Fracking Pern! *punches wall*

[gryphonsegg]

Earlier, I was in a comment thread that took a turn for both the creepy and the WHAT.



The original topic was writing about dragons. Some people discussed Pern, and I bit my tongue because I didn't feel like going THERE at the time. That branched off into telepathic animal companions in general which, as many of you know, is totally my jam. (As a general rule, I like telepathic animal companions, and I like dragons whether they are telepathic or not. I just don't like the Pern books because I don't like the way they handle a subject that is so near and dear to my heart. Or the way they handle anything else, really.) Then some of the people in the discussion started going on about how some writers water down the concept by not having the human characters go into an uncontrollable mating frenzy with their non-human bondmates. As if it should be taken as a given that this is something that logically must follow from the existence of the telepathic bond with a non-human. And everybody else just accepted this as a perfectly reasonable assumption on which to base criticism of writers for being too squeamish or prudish or unrealistic to go there.

I think fantasy fans must have learned about realism from the same teacher who taught the hipsters about irony.

Comments

[deird1]

Then some of the people in the discussion started going on about how some writers water down the concept by not having the human characters go into an uncontrollable mating frenzy with their non-human bondmates. As if it should be taken as a given that this is something that logically must follow from the existence of the telepathic bond with a non-human.

*facepalm*

Pern has a lot to answer for.

[gryphonsegg]

The weirdest part of it, for me, is that the concept existed in fantasy fiction before Pern. The Pern stories were probably a lot of people's first encounter with the concept, but anyone whose interest was piqued enough to look for more would surely find enough other stories to be able to tell that all the mating flight weirdness in Pern is the exception to the rule. The only books I know of that do go there are C. J. Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and Bear and Monette's A Companion to Wolves or, as I like to call it, A Compendium of Wolf Fail. Both of those are intentional deconstructions of Pern's rose-tinted presentation of its dragonrider system (I think the former is a well-thought-out deconstruction and a pretty good story in its own right, and the latter is not).

[lady_ganesh]

Man, didn't any of these people read His Dark Materials.

[gryphonsegg]

I don't know about His Dark Materials specifically, but they'd probably say it was "toned down" and had the animals not acting like animals. Which is what they said about the Heralds of Valdemar, even though the telepathic animal companions in that series are actually holier-than-though Spirit Beings and reincarnated humans who only look like horses. That they don't act like real animals is kind of the point.

[lady_ganesh]

In HDM, every human has a 'daemon,' that's basically an animal representation of their soul. It's not quite the same as a soul-bond given that it's essentially the character's own soul, but you'd think someone would've thought of it, as they're constantly there.

[gryphonsegg]

I knew that series had something called daemons, which are animal-shaped but not really animals, but I didn't know they were the character's own soul.

There are so many ways to work with the concept, and so few of them point to uncontrollable mating frenzies as a logical consequence of anything.

[lady_ganesh]

Yeah, it becomes more clear as the books go on. They're always the opposite gender of the character, which has made me want to write/find HDM stories with trans characters, but that's another story...

Yeeeeah. I mean, if that's what floats your boat, fair enough, but own it!

[gryphonsegg]

if that's what floats your boat, fair enough, but own it!

YES! That's one of my biggest problems with A Compendium of Wolf Fail-- it's supposed to be a more logical take on the problem of the green dragon writers, but it's really every bit as illogical. The behavior of the so-called wolves is very unwolflike, and the way the humans handle the mating frenzy issue is just about the worst, most irrational, most assuredly traumatizing way it could possibly be handled. It's full of cliches that look awfully similar to cliches found in shoujo and BL manga, urban fantasy novels, and slashfic (seriously, one of the main character's two main love interests is pretty much lifted directly from the pages of How To Write Your Shoujo Heroine's Endgame True Love). And yet anyone who points out that it's basically a multichapter dub con fic with a lot of the worldbuilding aspects handwaved to force the characters to act out specific kinks is being a sexist homophobe and probably interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.

[lady_ganesh]

Well, obviously.

[holyschist]

WTF.

It's not like most animals even go into an uncontrollable mating frenzy! Hell, I can think of plenty of species offhand where a) they are choosy about mating and mates, and it's often the female choosing, or b) the females spend a lot of time actively avoiding males who want to mate with them because "forced copulation" is a standard male reproductive strategy in those species (which would be SUPER-SHITTY in one of those telepathic bond pernoverses, but it's not exactly an "uncontrollable mating frenzy").

But like, blue-footed boobies? What, the man would have the OVERWHELMING URGE to suddenly do silly dances and offer twigs and pebbles to a potential mate?

[holyschist]

...actually, no lie, I would totally read that.

[gryphonsegg]

Sage grouse! They must court like sage grouse! Make them dance with noisemakers! Maybe they'll have to sew artificial throat sacks and sling them around while they dance because grouse-women go crazy for a sharp-dressed grouse-man.