If your fantasy world has historical connotations then having a grasp on historical fashion is really important. Talking about clothes can add layers of depth to your world, like the keftas in Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. In this post, I will mostly be focusing on historical fashion from Europe as this is what I know most about.
Class Hierarchy
If you want to show class and wealth differences, fashion can be key to doing so. However, this isn’t in the same way as we would see in modern times unless your world has the capacity for fast fashion. Being rich didn’t mean you had a closet the size of a barn with lots of floofy fabrics like in Bridgerton, it meant having a few garments in the latest fashion that you wore frequently. The less wealthy you were the more out of fashion your gowns or coats would be, however, gowns would often be altered where possible to fit the new style.
The poor would still wear imitations of high fashion, but in simpler ways with simpler fabrics. Second hand or homemade was the norm. Contrary to popular belief, being poor didn’t mean ceased to care about fashion and well get onto why later.
Regional Fashion
Just because something was the height of fashion in Moscow, doesn’t mean it was the heigh of fashioning Paris. On a smaller scale, fashions would take time to reach rural area’s and smaller cities, so fashion would differ from region to region within a country. If you want your world to feel vast, including differences in clothing preference from country to country and region to region could really help with this. Other characters can then identify more about a new character just by looking at them.
The Importance of Fashion
Historically, fashion held a much greater significance than it does today. This is because of what fashion meant in society. Through most of history in Europe, there have been very strict social rules that everyone had to abide by. Dressing in line with the fashion was a way of showing that you were in line with these social rules. This meant being fashionable wasn’t about setting trends and breaking out of the norm, it was about keeping to the norm as much as possible. Breaking out from the confirmative fashion could risk your place in society, affecting your relationships, marriage prospects and ultimately your livelihood.
Of course there were people who took risks that paid off and subsequently moved fashion onward, but fashion moved at a much slower pace due to the amount of time and expense required to make completely new garments and so these were relatively small changes.
Hope this was helpful!
[If reposting to instagram please credit @isabellestonebooks]
the other day I had a thought about worldbuilding that was like…okay, so, cars. obviously important and essential part of life.
And yet most of the time when we talk about going to places we don’t even bother mentioning how we got there.
you could potentially write an entire contemporary novel and not mention the word “car” and the reader might not even notice something was out of place.
imagine, someone reading a book set in our world when they know nothing about our technology. imagine a character saying something like “yeah, when I went down to Florida last week…” and the reader just being boggled because isn’t Florida like…300 miles from where the story is set
“I’ll go by the store on the way home” “oh I need to pick up my brother while I’m out” “I’m going to travel up to my aunt’s house for the weekend” it’s breaking my brain.
to people in a world where magic is commonplace, it would be like this. they wouldn’t think to say that the lights in the house or the locks on doors or the carriage on the street work by magic.
of course, in a story we take liberties because the reader needs things pointed out. But think of the kinds of wild things you could do with worldbuilding if you just didn’t go out of your way to explain. Idk.
Whoa
I never thought about it this way but yeah it makes total sense
And like, the followup to “Yeah, when I went down to Florida last week” could be “Did you drive or fly?”
“Huh? Drove, it was only like six hours each way.”
“Holy crap. How many speeding tickets did you get?”
And the reader’s head explodes because in just a couple lines of dialogue:
* It’s possibly to go from [location] to Florida pretty casually in this setting.
*Flight exists as a mode of transport in this setting.
* Flight exists as a mode of transport in this setting but someone would choose not to use it, and yet still not only go to Florida and back in a week, but make the journey one way in under a day.
* What the hell is a “speeding ticket?”
This is really cool, can we have a name for it like “negative space worldbuilding” or something where stuff about the setting is implied by the stuff happening around it?
“Negative space worldbuilding” is a great term for it. For instance:
“Did you drive or fly?”
“Gated. It was an emergency.”
“Yow, you can afford that?”
“It’s not TOO bad, if you agree to go during off-peak hours. I had to be up at midnight to make the gate hub by 3 AM. Went through perched on a shipping crate full of stuffed animals. At least it’s fast.”
Yes yes exactly, but think of just HOW ambiguous you can be like this.
Imagine two characters having this exchange:
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I was on the road!”
“I was just worried, no need to get grumpy. Are you headed out tomorrow?”
“Yeah. This is my first time flying.”
“Oh. Are you nervous?”
This scene could continue for a long time without revealing to the reader that we are in a fantasy world that runs on magic and uses scrying stones, carriages and dragons.
In a fantasy novel, we’d write something like this: “She took out her scrying stone. It was a round, polished piece of clear quartz the size of her palm, carved with a specific set of glyphs imbued with magic that allowed her to communicate with other people who possessed similar stones within range.”
But like, imagine it’s not a scrying stone, it’s a smartphone.
A few things:
I don’t know off the top of my head exactly what a smartphone is primarily made of, and I’m from this world.
What is its primary function that I have to let the reader know about? The ability to make phone calls? Access to the internet? I’m probably going to go with “remote communication.”
What does it mean to “get someone’s number?” Are the devices numbered? Who is numbering them? Are people assigned numbers? The reader wonders. But I, as a person living in this world, don’t really know how phone numbers work either.
These phones are a very new technology that’s changed the world. But what happened to make them possible all of a sudden, after 3,000 years of written history in this world has passed? I’m not sure I can give a complete answer to that.
Why are they always needing to be charged, the reader wants to know. What charges them? What is a “charger?”
“Mine’s an Apple charger, it won’t work with yours.” Are your characters charging APPLES????
It says that the protagonist “hung up.” What does that mean?
I need to introduce all the abilities of the smartphone early on in the story. It’s going to seem like a lazy cop-out if, in chapter 26, the protagonist is suddenly able to use her phone’s flashlight to navigate a dark area and this hasn’t been mentioned before.
“She picked her phone up off the coffee table. It was a hand-sized, rectangular device, similar in appearance to a mirror, but when imbued with electrical energy, its surface would display images and glyphs that responded to her touch. The smartphone was one of the most revolutionary technological advances of the twenty-first century. Its primary function was as a communication device, allowing her to send her voice, her image, or messages she typed onto the screen to others who possessed similar devices, but it also allowed her to search compiled records of human knowledge for any information she desired, listen to music, and watch pre-recorded theatrical performances, known as “movies—”
Some designs for the Ach'Harheini bladedancer armor and the traditional “Ch'wuari” sword, as worn by one of the main characters, H'oric la Harithe. He wears the mask of Thuvfi, the chameleon trickster god.
Worldbuilders naming towns: I named this town Elygwe’meth which means “Where the Dearly Beloved King died next to his Lover” in the language I invented and also a combination of the Old English word for diamonds and the Maori word for apples since that’s their main exports
People in real life naming towns: I named this town Big Falls cause big fall there
me poring over a fantasy map: Shit I already used that name for a town, I can’t use it again, that’s such sloppy worldbuilding
real life maps: There are six rivers in Britain called the River Avon, which means River River, because when the Romans asked the Celts “what is that?” they replied “a river?” and the Romans nodded and jotted it down
I’m really obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding that refuses to clarify its relationship to reality
When we read books we instinctively try to categorize books based on the kind of book they are, oh this is fantasy, post-apocalyptic, etc. and we try to find out things and clarify what kind of world it is and whether or not the things in it are make believe and how make believe they are.
So what if I…Messed with that process?
For instance. A book is set in Ohio. We mention the names of cities in Ohio and pieces of Ohio’s history and famous landmarks in Ohio and it’s incredibly well researched, even down to the names of museums in Cincinnati or something. We’re talking very firmly established in the facts of a place. It’s kind of an eerie book and in some ways the setting seems weird or cloudy or dreamy but it seems grounded in just the amount of facts that are in it about the setting.
There are little factoids dropped here and there. At first very boring ones. Something that happened at an Ohio water treatment plant in 1995. What it takes to serve on a jury in Ohio. Ohio laws about spraying pesticides on corn. Facts about corn itself. Probably one of those cutesy little facts about weird local laws.
They start to get…stranger. The little bits of worldbuilding. Did you know that Ohio has had more nuclear power plant accidents than any other state? In this small town in Ohio, you used to need a license to perform an exorcism! This charming small town’s mayor is a ghost. In Ohio, it is legal for doctors to draw more of your blood than they need to sell to third parties. There are no Dollar Tree’s in Ohio. (Have you ever seen a Dollar Tree in Ohio? Are you sure?)
At some point the reader catches onto something that is clearly not right. Maybe the book states at some point that Indiana is to the east of Ohio instead of the west. This is clearly a mistake, and they move on.
Some things about the everyday realities of the setting seem peculiar. There seem to be quite a bit of packs of wild dogs about, and mold seems to grow a lot quicker. Grass is described very strangely—a shade of green that isn’t very characteristic of grass. There seem to be a lot of cults, and there are a lot of empty lots in town enclosed with razor wire for no apparent reason. Sometimes a character’s hands grow suddenly cold, and they panic and hasten inside. Frostbite? Is it the climate? Why does the author write that way?
At some point, though, it becomes clear that the author is fictionalizing a bit. It may certainly be the case that nuclear accidents have occurred in Ohio more than any other state, but the tale of how deer from that area glow in low light is probably made up. And though that famous televangelist existed and it seems plausible enough that he owned tigers, like some kind of janky drug dealer would purchase, it seems implausible that he regularly fed people to them.
As the story continues, more and more facts seem a little off, though. The spatial relationship of Ohio to its surrounding states, and the shape that Ohio is (it’s described at one point as having a panhandle, and as bordering East Tennessee) seems to make less and less sense. The wild dogs are massive, and have smoldering eyes like hellhounds. One nuclear disaster apparently wiped out a full sixth of Ohio’s population. The deer, plagued with cancer from the radiation, have turned carnivores. The wild horses run under a red sky—the sky is always described as red. The original capital of Ohio is lost, its stones dashed down in the war that made its citizens turn to cannibalism. The invasive plants of Ohio can pry open windows, and once choked a woman in her sleep. The people of Ohio dream more frequently of birds of prey gouging out their eyes than people in any other state. There are plagues of rats in Ohio that sometimes devastate towns. In Ohio, unexplained disappearances are rarely investigated. There are eagles in Ohio—their wings blot out the sun. Ohio briefly seceded from the Union in 1922, and there are those that still believe in the Free People’s Empire of Ohio. Ohio shares a border with Arizona. Ohio has a coastline on the edge of a dark and perpetually cold sea.
It becomes abundantly clear that this is not Ohio. It is something else, named Ohio and superficially wearing Ohio as a skin, but it is not Ohio. And looking back, it is hard to tell when it stopped being Ohio. When it stopped being just quirky Americana and an eerie mood and started being…this. Small details were off early on, but these were not noticed, because they seemed so normal. The sky was always described as red, but that was because it was supposed to be sunset…right?
The governor of Ohio has been struck down. All bow before the God-Emperor of Ohio. The black wolves of Hell await those who will not bow with their teeth.
Wizards have the same trust in magic that software designers have in software, which is to say, almost none at all.
“Are you fucking kidding me I worked in a reagrent shop for a few years I don’t trust any of that stuff. Who the hell knows what other components are in the ashes.”
“Yeah I was in the circle that made Alston’s Divine Circle of Teleportation. There’s some pretty nasty corner cases you can get into but the headmaster published it without us. I just take ships. It’s way safer.”
“I call bullshit on that Necromancer channeling spirits of loved ones. What did he say he was using? ‘Medium Conduit Ruinic Circles’? That’s just a bunch of buzzwords slapped together, and they don’t even interact with each other.”
“I’ve been looking at this scroll all morning and I’m 90% sure that the scribe didn’t even look at the standard for pyromancies.”
“Help Desk, this is Gloriline, what did you fuck up this time?” *indistinct vocals* “Dave, I’ve seen the news, and, frankly, I can see the ash cloud from here. You paid for extended support, not enabling support.”
“I can’t get this fucking spell to work, Jane, can you look it?”
*passes a scroll* *a few moments of silence*
“I think you missed a bookend rune right here-”
“GODS DAMN IT! IT’S ALWAYS SHIT LIKE THAT! THANK YOU!” *angrily scribbles on parchment*
(It takes five more aggravatingly tiny adjustments before the spell works)
I don’t play wizards anymore because they’re too much like my day job.
Instead of a orb the wizard has a little statue of a duck he tells his spells to and then swears when he spots the obvious mistake.
You beat me to it! I was going to add that the reason why wizards and witches always have familiars around is so they can Rubber Duck at them until they realize what the mistake with their spell is!
Outsiders get it wrong and figure the familiars are somehow teaching spells to their owners, but no. It’s just explaining to Firewing what you’re trying to do with this teleportation matrix until you realize that you’ve been using telepathy crystals to power it the whole time like a FUCKING IDIOT!
i realize that last night’s post about the manarian probably makes very little sense, so maybe i’ll explain a little more of what’s going on with this setting.
theManarian is a whole galaxy inhabited by lost of technologically advanced alien species. there are no humans in the setting, but most of the aliens we created were roughly humanoid.
the thematic core of the setting, in my mind, has always been the Triwars, which is a galactic war fought between three major powers: norph,havokandcanog. the norph were the species i was always most attached to. they’re these guys:
this is the “new” design for the norph species. it updates my older one by removing the “pillar foot” look that a lot of old manarian species have b/c i designed them at a time when i thought feet (and specifically toes) were foolish extremities and gives them explicit gills. i don’t have access to my old sketchbooks right now, but the general look is very similar to the old norph.
so too with the havok. i didn’t really change their design at all, they’re still artificially animated, vaguely malevolent, gelatinous humanoids:
the havok and the norph are traditional enemies. usually the Triwars are considered the “present” or immediate past of the setting. when i’ve written a conclusion for them, the norph win.
both species are artificial; the norph were created by the za’agar and the norph by thezelktar. in the original lore, these were two different species, but in the new lore these are two political factions of the same species, the zær. in the new lore, the canog are also creations of the zær. the canog were based on the zær’s own genes, the norph on the wildlife native to the rhinox system and the havok are completely artificial. the three species represent increasingly radical attempts by the mainstream zær, za’agar and zelktar factions, respectively, to create the “perfect being.”
however, long before the civilizations of these species could really develop, the conflict between the za’agar and zelktar became a galactic war that rapidly spread and wiped out not only the entire zær species but most of their neighbors as well.
after this disaster, the galaxy enjoys an era of relative peace and prosperity as these younger civilizations grow. during this time, the dominant galactic civilizations are the Rox Protectorate (which was mostly untouched by the “biogenesis war”) and the Kotonn Empire (a successor state to the C!ansh Empire, which fell during it). however, they are soon upstaged by the zær’s creations. the havok are the most aggressive of the three and are cast as the antagonists of the Triwars.
here’s the blurb that i wrote as a hook for the post-Triwars setting i’m working on:
The Triwars are over but the wreckage remains.
Half an age of war has left the major powers scarred and bankrupt, and their spaceways choked with damaged, half-operative weapons of war.
Now, from the fringes come the refugee and the migrant, the pirate and the plunderer, the scavenger and the scrounger alike to strip and salvage what they can or die trying. This is the time of the tekleric.
New players have emerged: the mysterio, for generations itinerant riddlers and wanderers, are now the (precarious) princes of those who pick over the bones of the hulks of war. Eiqen raiders, formerly restricted to the galactic rim have crept out to trouble major spaceways.
which brings me nicely to the mysterio, the species i’d point out as critical to the identity of the manarian. in the old lore, they did not have a homeworld but formed in the vacuum of space and live on spaceships. they always wore armored suits and helmets, and no outsider had ever seen them without.
in the new lore, i tried to keep somewhat close to that? now, they are relatives of the orox, who were exiled for a crime in a bygone age and have refused to settle anywhere permanently. as constant spacefarers, they always wear their spacesuits, although i’ve changed their designs to be more lithe and flexible:
tekleric is a profession among the mysterio that involves entering space-wrecks for scrap and salvage. it has grown in importance since the end of the Triwars, and its associated industries are now among the most prominent in the galactic economy.
anyway, that’s some manarian stuff. hope you enjoyed.
here’s a glimpse into a my world-building process for this manarian stuff. this is a spreadsheet that i used to cross-reference and combine the lists of species that appeared in previous drafts of manarian-related documents i had written (right) into the list for my new version (left).
i tried to be relatively conservative, discarding little unless it was truly redundant (like the ioth, who were never clearly distinguished from the ichen) or never really fleshed out (like the prozians).
What types of art appeal to sight, hearing, touch/movement, taste, or scent?
What type of art do people in your world most commonly think of when they think “art”? Or is there a certain sense they tend to think of?
How accessible is the consumption of art across your world?
How accessible is the creation of art across your world?
Which type of art is the easiest to access, or most commonly interacted with? Similarly, which type is the most difficult to access?
Is there a certain theme or type of art that’s regarded as higher up in social standing? Or that’s more commonly interacted with my members of upper classes?
How easily accessible are the means necessary to create certain kind of art?
Is there a type of art that’s interactive, or that needs human interaction to be art? (A real world example for this one would be makeup.)
How important is performance art?
Do people sing, and are there different genres of music?
Are there different types of dance?
Is acting a common type of art, and have people benefitted from it in the way they have in today’s world?
Do platforms like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, or Twitch exist to showcase people creating or interacting with art?
Do anything like art museums, theaters, and concerts exist in your world?
What are some common emotions or themes represented in your world’s art?
What are some common reasons for people to create art?
Have there been any artistic movements that help change or define the style of art in your world?
Are there any famous pieces or artists?
How does art reflect your world’s sociopolitical issues?
What are some common ways that art in your world uses symbolism? Or does it depict events and emotions accurately, with no need to see a deeper meaning?
How do you see art in academia? Are there classes you can take?
Is there an artistic community in your world or a place to gather?
How are artists seen in social standing?
How much does it take for an artist to join the “greats” of your world and become a household name?
How common is it for artists to be able to live on their creations? Can they devote all of their time to their craft, or do they have to work another way at the same time?
Does art interact with the sciences at all?
Is there any discrepancy between the way society values science and art at all?
What is considered a controversial piece of art in your world?
Has art inspired anything in your world’s inhabitants before?
How common is it for your world’s population to have an emotional reaction to art? Is there a certain type it’s most common with?
Does consuming art take all of one’s attention, or can they do it in the background? (i.e. Listening to music while doing homework.)
Does art have any common purposes, like representation of issues or even comedy?
Badly Burnt Bacon was a Swedish late-night television show which aired on the now defunct “Dumt Roligt” network from January 1994 until February 2000.
The show was hosted by former Irish children’s television presenter Mary Jane Murphy [not pictured], Finnish metal drummer Neve R. Addeny [pictured, centre] and Swedish horror movie host Baroness Von Törstig [not pictured].
The show, which was broadcast in English with “comic book-esque” subtitles, consisted mainly of comedy sketches, often surreal and nonsensical, performed by beautiful women of various nationalities, along with extremely brief and often comedically interrupted bursts of soft-core pornography - with the hosts interjecting when things “got out of hand, ya?”.
The show is probably now most famous for the opening scene of the 1999 episode “The Scenic Town Of Sigtuna” in which host Mary Jane Murphy introduced the show from atop Skokloster Castle before stepping off and seemingly plummeting to her death.
This was her final public appearance and, despite it having been denied over the years by multiple cast and crew members, rumours that the stunt was an unscripted suicide persist to this day.
At time of airing, the show was critically-panned and had very few viewers.
It has since gained a cult following.
In 2016, one of the show’s running gags - in which characters step away from a scene in order to put their hands or feet in a tub of jam - became a “meme” on social media.
This led to rumours of a Netflix revival, which former host Neve R. Addeny called “utterly ridiculous” stating “no one wants to see me in my underwear”.
Some spooky Aos Sí of an undead nature! Continuation from the project I’ve been working on! These travel with the Queen of Night and her Winter court. Bringing those back from the dead to serve the living is a common practice in the shadowy forests of Rend'arfel, although outsiders are a little disturbed by it - KP
The Cat Sidhe variant of the Aos Sí of the same project as yesterday. These Sidhe are often found in the tall grasslands of Frumura and from their size and fuzzier appearance are often mistaken for cats. - KP
Some Aos Sí sketches from a project I’ve been working on! I made a batch of them so they’ll be coming out in the next few days. I’m still working on their designs but I like them so far! I’m currently writing a high-fantasy book and this is one of the species that inhabits the world! -KP
