scribe_protra | Round 2 is closed.

This is probably very, very well-written but makes me wish I had a glossary or something. *laughs* Are the Pern books so... steeped with in-universe lingo?

...yes? Damn, it's been ten years since I've been into Pern and I still know the universe so well that I didn't even stop and think about trying to make it a little more accessible.

Here! Have a link to one of the many glossaries online! http://www.dawnsistersweyr.net/club/Pern101/faq.php?print=true&cat_name=Glossary%20of%20Pernese%20Vocabulary&category_id=1

OH OKAY. That's much more enlightening. I was wondering wtf was up with the colors.

(If I may ask a possibly stupid question... during mating flights, how do the rider's get it on? I mean... if they're in freefall... I'd be just holding on for dear life.)

The riders don't actually ride the dragons during mating flights. They're on the ground, and I think there's an observation platform for the queen's rider and the riders of all the dragons interested in mating w/the queen- and then you know they go to a room or chamber to fufill all those mating related urges.

Ooooooh. Okay. Thank you. :thumbs up:

The riders aren't on their dragons during mating flights - the dragons take off on their own; the riders stay back in the Weyr and get it on there, in beds if they can manage it, staying with the dragons telepathically. (It's never been entirely clear to me exactly how the riders choreograph it on the ground, at least as of the last time I read the books - McCaffrey has a thing for unexamined creepy noncon, so we're almost always deep in the queen rider's headspace during a flight, and there's usually a horrible vaguely gang-rapey image of the bronze riders circling her and then she disassociates and flies in her dragon's POV until she wakes up the next morning and realizes which one she's just had sex with. Like I said - creepy.)

This should get somewhat clearer in the next part.

Creepy, but you know what? Really goddamn fitting for the Dresdenverse. Maybe McCaffrey and Butcher should have lunch. :le sigh:

...that would be why I decided I wanted this crossover. <_< Sigh indeed.

Ahah, and I just realized that glossary I linked you to is from an RPG weyr that has much saner gender dynamics than most of the history of canon!Pern.

Short version of dragon colors as I'm using them: Golds are queens, the only fertile females, and the only dragons with female riders. Bronzes are the heavyweight males, always Impress male riders, and the only ones who mate with queens. Browns and blues are lighter weight males and also impress male riders. Greens are the commonest dragons, infertile females, and also always impress male riders: the greens usually mate with blues or browns, sometimes bronzes, and what this means for the sexuality of male dragonriders is ... a subject of some debate. ^_^

Fire lizards are like miniature dragons, but they can Impress anybody regardless of gender (and some people impress more than one fire lizard.)

Thank you for taking the time to explain to me. :laughs: I'm gonna go reread the fill now. I think I'll really like it now. ♥

Greens are the commonest dragons, infertile females, and also always impress male riders

Well, almost always. Canon includes a girl Impressing a green dragon. Actually, there's useful canon precedent for fanfic writers who want any non-traditional dragonrider - in both Mirrim's case and Jaxom's, a dragon hatchling picked someone considered unsuitable, and people threw fits but basically had to deal with it. After all, once Impression (soulbonding, for non-Pern fans) has taken place, nothing breaks it but death.

This is an awesome fill, authornon, and I am eagerly awaiting more! :D

Well, like I said, for most of Pern's history that was the case. I know that after All the Weyrs it pretty much turned into anything goes, and subverting it is half the fun. And there were also female green riders in the really early days, and I know most of the RPGs are less strict. But to understand what's so fundamentally screwy about how gender works in canon, it is important to understand that anyone but queens having female riders is really, really exceptional, for anything but about one generation at either end of Pern's history.

This whole discussion is making me want a fic about Murphy being a candidate for a queen egg who Impresses a bronze instead. Everyone goes "omg a girl with a fighting dragon, no!" but she pwns them all at Thread fighting. And becomes Weyrleader eventually, because a setup like that is begging for some mating flight f/f. (Murphy/Luccio?)

And you just know that Lord Holder Marcone has a queen fire lizard. And he conveniently invites H'ry to visit and discuss business when she's due to rise. It's just a coincidence that it's always one of H'ry's fire lizards who flies her, really! (H'ry has several fire lizards, who he feeds some Pernese pizza-like food. The bronze who leads them is Toot-toot.)

I may ~~have already started~~ be thinking about writing the first part of that as as sequel to Queens High. (Except if I did that it would be a brown: Fidelacchieth to go with the other two. Which means femmeslash mating flight possibilities sadly fairly low; however, there would be nothing to stop her and Luccio hooking up between times. :P) Don't let that stop you from doing your own version though!

...I think I may have posted the second part of this while you were writing your comment. Um.

Hee! Warped minds think alike. (I should have seen that coming, with the browns, after M'chael and S'nya were mentioned.) I would love to see you write it. I can't write worth a damn, unfortunately, just come up with crazy fic ideas. :)

I love the second part! I totally didn't see the threesome coming, but it delights me. Stammering gentleman H'ry and unflappable Marcone, heh. Cool that Sheila's on their side, too - why would she willingly risk her dragon, after all?

And Toot-toot as H'ry's fire lizard is just so obvious it had to happen, whatever color he is. Bribing him with cheese, lol.

*cheers you on*

also as so far as the greens being infertile- I'm pretty sure some of the earlier books (chronologically speaking) hint at the fact that the greens are only infertile b/c of chewing the firestone to burn Thread and that this was used as a precautionary measure b/c in nature firelizard greens rise (to mate) far more often than golds.

...as you can probably guess I read a lot of McCaffrey when I was younger :#

Actually the gender of green riders varies with the time period. Books set early on have, IIRC, both male and female green riders, while books set later on have only males.

I think that's right. Something like that, anyway. Like you, I haven't read any Pern for a long time.

If I am remember correctly (might not. Been over a decade since I read pern) the reason why females stopped riding greens as well as stopped doing anything other then make babies and womans work cleaning type stuff was because a plague wiped out so many people that woman had to stop doing anything other then make kids to repopulate the world.

Yeaaaaah. Pern has awesome dragons but some really messed up world building.

Nah, women stopped riding greens and started being treated like chattel long before the plague. I think the general drop in womens' status was just supposed to be a result of the gradual drop in tech and cultural level, although there was a huge drop when they first shifted to feudalism.

Women stopped riding greens v. early on, IIRC, because going between a lot causes miscarriages, and greens' fighting style involved a lot of popping in and out of between, so female green riders basically had to accept that they'd never have kids (or the greens had to be taken out of commission a lot), and as womens' status dropped that became more important. (Queens still fought Thread right up to the Pass before the Lessa's, which was kind of a nadir for human rights of all kinds, so it wasn't a girls-can't-fight thing, but queens weren't maneuverable enough to need to go between as much, plus they didn't go between while breeding, so it wasn't as big of an issue.)

So yes, it was still a creepy women-are-just-walking-wombs thing, but a slightly more complicated one.

Aaaaaah. Forgot about that.

(Most of what I remember from Pern is 1. tentpegs, 2. Talking dolphins, 3. Incorrectly written blind chick with heat sensor wyerdog, 4. wanting a fire lizard horde SO BADLY OKAY, 5. Wanting to be Melody, and 6. Wanting a guy to impress a gold queen.)

So wait... McCaffrey is the person who came up with the tentpegs thing? ooooh my gawd

AHAHAHA yeah, she did. I made this weird face when I first read it and then couldn't stop laughing. it was just so.... special.

Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

luciazephyr - 2011-02-21 04:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

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Re: Pern crossover: Queens High (1/2?)

(Anonymous) - 2011-02-22 02:27 (UTC) - Expand

Anne McCaffrey has messed up gender stuff in a lot of her books. I mean, I loved her writing for a long time, she wrote some characters and worlds that will stay with me forever, but her male/female dynamics tend to be subtly or overtly creepy and sexist. And even her awesome female protagonists tend to be the exception - this woman is smart and strong and tough and an original thinker, unlike all those other women! *cringe* (And also she probably needs an even tougher and smarter alpha male to really be happy and satisfied with her life. *doublecringe*)

It is so sad to love an author as a kid and then reread them as an adult and find yourself twitching violently.

OP will tell you a secret: I started thinking about Dresden/Pern because I found myself 'shipping Ivy/Kincaid, and I was like, "Dammit! That 'ship belongs in an Anne McCaffrey book*! Why am I still warped by reading them as a youngling?"

I think Dresden and Pern may have to go down in history as the two fantasy series I love best despite knowing that they are totally fucked up.

*Much older, powerful, worldy-wise man/much younger, very precocious womanchild that he practically raised, one or both of them counting down the days till she's legal and they can get married, + bonus extra consent issue of your choice = Romance! in pretty much any of the FT&T books. And sort of in the Brainship books. And sort of in the Crystal Singer books, though at least Killa is already a teenager when he adopts her. And god, Menolly/Robinton WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO THERE. AND WHY DID I HAVE TO READ BACK AND REALIZE JUST HOW YOUNG LESSA WAS.

and yet I still think I kind of ship Ivy/Kincaid, help.

and now I want to go write a Thomas/Harry prompt based on that creepy scene in Damia where Afra manipulates her using post-hypnotic suggestions he implanted when she was a baby and then they have sex, HELP.

I should probably start using something like AYRT, for conversation continuity...

You are totally right that Ivy/Kincaid would be a classic McCaffrey pairing. And you know, if you write it, I will gleefully read it! And the creepy Thomas/Harry too!

There's a lot of stuff I cringe at in profic that I happily read in fanfic. For one thing, I think fandom really does it better, when it comes to this messy idtastic stuff - we know we're doing it, unlike a lot of pro authors, who put in skeevy plot/character elements without thinking and then freak out or dismiss it when readers point them out. In places like this kinkmeme, there's all kinds of dubcon and noncon, but we know what we're getting going in, and our beloved authornons are deliberately mashing specific kink-buttons, not treating consent as something that just doesn't matter. Or maybe this is self-justification so I can have my cake and eat it too...?

...And on the topic of imprinting on old Anne McCaffrey books, some of the ways people write Dresden/Marcone in this fandom remind me a bit of the Ship Who Sang. Niall, Helva's obsessive stalker boss, and Helva, the brilliant rule-breaking brainship who doesn't like being controlled, and their messed up True Love that just barely stops short of total mutual destruction.

Or actually, if I'm going to the brainship AU place, it makes more sense for Bob to be the brainship and Harry to be his brawn. *envisions a horny ship who keeps trying to get his brawn to hold orgies onboard so he can watch* And maybe Marcone is the interstellar mob boss the Harry-and-Bob team keeps running into? But there has to be a shellperson romance in there somewhere, or you might as well go with generic space AU. Marcone/Harry/Bob?

Cracktastic Butcher/McCaffrey fusions, why so much fun?