the best fantasy art imo is fantasy art showing completely mundane little daily life scenes that are completely recognizable yet in some integral way Different and Fantastic
@InspectorCaracal BIG BIG AGREE
but i'm also a bit strange in that i consider the One World Building Question that you will Ever Need is "what does a day's worth of food look like for the lower, middle, and upper classes?"
@wigglytuffitout well that depends on how much detail you mean that question to be answered in
@wigglytuffitout like, quantity and ingredients? okay that tells you a decent amount. what do the actual prepared foods look like? that gives you more info, because it requires knowing the available ingredients and also preparation styles and complexity. but you go all the way to "what are the typical daily meal experiences", then you get not only food sources and preparation methods but also cooking and eating utensils and environment and mealtimes give you daily schedules
@InspectorCaracal EXACTLY. and you can tell so much about technology level from tracing back "what are the little domestic technologies at play"
and yeah, that is its big flaw. but in most people doing "medieval-fantasy faux europe", they've probably already loosely got a set of tiers in place. i think it's useful to note that if there are tiers, you need to address it - and think about it, lol, instead of just blithely writing that your peasant is eating veal and pineapple lmao
@wigglytuffitout unrelated to your point, I am so tired of stereotypical faux-medieval sword & sorcery fantasy
@InspectorCaracal it is going to be replaced with me marching into worldbuilding reddits yelling at the top of my lungs DO NOT HAVE TOMATOES IN YOUR MEDIEVAL FANTASY IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO JUSTIFY THEM SIRRAH
@InspectorCaracal i admit i chose tomatoes because of how ~scandalous~ they were
which makes good sense to your average peasant, who hears about this nightshade like plant from exotic lands that you're supposed to *eat??????* tomatoes are real daredevil stuff!!!
@wigglytuffitout I actually spent like two weeks of world-building once on my primary fantasy 'verse, which is loosely an Alternate Earth setting, determining if my Alternate Not-England would have chocolate or sugar.
@wigglytuffitout [insert rant about how the idea of a middle/business class didn't exist pre-rennaisance]