Yup, I think Daegaer started a fad. I actually read one, and I think GMF is not as good a writer as she is. :) (I do think it's ironic, though, that his middle name is Manville.) Apparently there was a bit of a fad back in Victorian and Edwardian times of writing stories where schoolboys (and girls) do a lot of being really attached to friends of the same sex, and get physical about it to an extraordinary degree, without apparently realizing there's anything possible odd about what they're doing. I ran across a mention in the book about gay history that I was reading a few months back of a review done in Victorian times of one of these purported kids books where the reviewer was complaining about the suspiciously feminine behavior of these manly boys, so apparently it wasn't just normal behavior for the time.

Um... sorry, got pretty verbose there, didn't I.