allegory, allegorier, allegoriest

All "takes" on this blog reflect real policy that will come to pass in the dark era of my rule

How can I seamlessly weave the Peglar papers into this mundane conversation

a warthog is a thog specialized for use in war

i saw the greatest minds of our generation uplifted and enriched by the black sails torment nexus

going ape shit hooligan crazy searching the word Key on metmuseum dot org

egypt, 4th-1st century bce. the angle here is startling and charming to me and appears to have been standard at the time. at first i had difficulty imagining the lock it would fit into. looks like a guy clenching his big hand at you 🫴. A+

north china, 3rd century bce. hey everyone SHUT up. everyone SHUT UP for a fucking second and have some RESPECT while i tune my ZITHER with my beautiful little BEAR KEY. i said SHUT UP!! i am KISSING HIM. A+

driving me insane that the inscription in marcus aurelius is to "my truest love" like "my dearest love" would have been sad enough but TRUEST... the whole show is about the illusions and the falsehoods that prop up power and flint is so good at using them. but he was once someone's truest love. the least false. in this world that runs on lies and stories and theater there was once something true. and it was destroyed. i get why flint is like that now i'd go fucking crazy too

trans christian: god made me trans by putting a male soul in a female body so i could experience the joy of transitioning

trans atheist: society genders my body in a way i dont like so im transitioning to change my material circumstances

trans agnostic: nobody knows why im on t

Me and the mutuals

"AND DOST THOU THINK THAT I IN FEAR OF THESE NEW GODS WILL COWER AND QUAKE? FAR, FAR AM I FROM THAT."

male archetypes like uncles and the skiing joker

if you are a web designer of any kind and the dropdown menu that appears when i rightclick vanishes when i try to move my mouse and select an option you will go to hell before you die

Historical inaccuracies in major published novels and period dramas bother me so much because I can't write a fan fiction that I know I'll post for free without being fairly certain I have the major facts right.

I'm writing a story right now that I probably won't post at all and I still spent a good hour and downloaded a research paper to figure out if women in feudal China were allowed to have baths during their periods. The answer is no, as I suspected, but I checked! I also learned about their version of pads which sound much better than European historical period solutions and kept reading long after I'd found my answer. It was all fascinating to learn about because history is interesting.

So I guess what I'm saying is, why write historical fiction or make a period drama if you aren't even interested in or in love with history? When I read Bernard Cornwell, for example, it feels like he's fascinated by the period he's writing about. No one seems strangely modern, but they all feel deeply human. I don't need a female character to point out sexism or patriarchy to me, it's obvious. I'm trusted to think about it for myself. The author trusts that I care as much as he does about the past.

I don't understand why you would produce historical fiction if you don't care about the past. Maybe I'm the wrong audience, maybe most people don't care, but I don't get it. And I don't expect everything to be perfect, we don't even know everything about even an era as recent as the Regency, but it doesn't even feel like some of these people care at all.

Publishing houses don’t provide fact checking. Their main concern is that the book will sell. That’s it. And I believe they’re still cutting staff whenever possible. This is a criticism of corporate guidance, not publishing professionals.

Further, a lot of readers actively resent books which expect the reader to be an active partner in the learning process.

I used to be a book blogger who mostly read historical fiction and since I'm also a historian I had this naive idea that surely people would be really interested in me politely pointing out historical inaccuracies in historical fiction to provide learning opportunities. They were not. A lot of people, readers and authors alike, got really, really mad. One author doxxed me over this, I'm not even kidding.

It's not just that a lot of people don't care enough about history to actually do the research or that a lot of publishers just want to make a quick buck, though both these things are 100% true of course. But I've come to find that very often the "mistakes" are by design. Give the readers a version of the past they're already used to, do not challenge their conceptions of history, go for the cliche because a lot of readers want the cliche and they get really mad when you challenge it.

But it's so ugly, especially because a lot of those cliches just so happen to be the most sexist, racist, queermisic etc. ideas about the past and that's no mistake either. I've been looking into this for the past five years or so and it all comes down to making the past comfortable and familiar and safe for "mainstream readers". When you take that away in favour of offering a more nuanced, diverse perspective, a lot of people don't like that at all because it doesn't feel safe to them. That's exactly why we need more of it though. Reading, especially reading about history, really should offer us food for critical thought about the past and present, not just feed us old, easily digestable cliches that just so happen to validate conservative values as well.

Obviously it's not always quite that deep - but also it kind of is, especially considering that historical fiction was a favourite medium for fascist propaganda in the 20th century for that very reason. That context is always at the back of my mind when this topic comes up.

I’ve been thinking about this reblog a lot, and it spawned something between a response and a stream of consciousness.

In some ways historical fiction is a lot like fanfiction in that the setting, the set pieces, the characters, their biographical info, their context and backstory already exist. With fanfic, some use the medium to fix/expand part of the story, like when I was 18 and wrote a novel length fanfic about Andromeda Tonks (Boy Wizard Books, Jessica Mitford Expy) because I was obsessed with the non-fascist sister. I didn’t write that fic to “fix” said characters presence in the books, but to do a deep intimate dive into her character.

With historical fiction (which I will call HiFi) we see similar patterns. I grew up reading HiFi about Elizabeth I, and this distorted my ability to really engage seriously with her bit of history because in the back of my mind she’s just my favorite character, not a real, complex, often-cruel, brilliant late-Renaissance queen. Some HiFi writers never progress past the fanfic approach. Like an AU HiFi novel where Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley are endgame and Mary Queen of Scots is Elizabeth’s quirky sidekick. I’d read the crap out of that, but I wouldn’t take it seriously.

A complex psychological yet fictional exploration of Elizabeth I in all her complexity, though, would be so cool. It would also be a very different type of work. I’m not sure if I’d want to read it. I imagine that that’s the difference between hard and soft HiFi.

A separate but related issue is that…readers don’t like it when books provoke/expect them to think, or be partners in the reading/learning process. Hard HiFi does that.

As for the authors…look it’s really shit author behavior to attack/engage with reviewers. It’s shit author behavior to lurk on your Goodreads page. Which I do because I am a badly behaved author. But engaging and doxxing? Jesus.

But on the other hand, that book might be their biggest accomplishment in life. In fact, it probably is. Getting a book traditionally published to the point where blogs are talking about it? That’s the dream. And after you jump through all those hoops for some random book reviewer to (from their perspective) attack the entire book? Oof. That’s their baby. And that may be their only source of livelihood. Take it from a NYT Bestselling author: large readership doesn’t mean endless money. Or any money.

I think some clarity would help, or maybe better media literacy? Should a HiFi author have to say “yo this is soft HiFi don’t @ me about the Armada”? Or should I have to say “this is a serious work of history written for intellectually curious individuals who lack patience for academic prose it’s not a fun girlboss beach read”?

I’d argue that authors shouldn’t have to say that, but on the other hand, having someone take your biggest accomplishment and say “it needs to be more like this other book written by someone who has no formal training as a historian,” or “this beach read set in Elizabethan times got information about menstruation wrong” can be a real gut punch and experienced as a personal attack.

I have another post on me about the ethics of historical fiction and what we lose when we flatten events to fit a narrative, but I reckon I’ve rambled enough for now

Honestly the "fandomification" of history like this is something we're seeing real time with the way people have fandomized real-world events, people, and especially politicians. I don't need my political employees to be my blorbos, I need them to be good at their jobs and actually know how the government works. I don't see a problem with soft historical fantasy, as you've put it. I think pop-fiction is pop-fiction and to me, that's what that is. I mean, wasn't Shakespeare kind of doing similar with his histories? They were perhaps less fluffy? than it seems modern historical fiction is, but they were not purely accurate histories either. It's something we do, we retell our stories and we mythologize our past. The issue isn't in the existence of this genre, but of the way people just don't know the history outside of it, it seems. And more concerningly, buck up against and feel attacked by the mere idea that they don't know this and could stand to learn more, especially if they seem to have an interest in the particular time period their favourite historical fantasies are about. And of course, there is the value in examining and interrogating the mythologized past that perpetuates in these types of stories. Who is valorized, who is demonized, what is the main message that is being conveyed here that a modern reader is internalizing and then engaging with the real world with those ideals?

This last paragraph particularly is where I tend to fall. If anything, "soft" historical fiction tends to be where the underlying issues come up the most, because so much more is up to the author.

I do think (as an author, and one that's received her share of annoying, unfounded criticism) it's worth being understanding toward writers and considering whether one's critique needs to be made ... but ultimately, we've got to be able to criticize, even on grounds that the author considers Not The Point.

And also, to go back to the OP, if an author doesn't want to actually do the research then they should just gloss over it in a plausible way! They need to stop saying things about clothes that are straight detailed nonsense! Regency romance writers should read my book