Dragonriders of Pern AU

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Tropes and genres
Related tropes/genresDragon AU
See alsoDragon (creature), Dragonriders of Pern, Fusion (genre)
Related articles on Fanlore.

A Dragonriders of Pern AU or Fusion (genre) is a subset of Dragon AUs that incorporates elements from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series.

Unlike a Daemon AU, which may or may not be set within the world of His Dark Materials, nearly all Dragonriders fusions are set in Pern or a very Pern-like world. The details of said world may be altered to fit the characters' original canon, but the key components of a Pern fusion include Pern's Weyrs and dragon colors, an ongoing battle against Thread (a force that falls out of the sky and consumes all biological matter in its path), and telepathic bonds with dragons that form upon the dragon's hatching.

For many years, Pern fusions were highly uncommon due to McCaffrey's heavily-enforced rules for fanworks based on her books. Many sites including FanFiction.Net refused to host Pern fanworks, period. In 2004, the rules were relaxed and FF.Net finally opened a category for the Pern series, including crossover and fusion works.

Common Tropes

One of the most common tropes used in Pern fusions is the mating flight, in which a female dragon is pursued by various males and mated by the strongest flyer. The resulting sensations carry over to their riders. While riders in canon technically have the option to have sex with a partner of their choosing instead, fanfiction nearly always uses mating flight as a form of Sex Pollen that brings out hidden feelings, or as a form of arranged marriage. More rarely, characters may be bonded to fire lizards instead of dragons.

According to Anne McCaffrey's original rules, Green dragons are Impressed only by women and effeminate gay men, Gold dragons by straight women, Bronze and Brown dragons by straight men, and Blue dragons by masculine gay men. These rules, along other questionable statements on gender and sexuality by McCaffrey, have been challenged by fans over the years, and eventually the later books became more permissive. A Pern fusion may strictly follow the original rules, completely disregard them, or pointedly subvert them: for example, in a subversion, a male character may unexpectedly become the first man ever to impress a Gold queen. Other stories may dispense with the original rules completely and have characters riding any color of dragon without question.

Some fics incorporate the Pern tradition of shortening a male rider's birth name after they Impress their dragon (e.g. the canon Fallarnon to F'lar), while others keep names the same for clarity's sake. Likewise, the dragons may or may not have names that end with -th as in the Pern books. Dragons are usually original characters, but they may also be a re-interpreted version of a pet or iconic item from the source canon.

Example Fanworks

Fics

Art

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