Nominations open in a few days, which is plenty of time for you to shill your favorite canon and lure people into your fandom. Feel free to use the comments on this post to tell everyone why your canon is the best!
I’m done after this, I promise. This is the exact same period and setting as Psmith, but by a different author. I’m definitely going to be requesting Frank slash.
Fandom: David Blaize - E.F. Benson
What Is It?: Two gently humorous yet angsty coming of age novels set in early 20th century England. The first book follows the titular character and his friends through their years at boarding school. The second covers their years at Cambridge. There’s a surprising amount of canonical gay angst for something published in 1916.
What It's About: There's a LOT of pining, internalized homophobia, self-loathing anguish, naked swimming, romantic poetry recitation, declarations of love... and a memorably iddy scene of UST-filled caning. The central relationships are between David and his two closest friends, Frank and George (who goes by 'Bags').
David is almost absurdly nice without being too annoyingly cloying about it. Bags is a lovable woobie, always second best, and you just want to hug him. But it’s Frank who engenders the most feelings! Frank is such a wonderful, complex, fascinating character. He's smart, passionate, snarky, romantic, prickly, and terribly repressed.
Bags and David are the same age, but Bags hero-worships David something awful. He is eternally jealous of David's romantic hero-worship for Frank, who is three years their senior. Meanwhile, Frank spends the entire time trying to repress his lust for David.
Why You'll Love It: I mean... wow. If you like any of the tropes or dynamics explained above, you will love it. There's also some truly epic hurt/comfort, with people literally being healed by the power of love.
Caveats: The first book is GREAT. However, in the second, Bags is written a little less endearingly, and Frank is absent for large swaths of it (busy studying archaeology in Greece—swoon!). However, when Frank IS around, the pining is almost even better than the first book! After awhile, I ended up control-F'ing for Frank's name and reading only those sections, skimming the rest. No regrets!
Links: You can download the first book for free on Gutenberg HERE. The entire set costs only pennies on the kindle store. The set comes with an Alice In Wonderland-style prequel that has nothing to do with anything. I haven't read it, and I don't get the sense that anyone else who likes these books has either.
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Fandom: David Blaize - E.F. Benson
What Is It?: Two gently humorous yet angsty coming of age novels set in early 20th century England. The first book follows the titular character and his friends through their years at boarding school. The second covers their years at Cambridge. There’s a surprising amount of canonical gay angst for something published in 1916.
What It's About: There's a LOT of pining, internalized homophobia, self-loathing anguish, naked swimming, romantic poetry recitation, declarations of love... and a memorably iddy scene of UST-filled caning. The central relationships are between David and his two closest friends, Frank and George (who goes by 'Bags').
David is almost absurdly nice without being too annoyingly cloying about it. Bags is a lovable woobie, always second best, and you just want to hug him. But it’s Frank who engenders the most feelings! Frank is such a wonderful, complex, fascinating character. He's smart, passionate, snarky, romantic, prickly, and terribly repressed.
Bags and David are the same age, but Bags hero-worships David something awful. He is eternally jealous of David's romantic hero-worship for Frank, who is three years their senior. Meanwhile, Frank spends the entire time trying to repress his lust for David.
Why You'll Love It: I mean... wow. If you like any of the tropes or dynamics explained above, you will love it. There's also some truly epic hurt/comfort, with people literally being healed by the power of love.
Caveats: The first book is GREAT. However, in the second, Bags is written a little less endearingly, and Frank is absent for large swaths of it (busy studying archaeology in Greece—swoon!). However, when Frank IS around, the pining is almost even better than the first book! After awhile, I ended up control-F'ing for Frank's name and reading only those sections, skimming the rest. No regrets!
Links: You can download the first book for free on Gutenberg HERE. The entire set costs only pennies on the kindle store. The set comes with an Alice In Wonderland-style prequel that has nothing to do with anything. I haven't read it, and I don't get the sense that anyone else who likes these books has either.