Female green riders

[Gilluin]

How many female green rider are there by mid 9th pass? I understand that there are only 2 Mirrim and Tai by 31. Could there be others?

[Kath]

Damn, I could've sworn there was a third. Danegga? Don't have books to hand, but I'm pretty sure she exists and appears in Skies at some point.

[Brenda]

I think so.

[Daccio]

Originally Posted by Kath

Damn, I could've sworn there was a third. Danegga? Don't have books to hand, but I'm pretty sure she exists and appears in Skies at some point.

Using Google, i found something here.

The pertinent quote:

'Danegga, rider of Ptath (mentioned only once, in Skies.)'

Hope this helps,
Daccio

[Gilluin]

The reason I bring this up is because in SOP, bottom of page 27 in the hard copy, F'lessan makes the following observation about Tai. "She wasn't pretty; she didn't act sensual, the way some green riders did,"

Now if there are only 3 female green riders, Mirrim, Tai, and Danegga (who was 16 and just out of the Wyerling barracks) then this means that F'lessan has noticed male green riders being 'sensual" could it be that F'lessan is bisexual and has slept with the riders of the greens Golanth has flown? It is commonly accepted that bronzes only impress hetero males and the browns and blues impress bisexual males, and the greens gay males. I just found the whole scene to be strange and wondered if there are more female green riders around for a hetero male to notice the sensuality of green riders. Not to many straight men I know notice when a man is sensual. I know Flessan is weyr bred but even so it is a little strange.

[pearldiver]

He's a bronzerider. Regardless of F'lessan's own sexuality, Golanth wants sex, and greens are far more available than golds. Conclusion: F'lessan has had sex with men during mating flights. So has F'lar, for that matter. Mnemeth certainly wasn't a virgin when he caught Ramoth, and we know she was his first (and only) queen.

Now, if you take Anne McCaffrey's regressive look at sexuality as canon, then F'lessan and the other bronze riders probably only have sex with men during mating flights. Then they get up, shake hands, and go about their business. Functionally, it's no different than a male and a female rider who aren't normally attracted to each other winding up in bed together when their dragons mate. It's part of being a dragonrider. And you don't have to be attracted to a person to notice that they're "sensual," however you want to define that.

[P'ter]

We only know the names of a very small number of the riders: a few dozen out of something over 4,000 riders in the 7 weyrs. There could well be other female green riders in other weyrs who just have never been included in the stories.

[Kath]

Originally Posted by Gilluin

The reason I bring this up is because in SOP, bottom of page 27 in the hard copy, F'lessan makes the following observation about Tai. "She wasn't pretty; she didn't act sensual, the way some green riders did,"


Now if there are only 3 female green riders, Mirrim, Tai, and Danegga (who was 16 and just out of the Wyerling barracks) then this means that F'lessan has noticed male green riders being 'sensual" could it be that F'lessan is bisexual and has slept with the riders of the greens Golanth has flown?

Yup. Did you not realise before then?

I know Flessan is weyr bred but even so it is a little strange.

Not for the weyrbred. Dragons rise, riders shag, then carry on about their buisness of saving the planet. As they say, when in Rome...

[P'ter]

.. do the Romans.

[Kath]

*High fives P'ter*

[Anareth]

Rome is especially apt. Really the Pernese have a rather Roman take on sexuality. Bronze and brown riders are not gay or bisexual because they sometimes take advantage of a passive male partner for sex. The Romans did not hold any man who PREFERRED males to females or worse, enjoyed being the passive partner, as being a proper and sufficiently masculine man (they viewed the Greeks as degenerate for their NAMBLA-like social norms and if you enjoyed being a passive partner there was really something wrong with you-that's why it was a horrific swipe for Cicero to snark that Mark Antony was always best suited to a woman's role, he was saying Antony wasn't really man enough to lead Rome, and why the stories of Caesar and the king of Bithynia were less likely true than they were anti-Caesar propaganda), but using a male prostitute or slave for convenience was no different than using a woman. It's not who you're doing, it's who's doing what to whom. In the dragonriders' case, a green's a green, it's that or your dragon likely doesn't chase ANYTHING.

[CuriousFlit]

So... cold showers wouldn't help with mating flight urges at all? They do have that big lake in most Weyrs.

[mawra]

When dragons mate their riders are one with the dragon. You mate with the rider of the other dragon.

[P'ter]

There are hints that if you really do not fancy the other rider you arrange things so that your chosen, and the other rider's, are on stand-by so to speak.

[granath]

Yes, but that's retconned in the later books, and specifically in relation to a gay bluerider who didn't want to risk having sex with a female greenrider, either in First Fall or Dragonseye.

[Anareth]

And even in both those cases, we never actually hear a blue rider say anything about it. In First Fall, it's just a gold rider speculating on a gay blue rider's behalf that it would be nice for him to have someone more to his taste (but no indication he's been unable to perform with any of the female green riders when it's a mating flight) and in DE/RSR it's a female green weyrling with vague concerns that some of the blue riders don't like girls. There's never any indication from the blue riders that they can't manage, just other people (weirdly in both cases heterosexual females) fussing on their behalf. It's never addressed at any point in the later-time-period books that maybe the brown and bronze riders (whose riders are canonically heterosexual) would prefer more green riders to THEIR tastes, the implication being THEY can perform when they have to whether the green's rider is their preferred gender or not.

[Gilluin]

I still don't see it. How does a hetero male see sensuality in another male? As a gay man I don't find or recognize sensuality in women so why would a heterosexual man see it in men.

[pearldiver]

*shrug*

I'm a gay woman, and I can tell when a man is horny. Doesn't mean I want to help him out.

[Michelle]

Originally Posted by Gilluin

I still don't see it. How does a hetero male see sensuality in another male? As a gay man I don't find or recognize sensuality in women so why would a heterosexual man see it in men.

See, I don't think its about recognizing sensuality - it’s not about the rider's feelings at all. It’s 100% about the dragons (and this is where the skeeviness of Pern comes in).

The dragon wants to make the beast with two backs. The dragon’s impulses completely take precedent over the rider’s in the situation (which makes sense – Kitty Ping wanted to be very sure that there were next generation dragons, and that these future hatchlings received the absolute best genetics with no unnecessary rider fussing getting in the way).

It’s not about whether you as a gay man think women are hot, it’s about whether your blue wants to fly Path. If you’re not so keen on Mirrim … well … tough cookies.

Also, as mentioned above, social conditioning plays a huge role in all this. At this point in history, we think sleeping with people you’re attracted to is very important. At other points in history, we haven’t placed much value on that at all.

So you’re essentially forced to feel literally overwhelming lust, and then locked in a small room with someone else also feeling overwhelming lust, and given that this is a weyr and the same thing probably goes down three or four times a day (I think a full weyr apparently has about 1,000 greens? Divided by 365 days …) well, eventually ‘thinking of England’ becomes the social norm.

It’s not about sensuality, it’s about “will touching my genitals to this person’s genitals feel pleasurable?” and I think 90% of the time, no matter what the individual orientations may be the answer would probably be “yes”.

[mara]

In 2005 or 2006 I found a message from Anne on the internet saying :
"In the beginning of DOP females rode green or gold. Males rode blue, brown of 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 de hatching grounds after the first disatrous plague, males with feminine personalities Impressed green dragons. Bleu riders, not to mince words, were gay with masculine temperaments. Browns, who where not so onclined to mate with a green's riders, made an arrangement so that two pairs of riders were involved in a green's mating."
So this is how Anne explained the matter.

[pearldiver]

Originally Posted by mara

So this is how Anne explained the matter.

Yep. But there's absolutely no indication that substituting a flight partner was practiced in the 9th Pass. The custom seems to have died out, and dragonriders accustomed themselves to lying back and thinking of Benden when the time comes.

If substitutes were a common practice, surely F'nor would've at least floated the idea to Brekke -- she wasn't concerned about Wirenth mating with a dragon that wasn't Canth, but rather concerned about herself having sex with a man who wasn't F'nor. If it was as easy as telling the hopeful bronzeriders to be sure to bring their girlfriends because Brekke was going to be in the other room with her own lover, then that entire plot is a farce.

I know there's a convention in some Pern RPs to treat gold mating flights as more intense than green flights, but I don't recall anything in canon to back that up. Gold flights might be more prone to "psychic spillover" pushing feelings of lust onto nonparticipants, and golds unlike greens are willing to fight over mates, but from all descriptions, in both sorts of flights, the dragons and riders are one.

Subjectively, a green rider, male or female, is experiencing the flight just the same as a gold rider would, and ditto the chasing males. Therefore any substitution arrangement that works in a green flight should work in a gold -- and Wirenth was a junior queen, so there's no concerns about the new Weyrleader being legitimized in the Weyrwoman's bed.

tl;dr F'lessan's probably had sex with men in mating flights, he's still heterosexual, and he can read body language enough to tell when another person is feeling slutty even if he isn't interested himself.

[Lily]

I think golds have more their own choice over who catches them than greens.
There's references to golds saying, only so-and-so will ever catch me.
As opposed to greens who - tuttut! - are "slutty". Which can upset their riders.

[Anareth]

Originally Posted by Michelle

See, I don't think its about recognizing sensuality - it’s not about the rider's feelings at all. It’s 100% about the dragons (and this is where the skeeviness of Pern comes in).

The dragon wants to make the beast with two backs. The dragon’s impulses completely take precedent over the rider’s in the situation (which makes sense – Kitty Ping wanted to be very sure that there were next generation dragons, and that these future hatchlings received the absolute best genetics with no unnecessary rider fussing getting in the way).

It’s not about whether you as a gay man think women are hot, it’s about whether your blue wants to fly Path. If you’re not so keen on Mirrim … well … tough cookies.


So you’re essentially forced to feel literally overwhelming lust, and then locked in a small room with someone else also feeling overwhelming lust, and given that this is a weyr and the same thing probably goes down three or four times a day (I think a full weyr apparently has about 1,000 greens? Divided by 365 days …) well, eventually ‘thinking of England’ becomes the social norm.
.

Yep. Or rather not thinking at all. During the mating flight, the riders aren't even particularly aware of their own bodies. They're operating on dragon autopilot. (See the queen fights--Brekke and Kylara would not want to actually KILL each other or see their dragons dead or mutilated, but the dragon will is running the whole show.) It's not a matter of whether your orientations are compatible or even if you and the other dragon's rider violently despise each other (Lessa might threaten R'gul that she'll take Ramoth between rather than let Hath fly her, but through the flight it's pretty clear she's got no say over Ramoth, and in the end even Ramoth's will is secondary to Mnmenth being sneaky.) Even in Skies, when F'lessan's telling Tai to "choose" him, it's before he knows he's not going to be in control of the situation (and of course as he has literally no competition so it's a foregone conclusion, it's likely more trying to offer psychological help so she can deal with the situation mentally afterwards.)

[Brenda]

I think green flights are generally over very quickly, rather than the extended competition of the gold flights, which I would expect would affect non-participants less. Also, gold flights get the attention of the entire Weyr's population of dragons - even if they're not participating, all the male dragons are extremely keyed up. Green flights aren't really noticed except by whatever dragons decide to go for it.