Talk:Mercedes Lackey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

Please rate the article and, if you wish, leave comments here regarding your assessment or the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
To-do list for Mercedes Lackey: edit · history · watch · refresh
Move series to own articles
  • Before creating seperate pages for the various series, I suggest taking a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional series. I also suggest NOT creating pages for either series or individual books unless there is enough content to have such pages be more than stubs. DES 28 June 2005 17:02 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Controversies

Lackey's explanation over her abandoning the Diana Tregarde works and withdrawing from fandom are, to put it charitably, not universally accepted; they should be mentioned, but not reported as fact. Salsa Shark 07:35, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I went looking for stuff about this via Google. I found a whole lot of discussion about an alleged incident at DragonCon 1997, for which I haven't found a satisfactory conclusion (yet but RL intrudes yet again :-), but nothing yet about the other incident in her famous Last Straw message [1] involving IIRC a small child taking refuge in their home being killed during a court-ordered contact session. Does anyone know whether it's possible to confirm whether or not either of these stories is true. I will admit that I had only ever seen the Last Straw message and it hadn't occurred to me that there might be any question of it being true :-( Phil 15:06, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)
The DragonCon event, at least, would have generated a police report if it had gone down the way Lackey claimed. One skeptic on Usenet posts that they searched for one - it would have been quite distinctive - and came up empty. Salsa Shark 08:02, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I have added links to some of the usenet discussion of this issue, as archived on google. DES 28 June 2005 22:06 (UTC)

[edit] POV

The section "Opposition" seems quite POV as curretly written. Sources sould be cited for opnions, or at least pro and con views should be given equal treatment. DES 28 June 2005 17:11 (UTC)

[edit] Merges

I have moved the content from the separate pages for By The Sword and Oathblood onto the main page, and converted those pages into redirects. Both pages were stubs. In the case of By The Sword I have expanded and corected the content a good deal, as well. DES 28 June 2005 21:21 (UTC)

I initially came to ask another question, but first: have you noticed that someone has restarted the By The Sword article? I only did whilst reading this discussion. Anyway, the other question. What to do with the link on this (Mercedes Lackey) page to Oathblood now? It redirects back to this page. Just remove the link and make it italicised, or what? --Telsa 16:55, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I have now simply removed that link. I've also removed a few more links in the Serrated Edge stories: they link to entirely the wrong pages. See next topic :) Telsa 17:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] All these links to book titles

This page has something like 70 book titles as links. Of those which are blue links rather than red, they are links to anything from Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (ca. 1824–1876 ... the best-known black concert artist of her time) to disambiguation pages. Is there really an encyclopaedia article in every single one of Lackey's books, including compilations of her short stories? I can see that there is in the Arrows books, and possibly the Vanyel books. But in general, would it not be better to have articles on "SERRAted Edge (Mercedes Lackey)", "Bardic Voices (Mercedes Lackey)" and so on? And then all the information can be collected in one place for each, and book details all on the same pages? Now that the Oathblood info is on the main page, I shall try and demonstrate what I mean with the Vows and Honour series as an example. Telsa 17:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

My own suggestion would be to link the book titles to, where available, complete works or sample chapters. Baen has a lot of Lackey's books available for free in their entirety, either via Webscriptions or via the CDs hosted on the web with permission; many of those not would have sample chapters available. I made some such links in the paragraphs I added talking about the stories the other day. --Robotech_Master 17:49, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Whilst I largely agree with you, that link went down earlier today, (right as I was reading one of them): the same message now appears all over as on the main page: the maintainer can't afford the bandwidth since it suddenly shot through the roof, so has removed the CDs. I am having difficulty locating the equivalent pages on the Baen site so far. If you know where they are, some link updates are needed! In addition, it is possible that the links should be in an External links section towards the end? I am not sure on this, though.. Telsa 22:41, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Zounds!! Typical that, after all this time, it would happen right after I updated the links in here. And thanks to a robots.txt file, archive.org doesn't even have them.

But ne'er fear, I've found another site that does still have them, and I'll be going through and revising the links accordingly. This one being a quasi-official Baen fan site and having a long history of hosting other high-popularity Baen files (collections of preview snippets for books not webscripting yet) I expect it will be more stable.

As to the question of whether they should be in an external links section...I've always looked at those sections as kind of appendices for linking to general reference type material. If there's going to be a link to something that's covered in detail, I feel the link should be from where the detail is, so that the prospective link-follower isn't inconvenienced by having to go all the way to the bottom to find it. (Indeed, how is he supposed to know such a link would be at the bottom; he hasn't gotten there yet.) --Robotech_Master 19:06, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Velgarth series order

As I was looking over this article I was thinking that maybe readers would like to know the publishing order of the Velgarth series and/or the Chronological order of the books. I would like to do that but I thought I'd bounce it off someone first. I know I personally like to know the chronological order of various large series (like Pern) so that I can have a good feel of where I am when I pick up a given book.

Also in the question of if the various series are moved to seperate articles and the name for the Queen's Own, Last Hearld Mage, Gryphons, Mage Winds, etc. I would hightly suggest calling it the Velgarth series since some of them have nothing to do with Valdemar.

Looking at the order in the article, they do seem to be in a silly order, yes. Neither quite chronological order nor quite publishing order. I think it would make most sense to do it by chronological order. The publishing order went something like first gryphon book, first Mage Winds book, second gryphon book, second Mage Winds book, and so on, jumping 2,000 years each time. Similarly, the final part of the Oaththingies books came out years and years after the first two, supplanting the one about Kerowyn. This would not be a helpful order to new readers!
But we also have periods where different series all cover the same period and events. I think it would be best to do the order by series rather than by book. Trying to interleave By the Sword (which covers a very long period of time) with Exile's Valor (assassination attempt on Selaney) and the Talia trilogy (Talia coming to ask Rethwellan for help) is going to be as confusing as the original publication order.
I'd think of them as in an order along the lines of: the Mage Wars; the Last Herald Mage; Brightly Burning; Oathblood trilogy; Alberich pair; Take a Thief; the Arrows trilogy; Mage Winds; Mage Storms; Owl*ight... and where to stick By the Sword is the problem then, which I leave up to others :)
Finally, despite the recent arrival of The Halfblood Chronicles as a separate page, I am still a little wary of separating them all off into their own series. This article is getting long, but if it is packed with information, is that a bad thing? The first things I would personally split off are the Valdemar/Velgarth ones: that would be a big meaty article. I wouldn't have seen the Elvenblood books as the obvious candidate to start with.
Telsa 16:23, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I think the best order would be based upon publication order, only not breaking up trilogies. So, group the trilogies, and then order them based on the publication of the first book thereof. To me that's logical because chances are that's how they'll be read, or at least how I tend to read series like this. Meichigo (talk) 05:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

They weren't published in the order that they take place in the Valdemar universe. I suggest we order them as Telsa suggested. I think By The Sword would be best between The Arrows and the Mage Winds trilogies. On the other hand, that might not be the most encyclopedic way of arranging them. Perhaps on this main Lackey page, it should be a more traditional bibliography, in strict publishing order, and without extraneous information, i.e. synopses and stuff. But copy all that stuff to the series page, in the order that the books take place in the fictional universe.

So the series page would look like the current section on Valdemar, but in Telsa's order, whereas this page would just have a list of books irrespective of series or trilogy, like

Crymerci (talk) 19:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Excessively intemperate language removed

I have removed the second of the following paragraphs (I show both here for context):

  • Her failure to engage in adequate research before writing about real-world cultures has also been criticised, especially by members of and sympathisers with those cultures.
    • In one example, the urban fantasy Born to Run features a male bean sidhe--a contradiction in terms, given that the very name means "fairy woman"-- and claims that this name is derived from the words "sidhe" and "bane." This is not only a false etymology, mixing together words from the Irish language (Gaeilge na hÉireann) and from English to explain a term which is in fact purely Irish-language, but is deeply offensive to speakers of a living minority language which was nearly destroyed by a colonial policy of its deliberate suppression and replacement with English.
      The fact that the correct etymology might have been found with a few minutes' consultation of an ordinary dictionary of mythology or folklore suggests to some observers a layer of arrogance atop the apparent ignorance.

Apart from the fact that the language used is simply not appropriate, we must have proper references if we are going to make allegations like this:

  • where does ML make the allegedly-false claims about the etymology?
  • who is criticising her?
  • why have they not similarly attacked Terry Pratchett who also features male banshees in his stories?
  • which "observers" are suggesting the "layer of arrogance atop the apparent ignorance"?

This is not the appropriate place for language-advocacy. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I imagine the quote is this, from Born to Run chapter 4: "Elves can die; they can be killed. Ever think about where the world 'banshee' came from?"..."Bane-Sidhe?" "Right. 'Bane' or 'death' of elves." (There's a link in the article to the compilation Chrome Borne; that's where I found it.)
I admit, I winced when I read that passage the first time (to my mind--and to my dictionary--banshees are female and a sign of a death in the house to come), but shrug, this is a chapter where the character who gives that derivation also explains that banshees try to frighten people to death in order to feed off energy, and that elves are obsessed with child welfare. (Neither are common ideas in folklore.) Ie, the book is fantasy and should be read on that basis.
There are places in her books (for me, in Britain, they are mostly in her books set in a historical Britain) which make me blink. But personal impressions are not generally encyclopaedic.
I agree with Phil: in line with WP:CITE, WP:V, WP:NOR and all the rest, we need specifics and references. "Members of and sympathisers with those cultures" is not really terribly specific..
Telsa 21:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Further to his trimming, I have now removed the remaining one of the two paragraphs User:Phil Boswell mentioned, because no-one ever clarified who the members of and sympathisers with these real-world cultures are. I can see little reason to retain the remaining comments at the moment. If no sources are forthcoming in a week or two, I shall remove both "Some disparage her books as being about 'talking horses', though her works depict a wide range of cultures and environments." and "Because of the prominence of female and homosexual characters in her high fantasy works, she has been criticized for writing "fluffy" fantasy novels which bear little or no resemblance to real or pseudo-real history". (Who are these some, and where did they say it? Who called her books fluffy? What is pseudo-real history? Did someone really say that her books bear little or no resemblance to pseudo-real history? And if so, what exactly did they mean?) --Telsa (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree. I would love to know just who those "some" are that disparage her work as being about talking horses. --Robotech_Master 21:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Zapped. Still awaiting clarification on the matter of pseudo-real history... Telsa (talk) 23:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
This would appear to be a "criticism" of "her failure to engage in adequate research before writing about real-world cultures", but since it's a Usenet post, could it have been cited anyway? -- SAJordan 07:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This whole thing is rather funny, since nearly all of Misty's works occur in a fictional universe. Hello? Anybody paying attention? --JT 20:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be funny if anyone were claiming she got her own fantasy world wrong (aside from discrepancies in her own descriptions, which is another discussion). This was, as stated above, "about real-world cultures", as in the etymology of "banshee" (bean sídhe, literally "woman of the mounds" or "fairy woman", the Fair Folk being the Daoine Sídhe or People of the Mounds), a word which has a real history as very much a part of real-world cultures, not some original creation of her own. Likewise for the "Gypsies" and the American Indians, all real-world cultures. If she had portrayed entirely fictional cultures, not using the names of real ones, I doubt anyone could sensibly claim "she got it wrong". – SAJordan talkcontribs 09:52, 12 Nov 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Valdemar Timeline

Does anyone know of (or can we create?) a detailed valdemar timeline. I get very confused trying to work out how old folk were at various events, and estimated DOBs for Kethry, Tarma, Kerowyn, Selenay, Elspeth along with dates for the Tedrel wars and the Ancar wars would be helpful. I can't find it on ML's website. -- SGBailey 23:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misty Lackey

I've been a friend of Misty & Larry, lived on their property for a time, and wrote the title story, "Sword of Ice." The "story" about the child being killed is fact. I've spoken with their bodyguard at the time. He's still bothered by that he was the one who took the child to the father on the day that the murder happened, even though a judge ordered it.

Not quite so sure about the Con incident, but SOMETHING happened to keep them away from their adoring fans.:)

The studio fire is fact. That he (Larry) joined the volunteer fire department weeks later is a major stretch, though they did donate to that fire dept.

Timeline is available in several of the books, within the first few pages.

I'd call it Valdemar. That's what she and the publishers always called it, what it's known by.

I fixed the error about either of them being falconers... and if Larry practiced Aikido for more than three consecutive weeks, I'll chew glass... but I digress.;)

And yes, I'm the Master (class) Falconer that she referred to in a book or two... so feel free to ask me about falconry, rehab and raptors. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Falc (talk • contribs) 19:14, February 10, 2006.

I can confirm Falc is who he says he is (John Yezegulian sp?). On that note, I'd be willing to take his word for it.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 21:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks... sorry you've retired. I'd have liked to have made contact, figured out where we know each other. Write me if you happen to see this. --JT 22:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fanfiction

[2]

Also further down that thread, where Lackey admits to writing fanfiction set in the world of City of Heroes. It does not seem as though her zero tolerance position on fanfic is true. Phil Sandifer 05:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Edit: As she's said, she will allow not-for-profit fanfic, but will not read it due to the Marion Zimmer Bradley affair. She can't take that chance with her own work.
As for City of Heroes, NCSoft has explicitly authorized fanfic in their world (since a click-through agreement on the game itself assigns ownership of properties you create within the game to them, thus avoiding the potential legal problems). Furthermore, the City of Heroes fanfic in question is actually more of an extension of in-game roleplay than it is actual standalone fanfic; it's textual interaction between her characters and others. To call it "fanfic" is really to oversimplify.
--Robotech_Master 04:50, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I am aware both of the MZB issue and what actually happened with the MZB issue, which had less to do with unscrupulous fans and more to do with Bradley making some very large legal mistakes that opened the door to such a situation (She should NEVER have been reviewing fan works for publication in a universe she was also intending to publish in). My understanding was that Lackey allowed but never read under any circumstances fanfic on her works. In fact, she has basically said as much. And I am hardly hassling anybody - I've never communicated with Lackey over any matter. Phil Sandifer 04:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
You're right. That should teach me not to respond when tired. I had even read that message to which you linked when it was originally posted, but my internal censor had substituted some of the older stuff from the FAQ pages on her site which took a much harder line about fanfic. I should have clicked through and reread the message first.
I've gone ahead and edited my original post to remove the stuff that was wrong.
--Robotech_Master 05:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations and clean up

Her favorite book that she has written is By the Sword, and her easiest to write was anything about Tarma and Kethry.

Lackey's 'dream cast' list for her best known books is as follows:

   * Falconsbane: David Bowie
   * Firesong: Sting
   * Kerowyn: Cher
   * Lavan Firestorm: Haley Joel Osment
   * Tarma: Lucy Lawless
   * Vanyel: Johnny Depp

This part is in her biography, but it doesn't tell anything about her life--it tells about her personal opinions in a list.

There are also no citations in this article done properly... And is it me, or did someone delete the Creative Commons photo she released? I also think it's missing dates, relevant information, missing proper Biography format and has too much opinion on her fictional works, versus that of the author....--Hitsuji Kinno 09:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Diana Tregarde Series Order

I have just read 'Burning Water' and 'Children of the Night'. In Children of the Night, the character Andre is 'met', and Diana does a favor for the Rom (with the help of Andre and others). In 'Burning Water', both Andre and the nickname the Rom call her and the favor the Rom owes her are all referenced. So in terms of plot, 'Children of the Night' comes before 'Burning Water'. Now as far as why the publication dates don't reflect this, I have no idea.

--Thortok2000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.107.33.122 (talk) 23:46, 3 November 2007 (UTC)