Worldbuilding for Masochists

That's right! Former co-host Rowenna Miller is back again to discuss a worldbuilding topic near and dear to our hearts: fashion! How do you take clothing from bog-standard fantasy gear to something unique and specific to your world?

We four are all, obviously, very fashionable when we choose to be — but for people who aren’t clotheshorses, why should you care about fashion in your fiction? Well, for one thing, fashion touches on a lot of other parts of a world -- trade, economy, labor, social classes, etc -- and can quickly communicate aspects of those things to a reader. The choice of what to wear also communicates a lot about an individual character: Do they want to blend in or stand out? Are their clothes utilitarian or sumptuous?

We examine over- and under-used fashion choices in fiction, including scandalous sleeves, dragging skirts, the dearth of hats in fantasy, and the impracticality of leather pants. Also, learn about the "bloop vs squish" theory of the evolution of clothing!

Resources: 

Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh

How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 21st Century by Lydia Edwards

How to Be a Tudor and How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman

Fashion: Explore the Collections from the Victoria & Albert Museum

The Fashion History Timeline

The Met Costume Institute Fashion Plates

NYPL: Costume and Fashion History: A Guide to Resources

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Our Guest: Rowenna Miller is the author of The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, The Palace of Illusions, The Dancer and the Dream Thief, and the Unraveled Kingdom trilogy. She lives in Indiana with her husband, two daughters, four cats, and an ever-growing flock of chickens, where she teaches writing, trespasses while hiking, and spends too much time researching and recreating historical textiles.

This episode was recorded during LACon V / WorldCon 2026 in Anaheim! At the time of recording, we had about 32 hours left of being Schrodinger's Hugo Finalists. Well, we once again did not win -- but we had a fantastic time at WorldCon nonetheless! And one of the best things about being there, besides getting to hang out with each other, is getting to see some of our listeners and take questions live.

We talk about the history of the podcast, what got us into loving and writing fantasy, how research can affect worldbuilding mid-stream, how to create worlds that don't just feel like rat mazes for the protagonist, exploring the sliding scale of magic systems, and more!

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For a writer, a "better" government doesn't necessarily mean well-functioning or benevolent; it means “more complex and better for your story” -- which may well mean a government that is worse-functioning in interesting ways! But fantasy governments tend to look like one of two things: an absolutist monarchy or a US/UK-style representative government, flattened out in ways that ignore potentially juicy layers of bureaucracy, negotiation, and power struggles. So how can we make choices for our fictional worlds that reflect the wide variety of ways people agree to live in a society together and provide compelling plot hooks and character motivations?

To figure that out, we can start by asking: What role does the government play in your story? Where does it intersect with your characters’ lives and with the plot? A political game-of-thrones type plot will need a lot of building out, but even a cozy romcom or an intimate noir will have aspects touched by that society’s government. What are the in-world conditions that led to your world's government having the shape that it does? Economic stressors, rebellions, coups, invasions, ideological shifts -- many factors in your world could contribute to a government's development, maintenance, and fall, and your characters might have their hands on some of those levers.

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Resources:

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer (now a Hugo Winner for Best Related Work!)

Council of Foreign Relations: Forms of Government Introduction

That's right! It's infrastructure week at Worldbuilding for Masochists! So we're talking about the systemic underpinnings of a nation and its economy, the fixed installations that it needs in order to function -- which, admittedly, might sound like the exact sort of overly-detailed, tedious, weighty worldbuilding that people sometimes complain about.

Okay, except, so much in your plot probably depends on things like how people, goods, and information move around! This makes infrastructure perhaps the most iceberg-y of the iceberg things that your reader should only see the tip of, but that you might need to think a lot more deeply about.

So -- Who builds the roads, bridges, dams, and canals in your world? Who maintains transportation hubs and communication networks? Who controls all those points of access to both utilities and information? Who benefits from these systems? Who gets screwed over by them? And, critically, what does this mean for your plot and your characters? Whether you're riding horses over vast plateaus or zipping around at lightspeed, the logistics of time and space are likely to have some kind of an impact. How easily a message can get passed along -- or delayed -- can have serious implications. (Just ask Romeo). Points of change like revolutions or technological advances can seriously upset people's daily lives and the direction of whole nations. In this episode, we explore the ways that infrastructure can give you plot hooks, character motivations, and complicating factors.

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Resources: 

Educational Video from Dr. Esmé Louise James: Was it possible to get finger-blasted inside a Regency carriage?

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Ancient Road

UNRV: How Did the Ancient Romans Send Messages?

Bret Devereaux's Resources for Worldbuilders (many articles about logistics)

History of the Gander International Airport

Overly Sarcastic Productions: Trope Talk: Space Westerns

Magic is a lot of what makes fantasy fantasy. So, how can you do it better? What makes magic good and fun to read in the first place? Here at Worldbuilding for Masochists, we feel pretty strongly that magic systems should be more than an infographic, a D&D table, or a Sorting Hat. How, then, do we build magic into a world in a way that makes sense? And, even more importantly (because absurd and mysterious magic can certainly exist), how can we choose our magic intentionally in a way that allows us to explore something interesting both in the invented world and as commentary on our own?

We interrogate how things like our world's education system and capitalism may have detrimentally influenced the current vogue for "hard magic" systems, clearly delineated and highly transactional. Magic often seems both ancient and calcified; what happens when you make it something that is still being discovered and learned about, or something in a state of change? What systems of power have been built around magic, and how can navigating those create problems for your characters? In this episode, we poke at a lot of assumptions about magic and imagine some ways to draw out engaging plot hooks and character dynamics.

Also! If you'll be at LA WorldCon in two weeks, here are our schedules: Marshall | Cass | Natania

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Resources: 

Cass's handout on Making Magic

Overly Sarcastic Productions: Trope Talk: Magic