But how is this But Better
Mar. 26th, 2026 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI am rereading (slowly) some fantasy books I haven't read in a while (decade or two?)
and what it just made me think about is
how many of them invent
TREE
but better.
Like, there is a Tree, and it can feed you!
and yes, that is indeed one thing a tree can do.
so what is the But Better?
well if it was simply not being seasonal that is a handy one, food but all year, everyone likes that.
but then it's like
tree but more supermarket.
what if fantasy landscape had a corner store, and no human needed to tend it.
let us just make labor even more invisible, and have Tree available to any and everyone just by walking past and grabbing a bit, that is obviously But Better, apparently.
And don't get me wrong, a lunch pail tree is obviously pretty cool, it makes you think about lunch pails and the way they do not in fact just grow that way and draws attention to the whole work goes in aspect of it, but
Tree But Better, These Guys Never Went Camping Edition,
is just
you can eat the tree!
And they do indeed eat every part of the tree.
you don't even need to know which part.
you eat all the tree and can live on it.
they never connect this up to the trees being ill
even though they have to avoid several ill trees to find a well one to eat.
they never get into the ecology of it all.
why are Trees But Better just sitting around for humans to eat?
why do they not have epic numbers of herbivores eating all the things?
why are they tree shaped if it doesn't get the edible bits away from the eaters?
every bit of the tree is edible.
that thing has no roots in logic land, something ate them already.
But nope, because it is Fantasy Land, so everything exists only for human adventurers.
Specifically ones that have no Survival skills, don't feel the need to Learn Plants, and just want to shove a food in their mouth.
And these miraculous items are somehow not part of the agricultural economy?
poor people might eat them if they wanted to badly.
otherwise they just sit there being trees
while people do farming
of unnamed crops
for nebulous reasons.
You know what does not happen when plentiful trees are literally a complete surviveable food?
the exact kind of feudal farming with thralls that is designed to grow you enough plant and animal to live on.
because you can already live on the sodding trees
which are everywhere
and nobody needs to tend them
and if you in fact don't have enough of them to feed all the humans
you would
Grow Trees On Purpose
because that is a complete meal
and a sheep is not.
But that isn't the point of the story so the whole world is vaguely medieval
because that's how it works.
Same thing with
Tree But Better:
You Can Shelter Under It.
And to be fair there are entire woodland societies that do indeed grow Trees But Better to live in.
It's just once that is simple, effective, and available everywhere you can walk to
you have to wonder why anyone else *isn't* doing it
or why every time they look for somewhere to shelter
there is a convenient
unoccupied
tree
with no beasties in it whatsoever.
Tree But Better exists solely so the narrative can stop thinking about survival and ecology and labour and make it so you don't need an inn to survive overnight in the middle of sodding nowhere.
It's like this character who went hiking in his running shoes to go find a portal, and the narrative has him still wearing them a year later after all the adventures, and that never turns out to be a bad idea.
You know how many times you have shopped for shoes?
You know how you have to check really carefully to get the right shoes for the job or you end up squelching around in foot ruining agony?
Terry Pratchett certainly thought about boots, and where they come from, and the socio economic implications of different sorts of them, and what boots dragon riders would wear,
but I can't think of a second example.
It's not even that they wouldn't make story mileage. Of such things is civilisation made.
But not if you're doing ye olde fantasy novel apparently.
Fantasy and magic makes everything But Better, so you can just ignore where things come from and who might be making them and the vague possibility that people might need other people even for basic goods and services and that that maybe might be why civilisation in all its varieties occurs
and just get on with the hard job of intimidating the natives with your clearly superior inherent worth
etc.
Today it is irritating me.
and what it just made me think about is
how many of them invent
TREE
but better.
Like, there is a Tree, and it can feed you!
and yes, that is indeed one thing a tree can do.
so what is the But Better?
well if it was simply not being seasonal that is a handy one, food but all year, everyone likes that.
but then it's like
tree but more supermarket.
what if fantasy landscape had a corner store, and no human needed to tend it.
let us just make labor even more invisible, and have Tree available to any and everyone just by walking past and grabbing a bit, that is obviously But Better, apparently.
And don't get me wrong, a lunch pail tree is obviously pretty cool, it makes you think about lunch pails and the way they do not in fact just grow that way and draws attention to the whole work goes in aspect of it, but
Tree But Better, These Guys Never Went Camping Edition,
is just
you can eat the tree!
And they do indeed eat every part of the tree.
you don't even need to know which part.
you eat all the tree and can live on it.
they never connect this up to the trees being ill
even though they have to avoid several ill trees to find a well one to eat.
they never get into the ecology of it all.
why are Trees But Better just sitting around for humans to eat?
why do they not have epic numbers of herbivores eating all the things?
why are they tree shaped if it doesn't get the edible bits away from the eaters?
every bit of the tree is edible.
that thing has no roots in logic land, something ate them already.
But nope, because it is Fantasy Land, so everything exists only for human adventurers.
Specifically ones that have no Survival skills, don't feel the need to Learn Plants, and just want to shove a food in their mouth.
And these miraculous items are somehow not part of the agricultural economy?
poor people might eat them if they wanted to badly.
otherwise they just sit there being trees
while people do farming
of unnamed crops
for nebulous reasons.
You know what does not happen when plentiful trees are literally a complete surviveable food?
the exact kind of feudal farming with thralls that is designed to grow you enough plant and animal to live on.
because you can already live on the sodding trees
which are everywhere
and nobody needs to tend them
and if you in fact don't have enough of them to feed all the humans
you would
Grow Trees On Purpose
because that is a complete meal
and a sheep is not.
But that isn't the point of the story so the whole world is vaguely medieval
because that's how it works.
Same thing with
Tree But Better:
You Can Shelter Under It.
And to be fair there are entire woodland societies that do indeed grow Trees But Better to live in.
It's just once that is simple, effective, and available everywhere you can walk to
you have to wonder why anyone else *isn't* doing it
or why every time they look for somewhere to shelter
there is a convenient
unoccupied
tree
with no beasties in it whatsoever.
Tree But Better exists solely so the narrative can stop thinking about survival and ecology and labour and make it so you don't need an inn to survive overnight in the middle of sodding nowhere.
It's like this character who went hiking in his running shoes to go find a portal, and the narrative has him still wearing them a year later after all the adventures, and that never turns out to be a bad idea.
You know how many times you have shopped for shoes?
You know how you have to check really carefully to get the right shoes for the job or you end up squelching around in foot ruining agony?
Terry Pratchett certainly thought about boots, and where they come from, and the socio economic implications of different sorts of them, and what boots dragon riders would wear,
but I can't think of a second example.
It's not even that they wouldn't make story mileage. Of such things is civilisation made.
But not if you're doing ye olde fantasy novel apparently.
Fantasy and magic makes everything But Better, so you can just ignore where things come from and who might be making them and the vague possibility that people might need other people even for basic goods and services and that that maybe might be why civilisation in all its varieties occurs
and just get on with the hard job of intimidating the natives with your clearly superior inherent worth
etc.
Today it is irritating me.