I enjoyed the books a lot too! Could only get my hands on the first few of the series, but I definitely liked the way they blend sci-fi and fantasy. Maybe they don't hold up as well today, especially if there's homophobia which I don't think I got far enough to see for myself. But overall, I totally understand why there are a bunch of Pern nerds on FR.
DA I read them when I was MUCH younger, but here is part of what I think was considered problematic (but I didn't get too far into things)
There were different dragon colors, and Gold and Green were always female dragons.
Gold Dragons ALWAYS had female riders, and Green dragons ALWAYS had male.
The other colors, I can't recall whether they always had male or could have female riders, but I believe were ALWAYS male dragons.
The dragons would have 'mating flights' where a green or gold dragon would 'rise' and the males would chase her down to mate.
Since the dragons had empathetic bonds with their riders, when the dragons had sex, so too did the riders.
Which comes across as not really being consensual since the riders had no choice in which dragons mated, so they had no choice in who they had sex with.
I read them really young, so I don't recall much about homophobia in them, but it might be that the green riders were considered 'less' (and I believe green dragons were considered lesser dragons, because they tended to be smaller or something? and gold were usually called 'queens' and very few in number, so a gold dragon and her rider were always a leader of a weyr) because their dragons I think couldn't produce eggs? or were just smaller than others.
Again, this is from basically a teenager's reading of the books. I am long past a teenager :P
also, anne mccaffrey believed that as soon as a man has sex with another man, he’s GAY FOREVER
https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Tent_Peg_Statement
she was also (in)famous for fucking hating fanworks of all kinds and at one point made all pern roleplay boards (and i think maybe fandom boards generally?) post the tentpeg statement or else they’d literally get sued! anne mccaffrey was a piece of work, but her worldbuilding was interesting enough that i totally get why people latched onto her books so hard. lots of room to get creative there if you just ignored the author saying dumb shit, lol.
DA I probably should recheck that, but she died recently and A03 got an influx of gay fiction backdated several decades. And as another anon who read her stuff as a teenager, got to agree that her worldbuilding was interesting but more as a general brushstrokes rather than going deeper into it as I remember reading one of the books and not following up because for me it felt awkwardly both too much into romance and sex allegories and vehemently denying there was any romance and sex allegories.
I have to admit, as someone who likes dragons, I sort of liked the Pern worldbuilding, though not necessarily MCcaffrey's books themselves.
As for getting the influx of fanworks, Ithought I read a statement where McCaffrey changed her stance on allowing fanworks (at one time it was they could use her world, but NOT her characters and could only be shared in closed groups, not on websites like Ao3 or something like that) so people were able to now share works based upon the novels more openly.
Honestly, I tend to prefer romance, and monogamy, so the idea that two people would get together, but then next time, because a different dragon might 'catch' the female dragon, it would be a different person never truly appealed to me.
IIRC most of that is right, but it turns out later on in the series that green dragons can have female riders, and in fact it started out that way but fell out of fashion Because Sexism. But all male green riders are supposedly "effeminate" gay men, because even if they didn't start out that way, they get "turned gay" by their dragon's mating urges (and tent pegs, apparently. Don't ask.) All blue riders are "masculine" gay men, and all brown and bronze riders are manly het men, just as all gold riders are womanly het women. Apparently lesbians don't exist on Pern, butch or otherwise.
PLUS gold and bronze dragons are ~Superior~ -- smarter and larger than the other colors. They only bond with ~Superior~ riders, so only gold and bronze riders can become weyrleaders, despite the fact that the books are rife with venal, incompetent, and downright evil bronze and gold riders. All green riders, male or female, are bitchy, flighty, and a bit dumb, just like their inferior dragons. So in Pernworld, het people are canonically ~Superior~ to non-het people and queer people will never ever bond with the coolest dragons.
Aaannnd the slave class, the 'drudges,' are all that way because they're lazy and stupid. and if they reeeaaally wanted to not be drudges, they'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Also, no matter how long the Pernworld humans have been isolated, they still speak only one language, have no religion, very little culture/folklore/etc. and outside of the dragons, are basically the dullest pseudo-medieval lumps imaginable.
So yeah, 'problemeatic' doesn't go nearly far enough. But god damn, I loved those dragons beyond reason as a teenager.
In addition to the 'only gold/bronzeriders (aka heterosexuals) have inherent leadership potential' factor, even male blueriders didn't get shown in the most flattering light in the few books where they were notable characters (such as Dragonseye). That sort of thing actually bugs me more than the books where gay characters aren't featured at all (but that definitely has its own problems - for instance, Lytol, Jaxom's future mentor, was originally written in Dragonflight as a male greenrider who'd lost his dragon; the dragon was 'upgraded' to a brown in later books, presumably because Lytol couldn't have been taken seriously as a wise old father figure if he were, as you note, 'effeminately gay').
A notable fanfiction author has a lot of more realistic theories on how Impression works (or would work in a more logical universe), if anyone's interested; her novels are also very good.
Thanks, as I said, it has been a long time (literally 30 years or more) since I read, and really thought hard about Pern and McCaffrey, so thank you for the more indepth commentary.
I tend to prefer fanworks set in Pern (but usually then have their own take on the worldbuilding) to actual books by McCaffrey.
A lot of my like of the Pern Novels came from just the fact that DRAGONS! and they weren't mindless beasts or always evil characters just waiting to kill the hero.
(it also helped that for my family had most of the novels, so they were easier to reach)
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Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 11:13 am (UTC)(link)Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 03:03 pm (UTC)(link)I read them when I was MUCH younger, but here is part of what I think was considered problematic (but I didn't get too far into things)
There were different dragon colors, and Gold and Green were always female dragons.
Gold Dragons ALWAYS had female riders, and Green dragons ALWAYS had male.
The other colors, I can't recall whether they always had male or could have female riders, but I believe were ALWAYS male dragons.
The dragons would have 'mating flights' where a green or gold dragon would 'rise' and the males would chase her down to mate.
Since the dragons had empathetic bonds with their riders, when the dragons had sex, so too did the riders.
Which comes across as not really being consensual since the riders had no choice in which dragons mated, so they had no choice in who they had sex with.
I read them really young, so I don't recall much about homophobia in them, but it might be that the green riders were considered 'less' (and I believe green dragons were considered lesser dragons, because they tended to be smaller or something? and gold were usually called 'queens' and very few in number, so a gold dragon and her rider were always a leader of a weyr) because their dragons I think couldn't produce eggs? or were just smaller than others.
Again, this is from basically a teenager's reading of the books. I am long past a teenager :P
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 03:29 pm (UTC)(link)https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Tent_Peg_Statement
she was also (in)famous for fucking hating fanworks of all kinds and at one point made all pern roleplay boards (and i think maybe fandom boards generally?) post the tentpeg statement or else they’d literally get sued! anne mccaffrey was a piece of work, but her worldbuilding was interesting enough that i totally get why people latched onto her books so hard. lots of room to get creative there if you just ignored the author saying dumb shit, lol.
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)I probably should recheck that, but she died recently and A03 got an influx of gay fiction backdated several decades. And as another anon who read her stuff as a teenager, got to agree that her worldbuilding was interesting but more as a general brushstrokes rather than going deeper into it as I remember reading one of the books and not following up because for me it felt awkwardly both too much into romance and sex allegories and vehemently denying there was any romance and sex allegories.
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-29 02:24 am (UTC)(link)As for getting the influx of fanworks, Ithought I read a statement where McCaffrey changed her stance on allowing fanworks (at one time it was they could use her world, but NOT her characters and could only be shared in closed groups, not on websites like Ao3 or something like that) so people were able to now share works based upon the novels more openly.
Honestly, I tend to prefer romance, and monogamy, so the idea that two people would get together, but then next time, because a different dragon might 'catch' the female dragon, it would be a different person never truly appealed to me.
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)IIRC most of that is right, but it turns out later on in the series that green dragons can have female riders, and in fact it started out that way but fell out of fashion Because Sexism. But all male green riders are supposedly "effeminate" gay men, because even if they didn't start out that way, they get "turned gay" by their dragon's mating urges (and tent pegs, apparently. Don't ask.) All blue riders are "masculine" gay men, and all brown and bronze riders are manly het men, just as all gold riders are womanly het women. Apparently lesbians don't exist on Pern, butch or otherwise.
PLUS gold and bronze dragons are ~Superior~ -- smarter and larger than the other colors. They only bond with ~Superior~ riders, so only gold and bronze riders can become weyrleaders, despite the fact that the books are rife with venal, incompetent, and downright evil bronze and gold riders. All green riders, male or female, are bitchy, flighty, and a bit dumb, just like their inferior dragons. So in Pernworld, het people are canonically ~Superior~ to non-het people and queer people will never ever bond with the coolest dragons.
Aaannnd the slave class, the 'drudges,' are all that way because they're lazy and stupid. and if they reeeaaally wanted to not be drudges, they'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Also, no matter how long the Pernworld humans have been isolated, they still speak only one language, have no religion, very little culture/folklore/etc. and outside of the dragons, are basically the dullest pseudo-medieval lumps imaginable.
So yeah, 'problemeatic' doesn't go nearly far enough. But god damn, I loved those dragons beyond reason as a teenager.
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-28 10:19 pm (UTC)(link)In addition to the 'only gold/bronzeriders (aka heterosexuals) have inherent leadership potential' factor, even male blueriders didn't get shown in the most flattering light in the few books where they were notable characters (such as Dragonseye). That sort of thing actually bugs me more than the books where gay characters aren't featured at all (but that definitely has its own problems - for instance, Lytol, Jaxom's future mentor, was originally written in Dragonflight as a male greenrider who'd lost his dragon; the dragon was 'upgraded' to a brown in later books, presumably because Lytol couldn't have been taken seriously as a wise old father figure if he were, as you note, 'effeminately gay').
A notable fanfiction author has a lot of more realistic theories on how Impression works (or would work in a more logical universe), if anyone's interested; her novels are also very good.
https://www.dragonchoice.com/on-impression/
Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-04-17 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-04-17 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Deladria#242017
(Anonymous) 2022-03-29 02:31 am (UTC)(link)I tend to prefer fanworks set in Pern (but usually then have their own take on the worldbuilding) to actual books by McCaffrey.
A lot of my like of the Pern Novels came from just the fact that DRAGONS! and they weren't mindless beasts or always evil characters just waiting to kill the hero.
(it also helped that for my family had most of the novels, so they were easier to reach)