green dragons

[dae]

i was reading my books when i noticed that males bonded to green dragons and thought nothjing to it till i read that males were meant to bond with male dragons and females to female dragons. it sort of made me a bit confused because greens are female dragons so shouldn't they bond with female riders

[lccorp2]

Extract from the Renewable Air Force Document by Anne Mccaffrey:

"A LONG OVERDUE AND DEFINITIVE EXPLANATION OF PERN'S RENEWABLE AIRFORCE

In the Beginning of Dragonriders on Pern™, females rode green or gold. Males rode blue, brown or bronze.

Since greens are females and tend to be 'loving', they mated with any dragon they fancied. When not enough girls elected to stand on the Hatching Grounds after the first disastrous Plague, males with feminine personalities Impressed the green dragon. Blue riders, not to mince words, were gay with masculine temperaments. Browns, who were not so inclined to mate with a green's rider, made an arrangement so that two pairs of riders were involved in a green's mating."

I think that should answer it.

[dae]

ah that helps thank you

[granath]

In spite of the renewable airforce document quoted above, I still think that stand-ins are a copout, written mainly so that fans who don't want to write gay mating flights have an easy way out. They haven't been mentioned in the 9th Pass so far, and only once in the 2nd Pass.

[Kathryn Draconna]

Though the practice of men impressing Greens became a sort of tradition after a while, in the nineth pass there does come two female green riders... I'm not sure any more exactly which book tells of her impression, but in the Skies of Pern, I can no longer find the name of dragon or rider for the first pairing, but there is Tai rider of green Zaranth. *goes paging through all her Pern books, searching frantically for names to first pairing*

[Anareth]

By Skies, there are at least three: Mirrim, rider of Path (the first girl to Impress green in living memory, meaning at the very least since the 8th Pass, Impresses in Dragondrums), Tai, rider of green Zaranth (accidental Impression, five years before Skies), and Danegga, rider of Ptath (mentioned only once, in Skies.) So it's not common, but it's becoming more so.

We can only estimate when it stopped completely--it's slowing down in DE/RSR as more girls are being denied Search to marry and hold land, though they're preferred by some (like K'vin) to male greens because even though they tend to get pregnant, they are 'steadier' than the male green riders. We also have the short story "Ever the Twain", in which female-ridden greens are apparently common enough not to cause comment (and for their riders to be older) but we don't know exactly when this is set. The next book in chronological order, Moreta, doesn't have any females on greens, at least none who are mentioned, but there are several hundred years between DE/RSR and Moreta, including a Long Interval. Girls Searched are considered only for the gold egg. Once Dragonsblood comes out we should have a better idea if it had died out completely by the Third Pass or was on its way out.

[Kathryn Draconna]

*reads and beams* Thank you for filling in the gapps in my memory!

[Mausey]

The only problem with the term "in living memory" is, it's not really that long. Robinton clearly remembers women harpers, yet people act like Menolly is a complete aberation. There could have been female green riders within the past 70 years. Now if they had said the weyrs had no WRITTEN record of a female green rider that would be different.

[dae]

that clears up some of it but how come when the females don't impress the gold why doesn't greens bond with them

[Kathryn Draconna]

Dunno, might be that in all that time, none of the females were suitable for a Green... or were too biased against greens...

[Lady Arwyn]

Actually it doesn't say that the female greenriders were steadier than the gay male greenriders, rather it says that the pairing is more stable. It makes sense, a green was intended to pair with a female mind, and while the more feminine of the gay male minds were closer to the female mind (hey, the fact that gay males have a female type brain, physically, is an actual scientific fact now!), so the female to feminine but male mind link just wouldn't be as ideal as a female to female link.

As for why the greens didn't choose gold Candidates, the gold Candidates were Searched to be a possible future Weyrwoman, with those qualities in mind, a green wouldn't be looking for the same qualities as a gold. They gay boys on the sands, Searched especially with green dragons in mind, would be much more to the liking of the instincts of the newly hatched green.

Take Mirrim for example. Brekke KNEW that Mirrim wouldn't make a good goldrider, she had no leadership qualities. But she was a hard worker who did what needed to be done without constant supervision, and therefore a good greenrider. And Path made the point for her.

I wish we knew more about Danegga. Both Mirrim and Tai are "from the stands" Impressions, we never learned if Danegga was the same, or if someone finally let girls onto the Sands to stand for greens.

[granath]

I'd love to learn more about Danegga and Ptath (boy does it bug me how similar that name is to Path!). Mirrim's a fair enough micromanager, although she does tend to rub people the wrong way by blurting things out at the wrong moment, and being where she isn't really wanted. Although readers seem to take more exception to her being present at meetings instead of or in addition to Talina than other participants do.

However, I've still not seen any evidence for Brekke's leadership qualities, at least during the time she was a dragonrider. Personally I think she Impressed because she heard all dragons or at least had the potential to hear all dragons, and the Search dragon sensed that. I don't think she had the capacity to inspire any following in others, she was a quiet plodder who did the things that had to be done and were neglected by others. She made a great junior WW, but I'm not sure she'd've been any good as senior. Pity we never got the chance to find out.

[pern_queen_rider]

I think maybe if Mirrim had spent more time with Brekke, and maybe soemtime with Lessa, she may have qualities she dosent have at the moment.

[Lady Arwyn]

I think Mirrim's problem was that she spent TOO MUCH time around Lessa. She wanted to be a strong, powerful woman like Lessa, but didn't have the leadership/interpersonal skills to know WHEN to be a witch and how to use it properly. She wants to be a leader, but she lacks the innate leadership qualities that make Lessa a good leader whom people WANT to follow, rather than just a harridan whom people go out of thier way to avoid.

Brekke was the real leader at Southern/High Reaches. While Kylara went off to "play", Brekke was the one everyone went to to get things done. Brekke had no recourse to challenge Kylara, she was Kylara's junior, she had no way of changing things. Brekke may not have been the kind of person who enjoyed confrontation, but she got the job done. In her own way, Brekke was a very strong Weyrwoman, not Weyrwoman in name, but she did the job under adverse conditions. I think if Wirenth hadn't taken that fateful direction, had Prideth not been there and proddy, I think Canth would have caught Wirenth, and Brekke would have gotten over her hangups. She always had the potential to be a really good goldrider, Kylara beat her down until she started believing she was what Kylara called her.

Remember, if leadership potential is mismanaged, it can destroy the possibilities. Jora was horribly mismanaged, if R'gul had won Ramoth's mating flight, Lessa might have turned into a very scary person and destroyed the Weyr. Kylara, managed correctly, could have been a very good Weyrwoman, along the lines of Lessa's style.

Brekke might never have been a forceful Weyrwoman like Lessa, but not every leader leads through being a firey, forceful kind of person. Brekke, had she gained a Weyrwoman's post, she would have been an effective if quiet leader.

[Aurelia]

girls are Impressing greens now more often than before the most recent Pass

[Brenda]

But not by much. There are three 9th pass female greenriders that we know of. Out of how many green dragons? Which is, of course, an increase compared to zero before Mirrim impressed Path.

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

that clears up some of it but how come when the females don't impress the gold why doesn't greens bond with them
That would likely be because the female candidates were searched for GOLD riders, not greens. So any left on the sands still wouldn't be suitable for greens. There may be the odd case, but for the most part, it just wouldn't match.

[Kaoru]

I do so love Dragonchoice's theory (http://dragonchoice.com/theory/index.htm).. :D

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Thanks for that! I'd forgotten about that section of the site. But somehow I missed this part before about female blue riders, and I'd never thought about it this way, it now all makes sense :D

"Fandom frequently protests that, if boys Impress greens, girls should Impress blues, but this is flawed logic. Greens began to choose male riders not on a whim, but because circumstances - a lack of female candidates - forced it. For a blue dragonet to choose a girl as his rider, the reverse - a lack of male candidates - would have to be true. Should this situation ever occur, then blues, and indeed, browns and even bronzes, would most probably begin to look to girls as riders rather than die unimpressed, but the likelihood of a massive drop-off in the number of boys available to Impress is very low. Unless a male-specific plague wipes out all the men on Pern, odds are that there will never be a female blue rider."

[Kaoru]

Sure thing. I keep it bookmarked for these occasions. :D

[Lady Arwyn]

Thanks for that! I'd forgotten about that section of the site. But somehow I missed this part before about female blue riders, and I'd never thought about it this way, it now all makes sense :D

"Fandom frequently protests that, if boys Impress greens, girls should Impress blues, but this is flawed logic. Greens began to choose male riders not on a whim, but because circumstances - a lack of female candidates - forced it. For a blue dragonet to choose a girl as his rider, the reverse - a lack of male candidates - would have to be true. Should this situation ever occur, then blues, and indeed, browns and even bronzes, would most probably begin to look to girls as riders rather than die unimpressed, but the likelihood of a massive drop-off in the number of boys available to Impress is very low. Unless a male-specific plague wipes out all the men on Pern, odds are that there will never be a female blue rider."
Only problem with that is that the first blue and greenriders happened in the first pass, before and during the story "The Second Weyr." The first time a blue chose a gay boy when there were plenty of others around, and they stuck a feminine gay boy in there to see what would happen, and a green took him when there were plenty of girls around. He wasn't placed there because of a shortage of girls, but because they thought that the gay bluerider needed an appropriate partner (appearantly they didn't do stand-ins). It wasn't until two hundred turns later that girls were really in short supply on the Hatching Grounds.

So I still think lesbians should have as much chance of Impressing a blue as a gay boy has of Impressing a green.

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Hmmm, good point. Back to the confusion again :tantrum:

[Lady Arwyn]

I still think it's because until F'lar and the Ninth Pass, generally the only folks "invited" to a Hatching would be eletes and those already dragonriders. Generally that means Lords, the ranking Crafters and the higher-ups at the Weyr. Most of the time they wouldn't bring children with them, and since girls were mostly valued for their marriage values and little else, girls would have been left at home. Riding a dragon to a Weyr for a Hatching would have been a high honor, not something for a "mere girl."

So they have the Weyrgirls working in the kitchens, preparing for the feast while those higher rank go to watch the Hatching. By the time the girls are done usually all of the eggs would be Hatched.

So girls of suitable age at the Hatching (except those presented as Gold Candidates) would be rare. If even 1 in 100 girls are suited to Impression, and girls are rare at Hatchings, then what are the chances of a girl of the right age and suited to Impression would be at the Hatching?

[Brenda]

But the point was that the first time a boy impressed a green was when there were plenty of girls around.

[Coffee]

But the point was that the first time a boy impressed a green was when there were plenty of girls around.

I forget what book it's from, but wasn't the boy offered because one of the blue riders/candidates, was gay?
This got me thinking... Maybe, much like in mating flights, the bronze that people wants to win, will often fly the queen. Perhaps, in this Impression, people wanted the green to Impress the boy, despite the fact there were girls around for her to Impress. Perhaps the expectations/hopes of the weyr at the time, were strong enough to influence this Impression.