#anyways. I say generating a colour palette - I'm still waiting to find out if the GNU image manipulation program uses k-means clustering or

[megid0nt]

[lucky-lunch]

Apple Pie

Price: $5

the dollarama nearest me recently got a boost in inventory variety, at least in the food department, and I was finding my snails in a can and lemon biscuits and this miraculous thing in the aisles of my humble 'Rama. there are two main reasons why I refer to this pie as miraculous: 1) it being a whole ass pie, looking not too worse for wear; and 2) this thing, and I'm calling it a thing, sat on a shelf with no other obvious means of preservation, and expires at the end of August. It is currently January as of purchase. This product of Italy, imported here from possibly Montréal, sat on a dollarama back storage area and then front shelf for God knows how long, and for god knows how long still. filled with some semblance of fruit, this object keeps for over half a year in a "cool, dry place". this is zombie apocalypse survival pie. this thing outlives certain grandparents. so, how does end-of-the-world pie taste? what does the last drop of sweetness you'll ever experience on your tongue as you barrel roll through the void at the end of the universe feel like?

just as the simple plastic packaging reminds one of generic no brand Halloween candy, it also smells exactly like generic no brand Halloween candy. this flat piece of candy rock oozes artificial sweetening like puss from a wart. Yes, I regret that sentence too.

and again, just like single use plastic packaging, there's no going back, no resealing this ancient curse. I'm going to be incredibly brave for a second and sample a tiny fork full unheated, as the deities of capitalistic, fast and exponential consumerism intended. do not be fooled by the photo, the camera colours are pulling a lot of the weight here making this look appealing. I'm just too lazy to figure out how to stop the automatic filtering. in real life it looks dull.

so, it's not inedible, and I can imagine eating this and a single tear rolls slowly down my face as the flavours evoke an involuntary reminiscence on the good ol' days (2025), sitting alone on a garbage pile next to a dumpster fire under a bridge (like a troll) or in a sewer (like a mutant ninja turtle) as I wait out 5 months of continuous acid rain in the year 2056. I'll think about how I haven't had any food that isn't mock cockroach gruel for 20 years and the artificial, allegedly apple, sweetness makes me choke up because I've forgotten flavours existed. the seasoning of time and suffering and absence of joy makes a delicacy of this dish - oh wait, that's happening around the world right now, isn't it. silly me. Anyway, I'm getting undertones of cardboard over fragrances of day after on sale holiday candy that, at gun point, I supposed I'll say is apple. it's not not apple. a tree was once involved.

it's slightly better heated up. the apple flavour is enhanced and it doesn't feel as sad anymore; I might even realize I'm eating a - oh, the heat also makes it so much sweeter - imitation crab meat of an apple pie.

verdict: I'm p sure you can get better apple pie for the same price in supermarkets. unless you hit a real low point in your life, and you want to sit on the cold kitchen tile while you shovel expired splenda into your mouth to really hit a home run for the worst day you've ever had, i recommend abstaining. you won't die but you're not living either, you know?? actually, I feel like I'm getting heartburn in real time. it gets a D, because 1) I can get better elsewhere; 2) it tastes radioactive; 3) it smells expired; 4) an 8 month shelf life for a baked good that generally conjures to mind freshness is sitting as right with me as this pie is on my palette right now; and 5) i don't think i need more reasons. it gets points for potentially being there for me when i'm still standing after the earth implodes. and i guess for being passably edible. i guess.

[solacefruit]

May I ask how you go about choosing the plant palette of a location as you put it? I'm so excited for what you're going to do but also your process!

Hello! I am SO sorry. This ask has been in the askbox for about six months and I’ve kept looking at it and going, “I love this question, I’ll answer it when I’ve got time to give a really good answer,” and that’s just not happened. So I’m answering it now, because I guess there’s never going to be a good time and I feel very bad about making you wait this long. Sorry! 

A plant palette for me is basically what it sounds like: the particular palette of plant-life in an area. Just like how when artists start a work they test out some ideas for colour and tone, and select the general paints they’ll use and add those on the palette, I do a very similar thing with vegetation when I’m writing. Also true of if I’m playing creative games--i.e., Planet Zoo, etc.--and decorating a habitat or particular location.

The ecology of places is important to me, both in real life and in my writing. I think it’s something that shines through in the stories I love to read (Watership Down is a great example, but far from the only one), and also is one of those writer tells that I think even new readers probably notice in my work. tl;dr--I like plants! 

For my Warriors stories especially, plant-life is a significant portion of the setting, by virtue of these being feral cats living wild in (for the most part) natural environments. There’s also a variety of a micro-environments within this space, wherein the terrain (and resultantly, local flora and fauna) varies, and that’s where plant palettes really become useful for me.

Basically, the way I do things is that each clan territory has a general environment--i.e., Windclan has the heath, Thunderclan the forest, etc.--but within each territory, there are what I generally think of as micro-territories (but you could just as easily think of them as districts) with their own distinct--though sometimes subtle--landmarks, common flora, atmosphere (figuratively, not literally), and resources. 

By breaking the environments up into these spaces, I feel it not only gives the territories a much greater feeling of depth and realness, and also reflects the close attention the characters pay to their home environments, but it also makes it easier for readers to get a sense of place. I find that people who don’t put thought into this kind of thing tend to write forests, for example, as very same-y, and as a reader it all sort of becomes a blur of trees without definition or detail to help ground you. So anyway, not to get too off topic--

My process for coming up with this is fairly straightforward. I scribble up a general map, loosely circle the different spaces within the territory that I see as being specific locations, and figure out the general terrain and environmental context of that spot--e.g., is it beside a river, or stream? is the soil sandy, or peat, or clay, or what? how much does human disturbance factor into this spot? so on.

Then with those details, I do the research part. I have a pretty broad knowledge of plants etc. anyway, especially for an English setting, but I still do some digging around and come up with a list of plants (and fungi, and sometimes fauna) that I feel would reasonably be found in that place and that reflect the kind of feeling I want that place to have. 

As a caveat, I do want to say that even though I research, I also use a lot of artistic license from time to time, and indulge in doing things that might be unlikely or improbable simply because the vibe is right. Nothing too wild, and typically not the sort of thing a non-expert would notice, but definitely don’t treat any of my writing as an encyclopaedia or anything. I am first and foremost a liar fiction writer. 

Once I have my list, then I whittle it down to the most prominent ten plant-life features (or so, I don’t actually have any limits, it just tends to be around a dozen) and think briefly about how they interact. If the trees are tall and dense, for instance, then only plants that love shade can flourish there--or maybe delicate flowers only grow in the occasional glade where the sun can filter through. I think about the relationships the plants have--e.g., some fungi will grow on or around certain trees, but not on others. And I consider what the clan that lives there feels about that place--e.g., is it sacred? ideal hunting space? dangerous? (I also think about how I want to get these feelings across in how I describe the space)

Finally, I think about the fauna that can be found here, and how they move about and inhabit the place. That’s really it! 

I like to hope that particularly keen-eyed readers can notice these specific details and recognise what grows where, but even for readers who are just along for the ride and not reading so closely I hope that this approach results in a rich, dense-feeling world where you feel embedded in the environment, just like the clans are. 

Thank you for asking, and again--really sorry about the long wait.