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Part 3 - Axes to Grind
I have two fic projects I need to do, because of old drama.
I've seen Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage trilogy cited as the first example of canonical gay male protag in fantasy fiction. I don't think this is right, but when I've asked around I have yet to have anyone answer with anything earlier. So, while it may not strictly true - sci fi books that some today might classify as closer to fantasy were earlier, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner isn't really fantasy and is tricky for a number of reasons... but even if we count Swordspoint it was barely earlier and didn't have wide distribution until years later - it's still a big deal. Functionally, for most people, Last Herald Mage was it. I think these books and some other Mercedes Lackey books have had a very big impact that isn't well understood because genre fiction got away with a lot by flying under the radar. What was going on in genre fic wasn't well documented and it didn't want to be well documented.
The fact that sci fi has a lot of earlier gay but not fantasy is utterly baffling to me, but here we are.
The axe I have to grind isn't with this or any Valdemar book, I am just establishing a bit of context. The first book in that trilogy with poor, oppressed, uber-woobie Vanyel Ashkevron came out in 1989. Him being gay all through his life and death and afterlife is never questioned, never erased, never walked back. Foreshadowing is a narrative device that-
Between the publication of the first Woobie Vanyel and the last, Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon came out. In this book Eric, our hero, is in love with Beth. He thinks she's out of his league, but as the book events progress and they have more reason to interact, he realizes that she likes him more than he thought and in general he is more liked and appreciated than he thought. Basically, her take on Eric is very 'if you just get your life a little more together, boyo'
But, his life is complicated by an elf named Korendil. He doesn't know what to do with this elf and he thinks he'll have what he wants in life if he pushes the elf away, but he can't. He feels things about Korendil and is unsettled by those feelings, and that's getting in the way of chasing Beth (again, or so he thinks)
Then, Eric finds Beth and Korendil got together and he is just broken by it. He feels intense things for both of them and he's suddenly sharply cut off from both of them. But they explain that they both want him. He is very confused but eventually realizes he's being invited into the relationship.
Bi men and poly rep? In 1990 fantasy lit? Well, no because it gets retconned with a sledgehammer.
The series was later continued as a collab between Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill. I was also a big fan of Rosemary Edghill and had spent significant amounts of time tracking down her urban fantasy books. To say I was hype about my two favorite authors continuing the story of Eric, Korendil and Beth is an understatement. So, imagine my reaction when he is described as distant from them, that him being close to them would be inappropriate and that they never were close. I forget how the narrational voice puts it's exactly, but this wasn't a smooth retconning. They didn't go with a hand-wavy 'they were close once but realized blah blah blah'. They went in with a machete, they left a scar. I am not the only person for whom this is a sore point.
Bringing up KoGaS in certain fandom spaces and watching them turn into a major bitch session is something I enjoy indulging in. It's not just me, there are dozens of us! But I mean, think of all the drama over rep just in the past few years, even though we have tons more rep these days. These Mercedes Lackey books were A Big Deal to a lot of people and it's easy to see why.
So, I feel a deep need to write Korendil definitely, explicitly taking Eric. It might sound like spitefic, but it's not. It's a writing exercise. I want to write urban fantasy and this book is one that has stayed with me. Okay, it's a little bit spite fic but also it's breaking down this feeling into something useful.
Explaining this is why I am breaking up my 'taking stock' post into 3 parts. I will feel better if I write some absolute smut that no one is probably going to read in the year of our lord twenty thirteen. Wait, it's a new year, it's twenty fourteen now.
* Second (and final) Axe!
I could go on at length about this, but I will try to be brief. I need to post at least one more slash fic for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. It had a big slash fandom back in the day, but this was before Ao3 and all the archives got harassed offline and to this day just... the way the people still in fandom talk about fanfic... Passing around explicit torture porn of Penny Priddy was 'all in good, healthy fun'. But boys kissing? Disrespectful, to the writer and to the actors and to everyone! Gross!
So, people like me got run out and they held up Ernest Cline like a genius. (Note for clarity - While Cline's stuff was het, the explicit torture porn was not by him afaik. I was just wanted to show how extreme the double standard was) Fandom was very insistent that Cline was NOT a fanficcer, his TABB-based fiction was literature! And now omg A huge virtual world based on “Ready Player One,” a story set in a future where people enter into a virtual-reality simulation to escape the real world, is coming soon...
Futureverse, an AI and metaverse technology and content company... to exclusively bring the Ready Player One franchise to the metaverse across web3."
Yes, I have emotions about the TABB fandom holding up transphobe Cline's fanfic as important and rallying around everything he did while people like me where harassed out of fandom spaces, but there is nothing I can do except just finish a bit more of my own fic, stick it in the Archive and sometimes sadly say that yes, Tommy/Rawhide was the juggernaut pairing back in the day.
What TABB fic I have posted isn't very good. Having one solid story up there will make me happy even if it never gets read. And again, like with the Mercedes Lackey thing, it's also about processing a canon that was important to me, breaking it down and maybe figuring out what I want to do with my own origfic.
I have two fic projects I need to do, because of old drama.
I've seen Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage trilogy cited as the first example of canonical gay male protag in fantasy fiction. I don't think this is right, but when I've asked around I have yet to have anyone answer with anything earlier. So, while it may not strictly true - sci fi books that some today might classify as closer to fantasy were earlier, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner isn't really fantasy and is tricky for a number of reasons... but even if we count Swordspoint it was barely earlier and didn't have wide distribution until years later - it's still a big deal. Functionally, for most people, Last Herald Mage was it. I think these books and some other Mercedes Lackey books have had a very big impact that isn't well understood because genre fiction got away with a lot by flying under the radar. What was going on in genre fic wasn't well documented and it didn't want to be well documented.
The fact that sci fi has a lot of earlier gay but not fantasy is utterly baffling to me, but here we are.
The axe I have to grind isn't with this or any Valdemar book, I am just establishing a bit of context. The first book in that trilogy with poor, oppressed, uber-woobie Vanyel Ashkevron came out in 1989. Him being gay all through his life and death and afterlife is never questioned, never erased, never walked back. Foreshadowing is a narrative device that-
Between the publication of the first Woobie Vanyel and the last, Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon came out. In this book Eric, our hero, is in love with Beth. He thinks she's out of his league, but as the book events progress and they have more reason to interact, he realizes that she likes him more than he thought and in general he is more liked and appreciated than he thought. Basically, her take on Eric is very 'if you just get your life a little more together, boyo'
But, his life is complicated by an elf named Korendil. He doesn't know what to do with this elf and he thinks he'll have what he wants in life if he pushes the elf away, but he can't. He feels things about Korendil and is unsettled by those feelings, and that's getting in the way of chasing Beth (again, or so he thinks)
Then, Eric finds Beth and Korendil got together and he is just broken by it. He feels intense things for both of them and he's suddenly sharply cut off from both of them. But they explain that they both want him. He is very confused but eventually realizes he's being invited into the relationship.
Bi men and poly rep? In 1990 fantasy lit? Well, no because it gets retconned with a sledgehammer.
The series was later continued as a collab between Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill. I was also a big fan of Rosemary Edghill and had spent significant amounts of time tracking down her urban fantasy books. To say I was hype about my two favorite authors continuing the story of Eric, Korendil and Beth is an understatement. So, imagine my reaction when he is described as distant from them, that him being close to them would be inappropriate and that they never were close. I forget how the narrational voice puts it's exactly, but this wasn't a smooth retconning. They didn't go with a hand-wavy 'they were close once but realized blah blah blah'. They went in with a machete, they left a scar. I am not the only person for whom this is a sore point.
Bringing up KoGaS in certain fandom spaces and watching them turn into a major bitch session is something I enjoy indulging in. It's not just me, there are dozens of us! But I mean, think of all the drama over rep just in the past few years, even though we have tons more rep these days. These Mercedes Lackey books were A Big Deal to a lot of people and it's easy to see why.
So, I feel a deep need to write Korendil definitely, explicitly taking Eric. It might sound like spitefic, but it's not. It's a writing exercise. I want to write urban fantasy and this book is one that has stayed with me. Okay, it's a little bit spite fic but also it's breaking down this feeling into something useful.
Explaining this is why I am breaking up my 'taking stock' post into 3 parts. I will feel better if I write some absolute smut that no one is probably going to read in the year of our lord twenty thirteen. Wait, it's a new year, it's twenty fourteen now.
* Second (and final) Axe!
I could go on at length about this, but I will try to be brief. I need to post at least one more slash fic for The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. It had a big slash fandom back in the day, but this was before Ao3 and all the archives got harassed offline and to this day just... the way the people still in fandom talk about fanfic... Passing around explicit torture porn of Penny Priddy was 'all in good, healthy fun'. But boys kissing? Disrespectful, to the writer and to the actors and to everyone! Gross!
So, people like me got run out and they held up Ernest Cline like a genius. (Note for clarity - While Cline's stuff was het, the explicit torture porn was not by him afaik. I was just wanted to show how extreme the double standard was) Fandom was very insistent that Cline was NOT a fanficcer, his TABB-based fiction was literature! And now omg A huge virtual world based on “Ready Player One,” a story set in a future where people enter into a virtual-reality simulation to escape the real world, is coming soon...
Futureverse, an AI and metaverse technology and content company... to exclusively bring the Ready Player One franchise to the metaverse across web3."
Yes, I have emotions about the TABB fandom holding up transphobe Cline's fanfic as important and rallying around everything he did while people like me where harassed out of fandom spaces, but there is nothing I can do except just finish a bit more of my own fic, stick it in the Archive and sometimes sadly say that yes, Tommy/Rawhide was the juggernaut pairing back in the day.
What TABB fic I have posted isn't very good. Having one solid story up there will make me happy even if it never gets read. And again, like with the Mercedes Lackey thing, it's also about processing a canon that was important to me, breaking it down and maybe figuring out what I want to do with my own origfic.
