Aromantic asexual atheist obsessed with Star Wars, LotR, and other assorted geekdoms. I appear and disappear in spurts and reblog everything on a queue. Most stuff is tagged plainly for navigation, so have fun wandering here.
Commonly called Violet Despair, Violet Deceiver, False Delight, Purple Liar, and Shadow Deceiver in Westron.
*elvish name pending someone better at Sindarin than me devising one.
They grow in the southern part of Mirkwood, near Dol Guldur, and in the poisoned lands around Minas Morgul, where instead of arsenic they absorb the Shadows of the place, becoming darker and richer in color, and capable of swamping you with despair and paranoia if you eat them.
They predate the Shadow, but without a source of evil and corruption to feed upon they were nearly harmless: used often for dyes and decorations, although rarely for eating, for even then the Violet Deceiver was known for feeding on the rot and echo of darker feelings, and thus their flesh often became tainted with these sensations and capable of inducing fear, sorrow, and dismay in those who ate them.
Those fungi which found Evil on which to feed were, of course, much worse.
They are not quite bioluminescent, but their coloring is vibrant enough that in the black shadows of Mirkwood’s trees and Mordor’s gloom, they can trick the eye into thinking that they glow; but it is a glow that sheds no light to drive back the surrounding dark.
The Rangers of Ithilien encounter them much more rarely than do the elves of Mirkwood, for the Rangers do not brave the lands close to Minas Morgul; but they have come across them often enough to know to be wary of them also. (Among the Rangers, the mushrooms are sometimes referred to as “Violet Joys,” as a form of bitter irony.)
Their spores exude a mild compulsory effect, tempting those who smell them to eat them, even when they know better.
The initial taste of the mushroom is sweet, almost too sweet, thick and cloying; this is followed quickly by a sharp sensation of peppery heat, and then a heavy nauseating muskiness (although few people are paying much attention to the taste at that point; mostly the latter is noted as a foul, rotten aftertaste lingering for a while in the mouths of the survivors).
Their scent is distinctive: alluring and floral, like lilies or lilacs, but with a hint of the sickly-sweet stench of rotting flesh lurking beneath that floral fragrance. By the time you notice the latter, you are already close enough to be imperiled.
Consuming even a single mushroom is enough to trigger the effects, engendering overwhelming sensations of despair and paranoia. Most victims report simultaneous symptoms of both, but some experience primarily hopelessness, while some suffer predominantly from the fear, and others vacillate between the two extremes.
Eating more than three or four will leave one in a fraught emotional and even hallucinatory state for several hours, or even days.
There have been no known cases of fatal poisonings from consuming the mushrooms, but many folk—elves and mortals—have died while under the effects, whether as a result of blundering into some peril they could not properly comprehend, being too absorbed or apathetic to defend themselves against another threat, or from breaking under the despair and terror and taking their own lives before their senses clear.
The Unhoused Shades that haunt Southern Mirkwood are prone to lingering near the mushrooms as well—or perhaps it is the other way around, and it is the rot of those trapped souls upon which the mushrooms feed.
Ideally we ask you to link back to this post so that other readers can likewise make use of this bit of shared world building, but that’s not a hard requirement for inclusion in your works.
All you have to do it not claim the idea for your own, and continue to freely share it with anyone else who wants to play too.Thank you!
Just saying, if you’re looking for a line at which to accept our “checks and balances” system is not checking nor balancing anything,
“Government admits to trafficking an innocent man to foreign prison camp, then refuses to get him back” is about as clear cut a line as it gets.
My brother who is super into Roman history (not in a racist way) is visiting for Easter and keeps pointing out how very directly and specifically everything happening in the US government parallels specific events of the fall of the Roman Empire. He’s all like “yeah THIS was the point where the Roman leaders realised that they could do anything without reprisal which means that the laws didn’t apply to them, and what’s happening right now is the point where things had gone far enough that the populace as a whole had no choice but to accept that” and giving specific names of specific powerful Romans and relating parts of their speeches and decisions to parts of US politicians’ speeches and decisions.
I feel like that’s not a promising sign for the future.
i don't know if this counts as a research question, you can delete it if it does, i just can't find answers to these things specifically for hands
i have a character with mild burns from soap and bleach on his hands, just like i have
so i've given him all of the issues i have with my own hands, but the problem is i don't know if these symptoms i mention here can be attributed to the burns or may be related to other conditions i have, like i think the atrophy in my hands is from what's atrophying the rest of my muscles, not the burns
but the symptoms i'm most wondering about is that when my hands get hurt, the scars tend to stick around for a long time, i still have one right now from months ago, just from a scratch, and i have an intention tremor
are these things that can be caused by burns?
this character does have a bunch of undiagnosed and unexplained symptoms like i do so it's not really novel for him to have other symptoms that may also affect his hands, but
Chemical burns on skin, depending on their intensity, can cause longer-term damage to the skin. This specific scar situation isn’t something that is explicitly stated as being a side effect of burns, but chemical burns can cause affected skin to heal more slowly. This could potentially be what is happening with your scars that you could reflect on your character.
Another thing about scars is that most of them fade over time, but everyone has a different skin makeup that affects how long this takes, and some people scar way easier. My boyfriend scars very easily, so a small scratch can leave a permanent scar on him while the same scratch will fade away completely for me. (I know this very well because we have a cat.)
It’s possible that your hands used to have one particular tendency to scar, but after the mild burns, this tendency changed, and now your hands specifically are more prone to scarring or to visible scarring.
I don’t know anything about muscle atrophy and scarring nor could a cursory search tell me anything specifically, but I wonder if they’re tangentially related even if the skin isn’t a muscle.
I don’t think there’s any specific answers to the causes that we could give you, but those are some possible options that could be the case for your character or for you.
Months after a viral haka was performed in New Zealand parliament, the controversial bill that sparked it has now been defeated. The Treaty Principles bill sought to redefine the which is New Zealand’s founding document. The bill was brought by ACT Party leader David Seymour, who believed the current interpretation of the treaty gave more rights to Māori people than non-Māori New Zealanders. After two years of debate and nationwide protest, the bill was voted down by all but one party.
Hot take: the following things can be simultaneously true:
America has always done bad things
Trumpism is connected to the failures of Reconstruction
Trump is still a uniquely terrible figure who ushered in a uniquely destructive era in American politics
Snide remarks like “lulz, lmao, you think Trump is bad? America was ALWAYS bad” contributed to the cynicism, nihilism, and apathy which led to not enough people caring about the country to try to stop him at the ballot box
It reminds me of people being outraged when Democrats responded to something like Charlottesville with “this isn’t who we are”; yeah, obviously that’s always been part of America, but rhetoric has an impact and it both empowers white supremacists and demoralizes normies to say “yep, white supremacists represent America and everything has always sucked shit.” There are consequences to pretending all people and eras are equally bad, because then people stop taking new and dire threats seriously, and there are consequences to people believing their society is always and forever evil, because then they don’t fight against those threatening to harm that society. You don’t need to whitewash history to understand any of this.
All of this is true. Let me tell you a story to illustrate.
Once upon a time, there was a impoverished king whose kingdom was under a curse. When his son the prince was old enough, the king sent him out to break the curse, but things had been so bad for so long that all the prince could take with him was a lump of cheese and a crust of bread. On the road, he met a beggar, a woman even poorer than he was, who said: “Please, spare some bread, prince.” The prince said, “All I have is a lump of cheese and a crust of bread; we can share.” He split it equally. Other things happened and eventually he broke the curse with the help of a good witch who revealed herself to have been the beggar on the road. Everyone lived happily ever after, the end.
This story is not representative of reality. Kings are never actually poor compared to common people, there is no such thing as curses, and princes don’t generally stop to talk to starving beggars unless it’s for a PR stunt.
But that story is important. The story doesn’t tell us who we are or how the world is; the story tells us who we aspire to be and what we want the world to look like. It reminds us of proper behavior (kindness and charity with no expectation of repayment is a virtue) and asserts some societal values and beliefs (good behavior will surely be rewarded; virtue is the right path toward solving your problems).
We can and should be mindful of the stories we’re telling. But “Actually, this IS who we are; this has always been who we are, how dare you say that it isn’t?” is, from a mythological perspective, not a functional story if the function you’re aiming for is to change things. Now, it is still an important thing to say, because it’s part of the story. But it’s only the first part – “Once upon a time, there was an impoverished king whose kingdom was under a curse.” Yep. Yes, that’s true. It is indeed under a curse. You’re 100% correct about the curse. It is right there for anyone to see if they care to look.
But if the story ends there, then the curse does not get broken – not in the story and not in reality. Yes, we know about the curse, we’ve all heard about the curse. It’s going to take a lot of work to break the curse, and any of us can become the prince and set out on a quest. But in order for the story to fulfill its intended function, what it also needs to tell us is: What small virtue should we exhibit on the road which will turn out to be the actual key to breaking the curse later on? Not what we should avoid doing, but what we should strive to embody. Which seemingly-distasteful people should we show kindness and solidarity to, whether or not they turn out to be a helpful ally later? What is the reward for virtuous striving?
Now, a lot of leftists will scoff at this: “What, you need rewards? You need brownie points for doing a good thing?” Well, I don’t, because I was told a sufficient amount of fairytales in my childhood to have acquired a solid cultural belief that good things will come later if I virtuously strive for kindness now. I heard enough stories to know how that goes.
But do other people need rewards? Often, YEAH SORT OF. We as humans at least need to believe that a reward is possible, because then that tells the dopamine centers of the brain, “You did a good thing? Ooh, I know this pattern!! REWARD INCOMING. Let’s go ahead and feel great about it now. [dopamine!!!]” When that happens, you’ve taught someone that virtue is its own reward.
This is how humans work. This is how you hack the human brain. This is how you build toward a better future – you tell stories of the journey, of a good person doing a good thing and being rewarded. And the more times you tell that story, the more people believe it to be true, and the more virtue does become its own reward, and the more real and actionable it is to break the curse on the kingdom.
“This isn’t who we are” is a story – perhaps an imperfectly-worded one, but it’s pointed in a Direction. It’s saying that this thing did happened but it was WRONG, that it SHOULDN’T happen. We all know it does happen. We all know about the curse. But we must, MUST, MUST believe that it is possible to break the curse – otherwise, we are left with a half-story that saps away our energy and leaves us asking, “What’s the point?”
Maybe the curse cannot be broken. But we MUST tell the story that it can, even if it feels like a lie at the time, because when you shoot for the moon and miss, you land among the stars. “Actually this IS who we are, this has ALWAYS been who we are” does not shoot for the moon. It is shooting at the ground. And hey, good news, it hits every time! You’re 100% right every time! People reblog that shit going “Mmm, wow, yeah, so insightful, we all need to remember this, so important.” And yet we do not reach the stars. We tear each other down, and we never end up offering a crust of bread to a potential ally, so the curse does not get broken.
But what next? What’s step two?
“Actually, this has always been who we are” carries the implication that this WILL ALWAYS BE who we are. It is cynical, it is nihilist, it is pessimistic to a degree that baffles me. Do you truly believe what you’re implying? Is that the story you tell yourself? That nothing will ever change? That nothing will get better? Does this stony, grim resignation actually protect you from the curse, or does it only protect you from heartbreak and disappointment? Why is it easier to scoff than it is to even acknowledge the possibility of working towards breaking the curse? What is going on in your head to make you tell the story that nothing has ever changed and nothing will ever change? Have you forbidden yourself from any hope, from any faint dream of a better world where the curse is one day broken? Have you ever dared to dream big of what a post-curse world would look like, how it would feel to live in it?
Maybe you’re right that it will never be broken in your lifetime, that you will always be living under the curse – but are you telling that story to your children, telling them that there’s no hope for them either, no chance that they might live to see a better world? Do you insist to them that they too have to bitterly accept the presence of the curse instead of questing to break it? And if we all settle into bitter acceptance, then what incentive do we have to set out on a quest and to be kind to those we meet on the road?
I will tell you a story:
Once upon a time, there was a kingdom under a curse. Everyone knew the curse had always been here, and would probably always be there. There were people working to resist the curse and helping those who had been affected by it. But a lot of other people looked at what they were doing and just scoffed in apathy: “What’s the point of thinking about a world without the curse? Haven’t they heard about the curse? We should be talking more about how bad the curse is. As far as I’m concerned, there has been no progress or change to the curse in the past, and there will be no progress in the future; the only time that exists is the cursed Now. So what’s the point?”
Other people were angry at those who were trying to help: “What you’re doing is stupid. The curse is something that’s baked into society. You’d know that if you’d really listened to the people who are suffering the most from the curse. You know, I hate those ignorant, naive people who think they can break the curse. I have nothing but contempt for them.”
Other people were paranoid: “Those people, the ones trying to break the curse, they want to steal the crust of bread that my mother and her mother worked so hard to hoard away from the effects of the curse! They’re literally going to come into my house to take my crust from me! Thieves!”
Other people, hearing someone mention a historical figure who had once tried to break the curse or who had succeeded in another kingdom, were quick to say: “Friendly reminder, that person was Bad somehow! So we shouldn’t tell stories about that Bad, Bad Person who did a thing that was Bad. We also shouldn’t bother talking about people who tried and failed to break the curse. We should only remember people who were morally perfect AND who succeeded in their quest. :) Which leaves… [checks list] no one! :) …Why are you mad? Wait, you don’t SUPPORT Bad People, do you? Ew! You’re not a cursebreaker, at all, then! You’re a FAKE! I don’t want anything to do with you!”
Other people had found ways to benefit from the curse: “The curse is good, actually. Society would literally collapse without it. People who want to break our beloved curse basically want to tear down the kingdom; they’re traitors. We’re going to enforce the rule of law on anyone who goes questing, because only traitors do that.” And all the people who were mad and apathetic and paranoid and worried about Bad People nodded along and said, “Yes, you see? There is no point to going on quests or thinking about breaking the curse. The curse is eternal. It’s just as I said.”
But there was a poor woodcutter, even poorer than the king of the cursed kingdom, and he told stories to his son: “Curses can be broken. Quests are important. Be kind to the people you meet on the road and share what you have with them. Virtue will be rewarded one day.”
So his son grew up believing those things. And because he didn’t know the things that everyone knew – that some curses are eternal, that quests often end in disappointment, that sharing what you have always means that there’s less of that thing for yourself, and that virtue always goes entirely unrewarded and doesn’t deserve acknowledgment or celebration – because he didn’t know those rules, he still went out questing. He still tried.
And perhaps he didn’t manage to break the curse so that everyone could live happily ever after. but that day that he met the beggar on the road, and he remembered all the stories that his father told him, so he shared his crust of bread and lump of cheese with her… And he lived happily that day, and so did she.
Ah, thank you for the ask! Well, this says ‘leaves’ and I’m me so - this is going to be about Legolas. (No one is surprised XD.)
I think for this title I would write a story about Legolas feeling restless. There’s so much movement implied in 'Wind in the Leaves’.
It could be about his sea longing. But I think it might be more interesting to me to write about him doing his rewilding work in Ithilien and he notices something that makes him think of Gimli, and suddenly he feels immensely restless. Like he just has to go to Aglarond for a visit or he’ll crawl out of his skin.
And just like that, his work crew watches him ride off, calling a promise over his shoulder as he disappears into the wind that he’ll be back.
I’m pretty sure I thought he was funny when I was a kid, but reading book 7 as an adult?
I’m just constantly thinking ‘wow dude no wonder Naomi left you’
Rachel’s dad reminds me of the musical Rent. In that when you’re young, you’re rooting for one side and then once you’re an adult, you realize, “Oh. Yeah, I totally get Benny/Naomi’s side now.”
Also that perfectly describes Rachel’s relationship with her dad as she grows up and gets more involved in the war too.
I’m glad so many of us read this book at Rachel’s age like “awww, her dad’s really cool! It’s a shame he’s moving away.” And then reread the book at Naomi’s age like “holy shit this dude SUCKS, and him trying to parentify Rachel is the cherry on the shit sundae.”
And then in every other Rachel book after this it’s like “yeah, my dad has missed like every other visitation he had with us”
Aaaaaarrrrrggh, him in #32 not even letting Rachel finish explaining why she’s upset before he goes “have you tried talking to your mom about this?” Like, fffuuuuuuuck yyoooooouuuuu.
“Pretty sure dragon fire is hotter than a forge,” your party’s leader pants. Kent is a veteran adventurer of twenty years to your two years and he’s seen his fair share of dragon fire before today. There are curling scars dragging the corner of his mouth down into a permanent scowl that pairs oddly with how high he has his salt-and-pepper eyebrows. He exhales noisily. “I think you’re just a freak, actually.”
“Not nice,” Sella says. The archer is your age with twice your experience. Her leather armor is well-beaten by four years running around with Kent and getting far closer to battle than an archer should. Her red hair is tied with golden thread that matches the golden charms dangling from her necklace. She adds a new one with every successful monster kill. It’s lucky she’s so stealthy or else she’d be jingling with every step. “Mande is an exception, not a freak.”
One field that badly needs to be purged of “Great Man-ism” is architecture.
In my hometown there’s a hospital that won awards for the brilliant architectural vision of the great man who designed it.
The fact that even before it opened they’d begun building the extension, because it was too small to accommodate the number of patients, and even then too small to accommodate visitors, apparently didn’t matter.
Standard “visionary design”
I’ve worked in multiple award-winning buildings, and every one of them was a terrible work environment. Confusing internal layouts, bad HVAC, inaccessible spaces, lacking basic amenities, horrible acoustics, just bad places to work all around.
But hey, the lines of the buildings look great from the outside.
there was an award-winning building at my college that, due to its oddly-curved roof, every year, produced icicles that could kill people
I worked as an admin for 2 months at a multiple award-winning architectural firm. When I got to see a restaurant design in progress, I pointed out that the design of the bar in said restaurant would end up causing injuries to the workers. I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
I had left bartending to go to that job and I left that job to go back to bartending.
The fact that everyone has a story like this and yet architects are still allowed to ply their trade as if they were visionary artistic geniuses rather than glorified contractors with ideas above their station will never cease to grate my gears. Why do we, collectively, tolerate this bullshit?
Never gonna forget that episode of Grand Designs where the architect no longer wanted his name assosciated with the build because the folks who were going to live in it (and are paying to have it built…) raised the garage roof line high enough to be able to fit their regular-sized car into the garage.
I have basically been radicalized into feeling like architecture as a field is full of a lot of people who want to make really big sculptures and make other people pay for it. (There is also livable architecture. But when I look at architecture magazines, all I see are malevolent staircases that will murder you.)
I’ve got my story, too. Worked in a brand new school building. The architects DID ask us – we the people who would use the building – for input, and then ignored all of it. So the whiteboards were unuseable (we had asked for chalkboards anyway, but that got turned down) because they were placed behind screens that blocked them from the students’ view and every classroom had an unlabeled panel of buttons that did different things in every room and you had to just hit them randomly to find out what they did. The reason for both of these design choices was to keep things “sleek.”
And we were stuck in that building for basically ever because of how expensive it was to build so it was going to take so, so long to pay it off so we would never be able to justify the cost of a new building.
My mom worked for an opera company during a time when a new performance hall was being built. The architect’s vision was for this building to represent a timeless, liminal space where people could exist outside the mundane pressures of the real world. In pursuit of this vision, he refused to allow clocks or visible timepieces of any kind anywhere in the building. It would have undercut his theme and ruined his aesthetic.
So, the thing about operas is that most have an intermission. This was before the ubiquity of smartphones & people couldn’t easily judge when they needed to head back to their seats. It was a headache every single performance.
I have a book recommendation for all of you: How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand. Lots of things about this book changed the way I look at buildings, but he also covers architecture not meant for humans, with particular attention to how humans will alter it over time.
Watching the mummy 1999 for shits and giggles, thought it’d be fun to bitch abt the inaccurate hieroglyphs now that I know smth abt all that. Disappointed and disgusted to find out that they hired an egyptologist consultant and the hieroglyphs are actually well done. Night ruined
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2:24amOctober 13, 2024
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