i was under the impression it was too low for mass-production of resources as needed for a spacefaring, multiple-planet-inhabiting culture. not necessarily too low for getting a few people out in space like we have right now. but it's been a looooong time since i read the relevant material and clearly i missed some of the books so i'm prolly wrong
oh man, pern! those books were my jam as a kid, and i still have a soft spot for the books despite my eventual realization that gay dubcon orgies were a thing. one of the big things i've always wondered, kind of in the same vein as earth humans meeting pern-humans, is how they evolved/will evolve differently in the time spent on very different habitats? i forget the technical term for it, but the thing where a species of animal has its population split, and they eventually evolve into very different end results, based on the two habitats they ended up in? Spoiler: also yessssss homestuck in pern rose would absolutely be a terrifying weyrwoman i wonder what jade would be up to? i feel like dave's gotta be a harper, especially if this is an everyone-gets-dragons AU and he can still ride around on one. the ballad(s) of sweet bro and hella jeff is infamous around the holds he frequents, i bet and aradia losing her dragon is terrible and sad i love it
/glances at my copy of Raising The Stones by Sheri S Tepper. Things about the flashback to the prophet, and the burrowing alien lifeform that consumes organic matter. Sweats at the crossover possibilities...
So we've got canonical gay and bi dude dragonriders, eventually got canonical lesbians (who fandom has been putting on both greens and blues for years), but other than Ruth, who is ace, all of the dragons are apparently straight. But homosexuality is observed in plenty of species (and can include both sex and other pair-bonding behaviors, like grooming or raising offspring together), and this does include those where the females are completely uninterested in sex except when they're fertile. So damnit, I want to know what diversity in dragon sexuality would look like! Are some males bi, and able to, uh, vent their frustration over losing mating flights with other males? Do greens ever join in the crowd chasing a green's mating flight? (Can greens or queens turn down all the males if they aren't into them? Or are they stuck with whoever catches them?) Do blues, browns, or bronzes ever chase the other male dragons who are chasing greens/queens?
I could see dragons just having a completely different set of sexuality paradigms than humans, and even the riders not really getting it. And stuff like the above happening and the humans labeling dragons gay or bi and the dragons just being like "??????"
Point. Given the dragon color hierarchy, they might think more in terms of colors than male/female... or they consider mating flights separate from other pairbonding activities, or whether or not eggs result from a mating flight matters more than the sexes of the individuals involved. Dragons having a totally different paradigm for sexuality from humans (especially one that separates mating flights from other pairbonding stuff) would explain why none of the dragons seem perturbed to be subjecting their riders to the gay dubcon.
Distressed rider: "I thought you were going to share a cave with [bronze dragon]!" Confused queen dragon: N...o? Why would I do that? Distressed rider: "But you let him catch you early during the last mating flight!" Confused queen dragon: ...So? Distressed rider: "But you moved in with the last bronze who caught you, and he was neck-and-neck with two others for ten minutes!" Confused queen dragon: So? Distressed rider: "Shouldn't you be more willing to share a cave with this one?" Confused queen dragon: But this is totally different! Green dragon on other side of cave: *yawns and falls asleep*
Or some poor rider who has to make sure all their belongings are portable enough to be stuffed in one bag, because their dragon insists on switching roommates twice a week for mysterious dragony reasons.
Alright but now I have the best mental image of a bronze coquette who spends the entire mating flight bothering the absolute shit out of the other bronzes because he's interested in them, not the queen. Even better if he's young and strong and bigger than the rest of them, so by rights he would win if he actually tried, but most of the time he goes veering off to chase the runner up before being in contention is actually an issue for him.
Ok I've been brooding on canon and what I would consider necessary to make the world work and have an enjoyable rp that still resembles canon. The difficult lies in balancing the dystopic setting of Weyr-Hold-Hall that is incredibly open to abuses and oppression, that completely characterizes the books, with making something more bearable, logical, and fun, and less a pastiche of Hollywood's impression of the middle ages. I have some thoughts about things one would have to keep in mind for this :/ 1) Dragons Impressing a dragon does not actually reflect your moral fiber, which while obvious when considering several characters (T'kul, Kylara, etc), is still part of the myth of dragonriders. Despite the hierarchy in dragons, a bronzerider is not actually better than the "lower colors", nor are bronzeriders chosen because they are natural leaders, because I find this distasteful for many reasons, especially in the treatment of blue and green dragons >:/ Humans had to adapt to dragon nature, since an order given by a bronze or gold dragon will be followed in a way that one given by a blue or green won't, which limited the pool of effective leaders to exclude many that have the skills and qualities needed. As such, I think it would follow that the secondary positions of wingleader and wingsecond should be open to blue, green, and brown, not limited to brown and bronze. It gives a bit more balance that I feel is sorely needed in the stories, with their focus on bronze and gold riders :/ I will admit that since gold dragons can't chew firestone for sterility reasons, their role would be limited in the fighting wings, but they can probably take additional positions outside the queen's wing where their dragon's authority would come in handy. The mating flight = weyrleaders is really ridiculous, since it has no real bearing on whether the leaders will be those most fit to lead, despite the proxy competition via dragons. It makes sense that this is another limiter from dragon instinct that hampers humans into adapting to it, but in that case, there needs to be a protocol for deciding which gold and bronzeriders are acceptable for the position in the first place. Canon relies on seniority for the gold riders, but seniority does not mean competence. Perhaps the gold riders are chosen by their peers or general election, or by a council, to become Weyrwoman. This way, a younger gold dragon and rider can lead even if their older and more senior counterparts are not fit for the position. Similarly, if only the bronzes whose riders have shown competence as leaders are allowed to chase a queen during their mating flight, it will at least limit the pool to acceptable candidates, not just who has the strongest dragon, which does not mean = best leader for the situation. Sex preferences for impression are more factors than strict rules, perhaps a bit more like green riders canonically. As such, you can have a woman impress a blue or bronze, but it will just be rather unusual, rather than a complete anomaly, since the dragonets will prefer to impress the sex that matches their own, but it will not be a complete blanket rule, allowing for more diversity and opportunities within the ranks. Also, because it boggles my mind that somehow all green and blue riders that are men must be gay or bi at least, sexual preference is probably less of a factor than canon makes it. It just doesn't make sense. It makes more sense that a straight rider has to manage the fact that their bond with their dragon will mean they sometimes have sex with men, and they have to abide with that. It is not an easy situation to be in, but more realistic. You could easily have a gay weyrleader bronzerider. Who knows. Go crazy. This way the idea that the weyr has different standards and mores regarding sexuality makes sense, because it was born out of necessity, and everyone has to adapt to it in their own way. It would make sense this way for the aforementioned gay weyrleader bronzerider to have his own weyrmate who might ride a green dragon or whatever, but still have sex with a woman when the queen rises to mate. Or maybe he makes sure he has his weyrmate by his side while the goldrider makes sure to have her own choice nearby, so that they can at least try have a bit more con in the dubcon that are mating flights. There really need to be backup plans man, a lot of the flights frankly sounded traumatizing for all involved. Dragons are fucking weird man. Anne really didn't dig into the dissonance of alien mind bonding and how it affects one, just from mating alone we have a lot going on. How does the whole "dragons live in the present and humans plan and remember" work? Are there other cognitive dissonances that make a dragonrider hard? Actually, candidates should probably be at a minimum at the age of consent or close to it, because imagine a 13 year old kid and then the next year their green rises to mate. That is just. No. For the kids protection from rape please stricter age limits than we saw in canon ._. How old was F'lar when he impressed?! ._. Heck, frankly there needs to be birth control and safe sex procedures that are widely agreed upon in the weyr because this is a mess Ramble done for the moment, will probably deal with holds or something later. I think I just rehashed a lot of stuff we said already in this thread XD
Do they even HAVE to have partners on standby? Like, couldn't they just lock themselves in a room alone and wait it out? It's not like there's a biological necessity here- it's purely a compulsion.
Did some blonde girl knock down Anne McCaffrey in second grade and steal her lunch money? 'Cause every bad woman on Pern is blonde.
Maybe? McCaffrey is really unclear about this. The core problem seems to come from her use of the mating flight of Ramoth and Mnementh as a plot device to sneak some noncon/dubcon sexyfuntimes into Dragonflight so she can have her 60s/70s romance novel plot of a "stormy" relationship between F'lar and Lessa. But it was never really more than a plot device in that book. By the time we make it to Dragonquest, she must have had a more lenient editor, who let her slip in more noncon/dubcon sexyfuntimes (sometimes dragon-related, sometimes not). But it's never really systematic. The green dragons=gay dragonriders thing is nothing more than a plot device to drive some conflict at the beginning of the book. Another thing is that we are told that in the Holds, the people are basically prudes. But we're never shown their lives. Hell, the holders are barely even there as background characters.There are hints that many children are "fostered", but not given much explanation of the reason for the practice. Widespread fostering seems a strange practice in a prudish society. It's like McCaffrey decided to glue some romance tropes onto a fantasy series. I'll hand it to her that she does it well and the books are good potboilers/pageturners. But as the series progresses, the weakness of the glue job starts to show.
The fostering thing is supposed to be to ensure genetic diversity -- send kids out to other places to mix up the gene pool. Except I think kids get fostered out... and come back to their home holds/weyrs? So that doesn't really help. You can't catch more varied DNA just by growing up with other people.
