Every Mercedes Lackey Novel, in one minute:

Jack has a terrible life. He's gay, or smart, or poor, or rich, or geeky, or from the wrong country, and his family, or whatever is in charge of him, is just awful. Jack may or may not be a girl, but we'll call him a boy just for generalization's sake.

One day, things get too much for Jack, and as he's being beaten, raped, mocked or scared, or running wildly from his house, which is on fire, or otherwise getting the heck out of there he meets a magic horse, or a magic native American who is bleached extra white, or a Jack from the last book, and discovers that the terrible thing that happened which caused him to flee is, in fact, his fault... Jack is exhausted, and the magic injun makes it better. At last, Jack has met someone who will understand him. You see, Jack's life was hard, but deep inside, he was special, and now he's met people who know it.

Jack's special powers are trained by the magic injun, or the magic animal, which is handy, as just as he's coming into his powers there is a MAJOR WORLD ENDING CRISIS back home where everyone always hated him. Despite having every reason to say screw you, Jack goes back, and saves everyone who was mean to him in the past, and he teaches them a lesson! Those people will totally never be prejudiced against people like Jack again... until the next book.

My wikipedia pledge as an author of books on Wicca.

People give Gerald Gardner too much credit. While he was seminal in what became Wicca, many of us place too much emphasis on his views, rites and writings, to the point where one's degree of Wiccaness can become about agreeing with Gardner, and one's lack of Wiccanness can be dictated by the uninvolved by divergence from Gardner. You will literally find people who are willing to argue that any fool thing Gardner came up with is a dictate of Wicca, from the age of our priestesses to the energy-blocking power of a bikini.

I am not Gardner.

Like Gardner, however, I am a flawed human being, capable of making mistakes, who should not ever be viewed as anything else.

Because of that, I pledge to you, that any attempts to make my writings more or less than they are by drawing real, imagined or wished for lineages, or real, imagined or wished-for relationships, or real, imagined or wished for histories will be met by me with physical, mental, emotional and maybe even magical warfare.

Take my words and my writings as they are. I never say "I learned to do this from so-and-so, so do things my way," so therefore who I learned from and how are not relevant to discussions of my writings. WHERE THE THINGS I DO HAVE NOT BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED, by other authors, I either leave them out of my works altogether (most often) or say they are of my creation (if they are) or say who I learned them from in that context. Saying I learned X from source Y does not make source Y my mentor, life partner, coach, or even friend.

I will not stand for poisoning, or even pleasantly flavoring, the well. My writings stand or fall by their quality, by the research relevant to them, not my lineages, degrees (college or Wiccan,) friends, acquaintances, enemies, family, favorite color, current affiliations, etc., etc., etc. If you've read my writings, you should know how I feel about "private sphere." I don't care who the actor is @#%ing, only that their acting is good. I don't care who the quarterback idolizes, only that he can throw the damn ball... and I don't care who the Pagan author went to High School with, only that his or her work is internally consistent.

IF YOU PUBLISH A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOUT ME, I will vandalize it. I will have my friends vandalize it, I will have my family vandalize it. I will give interviews in the Pagan press where I say the opposite of whatever you've written, even if it is true.

I will intentionally plant so much dissent and discourse that, in the end, even I won't know who I am anymore... just to be left the fuck alone.

Hail Eris, if that's the way you want to see it....

I do not claim to be the result of my teachers, and I do not claim my students are the result of my teaching.