It is 1913 in Vienna. Hitler, Stalin and Freud walk into a bar. The bartender says: "This may well be historically accurate, but we can't have a post that is simply a joke here on AskHistorians."

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands.

• H. P. Lovecraft, "The Picture in the House"

This quote came back to me today as my research into pulp author Seabury Quinn took me into a few strange places. Quinn was born in Washington, D.C. in 1889 and got his degree in law, but ended up in the 1920s, somewhat unusually, as the editor of the undertakers' trade journal The Casket & Sunnyside, and an expert on mortuary jurisprudence. He was also the most prolific and popular writer at Weird Tales during its initial run (1923-1954), publishing around 146 stories (counts differ, in part because of reprints) and a dozen articles on weird crimes and the Salem Witch Trials. Despite his immense popularity and success, the years were not kind to Quinn or his fiction - he had only one collection published (The Phantom Fighter, 1966) during his lifetime, that did poorly, as well as a hardcover reprint of his serial Roads (1948, about a Viking that becomes Santa Claus), and only wrote a single novel Alien Flesh (1977), which was long delayed in publication. But it's tracking down the latter which led me into strange places, because I ran across a reference to the latter in a 1986 issue of F.M.I. - Female Mimics International - a transvestite magazine! Some well-meaning fan had hand-typed a copy of the genderbending fantasy novel, which is a level of dedication I can scarcely fathom, but a part that caught my attention was:

The kind reader who undertook this enormous task and typed and sent this book wondered, in the letter that came with it, whether Seabury Quinn could have been a transvestite. As for that, it's almost impossible to say. I'd guess that it was likely, but you never can tell. Some authors simply have the ability to put themselves in the place of their characters, no matter who they are or what kind of oddball circumstances they find themselves in. Science fiction writers seem to have this ability in a high degree, at least the good ones, and Seabury Quinn does seem to have written for the old pulp science fiction and "weird" stories magazines.

This is a bit more familiar ground, because I've fielded quite a few inquiries about the same subject--as applied to H. P. Lovecraft and his genderbending weird story, "The Thing on the Doorstep." In fact, I went into great and gleeful detail about it in my essay "Great Phallic Monoliths: Lovecraft and Sexuality" in The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror (2015)...and it highlights an issue with judging historical personalities by contemporary understanding of things like psychology and sexuality - or perhaps I should say, of projecting our own experiences and understanding onto people from the past, interpreting their lives and writings through our own filter.

We'll never know 100% if Quinn was a transvestite or if Lovecraft was homosexual - not unless some diary or letter crops up that definitively addresses and settles the issue (and even then you have to ask about the context of the statement, the document, what they would have meant about it at the time, etc. etc.) - but there are cases to be made, arguments that can be put forth, evidence that can be arrayed. Both Quinn and Lovecraft were married to women in their lives, for example, and engaged in heterosexual sex - at least, so Lovecraft's wife claimed and so presumably was Seabury Quinn, Jr. conceived. That isn't definitive "proof" of heterosexuality - we know a great many homosexual men were closeted and yet fulfilled at least bare minimum marital relations. Negative evidence - the fact that nobody mentions seeing Quinn dressed as a woman, or Lovecraft showing any physical attraction to a man - also doesn't count for much; friends could have politely left such things out of their description, if they chose to write about them at all, and if either gentleman was sufficiently discreet there might not have been any witnesses or evidence left to come down to us. Rumor, too, doesn't help much in that regard, no matter how persistent.

It's not limited to sexuality, natch. We project our understanding of gender, ethnicity, nationality, psychology, etc. onto people from the past; they're our tools for dealing with and defining the world we live in. An alienist in the 1890s is not going to describe and interpret Vincent van Gogh in the same terms as a psychologist from the 1890s. You didn't have fans and scholars wondering if Lovecraft had Asperger's syndrome in the 1960s and 70s because the term wasn't popularized until 1981 and didn't become a standard diagnosis until the early 90s. So in many ways, we understand the lives of historical persons a lot differently than they did - of course, we have the benefit in that they're dead and can't generally argue - that's for the living.

It's a funny kind of distinction to make, but I think it's important to understand these biases, because they have different applications depending on the context. When looking at Quinn and Lovecraft from an empirical viewpoint and our contemporary context, there's little evidence that either man was anything but a heterosexual, cisgender male. The fact that neither of them knew what "cisgender" meant is beside the point; we're looking at them from our viewpoint. If we wanted to understand how they saw themselves, we'd have to look deeper - into their own definitions of masculinity and effeminacy, sexuality and gender - can lead to a more holistic appreciation of how they defined themselves and those around them, and possibly helps gain some insight into their use of sex and gender in their fiction.

Literary analysis, though, shouldn't be confused with historical analysis. The points are sometimes confused, especially on the literary criticism side: a story is interpreted by a critic, and they feel that what they read reflects an aspect of the author. Well, maybe. It is almost impossible to read intent, especially in a work of fantastic fiction. Quinn and Lovecraft could both write female characters despite not being themselves female; the inclusion of a female protagonist or point of view doesn't necessarily reflect a shift in their gender identity. This goes double for subtexts - where the reader often sees aspects of their own experience mirrored in the story, possibly through metaphor or allegory. The interpretation of the story can be a valid reading - especially for the reader, the whole reader-response theory approach - but it is independent of the intent of the writer, since it's really the reader loading on their own interpretation of the work.

Which of course can loop back to history again when you're dealing with historical literature like the Epic of Gilgamesh, and trying to interpret actual historical detail from a literary work. Tricky, tricky business.

GoT Season 3 Spoilers BTW

I'm assuming if something like the Red Wedding from GoT happened in real life today (inviting an army to your home as guests only to slaughter them), it would be considered a war crime. However, under what exact international law would the perpetrators be tried under?

A common argument American Conservatives make is that the Democratic Party is racist because the Confederacy and KKK were Democrats, while the Republican Party is pro-civil rights because of Abraham Lincoln, as you can see here, here, and here; or they say Nazism and other fascist groups are actually far left, such as here, here, and here. Obviously, all these claims are false. However, what exactly is the origin of conservatives making these claims that liberals=KKK and Nazis and denying the party switch? Is this a newer thing or has it been around for quite some time? Also, why is there so much illiteracy about this topic? Is it a failure of US Education or the individuals themselves or something else?

I got a tattoo of Guido’s Hand recently. Specifically so I can educate strangers who ask what it is about singing and education in Medieval convents and religious schools.

Outside of that I’ve narrowed down my master’s thesis to two possible subjects: nuns/female orphans and woodwind instruments during the late Renaissance/Early Baroque OR New World bajon tradition (which has a lot of interesting slave and gender stuff). I’ve got a semester to commit.

Is there anywhere online to listen to the Kennedy White House Tapes in full?

Hello, big time fan and lurker of this sub. I was wondering, and forgive me if this is the wrong place, if anyone knew of a definitive book on the history of mcdonalds? It's quite narrow in scope and the book list doesn't seem to have anything close. I'll look through the many (many) book choices on Google but I trust the community here and thought somebody ought to have a favorite.

Do people apply for an "interested inquirer" flair? If not, is there an existing collection (e.g. in modmail/discord/slack) of questions offered by individuals as evidence for why they got that flair? I think this could be a neat "hack" to either learn how to craft good questions or to find some interesting questions and answers.

I am making a socialist/communist/anarchist/syndicalist calendar and I would require some help with the history. Could you help me with the years and dates of important events in leftist history? Important events like the Haymarket affair or the Russian Revolution, births or deaths of important people like Marx and Kropotkin, dates of important publications. Whatever relevant I could put on the calendar

I want to learn another language and the further from English the better. So obviously, it's gonna be Japanese. Why is that?

It's not exactly a personal question. We wouldn't have /r/weeabootales if it was. I have some weeb tendancies, like the 刀 on top of my bookshelf, but I mostly hate anime. Coming from a chauvinistic, Disney-worshiping, 12 Principles background, I think it's terrible (with plenty of exceptions). However, outside of the US, Japanese pop culture seems to have the furthest reach. (fite me r/shitamericanssay, I know there's a Coke can on your desk, a Game of Thrones wiki opened in another tab on your browser, and a McDonald's bag between your mattress and boxspring.^^^^Not ^^^^to ^^^^mention ^^^^Gertrude ^^^^Stein, ^^^^William ^^^^Faulkner, ^^^^and ^^^^Gwendolyn ^^^^Brooks. But the language itself is so confined to Japan. What's the magic behind karaoke and anime? Bollywood is the most popular non-English, non-Japanese thing I can think of, but kids aren't exactly scrambling to learn Hindi. Is it just the lack of glorious nippon steel?

Which brings me to why this is in the Friday Free-for-All. Dragonball Z and Pokemon are probably as recognizable as Friends and Seinfeld in [non-Anglosphere country].

Can pop-culture be a Johnny Appleseed for language without imperialism/colonialism to back it up? Can anyone recommend any readings on that? Where does everyone here think language is going in the future? Is it English or bust in 2150? Or is Esperanto gonna blossom into a beautiful, beautiful thing?

I'm curious what people like /u/parallelpain and /u/nientedenada have to say about this. From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) you can both read Japanese primary sources. Why did you begin learning Japanese?

In Ancient Rome, The Christians were persecuted because the beliefs were against the government and they were killed for believing in it. With that Knowledge, why did people continue to convert to Christianity?