snarp | Appreciating Mercedes Lackey

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Appreciating Mercedes Lackey

I’m rereading the Dragonriders books. Yes, I am perfectly aware of the foolishness of this course of action.

They’ve actually aged worse than Mercedes Lackey. I don’t know if it’s that Lackey’s big fetishes (the H/C and the angsty slash and the didactic liberalism) have actually retained their cultural relevance more than McCaffrey’s (the bodice-ripper alpha-male rape-romances and benevolent fascism); or if they’ve just retained their me-relevance better; or if it’s just a matter of the politics.

Because you know something about Lackey? She really does try.

(Assume spoilers for pretty much every single Mercedes Lackey book under here, if that bothers you.)

She does monarchies because, for whatever reason, monarchies seem to be an inextricable part of her preferred genre, but the Good Monarchy is good because its leaders are forced by the Magical Power Of The Land to be fair to everybody. Not because the leaders are prettier and better at fighting and less into gross stuff like bondage than everybody else. (Oh, McCaffrey.) And there are women in positions of real political power, and they tend to marry guys who don’t get a share of it. And sleeping with and even marrying guys who aren’t Their One True Love is fine! And sometimes? Old women get to do stuff! (Learn, Avatar.)

In frigging 2007, J. K. Rowling waited until her series was finished, announced that one dead guy was gay, and then said, “If I had known this would have made you this happy, I would have announced it years ago.” Gosh, you’re brave, lady. Twenty years earlier in her very first book, Lackey was staffing her school of magic with out lesbians. Now, given how hilariously bad her gay guys were in the Vanyel books, I suspect that if I reread them I’d find things horribly wrong there, but she was trying.

There’s a trilogy, Mage Storms, that’s about scientists patiently telling the wizards how to save the world. Science isn’t evil! In the genre in which people who Doubt The Wizards’ Power are usually, like, fascist puppy kicker sexual assailants!*

Her contemporary fantasies tend to be pretty unpleasant, in the sense that little kids get raped and tortured a lot.** But there’s this oddly charming kind of didactiveness to them. Characters stop dead in the middle of the story to talk about what they’re planning to do to help kids. “He decided he’d start carrying around a wallet full of McDonalds gift certificates.” “She knew she was in over her head - she wasn’t trained for this. It was time to give child protective services a call.”

And then there’s a little afterward saying, “Child abuse is a real-world problem, and unfortunately, unicorns and elves are not available to real kids in these situations. If you suspect a child you know is in danger, these resources may be of help to you.” And then there are phone numbers. It’s nearly responsible!

Seriously. Those of us who read Mercedes Lackey as teenagers may groan about her - but we could have done so much worse.

(Some perspective: Race is still a big problem. In the Valdemar books, we’ve got the noble stoical Native American nature-lover stereotypes (two kinds!), the first Big Bad was thinly-veiled Muslims, and I think the third Big Bad ended up being thinly-veiled China. (The second Big Bad was rapists, with which I have no quarrel.))

* This trilogy was really, incredibly bad, but whatever. These are books 10 through 12 in a 24-book series about magic soulbonded horses. No one was going to pick them up unready for the shocking revelation that THIS TIME IT’S MAGIC SOULBONDED CATS! (Not falcons, like last time.) (The cats are all reincarnated caliphs of the past. I don’t think caliphs are supposed to get reincarnated, I actually think they’d probably be against that.)

** I think the presence of child sexual abuse plotlines may correlate directly to books co-written with her husband, Larry Dixon.***

*** No, wait, I just checked - When the Bough Breaks, possibly the most lurid one****, was with Holly Lisle. That’s the one where, at the end, the elves cast the abusive dad into the Rape Dimension.

**** Though Born to Run and Wheels of Fire would both sound crazier if you explained the plots. Oh, and it looks like Dixon didn’t do Wheels of Fire, either; that one was Mark Shephard. All right, Dixon, you’re free to go.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

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I have a soft spot for Misty Lackey's Valdemar books. They're not good and yet. There's an intrinsic element in them that appeals to the id.

I (figuratively) opened my mouth,
scrolled down to the comments,
and saw that you had stolen my words x]

Somehow it happens a lot when you talk about Mercedes Lackey. Reactions to her seem surprisingly uniform!

This is true!

Heh. Yeah. I think her historical fantasies and fairy tale books hold up a bit better as books, though.

Actually, I was kind of sad a couple years ago when I realized I'd apparently outgrown her. I mean, trying and failing is still trying, which is more than a lot go for.

I couldn't read the gay guys books because...well, they were really, really bad, IIRC, but I remember that the lesbians in the first books, and then other same sex (and IIRC, bisexual) characters later on were treated as perfectly normal. Like, she drew attention to them so you'd notice "yes, I do mean for them to be gay," but it wasn't UNUSUAL.

Now, the one whose lifemate was his horse? She did treat that one as a bit unusual.

What I mostly remember from the Vanyel books was that everyone spent inordinate amounts of time explaining to each other about how it was OK to be gay, and less time actually showing that, which struck me as an unbalanced way of doing that, and which could have been rewritten to be better.

Aaaaand then over a decade ago I managed to get in an argument on the internet with a man who insisted that EVERY WORD WAS PERFECT AND NOTHING SHOULD BE CHANGED because the book really helped him to cope with being a gay teen. Lesson learned: do not argue details of writing and editing with someone who is speaking from a deeply emotional and personal stance. (I am very happy that he found the right book at the right time! It doesn't mean the books couldn't have been better.)

What I mostly remember from the Vanyel books was that everyone spent inordinate amounts of time explaining to each other about how it was OK to be gay, and less time actually showing that, which struck me as an unbalanced way of doing that, and which could have been rewritten to be better.

Yes, I was actually going to comment on just that. Even when I was ten years old, growing up in semi-rural Texas, I was like, "yeah I know it's okay to be gay, now can we talk about something else?" I was also kinda sad that for all the talk about how being gay was perfectly fine, we didn't actually see a whole lot of it. It was like "I hate you! I love you! You're dead!" in what seemed to be the space of ten pages.

She had to make room for other stuff! Like Vanyel brooding about his family, and music, and clothes, and magic horses, and his evil tutor, and etc.

I was really surprised when I reread them a while back and realized how abrupt and weird that whole romance was. His aunt shows up just a couple hours after it begins to give a speech validating it. Because his boyfriend was talking to her telepathically, about his self-esteem and identity problems, while they were still in bed together! Word-count-wise, people spend more time talking about their relationship than they do talking to each other.

Word-count-wise, people spend more time talking about their relationship than they do talking to each other.

Yes, exactly. I sort of understand that it wasn't so much a book about romance as it was about the world as a whole taking a shit on Vanyel, but I probably would have felt more strongly about THE DEATH if it had felt stronger and more meaningful. As it was, it just seemed like a plot device to make Vanyel into the most super special awesome person ever.

She's so repetitive! And didactic! And repetitive!

With some writers I'd say all the repetition of the Nice Message was part of a cunning plan to lull the reader into a state of smug complacency before killing everybody off - but I don't think Lackey has that level of subtlety.

(I know someone to whom I am reluctant to criticize the Vanyel books for similar reasons. They had consequences for people!)

Yeah, I'm somewhat in mourning for my ability to read her stuff without wincing. I miss being able to pick up the Talia and Mornelithe Falconsbane books when I feel gross. They were very calming when I didn't realize how bad they were.

The Vanyel books are pretty short, so I have no idea how she makes such a mess of them. Maybe it's because they're tragedies, and she's struggling against the requirements of the plot. She doesn't want to think about the Sad Ending, so she throws in all these distracting subplots and scenes where people talk about politics we don't care about or magical systems. These are books about tragic pretty wizard boys in love! We don't need seven paragraphs on how Vanyel's horse was bred or how his mean tutor (who we don't care about) has seen the error of his ways and is marrying another minor character and isn't that nice. Just make the kids stare soulfully at each other in the rain, woman. It's not hard.

I think what gave them their power at the time was that they were basically pre-internet H/C slash. They're not good, but they're what was available.

I'm okay with treating the horse-lifebond thing as unusual! Maybe I'm intolerant. I'm in total accord with the girl who had a crush on the guy and had a heart attack about it. (I can't remember anyone's name in that book.) But yeah, I really appreciate how low-key people's sexuality generally is for Lackey. The only time I recall someone's gayness being a plot point was the Vanyel books. Then it was a Big Plot Point.

I picked up on the horse/guy lifebond thing at the start and was totally convinced that i had to be wrongwrongwrong!

HIS WIFE IS A HORSE.

WAIT! Was it his wife or his husband? (I can't remember.)

Wife!

I knew about that before I started the book. I was honestly a little surprised - I expected something much weirder. It was a pretty bland book.

In the book, or real life. In RL, it was his wife. And his girlfriend's LJ name was callmesilver, NO RLY.

I haven't read the book. Thank God.

Man, I don't think I want to re-read the Vanyel books. I'm one of those people who re-read them at a young age in a then-very-intolerant family and they Blew. My. Tiny Little Preteen Mind. So they were really important to me, even though I realized on subsequent re-reads and as I grew up and got a clue that they had all kinds of issues (literary and otherwise). But hurray for their existence anyway--it's just too bad that they didn't result in a lot more normalizing of gay characters. :/ Rowling is a good example of how little normalizing there really has been. Meh.

I wanted to put some non-challenging f/sf with gay characters into

assaultdoor's blog of reviews for his community college students (he's still building it, http://clintryan.com/reading/ ) but I don't know what to put on there. The other books I can think of tend toward literary/stylemonkey writing and will probably turn off people who don't already read a lot. Whereas hell, it's not like Valdemar's really a step down from Twilight (last year several students reported that being the only series they'd ever read). :P

Tamora Pierce? (Though maybe that's a little too non-challenging.) If I remember right, her Circle of Magic series had three lesbian characters. I felt they were kind of stereotypes, but they were cute books.

(I'm sure I'll think of like a million other things later, but right now I need to go to work.)

Non-challenging is FINE. Some of the students are total non-readers; a few are literally still in high school (since it's summer session) and usually there are a few non-native-speakers or "Generation 2.0." Plus I can still use recs for my soon-to-be 16-year-old Japanese student. :)

I never really read Tamora Pierce so I have no idea. Off to poke Amazon and see if it has preview!

If you think of more later, it's never too late :)

I hope work is fun-entertaining and not "they'll never believe THIS when I blog it later"-entertaining. ;D

Yes, the Circle of Magic series has several supporting lesbian characters. Later in the series, one of the leading characters comes out as lesbian. They're very sweet and gay-positive, and her writing is WAY better than Lackey's.

Okay, I'm not coming up with a ton, but here's three:

* Hellspark, by Janet Kagan, has a very cute lesbian couple. It's definitely heavier vocab-wise than the Pierce - though lighter emotionally (it's a fluffy book) - but I don't think it's going to scare anyone too bad.

* Ethan of Athos, by Lois McMaster Bujold, maybe. Again, the language might be a little challenging. Also, I feel Ethan's characterization is a little skeevy in a couple places towards the beginning.

* Kitchen, by Yoshimoto Banana, has a transsexual character. There are telepathic dreams, so I refuse to call this anything other than fantasy.

I can think of more stuff with positive gay characters, it's just I'd be uncomfortable suggesting it to high-school students with whose debauchery levels I am unfamiliar.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Kitchen!
Haven't read the other two, thank you!

I COME TO SHIBATA LOL

Want to go to the city tomorrow? I want to try to go to that cosmetics store in Furumachi to get stickers.

See if you can figure out google maps, and tack yourself on one. I am going to drive out to Nishi.

Why did you make me look up the AMV Hell thing. I now kinda want to watch Berserk, and I'm sure that that's a very bad idea.

I think I'm crippled in appreciating Lackey's emphatic-if-in-many-ways-tone-deaf liberalism because I was raised in a very progressive household, a UU congregation and a generally socially and politically liberal neighborhood that had been fully racially integrated for decades. When a much more thoughtful and nuanced version of a certain social worldview is your default surrounding from early childhood, you tend to be underwhelmed by a clumsier presentation of same. I just never had that lightning bolt of emotional validation from Lackey that other people describe having had--more like a sense of "duh," coupled with, "yes, but you're oversimplifying, and god, you're corny."

Yeah, that's how she sounds to me *now* ...

Yeah, Lackey's appeal really only makes any sense when you consider that she was filling a vacuum for a lot of people. She does a lot of boneheaded-to-offensive stuff, and if there is a list of ways that you can be a bad writer, she has clearly carefully studied that list, and put checkmarks next to most of it, and then added a couple of her own ideas. But in the big-huge-fantasy-series-genre, the Valdemar stuff's political worldview was pretty unique ten-fifteen-twenty-whatever years ago.

(I'm kind of phrasing this carefully because I don't actually feel things have gotten much better, but then I'm also not reading much recent fantasy.)

Also, she provided angsty slash pre-internet. I suspect that that gave her a boost.

You're probably right that things haven't gotten much better. I am really, really not on top of the speculative fiction scene these days, so it's pretty academic to me. In a vague and distant way, I sympathize with people's frustrations that modern fantasy and science fiction is (as I understand it) not breaking any progressive ground, and failing to keep up in some important ways. But I'm not reading the books and feeling the absence and getting frustrated by it, so I don't personally care about that. Or maybe I should say that in a world that generally frustrates me by not being progressive enough, speculative fiction not being progressive enough does not presently stand out to me.

This is a very sensible point of view. I just worry that if I were to emulate it, I wouldn't be able to keep in practice at Being Disappointed In Things. I guess I could always be disappointed in how people dress their children in matching outfits, or have lawns, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Eh, it wasn't something I deliberately cultivated. It's just that years of gradually being worn down by disappointment have left me unable to be outraged by this sort of thing except for really egregious stuff done by people who should know better. I don't have en endless supply of emotional stamina, and I now conserve it more carefully--one bout of serious depression brought on in large part by flogging myself over things I cannot change was enough for one lifetime.

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Appreciating Mercedes Lackey

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