In this episode, I’m joined by Evan Kidwell, debut author of Timeaous Spark and the Luck Curse. Evan’s pitch is simple to state and nasty to live through: a society that forces powers to surface early, so it can sort children into a hierarchy that will control the rest of their lives.
The core engine: the Trials are about control
At Mythica High, the Trials are not character-building challenges. They’re a deliberately brutal extraction process, designed to shake students hard enough that whatever is latent inside them is dragged into the open. Physical trials. Psychological trials. The point is not growth, it’s classification.
That one design choice does a lot of heavy lifting. It makes the school feel less like education and more like infrastructure. A machine that produces compliant citizens.
Bloodlines as lived reality, not background lore
The social structure sits on Bloodlines, a rigid hierarchy where genetics determine status, opportunity, and the social “rules of association”. Evan’s world makes a useful distinction here: you’re not necessarily punished for who you date, but you’re judged hard for who you are seen with. Friendship and social proximity become status statements.
That’s the kind of constraint that actually shows up on an ordinary day, which is what I’m always listening for in worldbuilding.
The world’s fear: unpredictability
Mythica High reveres power, but it fears instability even more. If you don’t unlock a power, you risk being pushed into a life of servitude. If you unlock something the system can’t reliably control, you become dangerous, not because you’re “evil”, but because you’re unpredictable.
That tension is sharpened by the way the world treats anomalies. Anoms are not just outliers. They are a category the system wants removed from the board altogether, because exceptions threaten the legitimacy of the sorting mechanism.
A clean example of hierarchy cruelty
One detail that stuck with me is Fayngel: born to Angel-blood parents, but unlocking Fairy-blood powers. The reaction is immediate and brutal. Family doesn’t outrank hierarchy. The system trains people to value status purity over kinship, and it shows.
That creates the kind of internal conflict that actually matters on the page: does a character protect relationships that cost them status, or pursue status at the expense of people they care about?
Writing process: accountability and iteration
We also talk about Evan’s creative process: the story emerging from a vivid dream, sitting with it for years, and then finally committing in a very public way, the kind of moment that removes your ability to wriggle out of doing the work.
He’s candid about the learning curve too: the worry about writing something derivative, the need to rewrite when a world’s logistics don’t add up, and the reality that reader response can change how you handle a character arc.
Worldbuilding takeaway
If you’re writing speculative fiction, the craft takeaway here is straightforward: Evan has built a world where power is not just “cool”, it’s administrative. It has a purpose, a sorting process, an enforcement logic, and social consequences that show up in everyday behaviour. That’s the difference between a setting that sounds interesting and a setting that actually runs.
Find out more and buy the book!
Visit Evan’s website to learn more: https://www.timeaousspark.com/
Name guide (correct spellings and pronunciations): Professor Undermeyer; Fayngel (FANG-gul); Mazidi (maz-ZEE-dee); Anom (eye-NOM); Non-Crea (non-CREE).
Aaaannndd. Here’s the forum question!
https://richardsonsrubicon.com/community/season-5-speculative-fiction-where-worlds-meet/power-hierarchies-that-bite-making-status-systems-matter-on-the-page/