Again, you are critizising based on today.
She was writing at a time when competent female characters were not only rare but almost totatly unheard of. That was the point of the story
You’re like the people who think old movies are riddled with clichés…when they weren’t cliché at the time.
She was publishing in the late 60s and early 70s! Hardly “the olden days”. Her constant “good to be shy/virginal, bad to be a slut” meme was getting dated even then.
I wasn’t refering to the sexual stuff, but to this:
[QUOTE=Malacandra]
McCaffrey again with the familiar shtick: Stupid men and their stupid ways oblivious to the harm their stupidity is doing until a brilliant woman, previously held back unjustly because of her sex, comes along and sweeps everything clean.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, at the time it was rare for a sci-fi story to have a female main character who was actually competent, and even be the best at something when running against male competitors.
The only half-way competent women would be the ones who were almost as good as the male hero, so he could look cooler. Having a female character who was unquestioned as the very, very best was refreshing and new at the time (in sci-fi/fantasy specifically, though hardly clichéd in non-genre fiction either).
Brekke was raised in a very strictly moral atmosphere. She would probably not have had a problem with her mating flight except that she had fallen in love with F’nor, who was a brown rider and thus would not have been able to participate in her mating flights.
Kylara, OTOH, was a spoiled bitch whose priorities were: Kylara, anything that would make Kylara feel good, and anything that would get Kylara power. Yes, she is a one-dimensional character, but she’s a spoiled self-centered princess, not a “slut”.
The Pern novels have many other female characters who do enjoy sex without being married or sluts; Sharra and Moreta off the top of my head; probably Menolly as well, but her sex life isn’t discussed as much.
Long time since I read the books – enjoyed them, as far as I got. That was decades ago – never experienced any of the stuff written by the lady’s son…
Memory has got vague and fuzzy, over the years. Re recent discussion – I was mixing up Brekke (F/nor’s partner, very much “worth her keep” once initial sexual trauma overcome) with Bedella (female characters, same initial letter). IIRC now, though, Bedella is the consort of an Oldtimer Weyrlord, whose name I forget; who is not a bad guy as Oldtimers go, but is basically “as dumb as a box of rocks”; and Bedella his partner, is even more stupid – their Weyr is overall more of a hindrance than a help, to the new progressive Pern.
Re-reading perhaps called for – I seem to have forgotten more than I remember…
I did not say that Kylara was a “slut”. I did not even imply that she should be slut-shamed. You had thought that Lessa would have implimented policies to prepare candidates for mating flights. Those were two clear examples that, in fact, she had not done so. Brekke was the one she would have been able to prepare, and Brekke very obviously was not prepared; she was in a near-panic at her first mating flight.
Kylara, by the point of Brekke’s first mating flight, had had at least one mating flight experience back in time, and probably more. Lessa wouldn’t have prepared her for it because (1) Kylara was a candidate with Lessa herself, and (2) Lessa couldn’t stand Kylara anyway.
You didn’t say it, but others have upthread regarding Kylara on basically this topic - that McCaffrey’s female characters are either sluts or rape victims.
I contend that Brekke was as prepared and ready as her background and situation allowed. The lack of readiness that that you perceive is (IMO) not there - she was conflicted because of the dissonance between her upbringing, her love for F’nor, and her duty to and love for her dragon. There is nothing anyone could have done to resolve that conflict.
Brekke’s problem wasn’t her internal conflict, it was her panic when her gold dragon rose to mate and F’nor wasn’t there with Canth.
Indeed, she knew what was coming, and she spent a lot of time dreading it and thinking of things that could go wrong (though she never thought of the actual worst-case scenario). Among other things, she was afraid she’d inflict her inhibitions on her queen and screw up the mating flight.
Her internal conflicts aside, she was clearly better informed than Lessa had been, which suggests that policies had been changed in that regard.
Fun Pern Fact: Kylara and Lady Holdless Thella were sisters. Must have been an interesting family…
Speaking of Kylara, I always thought it was a bit of a waste that the plotline never returned to any of her kids–she left, what, four sons behind? Imagine growing up on Pern and knowing that somebody so infamous was your real mother. 
There’s got to be a story you could build off that.
I’m assuming T’bor was the father of those kids, and he falls out of the books almost completely after Dragonquest after being one of the more important dragonriders in the first 2 books.
They could go chew the fat with Jaxom, who had one of Pern’s biggest scuzzbuckets for a father. 
I’d try and keep it that way. I read a couple of 'em and just… bleargh.
I still enjoy reading the original six, and a few of the later ones: although some of the characters are annoying and some of the later books’ failure to recognise the earlier world, I do like Pern (to the point of being in a fanfic writing club, dragonridersclub.com). Although it’s interesting to see the shift in attitudes in a few short years in Pern-time vs twenty or more in Earth-time (if you get what I mean). Dragonflight is very traditional feudal structure, with hold, hall and weyr, women being powerless, with only de facto power available to them (using their husband’s power, if he has any–say, wife of a Lord Holder). By the time the later novels came out, the world had changed and felt much less feudal.
I read Dragonflight AFTER reading the other five books of the original six and the Pern seen in that book seems very grim compared to what came later. The holds are armed camps, and settling challenges with duels to the death were commonplace. Women are little more than broodmares or kitchen workers. Everything seemed to be decaying. Even hatching and impression have a dark edge to them, as the dragon hatchlings maul and trample candidates who fail to impress.
In later books, McCaffrey smoothed out the rough edges and wrote the characters more sympathetically.