If your fantasy late-medieval-esque Europe isn't actually our world

[conuly]

then I guess I can overlook the potatoes, the peppers, and even the vanilla. Sure. They're useful crops, after all, even if there appears to be nothing similar to the Columbian Exchange in this universe.

However, I gotta draw the line at skunks and poison ivy coexisting in the same environment as peacocks and... okay, actually it turns out that my knowledge of native non-domesticated Afro-Eurasian flora and fauna is a bit skimpy, but you know what I mean. What's next, kangaroos?

Relatedly: Hedgehogs live in Europe. Porcupines live in America. I know that they're both prickly, but they're not interchangeable in the environment or, crucially, in stories.

Comments

[negothick]

Tolkien got it right, but mostly by accident. The world of The Lord of the Rings was not Built, it was Accreted or Agglomerated. The landscape of The First and Second Age stories that became The Silmarillion, or the tales set in Numenor is bare, as appropriate for epic. Then he wrote The Hobbit, and then spent 15 years or so fitting the cozy, children's fantasy-style novelist's world of The Shire into what is essentially a pre-apocalyptic Third Age Fallen World of Middle-earth. Along the way, he taught himself how to transform epic into novel--but that's a whole other story.