What stories are you made of?
When I was just a little queerling in early high school there was a year when almost every one of my friends quietly came out to the rest of our little social circle. This was the mid-late 90s, and none of us told the adults around us, because we all knew there was a homeless shelter full of teens who’d taken that risk just downtown. We were, effectively, on our own. One of these days I’ll tell the story of how I came out to my own parents when I was in college- thankfully that turned out to be a funny story, not a sad one. But today I have some books to talk about.
That year we all came out to ourselves and each other, we quietly passed around a few battered copies of the the only queer book series that any of us had ever found- the Last Herald Mage series by Mercedes Lackey.
The trilogy was classic 1980s high fantasy brimming with magic psychic horses, meddling gods, soulmates, and epic battles. The protagonist, Herald Mage Vanyel was a classic power fantasy of the genre. He was astonishingly beautiful, uniquely powerful, and tragic even admits his many victories. He was everything the genre is mocked for, and it would be hard to overstate how much this indulgent power fantasy meant to us. Because Vanyel was explicitly gay and had a multi-lifetime romance with his male soulmate. It’s one of those stories that got built into my foundations, an indelible part of me. It was years before I found another explicitly queer story at all, much less one that offered me a power fantasy that seemed to be meant for me.
This month, I found out that that series is being lovingly adapted by another queer person who grew up with these books as his home away from reality.
So far, most of the people around my age who’ve heard about the adaptation have made this…noise. It’s halfway between a declaration of joy and a full body flinch. I wasn’t the only one who remembered enough of the book to have conflicted feelings about the adaptation.
I was 15 when I first read these books- the same as age as the protagonist at the start of the series. Now I’m 38, the same age as Vanyel at the end of his story. The symmetry was too good to resist. The news of the adaptation prompted me to pulled my autographed hardback off the shelf and start reading. I wanted to know- how did it hold up?
It’s a bit like if your very best friend from middle school showed up, 20 years later, and you’d excitedly arranged for them to meet all your new friends, and then you suddenly remember every weird, sketchy, sometimes downright horrifying thing they ever said.
Except that people can grow up. Maybe your middle school friend learned better since you’ve last talked to them. Books stay put, once published. That’s one of the things that makes stories such an appealing refuge. A story that’s complete can be knowable, secure, reliable. I love that about them.
But when a book says something wince-worthy in 1986, it’s still got to say the exact same thing in 2021.
This year I’ve seen Sailor Moon and Fruits Basket adapted. I’ve seen Leverage restarted 7 years after the show wrapped up. It seems as though I’ve reached an age where people my age, who grew up loving the things I loved, have the power and status to create things like tv shows, and are using that power to retell stories that meant so much to them when they were younger. I am at once luxuriating in the resurgence in attention for the stories that made me, and cringing.
And the truth is, these books are even more cringeworthy than I’d remembered, even though I remembered a lot more about them than I would have expected myself to- probably due to the sheer number of times I re-read them. They are well past “problematic” and are, frankly, not very well written. This re-read has brutally exposed all it’s flaws to me.
I’m going to reach past the cringe.
Because while the book is a mess of dicey tropes, questionable narrative choices, and queer tragedy, I can’t resist wandering through my old home, and remembering the me that I was when I lived there. Feeling the feelings I had echoing through these chapters, even as my present-day mind snickers about head-hopping narration and hisses through my teeth at the age gaps in the romance.
I’m loving visiting not just Vanyel, but my younger self who loved him so much, and I’m going to watch the adaptation with them. I’m going to be opinionated and over-invested and probably cry a whole lot. I will probably not tell anyone else to watch it, unless I think they have nostalgic reasons to do so, because there’s only so much they can update this thing. But while the world of Vanyel isn’t my home anymore, it’s still part of my history. It's still part of me just like every home I've ever had.
I don’t think I could write about teenagers if I couldn’t love my teenage self enough to want to spend time with them this way, now and then.
Is there a story that’s been built into you? That was so foundational to some era of your life that it could never be taken out of you, no matter what you think of it today? I feel like these stories don’t get talked about as much as the stories that have kept their gleam better over time. But, if you have a story like that, and want to tell someone nonjudgemental about what it meant to you, I would love to hear about it- both as a writer and as a reader who loves the power of stories.
I'd like to close out with a quick request: if you read Secondhand Origin Stories and ever felt moved to reccomend it to anyone, could you leave a review on Amazon? When I updated the listing for my pen name Amazon took every review I had away. It doesn't need to be lengthy if you want to keep it simple, but while most people are finding me on Gumroad, Amazon reviews make it easier for those who want paper copies to locate the book. Link right this way: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099TSBRJT
In thanks, I offer you this picture <3
- Lee Brontide