Full Gastro Obscura Interview
A while back I posted about the interview I did with Gastro Obscura. (If you haven't seen it, click the link and check it out! It's about the importance of cuisine in worldbuilding. It features other worldbuilders too and their work is great!)
They weren't able to use the entire interview in the article, but gave me permission to post it here. I wanted to wait a while before I did so that their blog could get the clicks it deserves.
Now it's time, so here it is!
1) What name would you prefer me to use for you in the article? And where are you located?
A ) You can just call me Alex or Alex Greys! I’m located in Washington, USA.
2) How long have you been worldbuilding? And do you do it primarily as a hobby for its own sake, or as part of a larger project you are developing?
A ) I’ve been worldbuilding since I was in kindergarten, or maybe a little before then. I learned to read and write earlier than most kids, and I spent a lot of time writing fantasy stories and creating worlds for them. In retrospect, I wouldn’t call it a hobby. I think it’s more of a coping mechanism I used to escape reality, because I’ve spent most of my life trapped in situations where I have no control. Worldbuilding gave me control over something.
I didn’t start taking it seriously until 2017, when I contracted a flu that left me with severe post-viral syndrome. I was stuck in a wheelchair for over a year and developed chronic conditions that kept me in bed for long periods of time. My body was broken, I could hardly do anything physical for years after that. I decided this was the time to buckle down and finally do something with this writing skill I developed.
I wanted to commit to a larger project than the little ones I’ve done in the past. I started writing the World of Looming Gaia series in 2017, and it’s still going strong 7 years later in 2024! My health has been up and down ever since, but Looming Gaia has always been there to support me when my body won’t.
3) Was food always something that you incorporated into your world? If not, when/how did food become an aspect of your worldbuilding?
A ) This part is pretty interesting, because even though cuisine is so essential in real-world cultures, it wasn’t something I thought about until several years into my project. I believe this is because my health conditions really limited my diet. By that I mean, I could only tolerate the same 3 or 4 bland foods every day for years on end, and this limited diet was driving me insane. Eating became this immense source of stress and physical pain for me. I resented food and never wanted to think about it.
One day, my husband complained that he wanted food from a restaurant, but we couldn’t afford it. So, I told him I would cook him something instead. I never cooked much in the past, but I looked up a random recipe online and gave it a go anyway. It turned out pretty good, so I started researching more about cooking so I could make more meals for him.
Cooking for other people fixed my damaged relationship with food. I was still stuck on the same bland diet due to my health, but I didn’t resent food anymore. I finally saw the value in cuisine as an art form and developed an interest in it, so I decided to incorporate it into my worldbuilding. Looking back, I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to incorporate something so vital into my world. I think cuisine is one of the first things worldbuilders should think about when developing cultures.
4) Why is it important for you, or worldbuilders in general, to consider the food that characters are eating, and make food a part of the storytelling?
A ) What people are eating can tell you a lot about their culture, and it can tell you a lot about the area where they live too. When you examine what’s on a character’s plate, you get a glimpse of what crops and meats are available to them, and this forces the worldbuilder to consider things like the climate and geography of that location. It all ties together.
It also gives the worldbuilder an opportunity to explore their cultural practices, like maybe they are from a purely vegetarian or carnivorous culture, and the worldbuilder must come up with reasons why that might be. They can also consider the health implications of such a diet, and that might change the appearance or behavior of a character. Cuisine can say so much. It opens the doors to all kinds of stories and concepts.
5) When it comes to food, what factors or details are most important for you/worldbuilders in general to consider?
A ) When worldbuilding, I think it’s important that different aspects of your cultures feel cohesive and make sense. For example, let’s say you wanted to create a culture that lives in an arctic tundra environment. You decide that their native cuisine is hippopotamus meat and coconuts because it sounds cool or whatever, but you should ask yourself if that really makes sense when their environment doesn’t support those plants and animals.
Worldbuilders should ask themselves what their people/creatures are eating and also WHY they’re eating it. Is it because they have to, for nutrition or scarcity reasons? Or because they prefer these foods over others for taste? The history of the region and the biology of the people matters too. How accessible is food to the average person in this culture? Is famine an issue? What do the rich people eat compared to what the poor are eating? Do they use ingredients that are imported from other lands?
These are some of the questions worldbuilders should ask themselves when developing cuisines. As you write the answers, you’ll find pieces of a puzzle naturally coming together and building cohesive concepts.
6) Where do you get inspiration from? Real-world cultures, history, etc.?
A ) Inspiration comes from everywhere! Sometimes I look at real-world cuisines from regions that are similar to my own, and I ask myself if these dishes would make sense in my lore. If not, I can tweak them as needed and create something more original.
I take a lot of inspiration from what animals eat too. When you’re writing fantasy creatures with animal traits, like centaurs and satyrs for example, I think it’s helpful to look at what those animal counterparts eat in the real world and why.
Do they have specific nutritional needs? Do they have to eat hard things to grind down their teeth? Do they eat little stones to help them digest stuff? These dietary factors can carry over into fantasy species too and make them more interesting.
7) Tell me a little about the process for developing the different cuisines that you profile in Looming Gaia. Do individual characters, settings, or cultures that you have created dictate the food that you think of? Or is it more the other way around, that you think of an interesting idea for food first, and then see where it fits into the setting?
A ) When I’m developing a cuisine, the very first thing I do is look at the climate and geography of the region. I ask myself what kind of crops would grow there and what kind of animals would make the most sense to hunt and ranch. I also look at the species of the peoples who live there. A troll’s diet, for example, is going to be very different from a human’s diet because they have different nutritional needs.
The next step is to consider other factors such as religion, economy, trade relations with other regions, and so on, because these can all affect what resources are available to them. I think about what foods may not be native to the area, but could be imported from foreign lands.
I never come up with a cuisine first and build a culture around it, though I do think this is a perfectly valid way to worldbuild. I always take the opposite approach and build the cuisine around the culture. I try to create at least 10 traditional dishes per region, including a typical breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, and drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. When all of them are put together, it can paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind of what the whole culture is like.
8) What’s one aspect or detail of your own food worldbuilding that you are most proud of, or think is the coolest?
A ) So far I’m most proud of my Mogdiri cuisine concepts. The Mogdiri are a kingdom of magic-users who refuse to eat animals for cultural reasons, but they don’t consider insects to be animals. For this culture, I had to come up with traditional cuisine that centered around bugs and bug byproducts. It was intimidating at first, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
