Comments | boymeat: A tale of me and dragons.

boymeat

A tale of me and dragons.

Nov 23, 2011 11:54

I was very sad to read this morning that Anne McCaffrey, the famed fantasy author well-known for her Dragonriders of Pern series, had passed away on the 21st.

Now, while I am a self-identified sci-fi/fantasy geek, I actually have to shamefully admit that I have never actually read any of her novels. But her death fills me with sadness, as she was ( Read more... )

Comments 8

kaylaraine November 23 2011, 17:29:20 UTC

That's a great story. Do you still keep in touch with the girls?

boymeat November 23 2011, 17:37:46 UTC

Thank you! I've really enjoyed revisiting this memory.

Unfortunately, after they went off to high school, we fell out of touch. I wouldn't even know how to find them - I forgot their last names!

sadisticseraph November 23 2011, 17:53:51 UTC

I actually have a *number* of stories like that so you needn't feel too embarrassed. This is a great reminder of the power of stories and writing, though. Thank you for sharing it.

eric_mathgeek November 23 2011, 18:17:29 UTC

Wow, that's awesome.

Not McCaffrey dying, though... I read the first three books in high school, and absolutely fell in love with them. When I saw Avatar, and they did the scene riding the flying animals (really the only scene in the movie that I liked), I thought -- ok, NOW they should make a Dragonriders movie.

kayt_arminta November 23 2011, 19:07:56 UTC

That story made me cry.... I've never read her books either, but for me it's, she didn't write in a style that I can read comfortably. I've got OCD, so a book has to be just so for me to read it. Still, what a loss.

caprinus November 23 2011, 19:57:14 UTC

*schpounce*!

Odd, I'd have thought she'd fall under the "Ruins of Ambrai" kind of category for you. But I only really liked the first Pern book.

kayt_arminta November 23 2011, 20:00:25 UTC

And those books were really hard for me to read, I honestly had to skip certain parts, but I still loved them. Her work was just too far out there for my brain to go with it. I love you Orbisaur!

caprinus November 23 2011, 19:55:28 UTC

Wow, that's both totally cool and totally creepy. I'm glad Jules was herself wise enough to acknowledge what she was doing, why she was doing it, and whom she was doing it for, and to step out of character for the sake of a person who didn't need that kind of help and stumbled into their private world accidentally -- that's cool. The number of people who take on her role without her self-awareness, and lead their entire adult lives submerged in a literary construct, often using its rules to control and manipulate impressionable partners, with no exit strategy and no insight into the difference between their personhood and their persona -- that's the creepy part. As I was reading this I was cringing it would not have a happy ending, because I've seen this scenario take flight so often -- from Goreans to "alien babies" to millenial/apocalyptic religious communities to WoW addicts, from Dragon Otherkin to "energy vampires" to conspiracy theorists to neopagans with claims of "unbroken tradition". (And I'd like to make clear I find no ( ... )