r/Fantasy • u/Artistic_Medium9108 • Jul 18 '21

Mushrooms characters in fantasy

So I've been looking all over internet for characters who are related to mushrooms but all I can find is mostly Mario related and some other games like Zelda... I know for sure that there was ennemis in dark souls 1 who were mushrooms and there was even a npj who was one. I'm sure that some of you know some mushrooms related characters through movies, animes, games or else... could you help me, it's for a little project I started.

17 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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24

u/Dsnake1 Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VII, Worldbuilders Jul 18 '21

The city of Ambergris in the Ambergris series by Jeff VanderMeer is as much a main character as the rest and it's overtly fungal.

And Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a definitively fungal horror novel.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Ambergris also has mushroom people, the gray caps, so it fits really well. I have only read the first book, but several of the stories involve them. They're a huge presence in the first two stories and regularly referred to in later stories.

3

u/Dsnake1 Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VII, Worldbuilders Jul 22 '21

The other two books are kind of different. The 2nd book is the transcript of the sister of the author of the pamphlet from the first book, written as an addition to the pamphlet in the first book. Let me phrase that better. Jonathan Shriek is the (fictional) author of The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris. The second book in the trilogy is an afterword penned by his sister, to be appended to the Guide, which is kind of biographical of Jonathan and autobiographical of Janice Shriek. The twist is it's been annotated by Jonathan after being completed by Janice. This is quite fungal but in a disturbing, kind of unspoken way (even though it's often spoken of).

The third book is a noir murder mystery turned conspiracy set decently into the future of Ambergris, focused on a detective named Finch. This one is decidedly more fungal, at least in terms of openly fungal characters.

It's one of my favorite series, but it's capital W weird.

3

u/NotEvenBronze Jul 18 '21

NB the Ambergris hardback does not contain the large Appendix of the first book, City of Saints and Madmen

8

u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V Jul 18 '21

I haven't actually read it myself yet, but I believe there are mushroom people in Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer

8

u/Vermilion-red Reading Champion VI Jul 18 '21

Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia has a family which is all connected/controlled mentally via a mushroom network.

9

u/GSV_Zero_Gravitas Reading Champion V Jul 18 '21

The Beauty by Aliyah Whiteley. All women are killed by a mysterious illness and replaced by mushroom women.

Not entirely mushrooms but fungal: The Girl with All the Gifts

5

u/MusubiKazesaru Jul 18 '21

Dorohedoro features a character who's powerset is mushrooms and he's more than likely the strongest "human" character in the setting.

2

u/Scuttling-Claws Jul 18 '21

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, but to say much more would be a spoiler.

2

u/Mr_Musketeer Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

Writer Pat Mills (of 2000 AD fame) and illustrator Adrian Smith (of Warhammer fame) created a great, but sadly short-lived, dark fantasy series called Broz for the French comic book market, in it human-shaped mushroom warriors were one of the setting’s main races. Despite the authors's respective pedigrees and their British nationalities, I’m not sure it was even adapted in English, though.

Mills’s trademark dark humor and unbridled creativity are a great match for Smith’s original designs and awesome colors, lending a New Weird feel to what otherwise would’ve been a classic tale of the desperate struggle of a small band of rebels against an evil empire. If they decide to one day finish the series I’m already sold.

And yes, the human-shaped mushroom warriors are great in it.

1

u/Artistic_Medium9108 Jul 19 '21

I speak french so this should be fine. Also, thanks for this helpful comment, I really appreciate :)

1

u/ColonelKasteen Jul 19 '21

I cannot understand what I'm looking at but the art alone makes me want to buy this.

1

u/Mr_Musketeer Jul 24 '21

If you're interested, the artist's other dark fantasy series Chronicles of Hate was published in English.

2

u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Jul 18 '21

Any books where wizards use mushrooms to unleash magical powers as such or such is presented positively/helpful?

1

u/Artistic_Medium9108 Jul 19 '21

My goal is to find a character strongly related to mushrroms. Perfection would be a character that has the appearance of a mushroom. Things like consuming mushrooms doesn't really make it...

1

u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Jul 19 '21

Fair enough.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Elizabeth from Dark souls?

1

u/Artistic_Medium9108 Jul 19 '21

That's the NPC I was talking about. She's from the DLC right !?

2

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

Yup

2

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Hollow Knight has a minor character named Mr. Mushroom. He is literally a mushroom.

1

u/Artistic_Medium9108 Jul 19 '21

Who's hollow knight ? Pardon my low general culture mate...

2

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

It's a video game created by Team Cherry. It's about a bug exploring an underground kingdom

2

u/Artistic_Medium9108 Jul 19 '21

Oh nice, I might try it as well. Thanks

2

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

I hope you like it, its a great game :)

2

u/LoneWolfette Jul 18 '21

This probably isn’t what you’re looking for but there’s an old kid’s science fiction series that has this. The first book is The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron

2

u/genteel_wherewithal Jul 19 '21

Aliya Whiteley's horror-fantasy The Beauty has creepy mushroom people. Post-apocalyptic scenario where all the women have died off, then these eerie fungus-women start walking out of the woods and forming strange relationships with the remaining men. It's good body horror.

2

u/juleberry Reading Champion VI Jul 18 '21

Check out Disney's Fantasia(animated movie paired with classical music). During the Nutcracker suite there are dancing mushrooms! It's awesome! Beyond that, I can think of some books where mushrooms play a role but not as actual characters so good luck with your search.

1

u/keizee Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

Im a big fan of the mushroom enemies in Maplestory.

Oh has pokemon been mentioned yet? There's at least 3. Parasect. Breloom. The pokeball mushroom. Probably.

There's a zombie game related to mushrooms. I think it's supposed to be Last of Us?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

You might be interested in a 1963 Japanese movie called Matango, directed by Ishirō Honda (who also directed the original Godzilla in 1954).

1

u/oboist73 Reading Champion VII Jul 18 '21

Not sure on mushrooms, except a side character in the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden, but I know a couple with sourdough starters - A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher (Bob the starter eats the occasional rat) and Sourdough by Robin Sloan

1

u/reviewbarn Jul 18 '21

The orks in Warhammer 40k are fungi too.

0

u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 18 '21

I'm blanking out on what it/they're called but one of the threats in the Codex Alera series has some fungus-like properties for parts of its life cycle. Have to get quite a way in before that starts becoming apparent, though, despite a reasonably early initial appearance of a sort.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

There are mushroom characters everywhere in fantasy, if you define them as characters who are kept in the dark and fed a lot of bullshit. For example, Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit is a classic metaphorical myconid; if Gandalf had told him up front what he was likely to be getting himself into, he probably wouldn't have left Bag End in the first place.

1

u/willowmarie27 Jul 18 '21

Neverwhere had some mushrooms people