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i_read_whatSo we've reached the section that infuriates me the most about the entire book. At least so far.
This is the section with Ramoth's mating flight. And please take the content warning very very seriously.
Okay, so here's the thing about the Mating Flight: When a Queen Dragon flies, the Bronze Dragons compete to try to mate with her. The victor's dragonrider then becomes Weyrleader. We know this already.
What we don't know, until now is that, since the riders are psychically linked with their dragons, THEY end up having sex just as their dragons do.
And what's worse, no one has told Lessa this. She's going into this blind. She knows that whoever wins the mating flight with Ramoth will be the leader of the Weyr. She does NOT know that she'll be having sex with this person herself. She's basically been set up to be raped!
It's abhorrent! And it's unnecessary. I hate F'lar, but he and Lessa were actually developing a really interesting and appealing dynamic. They have compatible personalities, they aren't put off by each other's flaws. They have compatible goals. If they could have naturally come into a relationship, and then Ramoth and Mnementh mated to reflect that, that would have been fine.
Hell, I'd have even been okay with the idea that F'lar tells Lessa about this ahead of time, so at least she knows what to expect. There's still some tension in the idea that Lessa may not completely trust F'lar, that she is indignant about the situation and may decide to choose someone else. There are still some significant problems with this scenario, but at least it would give Lessa some measure of choice in the entire monstrosity. And our romantic lead wouldn't be a literal rapist.
God forbid we have that.
But let's get back to the chronological recap:
So this section starts a bit later on. Lessa is annoyed, because F'nor has come to visit without F'lar. F'nor informs him that F'lar has gone after K'net (one of the riders that Lessa recruited for her scheme last time.) They exchange some angry words, which Lessa promptly regrets as F'nor is considerably less of a jackass than his brother.
The crux of the issue is that Lytol sent a message to the Weyr warning them that some of the Lords have conferred and realized that the Weyr is behind the theft of food. Lytol remains the single most useful person in the book. F'nor is frustrated that Lessa didn't keep a closer watch on K'net. Which strikes me as unfair, because Lessa is basically a prisoner inside of the Weyr. He also thinks she should have been wiser in who she chose.
He might have a point there, but F'nor starts to lose me when he laughs at her outrage. "'F'lar did give you more credit then you deserve,' he replied, contemptuous of his own turn. 'Haven't you realized why he must wait?'"
Lessa makes a very good point: "'No," Lessa shouted at him. I haven't! Is this something I must divine, by instinct, like the dragons? By the shell of the first Egg, F'nor, no one explains anything to me!'"
Which really gets into the stupidity of this entire system. The Weyrwoman is educated by the Weyrleader, so she only knows what he chooses to tell her, which in R'gul's case is absolutely nothing. This poor woman has spent two years playing Bart Simpson, writing repetitive lines and no one's told her anything!
Especially not what's going to happen to her!
F'nor gives us some backstory on the situation: basically they're in what's called an Interval, which is a span of time when the Red Star doesn't pass close enough to Pern to drop Thread onto it. They've calculated the length of the Interval to be 200 years. They're in the last of the Interval now. F'lon, the father of F'lar and F'nor (these names are fucking killing me), was the Weyrleader before R'gul, and he had plans to prepare for the end of the Interval. He was training F'lar to follow him, but got killed in a "ridiculous brawl" when F'lar was nineteen. The Weyr didn't want to follow a nineteen year old, and public opinion apparently influences the mating flight somehow, so R'gul won instead.
Of course, this was about ten years ago, so there's no fucking reason that F'lar couldn't have won a subsequent mating flight, considering that everyone agrees that Mnementh could easily take Hath. But by that point, Jora had "deteriorated" from her grief for F'lon. So god forbid, they curtail R'gul's harmful policies sooner! Fuck you, F'lar.
And can we talk about how horrifying this entire idea is based on how the Mating Flights actually work? Jora is psychically linked with Nemorth, and therefore she ends up having sex with whoever wins the mating flight. NOT ONLY does she not get to choose her partner in her own right, but apparently public sentiment of the Weyr can actually influence who wins. The Weyr chooses who Jora has to sleep with. This is HORRIBLE.
F'nor also turns around and blames Lessa for not miraculously knowing that F'lar's wing already had the food situation under control. He isn't wrong that K'net has exacerbated the situation, but how the fuck was Lessa supposed to know that there were steps in place. All Manora told her was that they wouldn't last the winter. Then she was pointed toward members of F'lar's wing to do something about it. If there were other plans, why didn't Manora, the headswoman in charge of the food know about them?
Hell, why didn't K'net, who is a member of F'lar's wing, tell Lessa that there were plans in place?
Why the fuck is Lessa being blamed for shit that no one tells her?
Fuck you, F'nor.
They're interrupted though because the dragons are "blooding their kill" which is apparently a sign that the mating flight is about to start. The other dragonriders burst in. R'gul is delighted because F'lar isn't back yet, and he intends to start the mating flight without his direct competition.
God, this is so fucking disgusting. They are literally scheming as to who should get to fuck Lessa, and she has no idea. And R'gul is gleeful that the one person that she might have agreed to (UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES) isn't present.
Lessa does get a fairly glorious moment though: "'Yes, R'gul,' Lessa said, 'I understand. For once I do understand you, all too well. F'lar and K'net are not here.' Her voice grew shrill. 'But Ramoth will never be flown by Hath if I have to take her between!'"
Fortunately...for some definitions of the word, F'lar and K'net choose that moment to return. (Lessa had called their dragons as soon as she realized what was happening.)
The preliminaries start: Ramoth is ravenously diving through the feeding grounds, trying to gorge, and Lessa basically has to mentally wrestle her away from actually eating her kills. (It's important that she not overfeed or she won't fly as high or as long, and the resulting clutch will be weaker.)
Ramoth starts to fly, and Lessa has to stay with her, and I will give Ms. McCaffrey credit, this entire sequence is very tense and atmospheric. Lessa basically becomes merged with Ramoth as she flies, with the bronzes chasing her. She considers her choices (she hates R'gul's Hath, but is intrigued by Orth), and when she flies past Mnementh, he catches her.
And we get: "The mating passion of the two dragons at that moment spiraled wide to include Lessa. A tidal wave rising relentlessly from the sea of her soul flooded Lessa. With a longing cry she clung to F'lar. She felt his body rock-firm against hers, his hard arms lifting her up, his mouth fastening mercilessly on hers as she drowned deep in another unexpected flood of desire.
'Now! We bring them safely home,' he murmured."
So now all the weird skeevy undertones in Weyr Search make sense, of course. The odd focus on the girls' appearances, how it sometimes sounded like F'lar was looking for a woman more suited to his own taste as much as he was looking for someone best for the Weyr.
This is why F'lar took that tangent while admiring Lessa's strength of will to note that the moonlight made her look "almost pretty".
This is why it mattered that Jora was chosen before F'lar was born, that she was fat and lazy and undesirable.
F'lar knew that he was likely to end up taking over the guild, because Mnementh is by far the largest, strongest and fastest of the bronze dragons. Basically he was choosing his own sexual partner as much as he was choosing a Weyrwoman.
And he didn't TELL HER. He got this woman to give up a kingdom. Promised her power that he can't yet deliver. He didn't tell her that she was one of many candidates with a significant risk of death. He didn't tell her that her movements would be limited. He didn't tell her that she'd spend two years given meaningless busy work. He didn't tell her that she'd be constantly blamed for not knowing things that no one would tell her. He didn't tell her that she was going to have to have sex because her dragon does.
Our lead male character is a rapist now. That's the story now. I can't even bring myself to say "Fuck you, F'lar" because it was fun to hate him before, but this isn't fun. This is vile and completely unnecessary.
And want to take bets on whether or not Lessa will be allowed to have an emotional reaction to all of this?
Right now, I want Lessa to take Ramoth and burn this fucking Weyr to the ground, salt the Earth, and then go and reclaim her fucking kingdom. Because these people don't deserve to fucking exist.
Part 2:1 | Table of Contents | Part 2:3
This is the section with Ramoth's mating flight. And please take the content warning very very seriously.
Okay, so here's the thing about the Mating Flight: When a Queen Dragon flies, the Bronze Dragons compete to try to mate with her. The victor's dragonrider then becomes Weyrleader. We know this already.
What we don't know, until now is that, since the riders are psychically linked with their dragons, THEY end up having sex just as their dragons do.
And what's worse, no one has told Lessa this. She's going into this blind. She knows that whoever wins the mating flight with Ramoth will be the leader of the Weyr. She does NOT know that she'll be having sex with this person herself. She's basically been set up to be raped!
It's abhorrent! And it's unnecessary. I hate F'lar, but he and Lessa were actually developing a really interesting and appealing dynamic. They have compatible personalities, they aren't put off by each other's flaws. They have compatible goals. If they could have naturally come into a relationship, and then Ramoth and Mnementh mated to reflect that, that would have been fine.
Hell, I'd have even been okay with the idea that F'lar tells Lessa about this ahead of time, so at least she knows what to expect. There's still some tension in the idea that Lessa may not completely trust F'lar, that she is indignant about the situation and may decide to choose someone else. There are still some significant problems with this scenario, but at least it would give Lessa some measure of choice in the entire monstrosity. And our romantic lead wouldn't be a literal rapist.
God forbid we have that.
But let's get back to the chronological recap:
So this section starts a bit later on. Lessa is annoyed, because F'nor has come to visit without F'lar. F'nor informs him that F'lar has gone after K'net (one of the riders that Lessa recruited for her scheme last time.) They exchange some angry words, which Lessa promptly regrets as F'nor is considerably less of a jackass than his brother.
The crux of the issue is that Lytol sent a message to the Weyr warning them that some of the Lords have conferred and realized that the Weyr is behind the theft of food. Lytol remains the single most useful person in the book. F'nor is frustrated that Lessa didn't keep a closer watch on K'net. Which strikes me as unfair, because Lessa is basically a prisoner inside of the Weyr. He also thinks she should have been wiser in who she chose.
He might have a point there, but F'nor starts to lose me when he laughs at her outrage. "'F'lar did give you more credit then you deserve,' he replied, contemptuous of his own turn. 'Haven't you realized why he must wait?'"
Lessa makes a very good point: "'No," Lessa shouted at him. I haven't! Is this something I must divine, by instinct, like the dragons? By the shell of the first Egg, F'nor, no one explains anything to me!'"
Which really gets into the stupidity of this entire system. The Weyrwoman is educated by the Weyrleader, so she only knows what he chooses to tell her, which in R'gul's case is absolutely nothing. This poor woman has spent two years playing Bart Simpson, writing repetitive lines and no one's told her anything!
Especially not what's going to happen to her!
F'nor gives us some backstory on the situation: basically they're in what's called an Interval, which is a span of time when the Red Star doesn't pass close enough to Pern to drop Thread onto it. They've calculated the length of the Interval to be 200 years. They're in the last of the Interval now. F'lon, the father of F'lar and F'nor (these names are fucking killing me), was the Weyrleader before R'gul, and he had plans to prepare for the end of the Interval. He was training F'lar to follow him, but got killed in a "ridiculous brawl" when F'lar was nineteen. The Weyr didn't want to follow a nineteen year old, and public opinion apparently influences the mating flight somehow, so R'gul won instead.
Of course, this was about ten years ago, so there's no fucking reason that F'lar couldn't have won a subsequent mating flight, considering that everyone agrees that Mnementh could easily take Hath. But by that point, Jora had "deteriorated" from her grief for F'lon. So god forbid, they curtail R'gul's harmful policies sooner! Fuck you, F'lar.
And can we talk about how horrifying this entire idea is based on how the Mating Flights actually work? Jora is psychically linked with Nemorth, and therefore she ends up having sex with whoever wins the mating flight. NOT ONLY does she not get to choose her partner in her own right, but apparently public sentiment of the Weyr can actually influence who wins. The Weyr chooses who Jora has to sleep with. This is HORRIBLE.
F'nor also turns around and blames Lessa for not miraculously knowing that F'lar's wing already had the food situation under control. He isn't wrong that K'net has exacerbated the situation, but how the fuck was Lessa supposed to know that there were steps in place. All Manora told her was that they wouldn't last the winter. Then she was pointed toward members of F'lar's wing to do something about it. If there were other plans, why didn't Manora, the headswoman in charge of the food know about them?
Hell, why didn't K'net, who is a member of F'lar's wing, tell Lessa that there were plans in place?
Why the fuck is Lessa being blamed for shit that no one tells her?
Fuck you, F'nor.
They're interrupted though because the dragons are "blooding their kill" which is apparently a sign that the mating flight is about to start. The other dragonriders burst in. R'gul is delighted because F'lar isn't back yet, and he intends to start the mating flight without his direct competition.
God, this is so fucking disgusting. They are literally scheming as to who should get to fuck Lessa, and she has no idea. And R'gul is gleeful that the one person that she might have agreed to (UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES) isn't present.
Lessa does get a fairly glorious moment though: "'Yes, R'gul,' Lessa said, 'I understand. For once I do understand you, all too well. F'lar and K'net are not here.' Her voice grew shrill. 'But Ramoth will never be flown by Hath if I have to take her between!'"
Fortunately...for some definitions of the word, F'lar and K'net choose that moment to return. (Lessa had called their dragons as soon as she realized what was happening.)
The preliminaries start: Ramoth is ravenously diving through the feeding grounds, trying to gorge, and Lessa basically has to mentally wrestle her away from actually eating her kills. (It's important that she not overfeed or she won't fly as high or as long, and the resulting clutch will be weaker.)
Ramoth starts to fly, and Lessa has to stay with her, and I will give Ms. McCaffrey credit, this entire sequence is very tense and atmospheric. Lessa basically becomes merged with Ramoth as she flies, with the bronzes chasing her. She considers her choices (she hates R'gul's Hath, but is intrigued by Orth), and when she flies past Mnementh, he catches her.
And we get: "The mating passion of the two dragons at that moment spiraled wide to include Lessa. A tidal wave rising relentlessly from the sea of her soul flooded Lessa. With a longing cry she clung to F'lar. She felt his body rock-firm against hers, his hard arms lifting her up, his mouth fastening mercilessly on hers as she drowned deep in another unexpected flood of desire.
'Now! We bring them safely home,' he murmured."
So now all the weird skeevy undertones in Weyr Search make sense, of course. The odd focus on the girls' appearances, how it sometimes sounded like F'lar was looking for a woman more suited to his own taste as much as he was looking for someone best for the Weyr.
This is why F'lar took that tangent while admiring Lessa's strength of will to note that the moonlight made her look "almost pretty".
This is why it mattered that Jora was chosen before F'lar was born, that she was fat and lazy and undesirable.
F'lar knew that he was likely to end up taking over the guild, because Mnementh is by far the largest, strongest and fastest of the bronze dragons. Basically he was choosing his own sexual partner as much as he was choosing a Weyrwoman.
And he didn't TELL HER. He got this woman to give up a kingdom. Promised her power that he can't yet deliver. He didn't tell her that she was one of many candidates with a significant risk of death. He didn't tell her that her movements would be limited. He didn't tell her that she'd spend two years given meaningless busy work. He didn't tell her that she'd be constantly blamed for not knowing things that no one would tell her. He didn't tell her that she was going to have to have sex because her dragon does.
Our lead male character is a rapist now. That's the story now. I can't even bring myself to say "Fuck you, F'lar" because it was fun to hate him before, but this isn't fun. This is vile and completely unnecessary.
And want to take bets on whether or not Lessa will be allowed to have an emotional reaction to all of this?
Right now, I want Lessa to take Ramoth and burn this fucking Weyr to the ground, salt the Earth, and then go and reclaim her fucking kingdom. Because these people don't deserve to fucking exist.