So my main writing project is for a, superficially, pretty familiar modern dark fantasy, hidden world type series. One of the things I am concerned with is trying to stand out and be thought provoking without losing the core aspects of that genera type that I like. The world as it is now features an assortment of fantasy races focused on a theme of occult style, European witchcraft era mythology, with demons, vampires, werewolves, sorcerers and faeries. An idea that occurred to me recently is maybe it would be better to choose a historical setting, namely somewhere around the Victorian period or somewhere between WWI and WWII. I have been thinking this might actually make some aspects of the story easier, in these are times when an underground supernatural world would actually be easier to hide. And such a setting could potentially help introduce more focus on society and culture rather than in a more familiar modern setting. However, I assume a historical time period would be more baggage in having to do setting related things certain ways, especially if people are paying more attention to them as I would think they would. How does my analysis stack up? And would this help differentiate a series like this from others in the genera?
I chose modern pure and simply because I think there is a lot of work in doing a Victorian/WWI/WWII historical fantasy fiction. Although this is fantasy fiction, the idea is you have to sell it to the reader, and like you said the reader will be looking at things and critically analysing whether they appear to match with the history. That being said, I think the Victorian and World War period could give you some interesting stories. Like how does a vampire react to the wars, does he get involved, is he called up like the rest of the humans, is Hitler actually a vampire/demon/sorcerer even. Hitler was reportedly heavily interested in the occult and esoteric practices. There would be plenty of material that might make it worth the effort of doing your research.
You can have focus on society and culture for any time period, that's not the issue. But when writing in a modern setting you will have to take into account the availability of all those modern technologies. A person in danger can always use their phone to call for help and that makes the danger a bit less dangerous. A person faced with a mystery can always google that instantly on their phone and that makes the mystery solved much quicker. If your characters don't use modern technology you will have to come up with a believable reason. That's just as big a burden as the one of writing historical settings and having to insert the right period detail.
But it seems to me that it's easier for something like this that isn't focused on showing the society and culture to include strong themes of them in a more unfamiliar setting because the setting it stands out a little more and draws a little more interest. But I suppose a historical setting is for that reason more restrictive on what I'm doing within it, and in that way could make it more difficult to incorporate themes society and culture with supernatural elements. This is something is was referring to when I said "I have been thinking this might actually make some aspects of the story easier, in these are times when an underground supernatural world would actually be easier to hide." What's making me attracted to the idea of a historical setting is that it feels like worrying about technology and things like that is a burden with less interesting results than worrying about the specific details of a different time period. But I suppose a modern setting requires a little less attention in general for something like this.
