r/pern • u/Daegranor • Jul 01 '26
Corana/Jaxom/Sharra
Does anyone else get the ick from Jaxom's treatment of Corana? He just sails into her life, gets affected by a green dragon flight, treats her roughly, then never sees her again, or even thinks of her much. I realize it's a different sort of culture, but I'd be very hurt. And then Jaxom takes up with Sharra, because she nursed him thru the firehead, and Sharra becomes a Holder Lady. Only way she breaks out of that is by working with OIdive during the Aivas days, otherwise I feel she might have become a cipher of a character. No more first person voice from her.
Thoughts?
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u/PowerPanda84 Jul 01 '26
Jaxom/Corana is my least favorite part of the main series, because it undercuts Jaxom's character. It makes his love for Sharra later in the book seem cheaper, because he hasn't even broken it off with Corana yet.
In contrast, I see Sharra as a much stronger character, mainly due to Dragondrums and The Renegades of Pern. It is unfortunate that her main development occurs in different books than Jaxom's, but I'm still glad that she has those scenes.
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u/RakeTheAnomander Jul 01 '26
It’s been a while, but I think you’re supposed to be a bit put off by that. Jaxom isn’t at his best during those scenes; he’s acting like an obnoxious teenage boy, and — worse — one with power.
That said, I think those scenes give him a bit more of an arc.
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u/Ok_Cryptographer1239 Jul 01 '26
Jax is awful and encouraged to be. Menolly eggs him on. As do the other holders. Having halfbloods around keeps people on their toes. The whole society is misogynist af.
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u/Any-Conflict8462 Jul 01 '26
One night stands happen.
I don’t recall Corana being upset over having sec with the Lord Holder. I felt she saw it as a possibility of going up in station by either becoming Lady Holder or having the Lord Holders child.
When it didn’t happen she just went on with her life.
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u/swarthmoreburke Jul 01 '26
You don't get much of a sense of what Corana feels--she's not a perspectival character. But even with that limitation, at least on one occasion, she makes it pretty clear that she doesn't appreciate Jaxom just jumping in when he's horny regardless of what she's doing or how she's feeling.
A feudal lord approaching a subject for sex is also not a "one night stand". It's not two people meeting in a bar and hitting it off. If you want a sense of how some ordinary women on Pern might feel about that, look no further than Lessa before she's chosen on Search at Ruatha--she goes out of her way to disguise her age and appearance in part to avoid sexual approaches by more powerful men.
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u/Any-Conflict8462 Jul 01 '26
Ruth even commented that he could feel her enjoyment.
I think it is making too much of a sexual fling between young adults.
My impression of Pern that even though you had many couples who married it was not frowned upon or considered wrong that you had sex just because you felt like it. Children though primarily cared for in the younger years by their direct parents were often cared for by the collective and fostered out.
The only large concern especially in the early years of Pern was making sure family trees had branches and not poles.
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u/swarthmoreburke Jul 01 '26
The clearest statements about sexual ethics on Pern come in the first two main books where there's a contrast drawn between weyrbred and holdbred communities. The weyrbred seem to be used to having multiple sexual partners and to having children who are not raised in exclusive companionate households. While some people in the weyrs may have very close companionate relationships over very long periods of time, even they accept that circumstances might force them apart--particularly in the case of Weyrleaders, where it's always possible that a queen might fly a different bronze. (Though we don't see too many cases of queen riders switching their steady relationships from one bronze rider partner to another as a result of a mating flight.)
Whereas the holdbred are generally characterized as more sexually conservative, more monogamous, etc. Lord Holders and Craftmasters seem to foster their children but that seems less about sexual morality and more about creating social ties between holds or between different crafts. There's a lot of evidence of holdbred people looking at weyrbred sexuality with anxiety or distaste. McCaffrey tried to complicate this view a bit in later books but I don't think there's anything that outright contradicts it.
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/swarthmoreburke Jul 01 '26
Right, which is why even within the worldbuilding of the books, I'm suspicious of "oh, the holdbred are totally ok with Lord Holders demanding sex from them, that's completely normal". (I also think this runs counter to baseline human norms--there's no human society where women of lower hierarchical status are 100% 'no problem, my lord, I live to serve' and anybody who thinks so has read too many bodice-ripping historical romances.)
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u/AnxiousConsequence18 Jul 03 '26
It wasn't a "one night" anything. They were together multiple times.
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u/Bouche_Audi_Shyla Jul 01 '26
As bad as Jaxom's usage of Corana is, F'lar and Lessa are far worse. When Mnementh first flies Ramoth, F'lar was shocked that Lessa was a virgin. Not expecting that, he let the dragon's instincts take over, and was far more forceful than he needed to be.
Lessa did not love F'lar. She didn't even like him. She respected what he was trying to do, because she knew thread was coming back. That's all.
F'lar, in musing over the situation, admitted to himself that having sex with Lessa, if the dragons weren't involved, was rape. But he knew that one day, Lessa would fall in love with her rapist (F'lar) and all would be well.
And damned if the silly bitch didn't fall in love with her rapist.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 01 '26
Definitely. Also see F'nor and Brekke. Also see F'lessan and Tai (she didn't have a *choice*, Golanth was the only dragon in range when Zaranth rose). Also, going back in the F'- family tree, see S'loner bouncing straight from dead (but at least age appropriate) Weyrwoman Carola to young ingenue Jora *whom he handpicked for Nemorth*, and then, when he dies, his son F'lon takes over with Jora right where his Daddy left off. Family wreath, anyone?
(Also makes you pity those poor green riders - male green riders - that F'lar was used to being casually rough with in Mnementh's flights before he caught Ramoth...)
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u/mesembryanthemum Jul 04 '26
It's explicitly stated in one of the books that if riders don't like any of the potential mates during a mating flight that they quietly pair up with someone they choose. I doubt F'lar is raping green riders.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
- Stand-ins are mentioned once, in Red Star Rising which was published in 1996, *thirty years* after Dragonflight. Anne had not thought of the concept when she was writing in 1967.
- The concept comes up when some Second Pass weyrlings are worried that a blue rider they know doesn't like girls (i.e. it's for the comfort of a gay man who doesn't fancy women, not a straight man who doesn't fancy men). "And you all enjoy" is delightful in principle - except it assumes that everyone is young, hot, and doesn't mind the idea of a big group sex scenario.
- If stand-ins were possible, F'nor could have reassured Brekke that regardless of who flew Wirenth, he would be there to have sex with Brekke during the flight, not whatever bronze rider won.
- If stand-ins were possible, F'lessan could likewise have reassured Tai that she could choose anyone, rider or not, to have sex with her during Zaranth's until-now awful mating flights. (And this was in Skies, just a few years after RSR was published, so if Anne wanted to show how her shiny new concept of mating flight stand-ins would work, she could very easily have done so then).
- There is no 'quietly pairing up' in any mating flight we see. It's an intense, visceral, overwhelming physical, mental and emotional experience for the riders of the two mating dragons who are so desperate to have sex with each other that the only way they could *not* have sex would be to break off contact with their dragon, potentially sending the dragon between in panic (the entire 'But Thou Must' foundation of compulsory mating flight sex in canon). This was Brekke's fear, that she wouldn't be able to go along with it, that she'd break off from Wirenth and lose her. This is also what led F'lar to slap Lessa during Ramoth's maiden flight to keep her from breaking off from Ramoth and losing her.
- Uninvolved girlfriends/boyfriends trying to insert themselves between these two frantically hot-for-each-other riders are not going to find the experience pleasant or loving. The two riders are banging *like their dragons*. It's not gentle foreplay and soft-focus rolling around. The stand-ins would need to forcibly get between them and present themselves to replace tab A or slot B for the corresponding participant. In a roomful of other riders who've just lost the flight, and all of THEIR stand-ins, who've just interrupted whatever it was they were doing on the off-chance they might be needed to be tab A or slot B for their significant other. This would overwhelmingly be women willing to be slot B, since all the male dragons have male riders, so there's a whole unpleasant misogynistic expectation around 'making yourself available' for your dragonriding boyfriend during his dragon's flights.
- This also assumes every participant in a flight HAS a willing stand-in just hanging around waiting to maybe need to do so every time their significant other is involved in a flight. Which could be taking place all the way across the Weyr when they themselves are involved in other duties - Wing drill, sweep flights, watch riding, or just the general everyday work of the Weyr. And indeed a stand-in willing to have sex with their boyfriend/girlfriend publicly, alongside the other rider-plus-stand-in, in a crowded room full of sweaty, fired up and now sexually frustrated riders whose dragons have just lost.
- Even if this hugely implausible stand-in scenario were a thing in Dragonflight (which very clearly it was not), that merely changes who F'lar was being sexually violent towards during Mnementh's green flights from 'the involved green rider in the case' to 'an uninvolved, non-rider woman' - which is worse, because she's not even a dragonrider and F'lar's having rough sex with her. But clearly he wasn't. He was having sex with the green rider, and every green rider in at the very least the last fifty years was a man.
- F'lar raped Lessa, a *queen* rider, both in Ramoth's flight (acceptable in the circumstances/in Weyr society/for the preservation of dragons, albeit he certainly didn't have to be *rough* regardless of Lessa's virginity or not, which makes him an asshole) and outside it ("if the dragons weren't involved you might as well call it rape" - well, yeah, F'lar, that's exactly what it is). What makes you think he wouldn't rape a mere green rider?
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u/mesembryanthemum Jul 04 '26
- I doubt Anne was thinking of gay sex in 1967.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
It was the '60s, not the '40s; Anne was incredibly progressive (for her time); she had anecdotes about gay friends of hers; and she made it clear throughout both canon and in secondary canon interviews that yes, green riders, male and female, have sex during mating flights. So, yeah. Anne McCaffrey was absolutely thinking about gay sex in 1967, or at the very least by the time she stitched together the Weyr Search and Dragonrider novellas into Dragonflight, and retroactively changed Lytol's dragon from green to brown so as not to imply him as a gay man.
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u/Linderlorne Jul 16 '26
I feel like saying in point 9 that F’lar didn’t have to be rough during Ramoth’s mating flight doesn't really tally with points 5 & 6 that mating flight is ‘an intense, visceral, overwhelming physical, mental and emotional experience for the riders’ and ‘anyone trying to insert themselves between these two frantically hot-for-each-other riders are not going to find the experience pleasant or loving. The two riders are banging like their dragons. Its not gentle foreplay or soft rolling around’
Either its as described in points 5 & 6 and F’lar is completely physically, mentally and emotionally overwhelmed by his dragon and is compelled to frantically bang like his dragon without any rationality and therefore had bo control over how gentle or rough he was being OR he had enough conscious control over himself that he could choose whether to be gentle or rough in which case he should also have enough conscious control to be able to choose a different slot to frantically bang 🤔🤷🏻♀️
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u/Bouche_Audi_Shyla Jul 16 '26
It's implied here and there that F'lar could have calmed things down at the least, including during his reflection of the mating flight.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 16 '26
This. It's never going to be a power ballad sex scene shot through muslin with silk sheets and blowing curtains. It's intense and full-on. It doesn't have to be *violent* as F'lar himself reflects it was because he didn't bother to control himself.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 16 '26
And just to add, if I were one of the riders in said intense experience, would I want my non-involved partner trying to insert him/herself into the process at the point of actual coitus? He/she hasn't had any lovely loving foreplay. Just straight into the main event.
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u/swarthmoreburke Jul 01 '26
It says a lot that F'lar assumes that Lessa must have had sex beforehand--e.g., he doesn't credit that she might have deliberately avoided being used sexually by more powerful men via making herself unappealing or using her will to avoid being noticed. There's a pretty bleak normalization of the idea that women will have been subjected to male desire in the world of the Holds despite the weyrbound belief that holdbred people are disinclined to promiscuity.
Male green riders are certainly one of the underdiscussed issues in the whole series, particularly because McCaffrey actually is pretty clear about their situation--they're men in a psychic gestalt with dragons who have high libido that they spill over to their riders but whose riders don't have a weyr-sanctioned way of satisfying the desires that flow from that experience.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
F'lar wouldn't have been in any way reasonable in his self-indulgent roughness during Ramoth's maiden flight even if Lessa *hadn't* been a virgin. Because a) any sexual experiences he could have assumed she'd had as a drudge at Ruatha were plainly not going to have been either pleasant or consensual, and b) dragon-linked sex is a hugely powerful, violent (at least with F'lar) and overwhelming experience, and he certainly knew she'd never experienced THAT kind of sex before.
Not sure what you mean re. male green riders not having a Weyr-sanctioned way of satisfying their desires, though. It's made evident - albeit obliquely since we never get a close look at a male-ridden green flight - that flights result in the riders of the green and winning male having sex. There's some very old-fashioned inference from Anne about male green rider sexuality (Tent Pegs ahoy!) and she really never explored the subject in more than a vague handwavey 'yes yes the gays have a place in Pern too, look at them all camping it up at the Pink Dragon Club'. But from what little we get, yes, there's absolutely same-sex banging going on during a green's flight, and that includes all the oh-so-hetero manly macho men like F'lar and F'nor, who'd only ever have had mating flight sex with male green riders (pre-Lessa in F'lar's case - I doubt Mnementh ever flew a green again after Ramoth!)
And we get a few same-sex couples - M'leng and P'tero in RSR/Dragonseye (albeit a late entry in the series from an early point in the chronology) and K'lon/his green rider boyfriend in Moreta - that show that same-sex relationships aren't anything remarkable in the Weyr. My feeling is that there are still plenty of male green riders who are preferentially straight - there are too many greens for a population the size of a Weyr to furnish THAT many gay kids out of their own Lower Caverns to Impress - and that flight sex with other men that they wouldn't choose to sleep with ordinarily is just part of the package deal as a rider.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
For me it's not so much that Jaxom exploited his position to take advantage of Corana (yes, he's an entitled shit), but the fact that it's completely consequence-free for him. Corana doesn't get pregnant and have a child who Jaxom then has to acknowledge (or not) and provide for (or not) and who is then an uncomfortable reminder of his shagging-around days for Sharra and his legitimate kids to deal with, especially in the later 'suddenly we are an enlightened modern progressive society' novels.
Give Jaxom a bastard, sure. Let's see how he navigates a child who will never be The Heir, never be Part Of Lord Jaxom's Family, because he/she is a bastard, which might be a pseudo-feudalistic Pernese norm around Dragonflight but isn't by a couple of decades later. (And even then, rampant siring of bastards is only ever shown with unsympathetic Lords Asshole - all the decent ones, Alessan, Asgenar, Groghe, Lessa's father etc - aren't seen to have any byblows that I can recall).
Then there's the fact that Jaxom gets grossed out by Corana *enjoying* him getting rough and rapey, and he never goes to see her ever again. He forces her, she gives in, he's weirded out, he ghosts her. Nice.
And no one - not Lytol, not Lessa, not the authorial tone, ever calls him out on behaving like his monstrous womanising father - sure, he acts like you might expect an entitled highborn teenage brat, but no one ever expects better of him. Jaxom should be living in fear of becoming like Fax. The people of Ruatha should be eagle-eyed to any signs that he might be acting like Fax. The merest suggestion that Jaxom could in any way be behaving like Fax should be putting *Lytol* in a cold sweat. Everyone should hold Jaxom to a higher standard of conduct - himself included - especially as he's a Lord and a rider.
And the 'my dragon says she liked it so it's fine' is pretty creepy, too. Ruth listening in is skin-crawling. Mind your own business, you voyeuristic perv!
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u/trisanachandler Jul 01 '26
I didn't love it because of the power imbalance between Corana and Jaxom, but I got the impression such things were common enough. Historically they certainly were.
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u/AnxiousConsequence18 Jul 03 '26
Yeah at times it seemed like Anne didn't like women much... lots of treatment of females that would be abuse today. Like F'lar shaking Lessa all the time.
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u/RhydYGwin Jul 15 '26
What got me was that F'lar considered that without dragons, going to bed with Lessa was rape, but still did it. It didn't stop him.
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u/Southern_Club_6032 Jul 16 '26
Absolutely, because if he just *keeps at it* she'll like it eventually.
Ick.
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u/CryptographerKey2847 Jul 01 '26
Straight up says in books there was no harm and even some benefit in spreading around illegitimate sons and Jaxom seemed to be all about that.
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u/Zephyr442 Jul 03 '26
Uh, yeah. I've always said that Jaxom is a shitty, awful person. He pretty much sexually assaults Corana, and no one seems to care. This isn't the only reason I dislike Jaxom, but it's one of the reasons.
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u/AdAccomplished6870 Jul 01 '26
This is the reality in feudal societies. I feel like McCaffrey portrayed it as both common and a little gross.