Samwise Gamgee, how the fuck do you know what potatoes are? Potatoes were cultivated in SOUTH AMERICA roughly 7000 years ago and Europeans only came into contact with them in 1537 AD.
hobbits also have corn!
THEY DO.
EXPLAIN, MOVIE. EXPLAIN!!!
Due to Belladonna Took’s fairy heritage shenanigans, the Shire is actually a few square kilometres of late 18C/early 19C English West Country, made to vanish from its timestream along with its potatoes, corn, and tobacco. Although I’m not sure that “corn” doesn’t actually refer to wheat or barley in this context.
In support of this thesis, I submit that no other Middle Earth regions BUT the Shire produce potatoes and tobacco.
A gaming buddy of mine many years ago postulated the West Isomorphism Principle, summarized as “Don’t reinvent chess.” If your fantasy culture has a game involving pieces with mathematically determined movement and capture options with military and philosophical implications, calling it anything other than “chess” will distract from the immersiveness of the setting. Just call it chess.
Similarly, Samwise Gamgee’s never seen a potato, which won’t be invented for an Age or four. But there’s a versatile, tasty, starch-and-vitamin-laden root vegetable that grows in virtually any soil that he wouldn’t have called a potato — but the audience does.
Hmm — that’s interesting, but I find that my own reaction is to agree with you about potatoes and disagree about chess, and I’m wondering why. I actually think that seeing “chess” appear in, say, A Game of Thrones, would jar me out of the fantasy immersion, whereas seeing a chess-like game called by another name would make me go “ah, here is alt-chess that suits this setting.” And yet potatoes are potatoes to me. Hmm.
(Source: houch)
