Dragonriders of Pern/YMMV

• Broken Base: Never ask whether the dragons are measured in feet or meters. Oddly enough, there's a composite scale going around that most of the role-players accept quite readily.
  • Rapidly approaching this concerning Todd McCaffrey's books, divided mostly between fans who say "Eh, they're not that bad" and those who consider them ascended fanfiction.
• Deconstruction Fic: A lot of this goes on in RPG groups.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: In All the Weyrs of Pern, chapter 11, in a light-hearted exchange, Golanth boasts that "No feline would challenge me!", with F'lessan agreeing. Not so funny at the end of The Skies of Pern...
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: "Another book series about dragon riders? That's so overdone."
• Values Dissonance: There's a lot of this, some probably deliberate, some not. Pernese culture is feudal, hierarchical, violent, classist, and (after the plague) pretty misogynistic.
  • A measure of Pernese misogyny is that it's considered perfectly normal for a man to "take" a woman who refuses to acknowledge her love for him. F'nor more or less rapes Brekke, and F'lar physically assaults and occasionally humiliates Lessa in earlier books.
    • Notably, F'lar actually thinks to himself that he "might as well call it rape" when he has sex with Lessa and their dragons aren't involved (this is before they actually fall in love). He's vaguely troubled by this but not overwhelmed with guilt or anything, and it doesn't seem to occur to him that maybe he should stop having sex with her unless she actually wants it. He just figures he's pretty good in bed and he'll get her to come around eventually.
  • The way the highborn characters treat lower-ranking individuals is also pretty appalling. Lessa is bad-tempered and judgmental to the point that she nearly causes a political crisis by demanding that an insult be punished; Jaxom generally ranges from thoughtless to downright obnoxious in the way he treats commoners.
  • There's also some Values Dissonance in how the disabled are treated -- in MasterHarper of Pern, Robinton fathers a mentally disabled child. The child's mother urges him to go find peace and happiness by paying attention to the other boys, and not worrying about his so very disappointing retarded kid.
    • The drudges in general are often treated pretty badly. Given that most of them seem to be mentally disabled, this carries Unfortunate Implications.
  • Word of God on how Impression and sexual orientation work implies that riders who aren't 100% heterosexual are barred from leadership positions in the Weyr, as only heterosexuals are supposed to Impress bronze and gold dragons. (Of course, at the time McCaffrey began the series, including any roles at all for non-heterosexuals was considered progressive.)
• The Woobie: Menolly.
  • Early on, very much so. After she comes out of her shell, she's a far more assertive character that only fools would think of messing with.