🎨 [Palette] If your WIP was a color, which color would it be?
🍩 [Donut] What's the weirdest thing someone eats in your WIP? What's the best thing?
TDPC is a science fiction romance story, so some of the terms I use are of my own creation and I will try to explain them so I don't lose anyone 😄
If The Dragon Prince's Consort was a color, it would actually be a palette of red, gold, and black. It's a story about wealth and power, after all, and red and gold are colors associated with wealth and power. Black is generally a good third color, and it looks great with red and gold. The combination makes me think of Imperial China and the ornate carvings and silk from the Han, Wei and Tang Dynasty. Also, the Drass people are a few shades of red or ochre themselves so I figured red would be a very dominant color. I generally come up with a color palette in the early stages of writing, and I think about the associations with those colors and work them into the story from the beginning. That also helps me "design" settings and outfits so that the whole story feels more cohesive instead of haphazardly thrown together, like my closet.
The weirdest thing people would eat in TDPC would probably be cheese and butter made from the milk of a hairy, cow-like species I called yangru. They're like oxen or yaks, hardy animals that can pull heavy carts and survive in the cold, hard conditions of Anun's snowy mountain ranges. I know in most of the world cow, sheep and goat milk aren't that strange, but I was thinking of how in Mongolia people drink mare's milk and make products from it, and how Western palates might find that odd. I'm a pretty adventurous eater so my definition of "weird" is a little different - the only stuff I won't eat are octopus/squid, live insects/worms, or cauliflower.
The BEST thing to eat, in my opinion, would be the rich, hearty meals of meat, bread, cheese and root vegetables. Anun is cold, so the Drass eat a lot of fat- and calorie-rich foods to stay warm. They run pretty hot anyway, about 105°F on average, and keeping their bodies at optimal temperature would require lots and lots of food. I looked at foods eaten in cold places like Russia, Siberia and the extreme north of Canada and modeled Drass food off of that - dumplings stuffed with meat and vegetables, soft cheeses with herbs, roasted and grilled meats, thick noodles like soba, and sweet or savory pastries stuffed with meat, cheese or fruit. I want readers to get to the end of a description of food and realize they're MASSIVELY hungry 😋
