Dragonriders of Pern: Difference between revisions

* [[Action Girl]]: Female dragonriders in general -- Moreta, Sorka, and Mirrim, in particular.

* [[Adam and Eve Plot]]: Averted in the short story "Rescue Run".

* [[Alien Blood]]: Pernese native animals have green, copper-based blood.

* [[Alien Sky]]: The Red Star, of course, but Pern also has two moons. Plus, Pern is far enough away from Earth that the night sky would look very different, with none of the familiar constellations.

* [[Breath Weapon]]: Dragonfire.

* [[Broken Bird]]: Lessa. She gets better. Menolly may also qualify.

* [[Can't Live Without You]]: Once a rider dies, the dragon normally commits suicide post-haste. Moreta's queen is temporarily tethered by her mothering instinct for the eggs she just laid, but suicides as soon as they hatch. Riders whose dragons die also frequently suicide; those who don't, such as Lytol, remain somewhat shattered for the rest of their lives.

* [[Charm Person]]: Part of Lessa's [[Psychic Powers]] manifest as a weak form of this.

* [[Corrupt Bureaucrat]]: Chalkin, Lord Holder of Bitra in ''Dragonseye'', who refuses to believe that Thread will return and won't take the necessary precautions to protect his people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the things he does.

* [[Culture Clash]]: Between Weyr, Hold, and Craft. Their traditions have diverged sharply over the centuries and frequently come into conflict in the main storyline. Similarly, a major conflict arises between the Oldtimer Weyrfolk who are brought forward in time by Lessa and the more "modern" Weyrfolk under F'lar's command.

* [[Death World]]: {{spoiler|F'nor and Canth}} pay a visit to the Red Star and come back near-dead and skinless from the corrosive, unbreatheable atmosphere.

* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: The death of a dragon or its rider will send the living member of the pair into despair or insanity. If the rider dies, his dragon will invariably commit suicide by going ''between''. If the dragon dies, the rider may become [[Ax Crazy]], [[Driven to Suicide|suicidal]], an [[Empty Shell]], or all of the above.

* [[Drowning My Sorrows]]: Even decades later, Lytol drinks to unconsciousness after a dragon dies to numb the pain of losing his.

** Robinton is also overly fond of drink, and has been ever since his bride Kasia drowned on their honeymoon.

** Menolly is first introduced in ''Dragonsong'' as singing the funeral elegy for Petiron.

* [[Empty Shell]]: If a rider who loses his dragon does ''not'' commit suicide, he or she is frequently left as this. The quintessential example is Kylara, who is left almost catatonic when her queen dies.

** When Lessa is treating F'lar's knife wound, she can't help but notice his manliness.

* [[Free-Love Future]]: The Weyr culture is highly liberated due to the nature of dragon/rider relationships; dragons mate with whom they choose and their partners are [[Aliens Made Them Do It|compelled to do the same]]. Children are fostered and raised by the Weyr as a whole to avoid attachments to any particular parent, given their high mortality rates.

* [[Gender Rarity Value]]: Applies in this case to the dragons; golds are the least common dragon color and yet the ones primarily responsible for populating the Weyrs. Over the last Long Interval, the Weyr population diminished to the point where there was only one gold alive at any time, making the extinction of the species a real possibility and justifying the taboo against flying golds in combat, something which had not existed in previous Passes.

* [[Genetic Memory]]: There is a very strong implication that fire lizard memory is this; it's hard to imagine any other way that they could remember the events of Landing so vividly two thousand years later. In fact, it's fire lizard memory that leads Jaxom's team to discover the original Landing site, as well as AIVAS.

* [[Kaleidoscope Eyes]]: Dragons' and fire lizards' eyes change color according to their mood.

* [[Kill'Em All]]: Todd McCaffrey's solo books.

* [[Knife Nut]]: Dragonriders don't carry swords, but many are deadly efficient duelists with eating knives.

* [[Legend Fades to Myth]]: In ''Dragonsinger'', we are introduced to the legend of Moreta, the Dragonlady who saved Pern from a deadly epidemic at the cost of her own life. ''Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern'' (published at a later date) recounts the actual events that gave rise to the legend.

* [[The Napoleon]]: Lessa

* [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]]: This seems to change at different points in the series. At the start, Jaxom coming close to himself causes incredible exhaustion, and Lessa overrunning herself three times at the same temporal point results in swaying and mumbling gibberish. By the time of Todd McCaffrey's stories, M'hall and Master Harper Zist both talk to their past selves outright with no issue.

* [[No Biochemical Barriers]]: Averted, hard, as the Pernese settlers were armed with advance surveys and the science to clearly identify which local lifeforms were good to eat and which weren't, and they wouldn't have tried to settle Pern in the first place if the atmosphere wasn't breathable, etc. They also brought a lot of Earth lifeforms and conducted extensive experiments to determine compatibility, modifying genes where necessary -- incidentally, this is why there are no bees or turkeys on Pern.

** Or coffee. In ''Dragonsdawn'' it's mentioned that for some unknown reason coffee had proven unable to be adapted to growth on any planet other than Earth. On Pern, this leads to the development of a substitute made from the ground bark of a native tree, a drink that becomes known as ''klah''.

* [[No Blood Ties]]: Although bloodlines are acknowledged, it is common practice among Weyrfolk to foster their children to avoid maternal or paternal attachments; this lessens the trauma when riders are lost fighting Thread.

* [[No Mere Windmill]]: Type B. When F'lar (and his father before him) warns the political leaders of the soon-to-begin Ninth Pass about the return of Thread, they refuse to believe him, until it starts dropping on their heads of course.

* [[Old Retainer]]: Rannelly, for Kylara.

* [[Our Dragons Are Different]]: Another [[Trope Codifier]].

* [[Reassignment Backfire]]: A subversion occurs with Petiron, who was assigned to a backwater fishing Hold that just happened to beget one of the greatest musical prodigies in Pernese history, Menolly. Then it turns out that he was assigned at his own request, and that his son is the current Masterharper, Robinton.

* [[Rebellious Princess]]: Nerilka, a Lord Holder's daughter, refuses to obey her [[Jerkass]] father's commands and becomes a nurse during the plague.

* [[Retcon]]: More than once. A lot of plot elements got modified between ''Dragonflight'' and ''Dragonquest'', specifically, some of the character names and several aspects of dragon biology. Further, in ''Dragonquest'', there's a specific reference to fire lizards "eating Thread" which is never mentioned before or after.

** As the "fire lizards eating thread" bit was said by [[Small Name, Big Ego|Kylara]] after her thunder had just been stolen by F'lar, it was likely something that she [[Blatant Lies|pulled out of her ass]] to bring attention back to herself. It worked quite well.

* [[Science Marches On]]: Millennia in the future of our day, the world of Pern is finally saved with ''DOS''. An AI version of DOS, but still...

* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: Distances seem to change at the plot's convenience, and either dragons in the Ninth Pass are ludicrously huge (bronzes and golds being much bigger than ''blue whales'') or someone said "meters" when they meant "feet."

* [[Shoulder-Sized Dragon]]: The fire-lizards.

* [[Space Amish]]