 Fantasy: August 21, 2024 Issue [#12699] |
This week: The Game is a Fruit Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
—Thomas Fuller
Time flies like an arrow - but fruit flies like a banana.
—Terry Wogan
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
—Brian O'Driscoll |
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Is a tomato a fruit?
Might as well ask: Is Pluto a planet? Is a hot dog a sandwich (it's not; it's a taco)? Are the Great Lakes really lakes, or are they seas?
Such categorization problems come up from time to time, but when it comes to tomatoes, well, it depends on who you ask.
To a botanist, sure, they're fruits, a seed-bearing structure formed from a plant's ovary after flowering.
To a nutritionist, they're vegetables.
To a comedian, they're missiles.
This sort of thing matters to us because it's possible that your fantasy world has strange and exotic fruits and vegetables. Yes, even more strange and exotic than some of the fruits and vegetables here in consensus reality. If that's the case for you, you might want to brush up on definitions of things such as fruits, gourds, berries, nuts, etc.
In brief, a berry is either a fruit without a stone (or seed or pit), or certain seeds such as coffee beans. Thus, blueberries are berries, while cherries are not.
A gourd is a fruit with a hard skin, usually not edible (but that has significant exceptions, such as pumpkins).
A nut is also a kind of fruit, but one that's all stone (or seed or pit).
To make matters more complicated, peanuts aren't technically nuts; a strawberry isn't technically a berry (though a banana is); and breadfruit is just plain weird.
Nature doesn't always pack things into neat categories; thus, we get the discussion about tomatoes, or the existence of the platypus. Sometimes, I think they come up with these definitions just so pedants like me will have something to talk about at parties. If we ever got invited to parties.
The point here is that what you call something depends on who's doing the calling. In every useful sense, tomatoes are firmly in the "vegetable" category, regardless of how scientists like to classify things. But it can be helpful to think about these things, and decide how some plant item that you came up with for your story fits into the larger picture. |
Some of the fruits of others' Fantasy labors:
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Last time, in "Once in a Blue Moon" , I talked about the Blue Moon, one of which occurred earlier this week.
s  : The blue moon concept is great for horror and those elements can also be transposed across to fantasy, especially looking at Wiccan and pagan rituals and beliefs. The blue moon is great for cleansing, for beginning something and, in more recent times, it is considered a great time to start or delve deep into a journal. The blue moon nowadays is seen as the time to awaken creativity. Those who practise the darker arts find the blue moon a time when they stay away from their own rituals; it is not conducive to what they wish to manifest!
Full moons in general are often featured in horror and fantasy. Even apart from the obvious werewolf lore, it's often symbolic of, among other things, mystery and otherworldliness. (Which I suppose is appropriate, as the Moon is an "other world.") This can have positive or negative connotations, of course.
So that's it for me for August! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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