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Shannon ([info]bardsong) wrote in [info]fandom_wank,
@ 2003-07-28 22:39:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current mood:*sporfle!*

Ahh, Pernwank that will never die.
There's a reason I stay away from Pern fandom. The people there will not let things die.

You may or may not know that Anne McCaffrey rides herd on her fandom. (In fact, her behavior is quite wanktastic, and I'll endeavor to provide examples of same in other posts.) You can only post fanfiction on her very secure fanfiction forums. All RPG and zine clubs have strictly enforced rules which are longer than the Bible. Among these are the gender and sexuality of dragonriders.

A *year* ago, Ms. McCaffrey decided that it was really OK with her after all if women Impressed brown dragons in fandom. So someone makes A poll asking what people's thoughts are on the matter.



(I'm not sure that I can link to original posts, so I'll cut and paste.)

Anareth's Rider, who is quite active on these boards, declaims:

They'll appear in my club over my dead body, but I could honestly not care less what anyone else does in theirs. (Not to mention we're always short on guys
so I'm not giving anyone an excuse to write more females.) If you love female brown riders, go for it! Just don't expect me to allow it 'cause other people
do. That's the beauty of having fewer rules. We can pick and chose what we want.


Noemi dusts off her Old Fandom Geezer hat and pronounces:

Yet again the lions of rational thought win out in the end, and I applaud the Powers That Be for returning again to the stance of friendly tolerance which
the citizens of Perndom enjoyed years ago.


Debate continues in a more or less civil manner until The Harper pops up with this gem:

Benden skins of it in fact more skins of it and then some more please somenoe explain to me rationally why should a woman want to be a brown rider?


And another one:

Sad. :rolleyes: I will stay out of all this RPG junk definately now.


The debate continues for over a year IRL, with what I suspect is the latest incarnation of troll on that message board sticking his nose in in April of this year:

Female brownriders??? This can't be happening!!!


So, naturally, the debate goes ever onward. I'm sure I'm missing all the good wank, as I could not make myself read all of that thread. However, now you see why in most instances I'm all about the slash. :P


(Post a new comment)


[info]ymfaery
2003-07-29 05:59 am UTC (link)
You forgot to mention one of her chief herders is Diane Duane. Since they're neighbors and all.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]bardsong
2003-07-29 06:13 am UTC (link)
Hmmm, should I know who that is?

Me, I've given up on Anne McCaffrey anything fandom once I discovered that it was infested with Mary Sues and that the most complex plots that seemed to happen in the RPGs that I joined tended to be along the order of, "Person-arrives-at-the-weyr-and-has-to-sit-through-long-boring-conversations-about-nothing-ad-nauseum."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]ymfaery
2003-07-29 06:17 am UTC (link)
Depends on what you read.

She's published Star Trek novels, one of the more famous ones being Spock's World, and various sci-fi and fantasy stuff, but she might be best known for her "Young Wizards" series (So You Want to be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, etc.).

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]jfpbookworm
2003-07-29 06:21 am UTC (link)
Another middle-tier writer of fantasy, I believe, the sort known more for being prolific than good. Her works include the juvenile So You Want To Be a Wizard and its sequels, a bunch of media novelisations (Star Trek, SeaQuest), and a few miscellaneous forgettable novels.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]ereshkigal, 2003-07-29 08:07 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sorchar, 2003-07-29 10:33 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-29 12:25 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]sorchar, 2003-07-29 07:52 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-29 09:00 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]diamonde, 2003-07-29 10:27 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]marysia, 2003-07-29 09:24 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]diamonde, 2003-07-30 03:52 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]iris, 2003-07-29 09:39 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]diamonde, 2003-07-30 03:48 am UTC

[info]jfpbookworm
2003-07-29 06:22 am UTC (link)
Wow. Just... wow. I hate Mary Sues and playing fast and loose with the source material, but those rules are ridiculous.

Sometimes the fanfic writers rape canon.
Sometimes canon rapes the fanfic writers.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]bardsong
2003-07-29 05:24 pm UTC (link)
Yes. And this was my first fandom...Although amoung Ms. McCaffrey's rules, you can still create Mary Sues to your heart's content. This is why the fanfiction section of her forums scares me.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sorchar
2003-07-29 07:12 am UTC (link)
What exactly is a brownrider and why isn't a woman supposed to be one?

I'm unhealthily curious.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]ueuecoyotl
2003-07-29 07:36 am UTC (link)
In Anne McCaffrey's happy little fantasy world, the dragons are segregated by color, and only people of a certain sex are allowed to bond to dragons of a certain color. Gold and green dragons are the females; bronze, brown, and blue are the males. So, since the golds and greens are females, only human women are allowed to bond to golds. Because greens are lower-class females and the reproductive rights are almost exclusively reserved for golds, human men can bond with the greens too. Golds aren't allowed to fight because of said reproductive rights, and because greens can fight, human women are usually discouraged from bonding to the greens and instead must try to bond with a gold dragon. BTW, the dragons are Impressed (bonded) with humans when they first hatch, and as the dragons grow up their humans become their riders. Thus, a brown rider would be the rider of a brown dragon.

It's all rather wanky and sexist in itself, really.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]rowan
2003-07-29 07:50 am UTC (link)
Eh, if the fantasy world wants to have different values ingrained in its different culture, I have no problem with that. *shrug* Some of the cultures I've created don't exactly have flattering morality or are what we'd call politically correct. As far as I'm concerned, stuff like that falls under the bounds of world/culture creation than wank.

But boy, the responses of the people above sure is wank! And pfft, I had a female brownrider character in a highly respected Pern RPG at least four years ago. So :P to them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]jfpbookworm, 2003-07-29 08:09 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ueuecoyotl, 2003-07-29 08:13 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]rann, 2003-07-29 09:38 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-29 05:41 pm UTC
Re:
[info]sorchar
2003-07-29 08:20 am UTC (link)
Good Lord, that's more convoluted and confusing than the Navajo system of determining what constitutes incest.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-29 05:42 pm UTC

[info]darkrose
2003-07-29 09:29 am UTC (link)
Doesn't this imply that there are a lot of gay dragonriders, since the browns and blues almost always end up with the greens in mating flights?

Ah, Pern. My First Smut.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]ueuecoyotl, 2003-07-29 10:00 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]rann, 2003-07-29 10:16 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-29 05:52 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]irk, 2003-07-29 10:36 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-29 11:43 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]rann, 2003-07-29 11:57 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]irk, 2003-07-30 10:00 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]keelywolfe, 2003-07-30 03:13 am UTC
0h boy. - [info]irk, 2003-07-30 09:54 am UTC
Re: 0h boy. - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-30 04:29 pm UTC

(Reply from suspended user)
(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-30 07:03 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-29 12:34 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-29 05:46 pm UTC

[info]rann
2003-07-29 09:37 am UTC (link)
God, I never even really picked up on that. McCaffery's such a hoser on writing, anyway... I hate authors that start a series and then every three or four books or so, they'll just throw everything out and start things over a century later or so.
...
(Not to mention that apparently a couple of firelizards mating is enough to turn a woman into a slut and fool around with anybody but the guy she's in love with. *mutter*)
Anyway, I'd love to be really wanky and make a muck or something utilizing the Pern setting, and just throw all her damn rules right off the dragon in the middle of Threadfall. Any gender to any damn color dragon they want!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]ueuecoyotl, 2003-07-29 10:01 am UTC
Re: - [info]rann, 2003-07-29 10:04 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]yadda, 2003-07-30 12:33 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-29 05:49 pm UTC
Re: - [info]rann, 2003-07-29 11:54 pm UTC

[info]bardsong
2003-07-29 05:37 pm UTC (link)
Thanks. That was a much less convoluted explanation. And yes, wanky and sexist are definitely adjectives that would describe Ms. McCaffrey in general, despite her rather pseudo-feminist attitudes.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

So wait--
[info]banal_o_rama
2003-07-30 01:10 am UTC (link)
So in these books, people have to have sex depending on what their pets have sex with?

Suddenly I don't want to see "Best In Show" ever again.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: So wait-- - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-30 07:21 am UTC

[info]bardsong
2003-07-29 05:34 pm UTC (link)
OK...In the Pern novels, there are five colors of dragons. The golds and bronzes are the leaders. The blues and greens are the uncool masses. The browns are basically your draconic sidekicks.

Generally, golds are ridden by heterosexual women, bronzes by heterosexual men, greens and blues by bisexual and homosexual men. Greens also can be ridden by heterosexual women...In Pern fannon, people tend to interpret this as that greens can be ridden by just about any woman on the sexual spectrum as well as very 'femmey' men. Blues tend to be 'masculine' homosexual men, or bisexual men. In fandom, sometimes blues are ridden by bisexual or homosexual women. Browns in fannon are ridden generally by straight men, with the occasional bisexual man in the ranks. I've always thought that a really butch lesbian might be able to ride a brown dragon, too.

Basically, in my opinion, there really is no reason a woman *couldn't* ride a brown dragon. It's never specifically said in cannon that they couldn't, and, well, Anne McCaffrey's notions about sex are very much still in the sixties, sooo...

Don't know if that made any sense. I have yet to inject caffeine into my system.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]raisedbyhyenas
2003-07-29 10:39 pm UTC (link)
Good one. You can make it simpler, really:

Golds and greens = female
Bronzes, browns, blues = male

When your dragon gets horny, so do you, prompting you to jump anything that moves but preferably the rider of the OTHER dragon. And...it's been a long time, but aren't girls ONLY allowed to ride golds? With an exception or two -- Mirrim or something? It's been something like fifteen years since I read them...

Anyway, ergo all KINDS of strangeness when you consider how stuffy and straightlaced Anne's worldview seems to be. I remember being 14, doing the math, and going "So if greenriders are men, and they mate with blues and browns...who are ALSO ridden by men...saaaaay, waitaminute..."

(Either that, or the kitchenwenches are used to getting jumped by lust-crazed riders on a moment's notice.)

Anyhow, when I first I got online, I took one look at the impossibly annoying Pern community, said "Fuck that," and figuratively took my massively overblown Mary Sue kickass female bronzerider and went home. ;)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bardsong, 2003-07-30 07:08 am UTC
Fucking WEIDMAN!
[info]jerry_ds_girl
2003-07-29 08:02 am UTC (link)
Anareth's Rider lives in Weidman! I went to college in that general area, and Weidman is about as far out in the boonies as you can get...it's a little no-traffic-light-town with nothing bigger than two-lane roads going in and out of it. For some reason, it just totally cracks me up that this person lives there.

And BTW, Diane Duane lives in Flint, if I'm not mistaking her for someone else. I believe she's been to MediaWest Con a couple of times.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Fucking WEIDMAN!
[info]sorchar
2003-07-29 08:22 am UTC (link)
*giggles* One way or another we've killed poor Sigmund off.

I was fairly into Duane's "Door Into" series...but she never wrote the last book, and I lost interest.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Fucking WEIDMAN!
[info]jerry_ds_girl
2003-07-29 02:48 pm UTC (link)
Ha ha, nice icon! I'll continue the literary theme with this one.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Fucking WEIDMAN!
[info]ymfaery
2003-07-29 12:29 pm UTC (link)
Is Flint anywhere near Bray? Or at least on the outskirts of greater Dublin?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Fucking WEIDMAN! - [info]jerry_ds_girl, 2003-07-29 02:46 pm UTC
Re: Fucking WEIDMAN! - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-29 09:31 pm UTC
Re: Fucking WEIDMAN! - [info]jerry_ds_girl, 2003-07-30 02:46 am UTC
Re: Fucking WEIDMAN! - [info]jerry_ds_girl, 2003-07-30 03:52 am UTC
Re: Fucking WEIDMAN!
[info]phosfate
2003-07-29 04:20 pm UTC (link)
::makes mental note - Do not punch Diane Duane, no matter how tempting::

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Fucking WEIDMAN! - [info]ymfaery, 2003-07-30 01:23 pm UTC
Re: Fucking WEIDMAN!
(Anonymous)
2004-09-22 08:05 pm UTC (link)
Yep. Went to college a LONG WAY AWAY, though. (Virginia, actually.) I assume you went to CMU? Actually, grew up south of Detroit, but Dad retired up here, and I work at Mackinac (for now. Fucking Mackinac.)

Hee...Dunc said I got mentioned here...she was right! Must resist urge to join, must not get involved in another place to post...should stick with trying to be a lone voice of sanity at the McCaffrey boards, though why I bother...

juliet aka Anareth's Rider

(Reply to this)(Parent)

I Was A Female Blue Rider....
[info]pyratejenni
2003-07-30 01:40 am UTC (link)
Many moons come Choctow, you =could= have a female blue or brown rider. Males could Impress any dragon but golds, and females any dragon but bronzes.

Then Pern got on the 'Net, and the fandom grew faster than she (or her lawyers) could have imagined. So the rules came down hard.

Back aroun '89-'91, there was a club that had a female (brownriding) Weyrleader. SOmeone went and whined to McCaffrey, and browns flying senior queens got kaboshed official.

I don't know why anyone would want a brown, anyway. Blues and greens are the party dragons -- no responsibility! And they're prettier.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: I Was A Female Blue Rider....
[info]irk
2003-07-30 07:45 pm UTC (link)
Aww, man! I still say she should have a brown-riding female weyrleader in the books. That would make up for everything tat's been wrong with them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]shoiryu
2003-07-30 02:37 am UTC (link)
Bah, Pern. I liked the "Dragonharper" trilogy, and everything after/before that was just too much for me. I dropped it like hot potatoes.

(Reply to this)


 
   
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