The Course of Honour

You may be looking for Courts of Honor, an influential Star Trek: TOS novel.
The Course of Honour is an original slash novel by Avoliot posted on Archive of Our Own in 2017. The story's early descriptive working title was "Arranged marriage space royalty origfic".
The small fandom has struggled to connect on AO3 because the tag wranglers have synned fandom tag "The Course of Honour - Avoliot" with the "Original Works" fandom tag where The Course of Honour was originally posted. The author does not read fanfiction of their own work because they feel it would be an intrusion on fannish spaces, which are usually author-free.Avoliot, response to an anonymous ask on 15 October 2017. (Accessed 31 July 2018.) Several works were written for the 2017 Yuletide exchange and it has since been occasionally requested in other exchange fandom events.For example, the 2019 Pining Exchange; see the nominated tags in the tagset under "Other Media", the single request on this page, and the sign up summary where it shows one person requested it and two people offered it. 
The Course of Honour and a related "storylet", And Now A Short Speech, were taken down from Archive of Our Own on April 15th, 2019.2019.03.25 by avoliot Avoliot announced the takedown in advance, saying "It is likely to be available in some form or another in the future, but I can’t give any certainty as to what form," and encouraged fans to save the story by using AO3's download function. Before the takedown, the work had over 3900 kudos and over 1400 bookmarks.archived on WBM, March 28 2019
In August 2019 it was announced that The Course of Honour was being published as a novel by Tor Books, now titled Winter's Orbit. Debut author Everina Maxwell received a three-book deal.Announcing Winter’s Orbit, a Queer Romantic Space Opera Debut, Aug 13, 2019 Winter's Orbit was published 2 February 2021.
==Summary==
==Origins==
Avoliot first shared The Course of Honour anonymously to the fail_fandomanon WIP thread on April 25 2016,Re: WIPs (Works In Progress) - Arranged marriage space royalty origfic by Anonymous, 2016-04-25 using the descriptive working title "Arranged marriage space royalty origfic" with the summary:
In late May of 2016, all of the previously posted pieces of the "Arranged marriage space royalty origfic" were collected in a comment thread the on-going WIP post fail-fandomanon. Six parts were posted immediately, followed by another ten parts. The last part posted to FFA was part 17 on September 30th, 2016Avoliot, posting anonymously, on Arranged marriage space royalty origfic. Posted 30 September 2016. (Accessed 05 August 2018.) and in an early February comment on the same section Avoliot (posting anonymously) told a fellow anon: "It's all done, it's 70% edited, and it's going to my beta next Monday come hell or high water. Depending on how long it takes her to beta and me to fix 100k, if you check back in a few weeks it may be up? I will be putting a link here and probably leaving a main meme comment."Avoliot, posting anonymously, on Arranged marriage space royalty origfic. Posted 06 February 2017. (Accessed 05 August 2018.) Roughly a week later, Aviolot switched to Archive of Our Own.Avoliot, posting anonymously, on Arranged marriage space royalty origfic. Posted 15 February 2017. (Accessed 05 August 2018.)
Avoliot created a Course of Honour Updates sideblog on Tumblr in 2019 to post news of what was happening with the story after its removal from AO3.CoH release sideblog, courseofhonourupdates, Tumblr. Published April 28 2019 (Accessed December 28 2020). The blog was later renamed 'Course of Honour / Winter's Orbit Updates' after the announcement of Course of Honour's publication as Winter's Orbit by Tor Books.
==Reaction==
The Course of Honour has a Goodreads page with 140+ ratings, 25+ reviews, and an average 4.13 star rating. The Course of Honour by Avoliot, Goodreads. Accessed December 28, 2020.
==Controversy and Wank==
===Lack of Canonization by AO3 Tag Wranglers===
:For more depth on this see the AO3 Original Works and Self-Pub Wrangling Debacle
On August 26th, 2017, an anonymous user posted to fail_fandomanon's AO3 thread asking for advice on what to say to AO3 support to convince them to unsyn "The Course of Honour - Avoliot" from "Original Works."
With help from anonymous users on fail_fandomanon, the anon in contact with AO3 Support wrote back the following:
On September 9th, 2017, the anon returned with a reply from AO3 Support:
Both pieces mentioned in the original August post were written by emilyenrose, who beta read The Course of Honour for Avoliot and is thanked in the first author's note of the work. They were posted earlier in the year and in August of 2017 were the only TCoH fanworks on the archive. A third work by another author was added in October of 2017, and several others have been published since then, but the fandom tag is still synned to "Original Work" as of late 2020. With the help of Aviolot, fans have been trying to make each other aware of the tagging problems, for example in this tumblr exchange:
===Inclusion in Yuletide===
Original works posted to "fannish spaces" are generally said to be disallowed from the yearly winter fanwork exchange Yuletide, mostly because the author has identified the work as fannish in some nature and might expect the same social etiquette around further transformation that authors of fanworks would expect.
The third post on the 2017 Fandom Eligibility post was a fan asking if The Course of Honour would be eligible. They provided a link to the author's blanket statement of permission for fanworks. A mod replied:
The Course of Honour was subsequently included in the Yuletide 2017 tag set in the "No Media" category.Yuletide 2017 Tag Set, Archive of Our Own. Accessed December 28, 2020. It was successfully nominated again in 2018 and included in the same category, Yuletide 2018 Tag Set, Archive of Our Own. Accessed December 28, 2020. but has not been nominated for any Yuletides since.
In the anon meme yuletide_coal, the discussion during sign-ups for Yuletide 2017 regarding The Course of Honour's likely inclusion was 89 comments long. Much wank ensued over whether The Course of Honour is a fanwork because of the AO3 Terms of Service and if that should automatically disqualify it from Yuletide.Various anons on yuletide_coal posted 04 September 2017 through 10 September 2017. (Accessed 05 August 2018.) There were accusations of Avoliot trying to cause drama to stir up interest on anonAnonymous on yuletide-coal on 04 September 2017. (Accessed 05 August 2018.) probably because the anons in question were unaware that much of The Course of Honour's initial fanbase grew organically from fail_fandomanon, where it was originally posted.
There were seven requests for TCoH in Yuletide 2017Yuletide '17 requests, accessed August 4th, 2018 and the same number in Yuletide 2018.Yuletide '18 requests, accessed August 4th, 2018
==Fandom==
===Fanfiction===
* Cultural Misunderstandings by antonomasia09
* Fundamental Theorems by blue_spruce 
* Is The New Prince K Here To Stay? by emilyenrose
* And Indeed There Will Be Time by emilyenrose
* Blanket of Stone by lurknomoar
* The Ghosts Will Try to Find You by lizzieonawhim
* An Etching of Love by KathrynNolan86
* Misunderstandings by Eluvia
===Fanart===
* Jainan and Kiem + Jainan in hospital by nevenne-creates
===Elsewhere===
* "The Course of Honour - Avoliot" fandom tag on AO3 (synned with "Original Works")
* "Course of Honour" OR "Course of Honor" search that produces the fanworks created for TCoH on AO3 (and previously produced the canon material, until it was removed)
* Course of Honour Fandom Unite a collection of TCoH fanfiction on AO3.
* Course of Honour tag on Avoliot's tumblr.
* The Course of Honour tag on tumblr
* courseofhonourfics on Dreamwidth
==References==
Category:Original Slash
Category:Original Fiction
Category:2021 Featured Articles