More beating with the Clue-By-Oar

[kippurbird]

This one inspired by a discussion on Antishturgal about Todd McCaffery's book DragonsBlood.


"Are you sure you want to do this?" Loranna asked her gold dragon, holding the syringe.

Yes she said.

Taking a deep breath, Loranna placed the needle to her dragon's skin. Just as she was about to inject the unknown mixture into the dragon, something whacked her on the head, sending her reeling to the ground. Looking up she saw a man holding what looked to be an oar in a threatening manner. He had two fire lizard's perched on his shoulders, a young looking green and an older brown.

"Bad Loranna, no cookie," he said, shaking a finger at her.

"What do you mean? I'm trying to save the dragons!"

"By injecting your dragon with a potentially deadly substance? Hah! No real rider would ever take that risk."

She gaped at him.

He continued on. "Your dragon is supposed to be the most important thing in your entire world. You live for your dragon. You love your dragon above all else, be it family or friends. Your dragon is a part of your soul. You would willingly rip out part of your soul? What sort of monster are you?"

"I'm not a monster!" she protested.

The oar hit her in the head again. "You were about to maybe kill a part of your soul. The thing that should mean more to you than life itself. This is a time for you to be selfish, not selfless. Stop sacrificing yourself for the rest of the world and think about your dragon for once." He waggled the oar at her. "Now, I'm going to follow you around until you stop being stupid. And every time you are about to do something idiotic, I'll hit you with my oar. Do you understand?"

Numbly, she nodded yes.

"Excellent." And then he stomped on the syringe, breaking it. "Now, lets get to it."

Comments

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

Your dragon is supposed to be the most important thing in your entire world. You live for your dragon.
Your dragon is your druck, your sweet, sweet high. It IS your meth. It IS your heroine.
I am so glad I don't bother with dragons in my world. GAH.

Suicide: Now I wanna kill a dragon. Just cause.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Your dragon is your druck, your sweet, sweet high. It IS your meth. It IS your heroine.
I am so glad I don't bother with dragons in my world. GAH.

*giggle* Dragons are like soulmates in McCaffery's world.

Suicide: Now I wanna kill a dragon. Just cause.

Verra: *growls*

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

Q: Is this Pern crap? ANOTHER McCaffery writing about soul-mate bondage Dragons?

Suicide: Not you, Verra. I have...issues...with my kid's mother. She's a dragon.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes. Todd is writing his his mother's world, but making an utter mess of it.

Verra: I see.

Alec: I find this entirely amusing that two elfish people had kids with dragons.

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

Side: I adopted her. Goddamnit Q! Either log in as me, or get an icon of me! This is bullshit!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Alec: *laughs*

Verra: Adopting her was very kind of you.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Dragonsblood myself. Though there were some aspects I had trouble with (mostly biology issues, as I understand the explanation of Pernese DNA, it should've effectively blocked evolution, or at least, slowed it to a glacial pace, and Pern would probably not even be at the multicellular stage yet), but I didn't see Loranna's actions as that unbelievable. It was either take the risk of that injection, or lose her dragon to the Plague. I'd take the action that gave a possibility that my Dragon would live over certain death!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

There were some continuity errors that really bothered me in Dragonsblood like he mentioned birds, when there aren't any. And that whole business where the dragons and fire lizards knew how to get to the first Pass where Wind Blossom was just... was silly.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Well, is it any sillier than five of the six weyrs packing up and jumping ahead in time 400 years, creating the very problem they're going forward to solve? Time-travel tends to create rather odd situations. :)

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, well at least they had Lessa guiding them forward and backwards. The dragons that went back in time in Blood had no guide to let them know that's where they needed to go to get the plague cured.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Didn't they have Loranna to guide them? Of course, that's still a couple of centuries to reach across ...

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

No, they didn't. They just randomly showed up there.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Hunh, don't remember the issue with birds. Are there really no birds on Pern?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

There aren't any except for chickens and other food birds. There was a brief mention of sea gulls. Hard to catch if you're not paying attention.

[loth440.livejournal.com]

Pao made me exclude anything dragon from my wip. And elves. And dwarves. And magic glowing swords. And super powerful magic. Looks like Todd McCaffery may have the same effect if I was to read his work.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Pao made me exclude anything dragon from my wip. And elves. And dwarves. And magic glowing swords. And super powerful magic.

But if you don't have that then how are people going to know it's fantasy?!

[loth440.livejournal.com]

Low fantasy. A gritty dark ages type world similar to Conan's, but my own. Magic is very limited and religious in nature, granted to shamans and priests by living gods. Protag is a thief who gets drawn into a power struggle between the two political factions of a large, wealthy port city.

[loth440.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add: The protag has a plain iron dagger, doesn't use magic, is only marginally skilled in combat, can't read/write, has regrets of his own poor choices in life that have forced him to live the way he does.

I guess the only Stu traits he might have are a brand on his left hand marking him as a thief, and his subterfuge skills.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I hope he keeps that left hand covered. It wouldn't do him much good to let everyone know he's a thief.

[loth440.livejournal.com]

That's one thing that stresses him out, he's constantly hiding it.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Is this something he got for getting caught at thieving?

[loth440.livejournal.com]

Yes.

The place he came from uses branding, then removal of the hand, then death. He left his home country due to being shunned, and the fear of a more serious punishment if he was to be caught again.

[(Anonymous)]

1) So he's left-handed? Good, we need more of those in fantasy fiction.
2) Gloves?

[loth440.livejournal.com]

Yes a lefty, and I agree.

What I had in mind was hand wraps, easier to slip on and off when needed. They could just be around the wrist when he's not concerned about it. Not set on those details yet.

This is still very much a work in progress. Just hammering out draft one slowly as I have time.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

I've played with the idea of "dragons" (actually just very large flying creatures) on my non-fantasy world. I ultimately rejected it, though, at least in the part of the world where my main cultures live. Maybe over in what I like to call Dinosaur Continent.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Rather like the dragons in the Harry Potter verse?

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. It's been so long since I've read Harry Potter that I can't remember what those dragons were like. But, I'd envisioned them as something like the ancient Quetzalcoatlus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus)

[berseker.livejournal.com]

I´m curious. What´s the skin of her dragon is made of? Or maybe I should be asking what is the needle made of. But I haven´t read the book, so I´m sure there´s an explanation...

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

On Pern, dragon's skin is soft. They aren't really dragons but aliens that look like dragons.

[berseker.livejournal.com]

Ah, so that´s it. I tend to think of dragons as being very...uh... tick-skinned.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, well these aren't really dragon dragons. But they're better dragons than Saphira.

[berseker.livejournal.com]

Any dragon is a better dragon than Saphira. And I´m willing to bet that any rider is better than Eragon ^^

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

Which thread on the forums was this from?

When I was 12, I used to like Pern. I got every single damn book I could, and read them over and over again and squeed every time I did.

Two years later, I picked one up and went "WTF"?

Personally though, as a dracophile these things piss me off. Still believe warcraft dragons are some of the best ones I've seen so far, with exception of Neltharion.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It was on the LJ, the one where I posted up the motivational posters.

I rather enjoy the Pern series but I think it went down hill after the Masterharper of Pern. It's a different sort of take on dragons because they're not the mythological sort but instead aliens that sort of look like dragons.

What are the warcraft dragons?

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Dragon

From there, happy browsing.

Essentially, I like them because they're no one's pet, hug toy or emotional tampon like Saphira a Pern dragon is. They have their own wants, desires, hobbies, essentially everything fully-fleshed out characters should have, unlike Saph, who cannot exist apart from Eragoner. She is only defined in terms of and by Eragoner and as such pretty much a shell and and shadow of him. Humans riding them? Faugh. Night Elves in trouble? Go handle it yourself, unless there's something in it for us.

Saphira could have been *very* interesting if she'd a personality approaching Alexstraza's, especially with the Ergy behaves.

The Pern dragons are little better in terms of personality, and Mccaffrey wrote herself into a rut when she got rid of Thread and started pulling new powers such as telekinesis out of the dragons' asses. It's too sappy. Too...perfect. Only Ramoth, Menementh and Canth struck me as having vague characters. Ruth was essentially Jaxom's emotional tampon, mark that Jaxom was SPESHUL and beater-up-of-EVIL-antagonists.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Those look like the D&D dragons. Which are also very cool.

Yes, but at least they grow as their riders grow. And Ruth was annoying.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Masterharper bugged me for its blatant contradictions. Robinton studies the Charter in MasterHarper, and yet, when AIVAS talked about the Charter, no one knew what it was! The healers who delivered Robinton mentioned how the ancients could distinguish blood types, but they hadn't had the technology for over 2 millennia! Why would they bother remembering, and teaching, something useless like that? "There are four types of blood, but we can't distinguish them anymore" "So, why bother learning about them?" "Don't question me! Just learn it!"

Robinton also seemed rather Gary Stu-ish in that book.