Dragonflight and tent pegs
Thursday, March 12th, 2009 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mothwing16.
So, no great big space dragons for me. I heard that other series by McCaffrey are less failtastic, though.
As an added bonus, the author strikes me as incredibly dense, going by her supposed views on human sexuality - this is from an interview she apparently gave in '97:
Q: But some people say one experience, especially under the control of outside forces, doesn't really make you gay.
A: It's not a matter of the rider becoming homosexual. Green and blue dragons choose people who are already homosexual. And even if circumstances arose, and a green dragon chose a heterosexual lifemate - well, he would become homosexual. It's a proven fact that a single anal sex experience causes one to be homosexual. The hormones released by a sexual situation involving the anus being broached, are the same hormones found in large quantities in effeminate homosexual males. For example, when I was much younger I knew a young man who was for all intents and purposes, heterosexual. He was mugged, and involved in a rape situation involving a tent peg. This one event was enough to have him start on a road that eventually led to him becoming effeminate and gay.
...tent peg?
Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey.
Ick ick ick ick. I don't think I can read this. It is a story about Lessa, last remaining heir of a died-out aristrocratic family, Fax, the evil overlord who has seized power over seven of the dragon holds and killed Lessa's family in the process, and F'lar, sent to search for a female rider for a newly hatched queen dragon. That rider will of course turn out to be Lessa, who is hiding as a kitchen drudge in Fax's hold. They'll also most probably dispose of Fax somehow and then Lessa has to get a love interest, most likely F'lar.
I am at the point at which F'lar and the men in his flight have hit the harems of Fax in search for a worthy rider for their dragon queen - because only women can ride female dragons, and because only a certain, specific type of woman can ride a dragon. It's revolting - all women, the kitchen slaves beaten into dulled submission, the raped women in the harem, as dulled beaten, are depicted as completely use- and mindless, looking to the male characters for advice as soon as something happens. Those "unexpected" things include the labour of a pregnant woman her husband "kept pregnant" for decades in the hope that she would be killed in childbirth. As soon as she starts experience labour pains the other woman run around like headless chicken without any idea about what to do and only start helping when the calm, superior dragon riders give instructions.
I am only a couple of pages in, but harems make my skin crawl, and what is even worse is the dismissing attitude of the stories protagonists, or the fact that this is basically a story about a token character making it in a disturbingly oppressive society while dismissing all her commiserators.
Readers are apparently meant to get the impression that Lessa makes it because she is special, better than those women around her on account of her birth, and that the others can be dismissed and ignored because they are so stupid, unwashed, fat and ugly. I have no troubles believing it - while she has the promise of a great heritage to dream about her fellow kitchen drudges only face more work, starvation and/or sexual slavery, looked down upon by everybody, especially Lessa. The way Lessa disassociates herself from the plight of those around her strikes me as incredibly unrealistic, but what is even worse is the way in which the searching dragonriders look down upon the mental capacities of the exploited, tired and overworked serving women around them.
Even if imagining I was reading this story before courses on gender provided me with eternal gender goggles I think that the amount of purple prose would have kept me from it even back then.
Ick ick ick ick. I don't think I can read this. It is a story about Lessa, last remaining heir of a died-out aristrocratic family, Fax, the evil overlord who has seized power over seven of the dragon holds and killed Lessa's family in the process, and F'lar, sent to search for a female rider for a newly hatched queen dragon. That rider will of course turn out to be Lessa, who is hiding as a kitchen drudge in Fax's hold. They'll also most probably dispose of Fax somehow and then Lessa has to get a love interest, most likely F'lar.
I am at the point at which F'lar and the men in his flight have hit the harems of Fax in search for a worthy rider for their dragon queen - because only women can ride female dragons, and because only a certain, specific type of woman can ride a dragon. It's revolting - all women, the kitchen slaves beaten into dulled submission, the raped women in the harem, as dulled beaten, are depicted as completely use- and mindless, looking to the male characters for advice as soon as something happens. Those "unexpected" things include the labour of a pregnant woman her husband "kept pregnant" for decades in the hope that she would be killed in childbirth. As soon as she starts experience labour pains the other woman run around like headless chicken without any idea about what to do and only start helping when the calm, superior dragon riders give instructions.
I am only a couple of pages in, but harems make my skin crawl, and what is even worse is the dismissing attitude of the stories protagonists, or the fact that this is basically a story about a token character making it in a disturbingly oppressive society while dismissing all her commiserators.
Readers are apparently meant to get the impression that Lessa makes it because she is special, better than those women around her on account of her birth, and that the others can be dismissed and ignored because they are so stupid, unwashed, fat and ugly. I have no troubles believing it - while she has the promise of a great heritage to dream about her fellow kitchen drudges only face more work, starvation and/or sexual slavery, looked down upon by everybody, especially Lessa. The way Lessa disassociates herself from the plight of those around her strikes me as incredibly unrealistic, but what is even worse is the way in which the searching dragonriders look down upon the mental capacities of the exploited, tired and overworked serving women around them.
Even if imagining I was reading this story before courses on gender provided me with eternal gender goggles I think that the amount of purple prose would have kept me from it even back then.
So, no great big space dragons for me. I heard that other series by McCaffrey are less failtastic, though.
As an added bonus, the author strikes me as incredibly dense, going by her supposed views on human sexuality - this is from an interview she apparently gave in '97:
Q: But some people say one experience, especially under the control of outside forces, doesn't really make you gay.
A: It's not a matter of the rider becoming homosexual. Green and blue dragons choose people who are already homosexual. And even if circumstances arose, and a green dragon chose a heterosexual lifemate - well, he would become homosexual. It's a proven fact that a single anal sex experience causes one to be homosexual. The hormones released by a sexual situation involving the anus being broached, are the same hormones found in large quantities in effeminate homosexual males. For example, when I was much younger I knew a young man who was for all intents and purposes, heterosexual. He was mugged, and involved in a rape situation involving a tent peg. This one event was enough to have him start on a road that eventually led to him becoming effeminate and gay.
...tent peg?
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no subject
Date: Friday, March 13th, 2009 05:57 pm (UTC)Sheesh, some people!
My only defence of her plot is that, if Fax is the evil overlord then I'd kind of expect everyone in his household to be beaten and brutalised. Maybe that's how she's showing how evil he is and why he needs to be overthrown? I've not read them so I don't know where she's taking it and I'm trying not to judge her writing by her beliefs!
Of course, that doesn't excuse only the noble woman having half a brain, unless everyone other than her has been there for years, been completely quashed and destroyed while she has only recently joined them?
Ah well, who knows! I should be working on my own plotlines rather than second guessing hers!
no subject
Date: Friday, March 13th, 2009 06:29 pm (UTC)As for Fax's evilness, I was actually thinking along similar lines, but the behaviour of her heroes convinced me that even though Fax's brutality in treating his subjects is seen and depicted as cruel, the fact that he has kitchen slaves and a harem in the first place does not raise any eyebrows. Even though the heroes condemn his treatment of his subjects, they still hold them in contempt and don't see them as deserving of any respect, really. As F'lar in particular strikes me as someone who is supposed to be a role model of chivalric behaviour within the books I doubt that it's going to get better, but I'm at the very beginning, so I might be mistaken. :)
I am not sure when Lessa's family was killed, but if they were killed only a couple of years ago that means that she's only been there for a couple of years while the other women have been there for decades. In that case I wonder what her family treated them like that they are in such a bad shape, and why Lessa doesn't have more sympathy with them.
Good luck with your own plot!
no subject
Date: Friday, March 13th, 2009 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, March 13th, 2009 08:57 pm (UTC)I doubt that she is malicious, she is just very uninformed, and some of her ideas on sexuality and gender are strange.
no subject
Date: Friday, March 13th, 2009 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, March 14th, 2009 12:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, March 14th, 2009 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, March 16th, 2009 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, March 15th, 2009 06:49 pm (UTC)This doesn't sound like a book I'd want to read.
no subject
Date: Monday, March 16th, 2009 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, March 15th, 2009 10:18 pm (UTC)I stand by what I said, 85% of all fantasy published today is unimaginative, ripped-off tripe. Gaiman, Pratchett, Ruff, Tolkien, Wynn-Jones, maybe Rowling, and to writers' hell with Brooks, Paolini, Funke and especially Hohlbein!
no subject
Date: Monday, March 16th, 2009 07:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, March 16th, 2009 06:55 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_Dragon_Trilogy
I didn't know there was a 4th book in the works!
no subject
Date: Monday, March 16th, 2009 07:51 am (UTC)