder. So coffee!

#plant comic #webcomic #comic #g/t #FINE I'll tag it with it slhfslkdskjfhadkjlgkjfbdlkjd

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Welcome to chapter 20! Round numbers baby!!

For those curious, the song Tauno is playing is Nuku nuku nurmilintu, an old lullaby. I tried to make a looser translation from a part of its longer form "Tule ulkoa unonen / Käy unonen kätkyehen" (as many old folk songs, it has different iterations in different places).

All Varpu's spells use the same melody as well. I mean they don't have to, there are myriad of ways of how old finnish spell singing or talking can be done, I just personally like this melody most!

#plant comic #webcomic #comic #chapter 20

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AT LONG LAST I emerge from my burnout pile hello. This is the 2/2 of chapter 19! I still can’t draw cars but stopped caring hell yeah

(not burnt out for drawing but work is eating me alive and leaving me for beasts)

#plant comic #chapter 19 #webcomic #comic

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Hello and happy easter! This is part 1/2 of chapter 19!

I have nothing horribly clever to add, I thought it would be fun to give Varpu more of those little observation panels intentionally (I’ve done it a couple of times with him) so that’s a feature now.

#plant comic #plant #chapter 19 #webcomics #comics

[plantcomic]

Q&A part 2

I'm doing this purely to give some much needed context for Months and Stuff. Below me are old sketches I rummaged up from my pile of sketchbooks.

Most named things in Plant are religious. There's no real meaning behind that, I just thought it would be fun and also helps theme the name pool.

Weekdays are named after our Easter week

Monday - malkamaanantai - beamday Tuesday- tikkutiistai - stickday Wednesday - kellokeskiviikko - bellday Thursday - kiirastorstai RENAMED - frayday Friday - pitkäperjantai - longday Saturday - lankalauantai - yarnday Sunday - sukkasunnuntai - sockday

Months are named after old agricultural year. They are just translated finnish month names and I do not take critisism on the quality of that. Tried my best

January - Tammikuu - Hubmoon or Heartmoon, haven't decided yet Although "Tammi" means oak in our modern language, it apparently used to mean the middle part of a wheel. It's the center of the winter.

February - Helmikuu - Pearlmonth or Twinmonth, also yet not decided. This one is funny since pearl simply means the ice pearls on trees.

March - Maaliskuu - Soilmoon The month when snow starts to melt away a little bit. There are three different possible meaning for "maalis", but the meaning of soil or earth (both are maa) makes most sense.

April - Huhtikuu - Ashmoon Comes from old tradition of burning woods into kaski or huhta, a nutritious, ash-rich land to sow

May - Toukokuu - Sowmoon "Touko" means fieldworks at the start of the summer

June - Kesäkuu - Plowmoon While "kesä" means summer, the origin is maybe tied to first growths of the field. Kesanto, fallow, means different thing nowadays so I decided to change it.

July - Heinäkuu - Haymoon There are other older namings for this, but decided to be literal for once.

August - Elokuu - Harvestmoon Pretty self exploratory. "Elonkorjuu" means the harvest season and celebration.

September - Syyskuu - Autumnmoon yeah.

October - Lokakuu - Mudmoon yeah two

November - Marraskuu - Deathmoon or Demisemoon Winter is here baby! Marras is an old word meaning death or premonition of it.

December - Joulukuu - Wintermoon or Knuuttimoon Joulukuu literally means "Christmas moon", but I haven't yet decided how important that holiday is for plant world. The older name for the month, before christianity was "Talvikuu", for the winter. So I think I'm keeping that.

The midseasons, Kaamos, Loska, Suvi, and Eloaika are about what you could expect.

As a thank you for reading this far, below readmore is some sketches I found while looking for these infos. I'm getting the start of next chapter ready and posted next weekend, so welcome to part 2 of Plant! It's pretty much the same as part 1 but hopefully less depressing and more fun and with more characters and lots of berry hunting and singing and crafts!

Fae houses: An entrance to an underground house of Woodland fae, riverside hunting hut of River fae, and an example of Floral fae's hibernation hole.

Abandonned doodles for an abandonned illustration of some lategame stuff

Chill sauna times

Raspberries, flowers and one depiction of a mature Veil over city landscape

#plant comic

[plantcomic]

Q&A

Thanks for your questions! You can still send some, I’m planning on answering them next weekend and then starting to work with new chapter.

I’ve never been asked this, you’re the first! I don’t think I will. I might, possibly tell a short timeline, but dunno. A friend of mine is tracking time by Tauno’s beard development and that’s actually one of the tells!

Ooh hmmmm Plant started as a daydream AU to whatever characters I was currently obsessing with like, years back. So it has gone through a lot of variations spawning from the question of “hey what if there was a fairy who got their wings ripped off, would that be fucked up or what?” and to what kind of world it would be. If I was a braver writer I would have some strong message here, but I’m not and I just want to rotate these characters in my brain microwave for vibes.

On a smaller scale I guess things I focus on are grief, obviously, but also finding joy and contentment in everyday life. Tauno and Varpu aren’t going to save the world, but they can try to save each others and sometimes that’s all you can manage to do and sometimes that’s enough. And I’m obviously trying to work out my own mental issues here.

Tauno and Varpu live in a country called Suntio, which is one of the northern areas where wild fae still exists to some capacity. Southern contries, where human culture has longer history fae has disappeared entirely centuries or even millenia ago.

The birth of fae has probably something to do with how pristine the nature is. The more human handwork shows up, the less fae borns or lives there. Suntio and it’s neighbour contries still have some lived history with faekind from the time before their industrial revolution, and known wild fae populations deep in nature reserves. There’s minimal contact as fae tends to move when discovered. In some neighbour countries there’s a small push to awknowledge woodland fae as a type of human.

I’m not a plant scientist and don’t know shit of how fae is grown, but I assume it’s something to do with controlled environment mimicing natural meadows. Would explain the diverse flower population instead of more cost-effective monoculture.

Veil is extremely rare in the wild, so it’s not really a fear outside the factories:

Next some rattle from friends.

#plant #q&a

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Part 3/3 of chapter 18!

Questions time!

This is the end of part 1 of the story as we’ve now covered most of the beginning stuff. SO! Feel free to send questions, of world or of characters or some other stuff. I’d like to use this for both to share unnecessary lore and also to see if I’ve managed to cover all info things I wanted to cover here. Obviously stuff I’m planning on talking about later is another story.

#plant comic #webcomic #comics #chapter 18

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Part 2/3 of chapter 18!

There’s a couple of spells in this chapter. First is a part of an old Finnish bloodstopping spell, second one is mine, a bond breaking spell (fae magic deals with more specific rules so their spells are different compared to what humans use. More on this later, but in general fae goes by adjusting magic by commands, humans run by emotional intent.). Rough translations under read more.

Bloodstopping spell

Blood, stand like a wall, Gore, live like a fence. Stand like spear stands in the peatland, Like iron bar in the bedrock, Like clay in the harried rapids.

Bond breaking spell

Separate the knots of living, Sever the ropes from yesterday. Let the new morning come, The sun rise for only one of us.

#plant comic #plant #chapter 18 #webcomic #comic