A request for all fantasy writers

[conuly]

1. For crying out loud, learn the names of some plants already, or else set all your stories in cities.

2. Relatedly, it is very jarring when somebody who is clearly in Not!Europe suddenly is runs away from a skunk and lands in a patch of poison ivy. Decide what real-world place analogs to your story and stick with it. I know, I know - in your secondary fantasy world you can do whatever you want, but somehow people never find randomly misplaced kangaroos, llamas, penguins, or lemurs in Definitely England settings, so it seems that actually, in fact, people do care at least a little about where they put things. Care a little more, why don't you.

2a. This goes doubles for all post-Columbian exchange crops. If you're not willing to have your Let's Admit It's European king chow down on turkey and cornbread, don't have your peasant eat some stew flavored with potatoes, tomatoes, or peppers.

Comments

[jack]

Well put! The thing about caring about SOME accuracy and not others is so right...

It's funny, the potatoes thing bothers me much less than it should do, even though many other things throw me out of a story. And it feels like I'm letting the side down :) I think because my brain knows less about it, so having potatoes FEELS right even though it isn't. The difficulties of writing something that both FEELS right to people who don't have any experience and FEELS right to people who do have experience...

[siderea]

I think the reason potatoes feels right is that potatoes are associated with poverty, and we associate, not incorrectly, the concept of peasants with poverty, so potato-eating peasants feels correct, so feudalistic societies eating potatoes feels correct.

[varidog]

That's the curse of knowledge. I wouldn't notice those points at all, but then again, I'd notice something else entirely. I often laugh to my wife about how I can accept some implausible things yet can't get over other minor things.

This is also a reason that I take an interest in varied subjects. For my recent steampunk, I've been following historical fashion people just to learn what the clothing was called, how it was used, and how it fit into life, because if I didn't, my women readers would see that I was an idiot.

[lilysea]

Yes, the potatoes and tomatoes before Columbus really annoys me :(

[lilysea]

People have been releasing pet skunks into the wild in Britain recently

so *now* there are feral skunks in some parts of Britain

but this is a very recent development...

Multiple sightings, the most recent of which was at a suburban north London bus stop (previous sightings have been in British forests)

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-65122718

There are also feral WALLABIES in some parts of Britain (again, dumped exotic pets). Astonishingly, the wallabies have survived multiple winters and have been breeding...

[conuly]

Why would anybody...

oh, nevermind, people suck.

[sabotabby]

It never used to annoy me and then I read too much and now it annoys me a lot.

[asakiyume]

Yessssss! This bugs me so much! Similarly, keep in mind the CLIMATE of your setting! Rice only grows in warm places, so remember that fact, or make trade in commodities a Thing in your story.

But now I'm imagining an Alt!England w/some lemurs and kangaroos and laughing.

[kengr]

Well, there's "wild rice" which grows fairly far north in the temperate zone. Native americans gathered it in a lot of places in the northern Us.

[mindstalk]

warm-ish places. Cultivated rice started as a tropical plant, but is grown in southern Italy, California, Honshu, and even Hokkaido (which one paper did call the northern limit). Sapporo's climate is like a slightly less extreme Boston.

[asakiyume]

the thing about the Columbian exchange is interesting. For me it depends on how Alt! the world is. e.g.: I can imagine a world where Columbian exchange happened earlier/later/differently, or alternatively, where these yummy nightshade plants were from the start more widely distributed, blah blah blah. I guess climate/biology things bother me more: don't have plants that need long, hot growing seasons growing in places that you've established have long, cold winters and cool summers, etc.

[profiterole_reads]

Kangaroo-ish beings on the cover art
Also, I love this book. <3

[grav_ity]

I put potatoes in my fantasy books to remind myself that "historical accuracy" is usually a crock, and things making sense is more important. Now I'm trying to remember if anyone in Lord of the Rings ever eats a turkey, because I know Hobbits definitely have all the crops (plus tobacco!).

[nancylebov]

No turkey in LOTR.

Was turkey common in England in Tolkien's time? Is it at all common now, or just known of as an American thing?

I would take a small bet that the out-of-place plants (analocisms?) in LOTR were background parts of Tolkien's life.

I suppose that in my ideal world, readers would be pleased by coherent world-building, but not extremely annoyed by small amounts of bad world-building.

[varidog]

If one is reading historical, I get the peeve. If one is reading historical-ish, accuracy is already taking a dive, and once you're into a secondary world, it's all a grab-bag anyway.

When I was writing high-ish fantasy, my dwarves liked curry, because I was purposely showing that there was an intersection of cultures from all over the continent. Food was all a muddle because it really was all a muddle. Now I do sci-fantasy and have flying dinosaurs eating ramen noodles and it's all cool.

[conuly]

But potatoes *don't* make sense if the culture is based around a culture that doesn't have potatoes. Potatoes aren't like wheat. They're harvested differently, which makes both banditry and taxation more difficult, which changes the culture pretty dramatically.

[mindstalk]

Allegedly Tolkien revised tomatoes out of later versions of the Hobbit, changing "cold chicken and tomatoes" to be "and pickles". But he kept potatoes and tobacco. I'm not stressed about the botanical 'realism' of a purported ancient past that included both ancient explorers and God turning a flat world spherical.

[redbird]

2b. Can we stop having people run away from skunks, a small mustelid that just wants people to leave it alone mile it looks for its dinner, and might forage in your trash cans? Give the skunk a little distance, and make some noise if you notice one moving toward you. Sometimes you might tell your neighbor "I saw a skunk over there" so they kepp their dog away from it.

Skunks real animals, not just animated cartoons.

[flemmings]

It's about keeping the other animals away from the skunks. I finally figured it's not stray cats that are tangling with our downtown skunks, it's the territorial raccoons. Hence the chronic odour.

I'd have thought running away from a skunk is a good way of giving a skunk distance?

[hashiveinu]

Hear, hear.

[kengr]

Also, make sure to check out what edible or otherwise useful plants grow in the area you are setting things in.

I'm pleased to note references to things like camas and henbit in the post-collapse Oregon in the series I'm currently re-reading.

Though I note they aren't using them as food, which is a mistake. Had henbit growing wild in my assigned garden plot here at the apartments one year. So I let it grow and harvested it while trying to decide what to plant.

[silveradept]

Doing the research, for some authors, is...not what they are here for, most charitably. But it is a good reminder that many of the things we take for granted as part of life are relatively recent inventions.

[conuly]

Like the spinning wheel, and also candles.

[acelightning73]

I would fill a story about the relatively near future with what exotic foods, liquors, and fashions I might extrapolate to add detail to the setting. The urban cyberpunks might drink something equivalent to energy drinks, and snack on samosas and fry bread - and I'm not sure how to imagine what the street drugs will be! And in my own life, I'm trying to imagine what fashions will look like in the future. I wear toe socks with flip-flops, and some of my jewelry contains electric circuits (electroluminescent wire used instead of embroidery or sequins to create highly visible designs on one's clothes. (Why are you wearing something advertising Tommy Hilfinger, when you can have Zazz Zu Zazz' - a 23rd century design house - logo glowing across your back?)

[acelightning73]

HOw about inventing new plants and animals in a distant place in the distant future? The surface of large buildings is covered with a bioengineered moss or lichen, that helps purify and recycle rain water. Giant mutant rats roam the city, clawing and gnawing the lichen off the buildings, becuause it's full of nutrients the rats want. People grow small-scale food crops on the roofs of the buildings, but mutant pigeons dive-bomb the farms and farmers. Someone's trying to make the pigeons carnivorous, to control the rats, but that would put pets and small children in danger. Indigent people sometimes eat the moss if they're very hungry, but it doesn't taste good to humans. Body modification is easy, and it's highly fashionable. One of the most popular entertainment stars of the day has feather eyebrows.

[conuly]

If the new plant or animal does a new thing, great.

If it's just a new name with no context for what it is and why it's there, this can get irritating for readers.

If you plainly just said "Man, I want birch trees here, but idk if birch trees live in this environment and I'm too lazy to look it up, I'll just rename them "chirb trees" and maybe nobody will write in to complain", I assure you, people will write in to complain. You can depend on it.

[nicki]

We also don't have poison ivy on the west coast. I would also like authors to quit putting it here in their stories. We have poison oak, which is a different thing. Also, their character could land in stinging nettles in Not!Europe. More OUCH! less ITCH! though.

[kengr]

I've seen poison oak. But never had an "encounter"with it.

A particular local geocache had a warning that the brush around it was mostly poison oak.

Me? I was more worried about the fact that the trail it was on was *literally* on the edge of a cliff. Worn down to the bare basalt, with 50-100 foot drop as the eastern edge.