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.