Against Willful Stupidity
Happy Fourth of July to all the Americans on my flist!
As you know, over the past year I've run into a lot of romance writers, aspiring and otherwise, who claim to be historical writers but who toss history flat out the window, and who will start sneering (and later kicking and screaming) at the suggestion that they take the advice of the Geico caveman and do a little research.
Now, before we go on, the qualifiers. I don't mind an author moving events back or forward in time, such as a battle taking place two months later, or an obscure witch trial occurring several years earlier; a writer who does that generally states that she's doing so in author's notes or acknowledgments or something along those lines. I figure that's playing fair, at least. The writer knows what's she's doing, and tells the reader.
The kind of thing I'm against is--oh, potatoes in a medieval stew. A Saracen woman marrying a Crusader knight in the Catholic Church and keeping her own religion and a Muslim name. Protestantism existing BEFORE the Reformation. Scots wearing kilts in the Middle Ages. I remember one book (and John Mortimer, author of the Rumpole of the Bailey stories, apparently ran into something similar, for he wrote about it) in which a "dewy maiden" who was at the court of Charles II was wailing about how it had been so much more fun at the court of Charles I. Which would have made, to quote Mortimer, "the dew-bespattered maiden" fortysomething at the very least. The author had forgotten about Oliver Cromwell--who ruled England between the two Charleses.
The odd thing about the romance genre is the way its fans insist on willful ignorance. Mystery writers tell horror stories about fans who know more about guns than they do, and who demand accuracy. It's hard to write any kind of science fiction these days without paying some attention to modern science; inventions are changing things so much that what seems to be science fiction may be science fact. Fantasy fans are often into medieval history, While you run into people who don't care about such things in each genre, the geeks--who want accurate facts blended with their escapism--comprise a significant portion of the readership.
But in romance, it's a different story. You find ignorance on a vast scale among readers, writers and publishers alike. It doesn't matter if you get anything dead wrong. It doesn't matter if it's stupid, illogical or downright impossible. You can wrap the whole story in an amorphous fog so that no one can tell where or when the story takes place; you can give duelists hand-loaded pistols that act like modern semiautomatic handguns; you can get everything wrong and the audience will not care. And any protest of "But that's wrong! That's not the way it happened! Can't you do some research and blend in the facts with the story?" is liable to get the fanbrat response from the average writer:
"It's just FICTION! Don't take it so seriously! I can do what I want!"
Romance, to my eyes, behaves in a way that is very FFnet. Yes, there are some excellent writers in the genre. Yes, some writers do their research and take what they're doing seriously. There are some good writers at the Pit of Voles, too. But in both cases, the overall environments are dominated to a deplorable degree by swift, unthinking, unearned praise, poor to nonexistent editing (even by those who should know better), wooden characterization, inadequate plotting, and research that is conspicuous by its absence.
Furthermore, I've never seen allegedly professional writers from another genre fight for the right to remain ignorant and incompetent.
And I wonder what it would take to make the romance genre stop having tantrums about accuracy and research and grow up already.
***
Out of frustration with the entire situation, I dashed off my protests in story form.
"You know," said the Duke of Mills to the Earl of Boon, "there's somethin' you must understand about little Mancy. Sweet girl, she is, but she's a bit limited. Slow to progress, that one. If she had her way, she'd stay in the nursery for the rest of her life."
"I don't follow," said the Earl. "There's nothing wrong with the gel's brains, is there?"
"Oh, perish the thought," said the Duke, rolling his eyes. "No, it's more that she wants something to be wrong with them. She won't use 'em. Insists on traveling through a lovely fluffy pink cloud, pretending that men who did with other men lived in a happy Golden Age once upon a time, that Scots wore kilts in the Middle Ages, and that there was never such a person as Cromwell."
"So she can't do her lessons," said the Earl, "Well, she's very young..."
"Old, you mean," snapped the Duke. "Why, Mancy's been around long before her sister, Skiffy, and at least as long as her other sisters, Missy and Tassie!"
"English, please?" said the Earl with a groan.
"Romance and the other sisters Genre, Science Fiction, Mystery and Fantasy," said the Duke grumpily. "Do you MIND? I'm tryin' to maintain an extended metaphor here."
"I think you left out Hor--"
"Mostly because there's no good nickname for Horror. And a lot of people consider her a redheaded stepchild, anyway. May we continue...?"
"So you think that Mancy's...willfully stupid."
"Well, yes," said the Duke. "Pretty gel, very optimistic, but she just won't accept the fact that the world is a bit different from the way she wants it to be. And when people tell her that there weren't any medieval potatoes or tomatoes or hot chocolate...oh, my dear, the tantrums! How dare anyone question her knowledge? How dare anyone check to see if she knows what she's talking about? Her sisters can be stupid at times, mind, but you don't get them arguing for the right to remain ignorant. They do TRY."
"But why does she want to be stupid?" wailed the Earl. "I don't understand that."
"Because she doesn't want to make the effort," said the Duke. "Oh, there've been souls who have done the research and spun grand stories, simply grand, but the truth is, Mancy'd rather think that the few grand storytellers were gods and goddesses, and that no one else could dare aspire to that. So much simpler, isn't it, just drawing a mysterious fog over place and time that you're not sure of yourself? And it saves you so much actual work."
"And it gets worse," said the Earl gloomily. "I've heard that Mancy doesn't know all that much about...well, country matters. Why, I've heard tales where a king fancied a girl tricked out like a boy, and didn't know he'd got a girl, even after they were in bed. Now, I'd think that the lack of a cock would be a dead giveaway, but Mancy? Why, it never occurred to her, and her friends all thought it was so sweet and simply wonderful."
"It's always worse when she tries playing the sexual sophisticate," said the Duke. "She's generally very bad at it. And she never bothers to read any facts about that, either. Just the fluffy, frilly, addlepated drivel of her friends, and you can guess how knowledgeable THEY are. I've heard tell about one woman named Neeta something or other who thinks that she comes in season every hour or so. I'd call her a good candidate for Bedlam, wouldn't you?"
"The problem," said the Earl, "is that Mancy thinks that facts are boring, and make for a tedious story. And no matter how many times she's told that knowing what you're talking about is better than solid ignorance, she won't have it, won't hear of it, and will drive you daft with the eternal whining of her empty mind."
"I can't think what to do," said the Duke "Especially since the gel's tripe gets published anyway by people who don't bother to sit her down and say, 'Now look here, a child in the schoolroom could make more sense, and you need to do a better job.' They simply rave about her skill, and why should she try to improve when everyone else is telling her how wonderful she is already?"
"I think," said the Earl, "that we need to talk to her sisters. Skiffy can get us to Mancy's side faster than the speed of light. Tassie's good at things that never happened. She can supply an alibi, if need be."
"And Missy?" inquired the Duke anxiously.
The Earl's smile was vicious. "Ballistics."
THE END
As you know, over the past year I've run into a lot of romance writers, aspiring and otherwise, who claim to be historical writers but who toss history flat out the window, and who will start sneering (and later kicking and screaming) at the suggestion that they take the advice of the Geico caveman and do a little research.
Now, before we go on, the qualifiers. I don't mind an author moving events back or forward in time, such as a battle taking place two months later, or an obscure witch trial occurring several years earlier; a writer who does that generally states that she's doing so in author's notes or acknowledgments or something along those lines. I figure that's playing fair, at least. The writer knows what's she's doing, and tells the reader.
The kind of thing I'm against is--oh, potatoes in a medieval stew. A Saracen woman marrying a Crusader knight in the Catholic Church and keeping her own religion and a Muslim name. Protestantism existing BEFORE the Reformation. Scots wearing kilts in the Middle Ages. I remember one book (and John Mortimer, author of the Rumpole of the Bailey stories, apparently ran into something similar, for he wrote about it) in which a "dewy maiden" who was at the court of Charles II was wailing about how it had been so much more fun at the court of Charles I. Which would have made, to quote Mortimer, "the dew-bespattered maiden" fortysomething at the very least. The author had forgotten about Oliver Cromwell--who ruled England between the two Charleses.
The odd thing about the romance genre is the way its fans insist on willful ignorance. Mystery writers tell horror stories about fans who know more about guns than they do, and who demand accuracy. It's hard to write any kind of science fiction these days without paying some attention to modern science; inventions are changing things so much that what seems to be science fiction may be science fact. Fantasy fans are often into medieval history, While you run into people who don't care about such things in each genre, the geeks--who want accurate facts blended with their escapism--comprise a significant portion of the readership.
But in romance, it's a different story. You find ignorance on a vast scale among readers, writers and publishers alike. It doesn't matter if you get anything dead wrong. It doesn't matter if it's stupid, illogical or downright impossible. You can wrap the whole story in an amorphous fog so that no one can tell where or when the story takes place; you can give duelists hand-loaded pistols that act like modern semiautomatic handguns; you can get everything wrong and the audience will not care. And any protest of "But that's wrong! That's not the way it happened! Can't you do some research and blend in the facts with the story?" is liable to get the fanbrat response from the average writer:
"It's just FICTION! Don't take it so seriously! I can do what I want!"
Romance, to my eyes, behaves in a way that is very FFnet. Yes, there are some excellent writers in the genre. Yes, some writers do their research and take what they're doing seriously. There are some good writers at the Pit of Voles, too. But in both cases, the overall environments are dominated to a deplorable degree by swift, unthinking, unearned praise, poor to nonexistent editing (even by those who should know better), wooden characterization, inadequate plotting, and research that is conspicuous by its absence.
Furthermore, I've never seen allegedly professional writers from another genre fight for the right to remain ignorant and incompetent.
And I wonder what it would take to make the romance genre stop having tantrums about accuracy and research and grow up already.
***
Out of frustration with the entire situation, I dashed off my protests in story form.
"You know," said the Duke of Mills to the Earl of Boon, "there's somethin' you must understand about little Mancy. Sweet girl, she is, but she's a bit limited. Slow to progress, that one. If she had her way, she'd stay in the nursery for the rest of her life."
"I don't follow," said the Earl. "There's nothing wrong with the gel's brains, is there?"
"Oh, perish the thought," said the Duke, rolling his eyes. "No, it's more that she wants something to be wrong with them. She won't use 'em. Insists on traveling through a lovely fluffy pink cloud, pretending that men who did with other men lived in a happy Golden Age once upon a time, that Scots wore kilts in the Middle Ages, and that there was never such a person as Cromwell."
"So she can't do her lessons," said the Earl, "Well, she's very young..."
"Old, you mean," snapped the Duke. "Why, Mancy's been around long before her sister, Skiffy, and at least as long as her other sisters, Missy and Tassie!"
"English, please?" said the Earl with a groan.
"Romance and the other sisters Genre, Science Fiction, Mystery and Fantasy," said the Duke grumpily. "Do you MIND? I'm tryin' to maintain an extended metaphor here."
"I think you left out Hor--"
"Mostly because there's no good nickname for Horror. And a lot of people consider her a redheaded stepchild, anyway. May we continue...?"
"So you think that Mancy's...willfully stupid."
"Well, yes," said the Duke. "Pretty gel, very optimistic, but she just won't accept the fact that the world is a bit different from the way she wants it to be. And when people tell her that there weren't any medieval potatoes or tomatoes or hot chocolate...oh, my dear, the tantrums! How dare anyone question her knowledge? How dare anyone check to see if she knows what she's talking about? Her sisters can be stupid at times, mind, but you don't get them arguing for the right to remain ignorant. They do TRY."
"But why does she want to be stupid?" wailed the Earl. "I don't understand that."
"Because she doesn't want to make the effort," said the Duke. "Oh, there've been souls who have done the research and spun grand stories, simply grand, but the truth is, Mancy'd rather think that the few grand storytellers were gods and goddesses, and that no one else could dare aspire to that. So much simpler, isn't it, just drawing a mysterious fog over place and time that you're not sure of yourself? And it saves you so much actual work."
"And it gets worse," said the Earl gloomily. "I've heard that Mancy doesn't know all that much about...well, country matters. Why, I've heard tales where a king fancied a girl tricked out like a boy, and didn't know he'd got a girl, even after they were in bed. Now, I'd think that the lack of a cock would be a dead giveaway, but Mancy? Why, it never occurred to her, and her friends all thought it was so sweet and simply wonderful."
"It's always worse when she tries playing the sexual sophisticate," said the Duke. "She's generally very bad at it. And she never bothers to read any facts about that, either. Just the fluffy, frilly, addlepated drivel of her friends, and you can guess how knowledgeable THEY are. I've heard tell about one woman named Neeta something or other who thinks that she comes in season every hour or so. I'd call her a good candidate for Bedlam, wouldn't you?"
"The problem," said the Earl, "is that Mancy thinks that facts are boring, and make for a tedious story. And no matter how many times she's told that knowing what you're talking about is better than solid ignorance, she won't have it, won't hear of it, and will drive you daft with the eternal whining of her empty mind."
"I can't think what to do," said the Duke "Especially since the gel's tripe gets published anyway by people who don't bother to sit her down and say, 'Now look here, a child in the schoolroom could make more sense, and you need to do a better job.' They simply rave about her skill, and why should she try to improve when everyone else is telling her how wonderful she is already?"
"I think," said the Earl, "that we need to talk to her sisters. Skiffy can get us to Mancy's side faster than the speed of light. Tassie's good at things that never happened. She can supply an alibi, if need be."
"And Missy?" inquired the Duke anxiously.
The Earl's smile was vicious. "Ballistics."
THE END