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“Of all the female sins, hunger is the least forgivable; hunger for anything, for food, sex, power, education, even love.”

— Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things. (via mythaelogy)

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Some fun out of context things from tonight's over an hour long game changer episode

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not to like out myself as having whatever problems I have but if Sam Reich gave me an extremely bizarre and detailed list of tasks and one year to not only complete it but complete it better than two other people, I feel like it would really fix my life. clarity of purpose would find me to an extent that it never has before.

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you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands

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Today’s real life horse shenanigans

Sometimes a horse just has to yeehaw

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WHER HYPNOTISM!

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Secret Santa for someone on Meraki Weyr this year!

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this was such an interesting read!

I think it's important to acknowledge that every site is a little different and those differences aren't necessarily good or bad so much as to one tastes or not to one's tastes... with the exception of yeah, OP aos 100% right about how the fandom sees its canon.

My point being this: it's okay to try out a site and decide it's not for you, for any reason or no reason. You don't have to justify leaving if you're not having the experience you wanted!

With that said, I'm on Meraki and adore it, I'd whole heartedly recommend Fortune Favors the Brave as well. I couldn't keep up playing both sites, but I think they're quite different and equally fantastic, if I had time for two I would still play on FFtB too

i've been wanting to get into pern rp, do you have any tips/suggestions?

hey sorry for the late response, for some reason tumblr forgot to tell me

thank you for this ask!! i would love to answet it fully and completely but it would be a very long answer!! basically a breakdown of how to scope out an rp that will fit you.

here are some broad based ideas to get you started as you shop for an rp:

check activity. find an rp that aligns eith your preferred activity level -- if you want to perfect every post and trade replies weekly, look for evidence of that, if you want daily replies, look for that

check recently approved characters to see if they match the vibe you want -- a lot of times the lore doesn't match the vibe of the site, so something can look really cool based on the lore but actually have become a different vibe over time

pern rp particularly has a pretty bad time with staffing all of their ranker-players. if eventually attaining a ranking/leadership/plot relevant character is your thing, look for evidence that the admin team does that (evidence, not them sayimg so in the rules)

here's some things i do that may not work for you:

i don't bother to read the rules until i've basically made up my mind if i'm going to try to play there. i go for the dragon info page (and wher page if the site does whers) and read through the description of the canon and special colors. are greens forced/expected to be stupid sluts? are bronzes forced to be noble knightly chads? biiig pass. the way these pages are written can give you a great idea about how flexible and story-oriented the site intends to be. i lean hard either "let me do anything" or "make the restrictions interesting" so ymmv

for jcink rps: go to the bottom of the site, get "today's active topics" and change it to see the past month. pay special attention to who is active in the rp. look at their characters. see if the vibe is right for you

check out the adopts!!! mega points if the admins are cleatly trying to get people to enter leadership positions. big demerits if there is some kind of ban on newbies having leadership. (buying rankers can be neutral or bad, it depends on the site)

for getting into pern rps specifically:

for this purpose i'm going to assume you, nonnie, are somewhat familiar with the books and at least passingly familiar with the art and commentary in the pern tag here on tumblr. i assume you like the books?

it is very important to remember that if the site you are looking at is up front in praising the books, says they really love them, etc., this is a BAD SIGN.

pern rp fandom is (maybe a little bit uniquely?) in an argument with canon, not in conversation with it. there are so many aspects of canon that just suck in an rp setting (ex. lifetime appointment of the senior weyrwoman, meaning the only way to shake that up is for her to die, everything about flights) that even the most canon weyr has yo make concessions to make it playable/comfortable in a group setting.

so if a site up front is like "we're canon. not like those other sites. we actually care about the lore." this is actually a dogwhistle for blatant transphobia, homophobia, favoritism, and really shit moderation. likewise, a tone of anger or vitriol towards more canon-leaning sites is a red flag, they tend also to have extremely narrow views on what the "right" way to play is.

the best way to play a pern game is to take the books as a framework, like baking a cake, that's your flour and egg, you're getting the structure from there but your cake isn't going to taste good unless you get a site willing to spice it up with its little extras and go to the effort of putting some basic butter and baking soda in there to fluff it up. pern in the novels does not work as an open, public rp, it's not a recipe for cake, so everyone adjusts it, the people who say they don't are Lying.

anyway

suggestions

i don't feel comfortable recommending an rp for you nonnie without knowing what you're most interested in. i have heard that at least one site is just starting up so that could be a great place to start.

i'm in the middle of making a site but it's not ready yet

@ followers, kindly recommend your rp spots for nonnie! (don't just drop the ad, give them a feel for the rp. don't leave out the rough bits either, we all know every site has them)

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Women on Bronzes <3

Nellumi of Bronze Muth!

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Okay, hear me out.

What if Pern dragons were WAAAAY more like colony insects?

Gold = Queen

Bronze = Drone

Chromatics = Workers

Brown = Soldier/Major

Blue = Media

Green = Minor

So you've got these pretty obvious and almost perfect correlations. But if you make them actually function like their ant/bee counterparts, a bunch of fun things happen!

Queens are still the baby-makers, but Bronzes/Drones are the ONLY ones physically capable of mating with them.

Browns/Soldiers and Blues/Media are not actually "male", they're the same caste/sex as Greens/Minors (which is not exactly "female" either).

Bronzes/Drones do not have fathers! All Bronzes/Drones are born from unfertilized eggs (they have a set of single chromosomes, instead of the full set of chromosome pairs).

Chromatics/Workers can rarely lay eggs, but they can only produce Bronze/Drone eggs because they can't mate to produce fertilized eggs.

Fertilized eggs become Chromatic/Worker eggs.

To get a Queen egg, you need a Queen, a Drone to fertilize her eggs, AND THEN you need a bunch of Chromatics/Workers to coat a Chromatic/Worker egg in Queen goo, causing it to change from a Chromatic/Worker to a Queen.

TO RECAP:

To create a Bronze/Drone, you only need a Queen.

To create any Chromatic/Worker, you need a Queen and at least 1 Bronze/Drone.

To create a Queen, you need a Queen, at least 1 Bronze/Drone, and a hoard of Chromatics/Workers.

I'd also like to note, in RL insect hives, the Queen doesn't direct the workers to create or choose a new Queen. The workers collectively decide when and which egg to convert. I feel like this helps with the common Main Character Syndrome that Golds and Bronzes get in Pern stuff.

So... Yeah. For your consideration.

If anyone wants to do anything with this concept, do! Have fun!

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"Something about his lack of urgency speaks to you on a fundamental level."

Dragonchoice's moon-blue Molluth seven times different

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Thinking about dragon populations and typing again: the main difference between the Old Timer and 9th Pass Benden dragons was the size, but what if hundreds of Turns of line breeding had resulted in some really weird differences?

What if all of Benden's dragons were just...Really dark coloured, or really light? What if all the bronzes and blues were on the green end of their spectrums? All the browns are super red toned? Do they have oversized heads and gangly legs? A tendency for big eyes? Extra toes? Too much wing membrane?

All the Old Timers pitch up like "Well, yeah, that is a dragon, and I guess they're not too different..." but sometimes it's a little uncanny valley when they spot them flying over.

(This isn't a specific musing about inbreeding itself (or why Anne's canon that triple helix DNA magically solving that problem is weird) but sometimes I just like the idea of riders being able to tell where a dragon comes from at a glance – "oh, that brown has a massive tail, do you think he's from Doeth's line?". Like how sometimes dog people can tell who bred what dog.)

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It would be SO EASY to make Pern another planet that got cut off from the Nexus by wormhole collapse. Or to have been colonized before wormhole navigation was even a thing, because they did indeed plan to be cut off.

But can you imagine everyone discovering that dragons can inherently navigate five-dimensionally.

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Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey

Cover art by Elizabeth Malczynski

Bantam 1977

For centuries, the world of Pern has faced a destructive force known as Thread. But the number of magnificent dragons who have protected this world and the men and women who ride them are dwindling.

As fewer dragons ride the winds and destruction falls from the sky, Menolly has only one to sing, play, and weave the music that comes to her so easily—she wishes to become a Harper. But despite her great talents, her father believes that a young girl is unworthy of such a respected position and forbids her to pursue her dreams. So Menolly runs away, taking shelter in a cave by the sea. Miraculously, she happens upon nine fire lizards that could possibly save her world...and change her life forever.