things for which I blame Bear

[jazzfish]

"There's a balance to be struck between the rules of formal English and demotic conversational usage. As it happens, my particular balance is the correct one." --PNH, complaining about Bear's use of the construction "between she and I"

A post by truepenny on the practice of rereleasing bad fantasy as children's books with all the potentially offensive bits stripped out, which in the comments became a glorious free-for-all about the Green Dragonrider Problem. Followed up in matociquala's journal here, in which truepenny summarises the previous discussion: The way sex works in the weyrs is clearly institutionalized rape, and it doesn't matter whether you're a woman riding a gold dragon or a man riding a green. You're on the bottom, and you're going to like it.

And now I shall have to get the novel that sprang forth from those two discussions. Aggravatingly enough it isn't out yet. (Neither is Ha'Penny, the sequel to Farthing, so I can't give papersky any author-mojo for her part in the discussion either.)

Comments

[jazzfish]

I know for a fact that I read the first three books at least once, maybe twice, but I don't recall very much about them. (Except being amused by the etymology of "agenothree," and learning the meaning of "perihelion.") I also read _Dragonsdawn_ and recall even less about it. Avril Bitra was a bitch and there was a character that said "Jays!" a lot in place of actual swearing. The sex thing blew right past me as well. I speculate that that's due to being 1) a kid, and 2) a boy.