manti

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.

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.

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.