Today, Amanda shared with me a post from writer and illustrator Odette Locke, who recently shared information about her upcoming romance in progress, A Corps of Health and Safety, with some Instagram graphics that lit my brain on fire.
Important note: absolutely no part of this post is a knock against the author, their idea, their work in progress, any of it. This is about the larger implications of what is part of the aspirational fantasy of romance.
(Sidenote: A Corps of Health and Safety is a hilarious title and I love it.)
It’s this part that grabbed me:
Fantasy. OSHA.
FANTASY OSHA.
Does this mean that the fantasy aspects of romance – people trying to be the better versions of themselves, people loving one another as they are – now includes functional governmental regulation and oversight?
I’m completely serious when I say that this is both horrifying and alluring as a concept.
Alluring? Listen, I don’t want to weird anyone out, but the saying “regulations are written in blood” is still true, even if our federal systems for oversight, regulation, and protective rulemaking are being dismantled in favor of exploitation, profit, and really not giving a fuck about actual people.
There’s a lot of absolutely justified disparagement regarding government oversight, particularly now, but I also know that regulation of workplace safety is in dire need of improvement. Hell at this point it’s probably in dire need of EXISTING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Many of the governmental agencies that provide guidance, regulation, oversight, and enforcement that are designed to protect people have been gutted – you probably know this already.
And while I fully acknowledge that there are many, many, maaaaaany places where that regulation and oversight are applied unfairly and that the system we had is nautical miles away from perfect, the loss of much of it is only beginning to be experienced. A fuckass executive order in February halted all OSHA rulemaking, and, as reported by Sarah Kettenmann at Shipman & Goodwin LLP, paused a number of rules under review, including measures and standards designed to protect employees from heat injury. Much like many other agencies on the federal level, the mandate this year and for the next three will be limitation or elimination of enforcement, fewer resources, fewer people doing the actual labor, and of course, no new regulations that might respond to current dangers in work environments.
I kind of love the idea of Magic OSHA, a body that, I’m presuming, provides workplace protection and rules to enforce that protect magical workers. I think that’s a really fucking clever premise – especially because I love stories about the people who do the actual meticulous work behind the scenes. This sounds kinda cool!
At the same time, my brain was ON FIRE WITH RAGE at the idea that the best OSHA we have would be fictional and in a world of magic.
And most of all, that the existence of functional agencies of regulation and oversight for workplaces is now part of the fantasy of romance. Like, holy shit.
Romance as a genre and a shared universe was and is and will be a reflection of the world in which it is written and read, so this is dead-on accurate as a potential required element of a happily ever after, especially in a workplace romance. Functional protections for people in their places of work can be seen as another aspirational piece of romance, alongside all the other things I joke about being scarce in the real world, and plentiful in the books we love.
WOW. That’s bleak.
I hope Odette Locke keeps working on this book, because I need all the aspirational HEA I can get, especially when it comes to safety regulation and oversight.
I agree with everything above and also, IT IS ABOUT TIME!!! I have been reading romance for 31 years, and in that time, I have been inundated with dukes, Greek magnates, millionaires, billionaires, robber barons, and gentlemen with incomes of twenty thousand a year. There have also been plenty of heroes who worked to defend capital- cops, military, etc. There have been *vanishingly* few characters who hold the bourgeoisie to account. An entire agency??? INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS.
Might I interest you in a favorite book of mine? Grilled Cheese and Goblins: Adventures of a Supernatural Food Inspector by Nicole Kimberling
I love OSHA. I am an OSHA fangirl. I am so into this idea.
I am also in the health and safety sphere and have toyed with the idea of writing something like this. I love the idea and I hope we get more of this kind of thing. Safety is sexy! If there is something about people worrying about labeling and writing Safety Data Sheets for magical concoctions, I will be first in line to get this.
The Fae & Human Relations series by S.O. Callahan and Sarah Wallace kind of deals with this. It’s set an alt, queer norm Regency world with magic. A lot of the plot of the first couple books centers around creating a new rubric to test the magic abilities of Fae and human children.
Reading a romance about building a rubric (as a former educator) amused me but I wanted to like this series more than I did. I skipped the first book because I didn’t like the sample (I dislike rivals to lovers when the rivals are childish) but liked book two well enough. I just wanted more character development and world building. But other readers loved the cozy vibes (looking at the GR and SG reviews).
My oldest son says regulations should actually be called protections. The Washington Post had a series of articles written by well-known authors (Geraldine Brooks, Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, others) on various federal workers and what they did to understand the structure of caves to prevent mining disasters, serve as cybersleuths in the IRS (the IRS!) to shut down black markets that dealt in human trafficking, and more. The pieces were collected by Michael Lewis in a book called “Who Is Government” that I’ve gifted to friends and family ever since it was published. Perhaps it could be read in conjunction with the books about health and safety regulation in the magical world, especially now that health and safety in our world is more a matter of fantasy than reality.
P.S. I wonder how many of the people profiled in “Who Is Government” are still employed by the federal government?