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Worldbuilding for Masochists: Daily Summaries Delivered
by worldbuildingformasochists
A podcast by three fantasy authors who love to overcomplicate things for themselves.
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- 3 days ago1h 11m
Episode 193: Merging the Magical and Mundane, ft. CAITLIN ROZAKIS
It's hard to find cockatrice eggs at the local market, your elderly colleague needs help saving a pentagram as a PDF, and it turns out your runes operate on proprietary magic and won't function if you don't renew your subscription. Isn't magical life glamorous? Caitlin Rozakis joins us to discuss mundanities of everyday life with fantasy elements. Whether it's an office building, a kitchen, or the cutthroat atmosphere of a PTA meeting, magic can touch every sphere of life in your world, if you choose to let it. Sometimes that's just about making life easier: heating and purifying water, preserving food, healing wounds. And sometimes it might not help at all. Plus, the development of magic, if widely-spread in a world, is likely to affect how non-magical technology develops -- possibly accelerating some discoveries, but just as possibly circumventing others. So what does the presence of mundane magic do to other aspects of your society? Whatever it is, we hope, most fervently, that you are never cursed with MagiTechBros. [Transcript TK] Our Guest: New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Rozakis writes fantasy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart. Her debut novel Dreadful turned out not to be dreadful at all. Her Everyday Enchantments series include standalones The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association and Startup Hell. She also writes romance under the name Catherine Beck; her novella “Leah’s Perfect Christmas” was adapted into the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Leah’s Perfect Gift.” Short stories have appeared under the name R. Rozakis in Cast of Wonders, Aurealis, Daily Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Weirdbook, as well as the anthologies Substitution Cipher, Clockwork Chaos,Baker Street Irregulars II, and Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022. Caitlin Rozakis is the pen name of Rebecca Rozakis. After graduating from Princeton, she has had too many career changes, including mechanical engineering (cut short after the murderous robot incident), finance (amortizing tequila receivables is not as fun as drinking tequila), and the American Museum of Natural History (who knew emus had birth certificates?), and a number of marketing positions, some at companies you may have even heard of. She lives in Jersey City with her husband and son.
- 2 weeks ago1h 16m
Episode 192: Building Better Catastrophes
From climatological calamities to terrestrial tragedies, from magical mishaps to interstellar incidents, disasters can be wonderful plot generators. So if you're going to tear apart the world you've lovingly built, how can you do that and what happens when you do? How do the people in your world deal with disasters? Do they attribute it to an act of an unkind god or to something else? What actions do they take to try to stop it -- or avoid it? And what happens to society in the recovery? And then, how do we apply the elements of sci-fi and fantasy to these disasters? What happens when someone tries to do The Big Magic and rolls a natural 1? Or when space keeps trying to kill everyone who travels through it? We explore some of the common catastrophes particular to genre fiction and their creative uses in narratives. [Transcript TK] Resources: The Great Courses: The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague The Great Courses: The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research The Great Courses: Earth's Great Extinctions
- Oct 7, 20261h 26m
Episode 191: Building Better Fashion, ft. ROWENNA MILLER
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 [Transcript TK] 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.
- Sep 23, 20261h 3m
Episode 190: Live from Anaheim!
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! [Transcript TK]
- Sep 9, 20261h 18m
Episode 189: Building Better Governments
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. [Transcript TK] Resources: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer (now a Hugo Winner for Best Related Work!) Council of Foreign Relations: Forms of Government Introduction
- Aug 26, 20261h 24m
Episode 188: Building Better Infrastructure
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. [Transcript TK] 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
- Aug 12, 20261h 14m
Episode 187: Building Better Magic
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 [Transcript TK] Resources: Cass's handout on Making Magic Overly Sarcastic Productions: Trope Talk: Magic
- Jul 29, 202650 min
Episode 186: Does It Hurt When You Do This? ft. JESSE ARAGON
Fantasy protagonists are highly prone to getting stabbed, sliced, impaled, poisoned, bonked on the head, dropped off cliffs, and otherwise wounded. Which means they need someone to patch them up! So who does that in your invented world, and how do they learn to do it? Guest Jesse Aragon joins us to discuss emergency medicine and other issues of healing. How much reality can you -- and should you -- bring into the medical components of your world? Waving a wand and curing all ills is easy, but potentially unsatisfying, but on the other hand, our heroes can rarely spare six months away from their Quest to let bones knit or infections pass. So just how much magic -- or sci-fi technology -- can you bring in to smooth the process along, and how do you make those things fit in with the rest of your world? Are there medical schools, or do you learn in a master-apprentice type system? How much experimentation is there? How well do your characters understand the real workings of the human body? And, most importantly: How do you get plot hooks out of it? [Transcript TK] Our Guest: Jesse Aragon* is a writer of sci-fi and fantasy, usually both at the same time. Her work features morally complicated protagonists, horror, tragedy, the numinous, and deep dives into the darkest, messiest parts of human nature. She grew up overseas, and “home” for her is everywhere from Brussels, Belgium to Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has a Psychology BA, an EMT-I license, and a BSN. She has been an usher, a cashier, a server, a home health aide, an EMT, an ER tech, and a trauma RN—her jobs have consistently been much stranger than any fiction she writes. When she’s not writing, she enjoys weightlifting, video games, and horror movies. She loves cats, green chiles, and UFO lore. Her debut novel, THE DEMON STAR, is forthcoming from DAW/Astra in July 2026! *Yes, this is a real name. No, it has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings. No, she is not (so far as she knows) a descendant of Catherine of Aragon. It is a very common surname for people of Hispanic descent in Mexico and the Southwestern US.
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