Snowflake Challenge 2017

[tielan]

Day 2

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Tempting as it might be to go with the MCU or Stargate, X-Men, Star Wars, or even He-Man and She-Ra, or novel series such as David Eddings or Patricia Keneally, I might have to go back to the first books I remember consciously reading as the sci-fi/fantasy genre - the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey.

I was thirteen, had just gone into high school, and there was an entire library of books to read! And somehow - I'm not entirely sure how - I decided to read 'Dragonflight' - the first 'Dragonriders of Pern' book McCaffrey wrote.

I was already into Star Wars, The Dark Is Rising, The Magic Faraway Tree, and other fantasy series, but they all had one thing in common: the hero was a guy - or a group of heroes, of which no more than one was ever female.

McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series changed that. It flipped a switch with the fact that the story began with Lessa - a young woman who'd lost her family and struggled to keep what she had left - and followed her rise to the most powerful position a woman can aspire to on Pern, and the act which made her name and saved the planet. Yes, F'lar was a significant player, but he was also Lessa's lover, so he was okay.

I adored Lessa. She was stubborn. She was short-tempered. She was spiteful and petty and grumpy and suspicious. She wasn't pretty exactly, but she was compelling. And she was the heroine of the story.

For a girl who already knew she'd never be the sweetest, most adorable of girls, who was well aware she was hardly pretty, but who knew she had a certain cunning charm about her, Lessa was pure catnip. I wanted more stories about her adventures! And I was so bitterly disappointed when I found that the next book wasn't actually about her. Or any of the other books! I felt cheated! Menolly got two books for being a sweet girl who tried to do right by her family even when they fobbed her off. Lessa got one (really, half of one) for being a calculating bitch who fought her way through survival and did what she thought was necessary for the weyr (and Pern with it) to survive - even if it wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. (This also echoes with me: I am a person who would rather make a decision and see it wrong than eternally vacillate waiting for the right moment.)

It is entirely possible that this is the core of my eternal bitterness at the characters I want to see more of never being given that opportunity by their canons. Sam Carter was entirely false advertising: Teyla Emmagan, Ziva David, Gwen, Maria Hill, Mako Mori and others have never received their due in canon, and sometimes not even in fanon for having a little too much pepper in their honey - a little too much chilli in their sugar.

Lessa was exactly what I needed at age 13, and reading the story about her is what flipped the switch for me from a consumer of stories-about-guys to a "I would really like to read fantasy/sci-fi stories which are about the girls".

I suppose that ultimately, Lessa was my precursor for Aeron Aoibhell, for Talia Holderkin, for Elspeth of Valdemar, for Heris Serrano and Esmay Suiza, for Kris Longknife, and the many other women whose stories were the focus of their books - and the frustrating parallel for the women named above, whose storylines always seemed the more interesting to me than the men who shared their universes and yet who never quite got as much limelight as I think they deserved...

Comments

[sperrywink]

Intriguing! I first read about Menolly, not surprising, and don't remember Lessa as fondly as you, except as you say a fantasy book with a fierce female protagonist was so rare.

Speaking of other fierce protagonists, I really love Claudia J Edwards "Taming the Forest King", but it is sadly out of print and not available through Powells, but you might keep your eye out for it. It is probably dated (written back in the 1980s) but it definitely touched me the way Lessa touched you.

http://www.powells.com/book/taming-the-forest-king-9780445203082/1-4

[tielan]

I think they might have recced Dragonsong to me to start with, but I don't remember why I didn't read it first. (Possibly because Menolly seemed...limp to me in her introduction?) Dragonflight was definitely the first one that I finished and it gripped me all the way through.

I'll see if I can't find a copy somewhere. Thanks for the rec!

[monanotlisa]

Interesting and resonant. I never read the Pern books; I probably would have been thrilled, too. Really should have pursued more woman-focused books then, but it wasn't exactly and easy find back then. (My Yes, This! books were the Lioness Rampant books by Tamora Pierce, and I still love Alanna more than anything.)

[tielan]

I didn't read Tamora Pierce until I was about 32, by which time they were interesting but not gripping the way they might have been as an adolescent.

And yes, they were really difficult to find in sci-fi/fantasy, anyway. I frequently settled for 'well-drawn female characters' in my reading.

[fire_juggler]

I loved the Dragonriders of Pern. So much. They totally shaped my world. But I came to them a little later, after Alanna (the Lioness), Harry and Aerin (Damar). ♥

[tielan]

I loved the series as a whole and was really excited when they were thinking of making a TV series back in the late 90s. But that died, and now I think I'm glad it did, because it wouldn't have been about Lessa.

Tamora Pierce didn't hit my radar until I was very much an adult, at which point there were aspects of her style which irritated me.

[reeby10]

I think I read Dragonflight when I was about 13, and it definitely made an impact on me as well. It's been a while and many books, but Lessa remains one of my favorite Pern characters!

[tielan]

I'm just thinking that I really really really wanted stories from those ten years between Dragonflight and Dragonquest...

[reeby10]

Oh yes, that would have been great!

[beatrice_otter]

I read most of the Pern books, but I was never really INTO them, even as a teenage girl. McCaffrey was the main author where, when there wasn't anything new from the authors I really loved, and/or I'd just finished a major re-read of old favorites and there wasn't anything I liked better that I hadn't read recently, I would read McCaffrey. I didn't dislike her books; I didn't find them compelling, either, and I'm not quite sure why.

The character that I latched on to was Honor Harrington. Similarly, because she wasn't your standard heroine and I could really identify with her. She was socially awkward (and I, an undiagnosed autistic, knew All About socially awkward) but really smart, with a temper that got her into trouble sometimes who was not afraid to literally backhand douchebags across the table when their douchebaggery crossd the line from "ugh" to "PROBLEM." And she was a great military officer who could triumph against alll odds, and had a telepathic alien cat, and she was a badass with both pistol and sword (killing men in duels with both weapons) in addition to being a brilliant military commander, and she became a noble with liveried retainers just like a fairy tale, and ALL SORTS OF THINGS that socially-awkward misfit me dreamed of doing. And she got to do ALL the things that teh male heros did while still being a girl, and still being a bit awkward. And there were always other women around her--her best friend Michelle Henke being my favorite. So it wasn't the "one special girl in a world of men" but "both men and women in positions of power and every role imaginable doing Interesting Things." And there was never a gendered tinge to female villains that I can remember. No vamps or femme fatales or "they're evil because they're Manipulative Wymins." Having gotten older, I can recognize how wooden David Weber's writing is, but dang it, I love Honor with all my heart and always will. It was the first time I realized that "she" could be a default pronoun, and that was awe-inspiring. (In the Honorverse, the default generic pronoun gender always matches the gender of the person doing the thinking/talking.)

So while McCaffrey wasn't it for me, I can certainly see why she was for you. And I get how hard you latched on to Lessa, because it is so powerful to see someone you can identify with.