Guest post written by Merciless Saviors author H.E. Edgmon
H.E. Edgmon is an author of queer speculative fiction across genres. Once a stray dog in the rural south, he now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest with a family of his own design. Haunted and hopeful, his work aims to offer levity without flinching from hard truths. In his writing and his daily life, H.E. will always prioritize the pursuit of an Indigenous future, the safety of our most vulnerable, and making a terrible joke whenever possible.
Releasing on April 16th, Merciless Saviors is the stunning conclusion to the Ouroboros series, a contemporary fantasy duology in which a teen, Gem, finds out they’re a reincarnated god from another world.
“Can I put a threesome in a young adult book?”
I asked the question in 2021 on a call with my new editor. She’d just acquired THE OUROBOROS duology, my next YA fantasy series—a series with an unconventional love triangle at its heart. And as uncomfortable as I felt asking about my publisher’s allowance for exploring fictional teenagers’ sex lives, it was a genuine question. While my goal has always been to tell authentic stories that don’t pull punches, I needed to understand where the lines in the sand were before I accidentally tripped over them.
In response, she chuckled and told me we would cross that bridge when we came to it. But I could hear the uncertainty in her tone. She wasn’t sure of the answer, either.
This wasn’t the first time I’d grappled with the question of what was and wasn’t appropriate for YA. My debut, THE WITCH KING, had just come out the month before, and I’d spent most of 2020 revising it. The issue of what I could and could not say in a story intended for children was a constant source of back and forth. And in hindsight, some of the pieces omitted from the original draft feel paradoxical when compared to what was left in.
The main character being forced into a marriage and plotting the downfall of their betrothed? Well, that’s the whole foundation of the plot. Murder, abuse, gore? No one questioned if any of it was okay for the teens in my target audience. The self-deprecating Gen Z humor of the internal monologue, however, was ultimately toned way down for fear it would make light of kids actually partaking in negative self-talk.
Don’t get me wrong—that’s a very real issue, and I know every decision in the editorial process was made in good faith. I wonder how we can address serious issues like that, though, if we don’t show characters engaging with them in the first place.
When I moved away from THE WITCH KING and into THE OUROBOROS, I knew I wanted to push the envelope further than I had before. With GODLY HEATHENS, book one in the series, I wanted a nonbinary main character, Gem, who was surrounded by other trans people—despite what the tokenism in our representation may lead you to believe, we tend to flock together. Publishing let me get away with that, and the duology ended up with a whole ancient pantheon reincarnated as modern trans kids.
Building the magic system, I started with Gem asking, “is any of this real or am I going crazy?” By no means is that a new question in YA fantasy, but I was looking for an answer here that wasn’t cut and dry. I wanted to see what might happen if the archetypal chosen one was also deeply traumatized and genetically predisposed to mental illness. I wanted to explore the ways magic might influence and be influenced by that reality. Publishing let me get away with that, too.
Finally, I knew I wanted to revisit the tried-and-true love triangle trope I’d grown up on, the trope oversaturating all YA media in the early aughts, and finally present the option I’d always been hoping for in those stories but not been handed—one where the main character didn’t have to choose. And publishing was happy to let me get away with the polyamory rep… but it did lead us straight to my original question. Could I put a threesome in a young adult book?
Now that you know how we ended up there, let me be clear where I stand on some things. Personally, I don’t think there’s a single subject that’s truly off limits in my work. Whether I’m writing for teens, adults, or even in middle grade—there are no topics too taboo for me to touch. My reasoning there is simple enough: for anything an adult might experience, for better or worse, there’s a kid out there who’s experienced it, or is currently experiencing it, too.
Because of that, I never once questioned if Gem’s sexual trauma was appropriate for readers. Instead, that trauma was threaded through the world building itself. The magic in my world became a mirror, and I held it up to the kind of pain that is, unfortunately, familiar to too many, including teens. It was dark and difficult to write, but I never worried I was making a mistake by doing so. If we don’t wade into the dark, how can we offer to turn on a light? Once again, something painful can only be addressed if we’re willing to call it by name.
On the surface, then, it seems the answer should be obvious. If trauma is fair game, why not pleasure? If we can acknowledge teenagers aren’t immune to being victimized, shouldn’t we also acknowledge they aren’t immune to being horny? Clutch your pearls if you must, but there are teens out there having group sex.
The reality isn’t as simple as that, of course. There’s a difference between writing about teens having sex because it’s authentic, because it’s impactful, because it’s important to show them navigating complicated intimate relationships… and writing about teens having sex because it’s titillating. It’s especially difficult to approach that as a queer author, when entire groups are dedicated to proving we only do what we do because we’re looking to exploit or manipulate kids. White cishet women writing white cishet girls might be able to get away with underage smut that never should’ve been sold as YA, but we have to agonize about every word we put on the page.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure what I should have done. If there’s a morally upright answer to the question, I don’t actually know what it is. What I do know is what I chose to do, because it’s the same thing I’ve always done and the same thing I’ll keep doing for as long as publishing lets me get away with it.
I told the story as authentically as possible, without flinching. I was honest about the brutal, uncomfortable, and tender parts. And when I wrote MERCILESS SAVIORS, the second book in the series (out today, as luck would have it), I let three traumatized trans teens experience candid pleasure alongside their pain.
