gryphonsegg

People, I think I'm finally cured of Valdemar. I bought the newest collection of Valdemar short stories (various authors, Mercedes Lackey advertized as sole editor), but once I started reading it, I found that multiple stories made me want to throw it. The Shin'a'in Herald story was the absolute last straw for me-- not only the last straw in the book, but the last straw in the series. I can put up with many things for the sake of returning to a world I've loved for years. But this story's blatant disregard for continuity shattered any remaining hope I had of any effort being made to keep Velgarth a mostly internally consistent world.

In this story, a young man raised by the Tale'sedrin clan, which was wiped out by bandits and refounded by Tarma over the course of several previous books and short stories, goes to Valdemar. He trains with the Heralds and has trouble learning how to use a sword because his people have no tradition of sword-fighting!!!! That's right, all the people Tarma adopted have been raising the new Tale'sedrin with no knowledge of how to use a sword or how to fight on foot because, in direct contradiction of all previous portrayals, Shin'a'in don't use swords, don't use melee weapons generally, and don't fight on foot. Ever. And they never did in the past, so they have no traditions related to those skills. All Shin'a'in warriors were only ever archers, and only from horseback.

As for the priests of their most honored and beloved deity being called the SWORD-sworn because they were supernaturally good SWORD fighters, and that being a huge part of the identity of Tarma, the Shin'a'in SWORD-sword character through whom we first me the Shin'a'in, and that being a fundamental plot-point of many of the stories in which Tarma was featured . . . THAT'S ALL RETCONNED! Sure, Lackey didn't write that story herself, but she gets sole credit for editing the anthology in which it appears. She approved this gross mangling of continuity. Shin'a'in sword fighters, specifically Tale'sedrin sword-fighters are not an obscure part of her previous worldbuilding.

I already knew that she's been phoning it in for a few years now, but there's something about her acceptance of such a complete defiance of previous canon that gets under my skin in a way that nothing else, not even her own relatively easy-to-miss retcons, ever did. I've stuck with Valdemar for a long time despite annoyances and misgivings about a variety of things that pale in comparison to letting this level of continuity-smashing slide. But I think I'm done now. If she cares that little about her own worldbuilding, I'm out. I'm giving up before we get stories in which Talia is a former race car driver and Vanyel has cat ears.

Some notes about sexual development and gender (or lack thereof) for the sapient species from the planet Achiem:

( World-building infodump; Warning for governments mucking about with people's hormones toward the end )

Guess what? My matriarchy-with-magic-water story now has a plot! Well, two plots, actually, and I'm hoping I can bring them around to being interrelated. There's some detective type stuff going on, but there's an overarching plot that might best be summed up as "lol ur succession!" I'm trying to decide on names for the main character's mentor and for the members of equivalent to the royal family (and also decide which ones really are trying to kill each other and which ones are just misunderstood).

( Cut for disturbing aspects of RL history and worldbuilding )

Inspired by multiple internet conversations, some of them older than others:

What could or should go into the worldbuilding of a plausible matriarchal human or humanoid society? I've read some stories set in societies that other people have labeled matriarchal, but most of them haven't worked for me, either because I find the worldbuilding itself weak or because the society turns out upon closer inspection not to be truly matriarchal. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order, about what doesn't work and what might work in building a world where it might plausibly be necessary to smash the matriarchy instead of the patriarchy.

( Long, rambly thoughts )