the-sentient-mushroom

[the-sentient-mushroom]

dalton highway, alaska

august 2020

[the-sentient-mushroom]

[the-sentient-mushroom]

More October mushrooms 🍄

#poison mushroom #mushrooming #mushroom #mushroomcore #faerycore #faecore #forestcore #mosscore #moss #mushrooms #faery aesthetic #mushroom aesthetic #october #fall vibes #fall aesthetic #fall season #autumn #alaska

[the-sentient-mushroom]

Just some pretty October mushrooms 🍄

#fall #fall vibes #mushrooms #whimsical #mushrooming #alaska #october #poison mushroom cookie #poison mushroom #mushroom #i want to be tiny #faecore #faerie #fae #faerycore

[the-sentient-mushroom]

Southeast Alaska (SEAK) cultural things that made me go “huh” after I moved here from Colorado. (And that strike me whenever I travel down south)

Take off your shoes when inside the house.

Don’t use an umbrella. Umbrellas are for tourists (despite the fact that you live in a literal temperate rainforest)

Leaving you car unlocked and running when you run errands during the winter.

But locking it in the spring/fall because bears.

Don’t lock your front and back doors either

Buoy swings (a fishing buoy attached to a rope and hung from a tree for kids to swing on)

Complete seafood snobs

Unanimous dislike of fish farming

It’s rumored that commercial crab/shrimp fishermen will cut the buoys off subsistence crab/shrimp pots when the commercial fishing season starts

But I don’t know how true that is.

Wood stoves in nearly every house. Middle of town in a trailer? Wood stove.

No fire places, they don’t actually heat very well and just take up wood.

Lots of homeschoolers

Getting wished “happy solstice” on winter solstice because everyone is so excited to start gaining daylight.

Rhubarb everywhere (in food and gardens)

Obsession with a type of flower called fireweed

Counting down the days of summer based on the fireweed.

Rubber boots, specifically the Xtra-tuff brand, as everyday footwhere.

Like, you write your name on yours and decorate them to distinguish them from your friends’/family’s/neighbors.

Anyway, those are just the things that came to my mind. 🤷‍♀️

#alaska #small town vibes #small town things #Alaska small town #is this a culture? #i think it is #little that things everyone in a certain area or environment that knows about and takes part in certain things is a culture I think #southeast alaska #SEAK #small towns #funny

[the-sentient-mushroom]

elrond sipping his tea: how nice of you to join me for breakfast, thranduil. it’s certainly been a while hasn’t it. you remember bilbo, the hobbit from like seventy years ago? he has a kid now. i know you would just love frodo

thranduil:

thranduil: elrond, where’s my son

[the-sentient-mushroom]

I misread someone’s “I don’t own the Silmarillion” disclaimer as “I don’t own the Silmarils” and legit my only thought was a heartfelt “good” as though the Silmarils are a real thing and all of us are in constant danger of being murdered by the Sons of Fëanor if we don’t tell everyone on the internet we don’t own them

[the-sentient-mushroom]

[the-sentient-mushroom]

On the Helcaraxë

[the-sentient-mushroom]

[the-sentient-mushroom]

forgiveness. 

[the-sentient-mushroom]

The Barrow Wight, by Matthew Stewart.

[the-sentient-mushroom]

I suppose even a brief stay in Mandos is supposed to heal elves from the PTSD of dying, but for the sake of angst: imagining Glorfindel who never again can be chill about anyone touching his hair in any context, which is quite a big deal for a Noldo

[the-sentient-mushroom]

Among the ranks of the knights you are considered unstoppable. Unbeatable. The greatest warrior to have ever lived. Your secret is that you a unique weapon, one forged to send hails of burning lead at your foes… its a shotgun. You carry a shotgun.

[the-sentient-mushroom]

we make fun of thorin getting lost in the shire but you know the nazgul also had to keep asking for directions to find bag end so maybe hobbits’ city planning is just wack

[the-sentient-mushroom]

The creators of The Rings of Power seem to have forgotten (or never understood) Tolkien's one absolute core message:

WAR BAD

It's not something you should aspire to, it's not something to glory in. It's horrible and violent and all-around shit. But sometimes, you have no choice.

He was a veteran of WW1 ffs.

He saw it all, the blood, the dying, the dogged determination of his comrades and the women fighting to save lives, plugging bullet holes as best as they can. Holding the hands of the dying while being shelled.

But US culture is so rife with war glorification. In US media, depicting war as something horrid, something awful, something that should be avoided if at all possible - that started and stopped in the 80s.

"Saving Private Ryan" was the last hurrah of that line of works a decade later.

If you view, like, Eowyn through that lens? Her character arc isn't "strong war maiden turns into docile wifey". It's "Clinically depressed woman yearning for one last act of glory and then death gets confronted with the realities of battle, does what she strove for, but realizes that she wants to live. And do something with her life that doesn't involve bloodshed and killing."

Because Tolkien doesn't see glory in war.

Or, to bring in a quote from another franchise: "Wars make no one great."

And if you lose that message? You lose everything.

[the-sentient-mushroom]

You mentioned Maedhros being unable to drop certain habits formed in asngband. What kind of habits are those?

Angband World Building and Aftermath of Captivity Masterlist

This is just a small collection! There are definitely more and I’m honestly considering doing a long post for both Maedhros and Húrin if there’s interest!

Angband lives in the bones and blood

It never lets you go

There is a reason Maedhros was one who had returned from the dead and why, upon sight of Túrin in the garb of a warrior, the possibility that his father had returned from death seemed as likely a possibility as his escaping the pits of Hell

a lot of these have appeared in various stories of mine and headcanon posts but I had too much fun writing this! I linked some relevant ones as I went or just mentioned them, feel free to ignore those, it’s partly just for my own references

as always the physical and psychological aftermath of Angband is an area of huge interest to me so always feel free to ask more!

Hoarding of food, anxiety over food (talked about in more detail here)

Maedhros never truly recovers from the physical or psychological effects of long term starvation.

He hoards food casually throughout his life, strongly dislikes and mistrusts depending on others for food and avoids group meals

His mistrust and anxiety over resources extends to non food as well

Obsession with repaying even small favors, not being in one’s debt (even if they wouldn’t demand it) or refusing favors or gifts

This is typical among escapees of Angband as I talk about here

Angband thrives on controlling resources, enforcing cruelty and humiliation in exchange for goods or safety and lopsided systems of debt and bargaining

Language and speech is another thing I’ve spoken about before. It’s hard to overstate how profoundly demoralizing the effects of captivity are on how one views interpersonal relationships, language and conversation, self advocacy and more.

Maedhros certainly acts as an eloquent diplomat and orator post Angband but he never fully regains his confidence or security in his words and never fully returns to his previous love of conversation and rhetoric

Fealty and power (too many posts to link)

Maedhros learns relatively quickly that the required demonstration of submission and debasement in Angband only horrify those on the outside and he is mortified the few times he replicates them or nearly does

Nevertheless his stomach still clenches, his body hurts as it fights the urge to bow, to curl in on itself, to prevent the pain of the wrath of a mad god.

The concept that he had power or authority also takes time to become used to

Guilt over privacy

Undressing behind closed doors was extremely welcome and near panic inducing

Touch, closeness and intimacy

His relationship with touch and intimacy was hugely impacted. I won’t go into too much detail here because it more specifically addresses torture but my the hidden hours tag has a lot as does the masterlist!