I don't really have guilty pleasures. If I like something, I like it, and I don't really feel embarrassed to like it, because I don't read books or watch movies to impress other people. That means my reading sometimes extends to genres or series that aren't high on the lists of the top SFF books of the year, for example, much of urban fantasy. I got into the genre through Daniel Abraham's Black Sun's Daughter series (which he wrote as MLN Hanover), and from there I moved to Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson books.
The books are silly, and perhaps a bit repetitive, but they're a fun, breezy read and a good way to get stuck into some female-written SFF, without also being bound to the Ann Leckies or Arkady Martines of the moment (much as I've enjoyed their books). Every once in a while, though, I stumble on some comment that Briggs puts in her protagonist's mouth. It's become a ritual over the ten years that I've been reading the Mercy Thompson books to note some passing comment and wonder what Briggs's politics are. Sometimes it's spurred by the comment that Mercy has a concealed carry license, or it might be anything else.
In the most recent book, it was when one of the werewolf characters talked about how high gas prices were. So I checked Briggs's Wikipedia page, as I always do, and found that there's no mention either way of outre political beliefs. This time, though, I persisted and found some reactions in the previous book where readers were disappointed that another character had voted for Donald Trump. I also found the interview below:
There are a couple of things to talk about here. First is the standard, and kinda disappointing, refrain that she hates both parties equally, which I've found is usually code for "I vote republican". It's tempered, though, by the very correct point that both the Democrats and the Republicans are completely beholden to dark-money - I may agree more with the Democrats' goals, but I'm just as uneasy with how much of the party is beholden to corporate interests and PACs as I am with the Republicans.
Briggs also makes the accurate point that the character in question, Mercy's husband Adam, is a white man from the South who was born in the 1950s, so what political affiliation do they expect him to have? The other source I found, criticizing Adam's voting, mentioned that he voted for Trump grudgingly, which is also an interesting characterization: in real life, plenty of conservatives have voiced displeasure with Trump but have continued to vote for him because they still can't bring themselves to vote for Democrats. Briggs doesn't mention that, but she could very well have been thinking about it.
The other important thing to keep in mind is that for all the conservative viewpoints espoused, there are also some pretty liberal ones. One good example is that werewolf who complains about high gas prices: he's gay, which she's used as a subplot in several novels to show how traditional werewolf society is still patriarchal and homophobic, but also an opportunity for the pack to evolve, by growing to accept him and his fairly elevated place in their hierarchy. The character's mate has also, over the course of the series, become a key ally to the werewolves, despite their long-ingrained homophobia. So there's some social consciousness to the series.
The final thing to unpack, for myself and those other readers, is our own reactions. Honestly, there's nothing that says complaining about high gas prices has to mean you're suddenly a member of the Proud Boys or whatever. It's true that in our rather febrile political climate, the ones most likely to complain about pain at the pump, or at the grocery store, seem to be more right-leaning (at least on social media), but high prices and inflation affect us all, and I've seen plenty of left-leaning friends express dismay at the price of gas. I'm not generally the kind of person who stops reading an author because I disagree with one or two things they or their characters say, and it's important to keep that in mind when reading these stories that might reference current events.
So the upshot is that I'm planning on continuing with the Mercy Thompson books, until I decide that the quality's gone downhill or Patricia Briggs starts having her characters give long explanations about how great Trump is. But given the tenor of the video I've shared here, I think the latter is a remote possibility.
There are definitely some Republican or Trumpist issues that we shouldn't abide in decent society, but let's also keep some perspective: characters can complain about gas prices, believe in concealed-carry or vote for Trump, but we don't have to immediately disqualify the author for those things.
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