Jora

[Kim]

Fat. Lazy. Afraid of heights. Silly. Unintelligent. Boring. No one seems to have a good thing to say about her, especially F'lon. You know what I don't see said about her? Selfish. Cruel. Self-centered. Malicious. Scanning through MHoP, what I see is an insecure timid young girl, warm-hearted, kind and loving. When F'lon's sons impress she shows signs of triumph, even though neither of them are hers. She seems to love F'lon, even though he has no use for her. It would have been nice if F'lon had gotten his head out of his ass and realized how much was depending on Jora and Nemorth. Thoughts? Was Jora really a hopeless case?

[Brenda]

Kath, didn't you write a short story about Jora? Or am I thinking of someone else?

[Kath]

A *very* short story! One of my hundred-word drabbles was from Jora's POV. Here's the whole thing:


"Food"

Jora sat in her weyr, alone, bored out of her mind. She could start on another piece of tapestry, she supposed, but that meant descending the steep steps out of her weyr, and there was no-one to walk with her. She could call someone up, but why bother? To be sneered at unsympathetically, or to hear some snide comment about her waistline?

No, she'd stay put today. And at least she had her darling Nemorth with her. Nemorth, who would never leave her side, or insist on terrifying her. Jora smiled at her queen, and reached for another sweet pastry.






Merfilly has also written a Jora story.

[Kim]

Kath (and Merfilly), thank you for a brief sympathetic look at Jora. You know, I don't understand why she wasn't allowed to move to a ground level weyr. Honestly, keeping her on the ground rather than requiring her to go up and down stairs (that probably didn't have banisters or rails) would have helped her tremendously.

[Brenda]

Oh, thanks!

I don't understand why the Queen wouldn't have a ground level Weyr in the first place, for easy access to the Hatching Grounds and the Lower Caverns.

[P'ter]

A remnant of the 'piano nobile' perhaps?

[Kim]

P'ter, it may well be a matter of status. Even so, compassion and common sense would have had her moved to ground level. Sadly, compassion is almost non-existent in Anne's Pern.

Merfilly made a comment that Jora may have suffered from vertigo. I think there's a good argument for that in MHoP.

"...Jora took it in her head to be violently nauseated and faint." That sounds like more than just fear to me. There was also that comment about not "tipping" off the stairs.

Somewhat off-topic, MHoP has left me convinced that F'lon is a truly loathsome and despicable individual.

[skywaterblue]

Some sort of neurological disorder makes sense because it would explain why she didn't just call on Nemorth to fly her down more often. Even Ramoth did as much gliding as to go to the feeding pens, and the Weyrwoman before Jora doesn't seem half as handicapped. If it made Jora physically ill to fly, well...

[Eriflor]

Looking at the map of Benden Weyr in the Atlas of Pern, I see only 3 places with access from the ground level: the Hatching Cavern, the Weyrling Barracks, and the Kitchen cavern.

Considering the smaller clutches in the Long Interval, maybe they could have closed off an area in the barracks for Nemorth after Jora's fear of heights became apparent. Or the pair could have moved into the Hatching Cavern permanently after the previous queen and her rider died.

However, the Weyrwoman's apartment was on the same level as the Council Chamber, so maybe that was considered the only appropriate weyr for her. Otherwise she might have remained in the Junior Queen's weyr that she must have occupied after weyrling training.

Why didn't they just build a wall along the outside of the staircase so Jora couldn't see the drop-off?

Eriflor
(who has too much time on her hands).

[Dragongirl]

Originally Posted by Eriflor

Why didn't they just build a wall along the outside of the staircase so Jora couldn't see the drop-off?

Eriflor
(who has too much time on her hands).

I'm going to take a guess here, and say that part of the problem here [where things like this didn't happen] was a 'led by example' kind of issue. When F'lon [who we know was definitely a self-centered dick and let me tell you, after the way he was talked up in DF, I was so disappointed] came into power, a lot of the Weyr very likely followed whatever example he set [being a military-esque structure, this occurs far more easily than most people might think, unfortunately]. In this case, he was completely indifferent where Jora was concerned at his best, and downright nasty at his worst. Of course he'd never bother to delve deeper and see if there's a more underlying issue. The closest he ever actually came to that kind of thing that we saw was when Robinton was half paralysed by grief after losing his wife.

Add in the possibility of Jora being timid and quiet and not likely to stand up for herself [which I get the impression stands out quite a bit from the 'stereotypical' Weyrbred woman, let alone the stereotypical Queen Rider, which is what most of a Weyr is familiar with], with that in turn affecting Nemorth [we know that even the strongest willed dragons don't like genuinely upsetting their rider, and if Jora was terrified of confrontation, it probably bled over into Nemorth] and you may very well have the reason why nobody bothered to think hard enough and long enough so that the kind of thing you mentioned could occur.

Of course, this doesn't explain the more independent types in the Weyr. Like say, Manora.

[pearldiver]

It's possible Manora didn't like her much, either. I get the sense that Weyrwomen don't necessarily socialize with the women of the Lower Caverns, though on the other hand there's nothing that says they can't. And since Jora was "slacking off" on her duties to the Weyr, more work fell on women like Manora, while their social positioned drooped lower and lower as the Weyr fell even more out of favor. It's not necessarily fair to Jora, but Jora was nominally Manora's leader whether she liked it or not, and Manora wouldn't've necessarily felt all that sympathetic as she watched Jora fail.

Must've been terribly isolating for Jora, with no other dragonriding women, no friends in the Lower Caverns, and not much chance to leave the Weyr and visit with Holder ladies who were more or less her social equals. Do we hear anything about her family, even?

(I think the Doylist explanation is that she's introduced in Dragonflight, which despite being speculative fiction is heavily influenced by the romance genre, and in classic romance novels the only women who get to be as pretty as the heroine are evil sluts - so Kylara gets to be attractive but Bad, and Jora gets to be ugly and dead.)

[P'ter]

This brings in one of the lectures I had this year.

Vladamir Propp (1895-1970) in The Morphology of the Wondertale, written in Russia in 1928, was not interested in myth as such, but rather in the ‘wondertale’, Russian folk and fairy tales.

Through analysing very large numbers of such tales he identified a very limited number of ‘characters’ -- 1 villain; 2 dispatcher; 3 helper; 4 'prize'/princess; 5 donor; 6, hero; & 7 false hero.

He also identified 31 ‘functions’, a combination of characters, objects and actions that come together in differing orders to make up all the tales. To this extent every tale is a structural variation on a common set of themes.

According to Propp's hypothesis, Jora was created to be Lessa's opposite. Lessa (heroine) is petite, active, domineering & socially active. Therefore Jora had to be gross, lazy, submissive & isolated, in order to reinforce Lessa's qualities.

Add in to this Christopher Booker's 2004 book 7 Basic Plots: Why We Tell Tales:- 1 Overcoming the Monster; 2 Rags to Riches; 3 The Quest; 4 Voyage and Return; 5 Comedy; 6 Tragedy; 7 Rebirth.

Now have fun working out how Anne's stories fit the categories.

[Eriflor]

Originally Posted by pearldiver

(I think the Doylist explanation is that she's introduced in Dragonflight, which despite being speculative fiction is heavily influenced by the romance genre, and in classic romance novels the only women who get to be as pretty as the heroine are evil sluts - so Kylara gets to be attractive but Bad, and Jora gets to be ugly and dead.)

Jora was "pretty" when she came to the Weyr. F'lar mentioned this when F'nor wasn't happy that their wing had only brought Lessa back, and said they should have gone back for "that one in Crom and the pretty . . ."

"Pretty?" F'lar retorted . . . "Pretty? Jora was pretty," he spat out cynically.

Search riders often took advantage of Search to bring in new bed-mates. I don't recall who brought Jora in, or whether she was the only candidate for Nemorth. Maybe they initially thought it was just flying that terrified her, and it didn't matter that much because they already weren't allowing queenriders to fly.

Anyway there must have been something happening between Jora and F'lon, as she grieved deeply and went into a decline when he was killed. That was a reference in Dragonflight, though. It could have been F'lon's father, or maybe R'gul, who made her life miserable. Guess I'll have to read Masterharper of Pern again and refresh my memory. (Oh joy! There's so much back-history in that book, and so much of it doesn't match what follows.)

[Eriflor]

My last post wasn't submitted because I got logged out before I'd finished composing it. Brief recap:

F'lon and Jora both impressed dragons in the last Clutch before Weyrwoman Carola died.

S'loner (F'lon's sire) was Weyrleader, and his dragon flew Jora's Nemorth in her first successful flight (there should have been one earlier --- it failed because Jora had an attack of vertigo and nausea). At the Hatching feast, S'loner showed his dislike of his new Weyrwoman (after several turns of trying to train her and coping with her phobia, plus her ditzy behaviour at the feast). He died of a heart attack while taking Lord Maidir home from the feast, and his dragon took all 3 of them between.

The three oldest wingleaders formed a triumvirate to rule the Weyr until the next mating flight. F'lon had no authority at all, and probably little contact with Jora --- in fact he didn't think much of her and most likely avoided her. When his dragon caught Nemorth in her next mating flight, I suspect that F'lon (now the Weyrleader) used his natural charm to win Jora's cooperation as Weyrwoman, and she probably fell in love with him. Whatever his plans may have been, however, they only had about 4 months together, from the mating flight to shortly after the Hatching, when he was killed in a duel engineered by Fax. Jora grieved for him and hit the down-slope.

R'gul's dragon Hath won the next mating flight (F'lar and Mnementh were subtly impeded). R'gul probably didn't care how Jora felt as long as he got to be Weyrleader. Nemorth's final clutch (R'gul and Hath again) was very small but included gold Ramoth.

So despite his personal flaws, I'd say F'lon at least made Jora less unhappy than S'loner and R'gul --- enough that his sudden death sent her into a decline.

[Lily]

Now that's interesting to know, Eriflor. Thank you
I wonder if it was during Jora's "reign" that it became accepted that queen's didn't fly? As for a queen's wing to fight thread - it had been so long since a pass that had probably been forgotten anyway.

We're getting a huge sympathy vote for Jora here, arent we?

[Anareth]

The problem with Jora being the catalyst for "queens don't fly" is that it doesn't really make sense. The attitude in Dragonflight is not that "Ramoth's our only queen, flying like a male dragon is too dangerous a risk until there are more", it's "Queen dragons don't fly except to mate", #TrueFacts. If the only queen that hasn't made a habit of flying is Jora's Nemorth, that leaves far, far too many people who should logically remember her predecessor and possibly the queen before that. Dragonflight is written entirely as if Benden has had generations of one queen at a time and that queen only flies around the Weyr to eat and to rise to mate. MHoP's timeline doesn't make a lot of sense with the society we see in Dragonflight.

[Eriflor]

S'loner and Weyrwoman Carola visited Benden Hold fairly often, as S'loner and Lord Maidir were friends, and Carola was Lady Hayara's niece. On the one visit described in MHoP, Carola rode her queen, Feyrith.

[Eriflor]

Originally Posted by Anareth

The problem with Jora being the catalyst for "queens don't fly" is that it doesn't really make sense. The attitude in Dragonflight is not that "Ramoth's our only queen, flying like a male dragon is too dangerous a risk until there are more", it's "Queen dragons don't fly except to mate", #TrueFacts. If the only queen that hasn't made a habit of flying is Jora's Nemorth, that leaves far, far too many people who should logically remember her predecessor and possibly the queen before that. Dragonflight is written entirely as if Benden has had generations of one queen at a time and that queen only flies around the Weyr to eat and to rise to mate. MHoP's timeline doesn't make a lot of sense with the society we see in Dragonflight.

From the time Carola and her queen died, there WAS no queen that flew, other than to feed or mate. From the time of Nemorth's first (actual) mating flight, R'gul was in charge, and when Lessa turned up he didn't want Pern's only gold to be put at risk, so he made up this story that queens "didn't fly . . ." etc, and made all the people in contact with Lessa tell her the same story. And probably restricted her company to Wingleaders, Manora, and one or two youngish servants who'd only seen Nemorth not-flying.

F'lar would toe the line as long as it suited him because he also didn't want the only gold at risk, being convinced that Thread would return. R'gul didn't believe Thread would return, but if the last queen died before mating the Weyr would come to an end in a few turns, and the Weyr life was all he knew.

[Anareth]

Except that's just retcon BS. R'gul and F'lar aren't the only people in the Weyr. Or at Benden Hold. Manora certainly isn't going to lie her head off for either of them. There is no way they locked Lessa in her quarters for nearly three years plus she can, without their knowledge, speak to all the dragons--she can talk to whatever riders she wants including elderly ones like C'gan. And the writing problem is we have F'lar as a POV character. There's no indication from his POV he's lying to protect Lessa and Ramoth. It's either the case that he's meant to think that queens don't fly unless they're mating, or it's bad writing. Far better to to treat MHoP as apocryphal, since a lot of it simply makes no sense at all with DF and DQ.

[Eriflor]

It was a known fact outside the Weyr that queens DID fly. The Ballad of Moreta's Ride was still being performed, and Lessa had reminded R'gul and S'lel about it. [Lessa's thoughts: "Those two arrant idiots might deny the existence of that ballad, but how had Lessa learned it if it did not exist?"]

And on about the 5th page of the lesson with R'gul and S'lel, it clearly states that except when she was having long boring lessons with them, Lessa was "restricted to the Weyrwoman's apartments, the feeding grounds and the bathing lake". I don't know how R'gul managed to keep people who had contact with Lessa from spilling the beans, but that's the story in Dragonflight. Let alone the dragons, which I'd forgotten about.

Given that Lessa was a strong-minded woman who was eager to go flying as soon as Ramoth was able to, R'gul would have done better to appeal to her reason and say "Look, we can't have you putting yourself and Ramoth at risk now, with only one gold left in the Weyr, but once we have a couple more golds, you can go flying." Or he could have allowed her to fly around the Bowl, but not between.

So why didn't he? None of it makes much sense.

And BTW, I find the inconsistencies in MHoP annoying too.

[Multi-Facets]

Originally Posted by Eriflor

So why didn't he?

Because one taste of freedom is never enough.

[Lily]

Originally Posted by Multi-Facets

Because one taste of freedom is never enough.

Because he was old and completely weyr-bound?

[Eriflor]

R'gul and S'lel must have been close to the same age as F'lon, as they all Impressed in the same Hatching. Unless we totally ignore MHoP as back-story.

Anyway, folks, it's been fun, but summer music camp starts tomorrow and I don't know if I'll have Internet access. It's like going to Harper Hall but with no drum tower. Bye for now, and Clear Skies!

Eriflor.

[Lily]

Summer Music Camp sounds marvellous. Would love to hear more about it. In another thread perhaps???

[Eriflor]

Originally Posted by Lily

Summer Music Camp sounds marvellous. Would love to hear more about it. In another thread perhaps???

Can't really start another thread on this, as it's not Pern-related. Briefly, it's a week-long camp at a small university campus, for amateur musicians aged 6 and up (sky's the limit). Lots of classes to choose from, both vocal and instrumental. Challenging, but great fun!

[Kennet]

Jora was isolated from the Lower Caverns in several ways. First, the Weyrwoman had special quarters somewhat removed from the Lower Caverns. Second, she had a status which set her apart from all the other riders and the non-riders as well. Third, the Weyrleader had a great deal of control over her life and who had access to her.

Jora could go to the Lower Caverns using the 'back stairs' (servant's stairs), but if she did that: everyone would stop working as soon as she entered a room and only the senior staff present would dare to speak to her first. If anyone has seen Downton Abbey, recall what happens whenever one of the family sets foot in the servants' hall.

R'gul was only interested in being Weyleader. He may not have been interested in Jora at all, and the possibility that he was a 'top' (dominant homosexual) would make this even worse. F'lon and S'lon would have at least treated her like a woman.

[pearldiver]

Originally Posted by Kennet

He may not have been interested in Jora at all, and the possibility that he was a 'top' (dominant homosexual) would make this even worse.

... um.

[Kennet]

Pearl, It would be worse because heterosexual men treat women in a way which recognizes their femininity and sexuality. Homosexual men don't do that. This is subtle, but it is there.
Jora is young and inexperienced, and would probably interpret this lack of reaction as her fault. It would be another blow to her self-esteem and could have started a cycle of self-pitying actions which would only reinforce the bad opinions of others, which in turn reinforces the self-pity.

She was brought in from the Search at a young age (14-16? maybe younger), thrown into a situation beyond her experience, and was expected to act like an experienced Weyrwoman from the outset. She is terrified of flying/heights, but no one understands how she feels. S'lon is far older than her and he dismisses her phobia as 'something she has to get over', as well as criticizing her behaviour (both socially and with Nemorth).

She barely gets to know F'lon before he dies, but he is much like his father. Also, F'lon is more interested in Manora, who is raising his two sons. But, he at least treated her as a woman before and after the mating flight.

If R'gul is homosexual, he does not react when she takes an effort to look good for him, brushes off her physical contact (touch of the hand on the arm, for example), and only interacts with her in a cold manner when he is trying to teach her something (like how to overcome her phobia). She would see him react warmly to his Green rider, however, and not really understanding what what was going on, she would denigrate herself.

Jora was about forty when she died and had spent at least half her life in semi-isolation, locked into a loveless relationship, and having only Nemorth as a companion.

[Anareth]

In Anne-canon Pern, all bronze riders (R'gul included) are heterosexual, no exceptions. R'gul is also one who in DF, in F'lar's opinion, picks beauty over brains. Though was he the one who Searched Kylara? If so he wasn't completely off base.

[GinnyStar]

Originally Posted by Anareth

In Anne-canon Pern, all bronze riders (R'gul included) are heterosexual, no exceptions. R'gul is also one who in DF, in F'lar's opinion, picks beauty over brains. Though was he the one who Searched Kylara? If so he wasn't completely off base.

I thought that was T'bor? shrug shoulders

[GinnyStar]

'back stairs' (servant's stairs)? No just the one out front, for Lessa had to go down the steps, facing the Feeding Grounds, then back to the Hatching Cavern when her queen was clutching

[Kennet]

I guess some of the people drawing plans for the weyr didn't pay attention. One shows a spiral stair to the Records Room, which has an entrance at ground level. Another one shows a connecting "old tunnel" from the kitchen area to the Queen's Apartments and Council Room. There is also a connecting tunnel to the Hatching Grounds, but it ends on a ledge which may not have been accessible to/from the galleries.

[GinnyStar]

Originally Posted by Kennet

I guess some of the people drawing plans for the weyr didn't pay attention. One shows a spiral stair to the Records Room, which has an entrance at ground level. Another one shows a connecting "old tunnel" from the kitchen area to the Queen's Apartments and Council Room. There is also a connecting tunnel to the Hatching Grounds, but it ends on a ledge which may not have been accessible to/from the galleries.

Ah I forgot about the spiral stairs to the Records Room, thanks.

[vyon]

If she really did have a problem with heights, the stairs might have been every bit as challenging as flying her dragon, especially if they were just cut into the outside of the cliff without rails. And that's a problem that would've only got worse as she became overweight.

[Anareth]

If she had true vertigo the stairs might be WORSE than flying.

[justbeingme]

This thread really changed how I viewed Jora as a character.

[Brenda]

In my version, it was R'gul!

http://forums.srellim.org/showthread.php?t=8933