historical AUs—send all recs!

[jlh]

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!!

Comments

[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.

[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.