jlh | historical AUs—send all recs!

So there's been an avalanche of fail recently, regarding historical AUs, both RPF and "FPF." I've been thinking about writing a post, a kind of "how to write one and avoid horrible fail!" But to do that, I need your recs!

Please rec historical AUs that you really love, that you feel avoided these kinds of fails but still managed to deal with the historical issues. Many of us have written the equivalent of a costume drama—like, putting the characters in a Regency Romance—that completely avoids the issues of the time. That's totally fine! But those AUs are not the ones I wanted to look at for this project.

I'd love to have AUs from a wide range of fandoms, and various time periods! Feel free to pimp this out to your own flist, and if you have suggestions for things I should think about to include in the eventual post please let me know! (Or, if you'd like to read it over—I think I'll definitely need some "betas" on this one, and I can't force

sistermagpie and

ali_wildgoose to do all of it!)

Thanks!!

Current Mood: curious
Crossposts: http://jlh.livejournal.com/571347.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dana_kujan

I've been very interested and curious about this undertaking since you first mentioned it on Twitter. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm willing to beta.

From:

jlh

Thanks!

From:

dana_kujan

You're welcome.

This is not a rec, but I saw it on Twitter. You may want to take a look and consider touching on it: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/473781.html

I tried to send it as a direct msg from Twitter, but found you no longer follow me there. So, now it is confirmed: I'm officially boring.

From:

jlh

Thanks!

No, it's the opposite; I stopped following about twenty people, many personal friends, mostly because they tweeted about political things and I found the necessary lack of context frustrating. I just followed twitters this spring that were sometimes upsetting me, and with all the chaos in my own life I decided I wanted it to be a space that wasn't bringing stuff in that frustrated, etc. It's all on me, man.

From:

dana_kujan

Oh, it's okay. But thanks for the context. I do tend to be more political on Twitter. I know that. I guess because I don't do long, "thinky" journal posts, that's where it comes out; it's a better medium for expressing my politics. (p.s. Do try to check your @replies regularly, in case I reply to you.)

I should try to post here more often, and get back on Y!M, just to stay in touch. Anyway, you know how to find me. :)

Edited (added p.s.) Date: 2010-07-09 03:21 am (UTC)

From:

tielan

The very best AU I've seen done, in a time-period which has racism and sexism liek whoa and where most people (of the time) wouldn't have thought twice about it, is

kristen999 and

everybetty's "Long Ago (And Far Away)".

Stargate Atlantis AU, gen, team-focused: John, Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla in Papua New Guinea, early 1940s in the midst of WWII.

One would think there's no way to get a half-black woman and a man with Hawaiian ancestry into a story about WWII American pilots, right? WRONG.

Both Teyla and Ronon have their own parts to play in the story - the writers deliberately and carefully included them in the plots, gave them reasons and background and agency, all the while still retaining the broader prejudices of the time period.

If you want an example of How To Do It Right, this is probably as close as it's going to get. The reason it doesn't get 100% from me is because Teyla - rather than being an African-American woman, is a Papuan-Australian woman, which could be seen as tying into the All Brown People Are Interchangeable trope - and will for some of the less cluey. On the other hand, there's no call for a half-African woman in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, while there is the possibility and potential of a half-Papuan/half-white woman.

I call it 'licence to include Teyla in the story' and it doesn't bother me. I'd rather have her in the story with a different racial type than not in the story at all, like far too many other AUs where the authors couldn't be arsed to do the research that would include her (or Ronon) in roles that gave them agency and inclusion in the plot.

And on top of all that...it's a FANTASTIC read. So, WIN all around.

From:

jlh

Thanks so much for this! I'm excited to read it. I know what you mean about the All Brown People Are Interchangeable, and having to kind of let that go. I think you are working to keep people accurate, but you also want to avoid the Buffy the Vampire Slayer in England syndrome, where the cast would never have met.

Even if you have things that are only at 80 or 75 or even 50% but have interesting aspects that could be used as examples, that would be really great too.

Thanks again!!

From:

melodiousb

I've been trying to come up with recs on and off all day, but all I can think of are AUs where the anachronisms set my teeth on edge. Your historical AUs are pretty much the only ones I can think of off the top of my head where the setting is more than a nifty backdrop.

I do have this: The Bubble Chamber, by Duncan Johnson. It's set during the Red Scare, but with the aid of time travel rather than an alternate universe--it's a Doctor Who fic--and it stood out for me because it incorporates the political atmosphere of the time (which is necessary to the plot) without co-opting it.

From:

jlh

Ooh, thank you! I look forward to reading that!

It's tough because there's Idol, and then there's HP which is very AU-unfriendly, and then I know of some ST stuff, but I really haven't read incredibly widely and so much is like, lazy white boy stuff.

From:

melodiousb

Some fandoms are a lot more AU friendly than others, for sure. Even if a vast majority of the historical ones are regency romances where it is apparently perfectly acceptable for two men to get married.

From:

jlh

And you know, I feel like regency romances that are pretty ahistorical get a pass. It's an entire genre of published romance novels, and those books are full of anachronisms. Plus, since you can trace it back to Austen, it's not like she has piles of socio-cultural analysis in her books; you have to read them in a class to get what she's not saying, like where all that money is coming from. I know that zvi gave astolat a really hard time for a Kradam regency that she wrote a year ago, and I agree that she should have labeled it as being more like a regency romance than like an historical AU, but I can't get too worked up about that genre being used as a glorified costume epic.

I don't actually feel the same about the western, perhaps because even Hollywood has complicated the genre since the 60s, so if you write about the west you probably should do it with some research.

I can't think of another genre I'd give a pass to.

From:

melodiousb

I read Astolat's Kradam regency, and to this day I'm not quite sure how I got through it. Regency does tend to get a pass, and I think it's a result of a gradual watering-down--Austen to Heyer to...Harlequin and such, I guess. But I've never been able to get further down the line than Heyer without finding that the anachronisms make the story almost unreadable. And that's a personal thing, I know, and it just means that I don't read a lot of historical AUS.

I have read the Supernatural RPF story linked below, and it's definitely way more subtle and better researched than any similar thing I've read. It's got it's own issues, though--there's a widespread knowledge of homosexuality among the characters, and they seem to all think of it fundamentally as something one is rather than something one does, which made me feel like the author was projecting modern views onto the past. But it's definitely an interesting story, both for what it gets right and what it doesn't.

From:

jlh

I think all historical fiction is going to be more or less anachronistic, just because the past is weird and we don't live in it. And with romance stories, the structure can't hold up too much drama rama or you tip into something rather maudlin and melodramatic and you're not telling the story you wanted to tell. I certainly made choices here and there in all the fics where I was stretching what people could be doing for the sake of a story, or otherwise the story becomes about some kind of forbidden love thing rather than just about the two people falling in love or whatever.

A good friend of mine writes well-received regency romances for Avon, and yeah, they're pretty watered down.

For me, fiction can never be history, and being a historian I have a pretty clear line there. And that's the funny thing; I think I'm more loose with my expectations for fiction because it simply can't be, and shouldn't be, academic history, so in my head it's always both falling short and not expected to come up to the mark anyway. But you know, there's falling short and there's falling short.

From:

melodiousb

I guess I just have a problem with historical fiction in general, which is probably closely related to the fact that most of the books I read were written pre-1930. I don't think of myself as a historian, but I did major in history in college, and my focus ended up being popular fiction from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, which has left me with a really clear idea of how people wrote about life in those eras, if not what life was actually like. So when I read historical fiction, I'm not comparing it to other historical fiction, or even what I know of the period, but to books I've read that were written during that period. But I still want to believe that historical fiction is doable. There's always going to be stuff that's going to interfere with my suspension of disbelief, but sometimes it's not really a problem, and I'd like to figure out exactly where that line is.

Ironically--since most historical AUs and vast numbers of historical novels are romances--I think the romance is often where--for me, anyway--the historical context breaks down. By prioritizing a romance that would be unlikely to happen in one's setting, or wouldn't have been written about if it did, one sort of demotes the historical setting. And that's another thing that really bugged me about Restraint, the Supernatural regency AU--the Jensen Ackles character was sort of aware that he was interested in men, but had no intention of ever doing anything about, and I felt like that was a perfectly valid choice for someone in that position at that time, but the author clearly doesn't feel that way, and so the story is largely about breaking down that barrier and--I felt--denying that character the right to make his own choices. Which, to be fair, is an issue in a lot of romances, historical or otherwise.

Possibly the reason your historical AUs--and I have only read a few of them--haven't sent me straight to the back button is that you do think about the story you want to tell, and at what point a romance is going to derail it. And that Doctor Who story I linked to, which mostly worked for me, is gen.

From:

jlh

That's a really interesting way to think about it! I was a history and literature concentrator in college myself, so I spent undergrad thinking a lot about the intersection of the two. It reminds me of the presentation assignment I give my students at the end of the term, where I ask them to find a non-text primary source from 1945-1989 and talk about how it represents something from its era. Of course a lot of the students want to do a film or a TV show, and I have to stress that they only do movies/tv shows in period, not anything like Happy Days or Mona Lisa Smile because they're too knowing. Within the period a creator always makes assumptions about their audience that they aren't even aware of, but which we can see looking back on them.

Which I think also means that I don't think about novels in-period as being the standard for a historical novel, mostly because in-period novels are full of outdated ideas and Things We Don't Talk About. If someone wrote a regency romance right now that was just like Austen, it would be a very problematic book, because it wouldn't have an awareness of the problems of empire and the gender issues and all of that. So I actually, I think, expect more from really good historical fiction than I expect from an in-period book.

It's interesting what you say about denying the character a right to make their own choices. It's true that many romances are about presenting a character that is resistant to romance with someone to fall in love with. I don't really have a problem with that trope because I've seen it happen more than once in real life, where some confirmed singleton randomly met a person and was like, "oh! You!" and off they went. It's true that most fanfic being romance can sometimes be problematic, but taken on its own terms, romance is what romance is doing, if that makes sense. That is, in the same way that action is what action is doing, or music is what a musical is doing.

Have you read Tipping the Velvet or Fingersmith? They're historical novels written by Sarah Waters, set in Victorian England and featuring lesbian romances. I find them to be quite good. To be sure, the women are not particularly respectable—they're usually working-class and sometimes criminals or stage performers—but I think she does a good job of saying, okay, I want a lesbian romance in Victorian England, so what kind of women should they be?

As for not written about, there are all these Douglas Sirk 1950s melodramas—All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession—where it seems like people are freaking out over small things—a middle-aged woman dating a younger man, for example. Todd Haynes made Far From Heaven which is a period piece that looks like a Sirk film, and covers the same kind of ground that a Sirk film would, but instead it's about a woman whose husband leaves her for another man, and she falls in love with her black gardener. Which is the kind of thing people would actually have freaked out about in a Sirk movie, only the irony was that Sirk could never actually make a movie about the things that people freaked out about in the 1950s. So while I find Sirk's movies to have a good deal of self-awareness and cultural critique, I think Haynes's film is a very successful historical fiction because it makes evident what could not be in a 1950s film—it is both recreating the period and commenting on the period, something we really can't do in-period because we can never be that distant from what's around us.

Thanks, what you've said has made me think a lot!!

From:

melodiousb

Definitely knowing when a book set in the past was written makes a lot of difference. There are books from the 1910s that I love which would make me fairly angry if they were published today, and a historical novel that doesn't look past its setting is kind of pointless, if not impossible. Reading so much fiction from earlier eras mainly affects my reading of historical novels and AUs in that tone is something I judge for historical accuracy. But that's still only one element--something I notice, rather than something that will make me put a book down. Most of the historical novels I read are mysteries, and a lot of them really stand out as having been written in the '90s, but I weigh that against the awesome characters and clever plots and love them anyway. I even find it sort of endearing.

I've seen a few of Sirk's films, but not the Haynes one, and I never thought of them of them as being coded in that way. That's really interesting.

I read about half of Tipping the Velvet once, but I was reading it in a bookstore, or maybe at someone's house, and didn't get to read the rest. I recall liking it a lot. One historical novel I absolutely love is Dinesen's The Angelic Avengers, which was written in the '40s and set about a century earlier. It deals with white slavery, the sexual harassment of female employees, etc. while operating very much in a 19th century gothic mode.

On the subject of romance and agency: of course overcoming one character's resistance to romance is a hugely common trope. I just felt that in that particular situation, avoiding romance was a more-than-usually-valid choice.

You've made me think a lot, too! I really look forward to seeing what you end up posting.

From:

melodiousb

So, I just read Zvi's reaction to the Astolat Kradam regency.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a YMMV issue. I'm sure there are people who read the Kradam fic and had no issues with it whatsoever, and then at the other end of the spectrum, there's Zvi. And I'm closer to the latter end of the spectrum, but I sort of feel like it's unfair to expect writers to keep to standards that would make me happy. Also I wonder if there are any writers who keep to standards that would make Zvi happy.

From:

jlh

My feeling when I read Zvi's post was definitely that she has a problem with historical fiction full stop, or at least historical fiction that focuses on romance, and you know, whatever. I mean, if she can't allow for the genre I can't get too hung up on making sure that my representation of the genre is up to her standards.

It's unfortunate because I think she made some good points, but in the post and the comments things got more than a little extreme. A friend of mine who more often runs in those circles talked me down at the time because I had finished posting the WWII fic and felt like I hadn't come up to her standards. My friend said she thought the venom in the language had more to do with the fact that the fic was by astolat and therefore was being rec'd every five minutes, rather than the matter at hand. That is, whether Zvi had problems with me or not, she probably wouldn't lose her shit over my story because I'm not that much of a BNF to get her really angry with me. I hope that's true, or at least, I'm hoping that writing this essay won't get people freaking out over my stories which previously didn't get spotlighted merely because no one reads Rymon.

From:

alexseanchai

Restraint by

darkemeralds, which is Supernatural RPF, yes it's a Regency romance sue me, but it does engage with the attitudes of the time to class and homosexual behavior and to a lesser extent sexism.

From:

jlh

A regency romance that actually deals with any issues whatsoever is unusual in and of itself, so thanks for this! Look forward to reading it!

From:

turlough

Here through

mahoni.

Going through my bandom recs I came up with these fics that I think might be the sort you're looking for.

- A Lovely Apparition (or, The One Where Gerard's A Crossdresser in the 1790s) by

jezrana is mainly a romance but it doesn't sidestep the issues of crossdressing and homosexuality (21,720 words)
- These Walls Are Built To Fall by

jezrana is also mainly a romance (this one taking place vaguely in the Edwardian period) but it doesn't sidestep the class and sexuality issues (6,930 words)
- Up the Line by

tabula_x_rasa takes place on the Western front during the last months of WWI and it's firmly rooted in its time and place, very little prettifying (54,630 words)
- The End of the Beginning by

tuesdaysgone is a post WWII story about soldiers home from the war and the wives who've been living without them for so long (14,920 words)

Edited (added one more story) Date: 2010-07-08 05:31 pm (UTC)

From:

jlh

Wow, what a treasure trove! This is exciting!

I think I'll need mahoni to give me a little bandom primer!

Thank you so much, this is really excellent!

From:

turlough

You're welcome! I love reccing stuff and have an insanely tagged Delicious :-)

I think the most comprehensive is probably the one in

crack_van, it deals with most of the bands and was last updated a year ago.

From:

jlh

Thanks again!

Wow, you do have a lot of tags! I was thinking about alternate tags for AO3 fics but my tagging is pretty bare bones, gotta say. pairing, rating, a note about timing, general length, that's about it. You are very organized!

From:

turlough

Well, my delicious isn't "just" for me. It's the place where I collect the weekly rec posts I've been making in my journal for the last three years so I try to imagine what kind of things people would like to search for. And I love tagging, I'm forever fiddling with them :-)

From:

sistermagpie

Yay! This sounds great! I haven't read that many AUs, but ones that were historical that I remember liking were--well, obviously yours but I assume you tried to be doing it right! I loved that Star Trek fic where they were in the old west. That seemed like a great example of how much you can say about the character with the way you transform them.

There was also an ATLA fic that I was really loving but I don't think it was finished...damn, who wrote it? Rawles! It's unfinished, but it was called "A Certain Fondness." An Avatar Regency fic.

Those are the ones I remember feeling were really taking place in those times. A Certain Fondness didn't get very far, but iirc it was already dealing with the some of the social pressures etc.

From:

jlh

I did try, it's true!

I'm also going to crawl through the AU big bang fics; there weren't many blow ups over those so I presume the historical ones got it close enough.

I remember that fic of hers and I really hope she continues it, as it had a very interesting start!

From:

mis-mariposas.livejournal.com

Searching for the Ghost (http://hollycomb.livejournal.com/149860.html) by Hollycomb.

StarTrek. Sulu/Chekov, NC-17. AU, 80k -- Sulu is a Navy translator sent to Japan in September 1945 as part of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. Chekov and Scotty are physicists, Spock is a behavioral psychologist who is accompanied by his protégé Uhura, McCoy is a Navy doctor, and Jim is a Lieutenant Commander.

There is almost nothing about this story that doesn't hurt, but that's what makes it a good historical AU. Sulu is Japanese American in Japan with the US Army post WWII and the author does not gloss over the confusion, complications, and ugliness that brings with it.