History is Written by the Victors

“Someone’s edited Wikipedia again.”

I was getting that headache. When I took conservatorship of The Harmon Collection, fighting with rabid fans online about her legacy was not the direction I foresaw.

“Should I even ask how bad it is?”

“And I quote: ‘Meredith Harmon was a freaking genius, a misunderstood and deep philosopher, a legacy we will never grasp. Her legandary re-working of the old misogynistic myths, re-introducing the divine feminity to its rightful place, is a masterwork against masculine hatred-’”

“Woof. Cool, another neo-Amazon. Spelled ‘misogynistic’ correctly, but not ‘legendary,’ nor ‘femininity.’ Interesting.”

“Just as bad as the person who railed against her not having enough LGTBQIA+ characters in her work. Um, did they even read anything by her? I mean, she even said her characters told her what their gender was, not the other way around, and they were all over the gender spectrum.”

“But they weren’t classified in the Pride section, so they got… overlooked.”

“Something something never argue canon with a superfan who thinks they’re capital-R Right.”

“Yeah. Report it, or flag it, or whatever, and re-submit our standard?”

“For the time being, sure. Let me see if I can go and freshen it up a bit for the haters.” I wandered off to the sound of frantic typing, knowing full well we would get complaints no matter what we did. Ohhh, the complaints.

I opened a new writing document, stared at a blank page.

How to encapsulate a complicated legacy?

Tell everyone the reason she didn’t read others’ work when she was actively writing, is because she was terrified she’d begin to copy their awesome ideas?

That she couldn’t stand fan fic? Not because she didn’t like fan fic; she wrote some herself, and her own “hubster” had a good-sized folder of same, but because My Immortal scarred her so badly, she couldn’t stand bad fan fic, therefore shied away from all of it?

That her hubster didn’t destroy the Super Secret Filthy Sex File, and sold it upon her death, and it’s still out there, and we’re secretly trying to get it back? That I was forced to read the bits we still had, and it was so bad, it would likely tear her fan base apart?

I sighed. I had to write something.

I took a sip of double-shot espresso, and began to type.

*****

“Here, this will have to do. It’s better than the old copy, I think, let’s go with it.”

“Um, okay? I don’t think-”

“Seriously. We’ll never know. It’s not like she left copious notes besides the stories themselves. It’ll cause controversy. It always will. Let’s lean into it.”

“Whatever you say, Boss.”

*****

Despite her work, or maybe because of it, Meredith Harmon’s legacy as an author will always remain controversial. Was she truly a semi-hemi-demi goddess? With the Octopi Takeover in the year of 2089 CE, and their treatment of her compendium (plus the DNA proof), we’ll have to take that as given.

You either loved her, or you hated her. To be fair, there was a lot to hate: creating worlds at the drop of a hat, head crowded with three or four ideas at a time while others were trying to come up with just one, an arrogant so-and-so when called for, with some downright weirdly twisted ideas.

There was also a lot to love: unafraid to take on injustice in story or real life, some seriously amazing stories with twists or perspectives you didn’t expect, occasional rants, and knowledgeable on a broad range of topics.

She left very few notes on which series link to which stories, deciding to let the fans bicker about the placement. She did not expect the Genre Wars that followed, and did not live to see the Octo Takeover, which would have made her a living goddess. As it is, the humans that are left have no problem serving our octo overlords. They’re better than we were at governing, honestly.

Of particular note are her series “Myth and Gem,” “The Gem Houses,” “The Myths Re-Written,” “The Unlikely Partners Series,” “Blue America,” and her strange semi-biography, “The Ghosts of a Forgotten Town.” She was particularly fond of her pastiches, her science poetry, and her strange turns of phrases.

As per her instructions to destroy anything named after her, a village is constructed on a semi-annual basis, named Harmonville, then blown to shit. It’s quite cathartic, which is what I think she wanted.

As she would quote about herself, she was not everyone’s cup of tea, but she hoped to be a few people’s shot of whisky. Our octo overlords do not care; they love her.

She started as a pastiche author, and ended as a legendary demi-goddess. Not bad for the span of a human life.