So last night I banged out a few hundred words of something new that I'm actually excited about. This is good, as far as it goes, but....

The story, however, instead of wanting to be something sensible like a contemporary fantasy story about people in their late twenties in a midwestern college town (i.e. something I could write) is insisting on being some kind of ridiculous steampunk robot uprising story.

Silly story.

Anyway, despite all my pleading, it wants to go to London in the late 19th century. I've tried to explain that this would mean me researching all kinds of crap that I have a hazy half-formed impression of from novels set in the period that I read a long time ago but really know very little about. I try, but there's no reasoning with it. I've bargained it down to being a sufficiently radically alternate timeline (lots of stuff different besides just robots) that lots of details can be different, but as far as the basic location in spacetime, it won't budge.

That means, e.g., that the story might want to have robots do something violent and unpleasant at a London society ball. I've tried to explain that this means that I have to find out all kinds of shit about how said ball would be set up, what people would be wearing, etc.--"you know I'm not interested in stuff like that"--but the story just laughs at me and tells me that it'll be good for me, that it'll expand my writerly horizons.

Sigh.

I was initially delighted when I found this apparent treasure trove of relevant information, a bit less so when random sampling showed that something like half to two thirds of the links, including most of the most relevant ones (the ones with daily life-level detailed info not just general historical info) aren't working any more.

So....anyone have any thoughts about doing research about stuff like this in a hurry?