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Lleu: Hello!
Tequila Mockingbird: And welcome to Dragons Made Me Do It one of potentially many podcasts about Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, but the only one by us.
Lleu: I’m Lleu.
Tequila Mockingbird: And I'm Tequila Mockingbird.
Lleu: And today we are continuing our unhinged discussion of numbers.
Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause we just couldn’t get enough of it. Shall we talk about dragons?
Lleu: Let's talk about dragons. So, I am, I think, broadly on board, with the speculations from News from Bree about dragon populations. So, first of all, we do get some hard numbers for that. There are 1,800 who come forward in time, so that's approximately — well, no, that's exactly 360 —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yep.
Lleu: — dragons per Weyr. It seems likely… Later numbers that we get indicate that they regard 500 as being the appropriate number. So the 360 number is from the end of the pass. If we are thinking about dragon demographics that also — I don't think that Mccaffrey had put this much thought into it, but — that would also add to some of the tensions. If the Oldtimers, especially, are not producing large clutches and are not producing queens because their dragons are kind of entering the Interval cycle —
Tequila Mockingbird: Winding down. Yeah.
Lleu: — rather than the beginning of the Pass cycle, that maybe also explains some of the tensions and the complaints about, “Oh, there’s so much land area that we have to cover.” It's like, well, not only is there more land area, but also your dragons are not actually…
Tequila Mockingbird: At replacement rate.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: And I think it's fascinating to question, because the… Humans cannot control when a dragon rises, or the size of a clutch. We are told that, “Oh, they have bigger clutches, as a Pass approaches, and then they have smaller clutches as we start to go to an Interval.” And so my question is, is that supposed to be something that Kitti Ping Yung programmed in?
Lleu: It kind of has to be, right?
Tequila Mockingbird: Right? So is is the implication that the dragons can tell when the Red Star is going to be approaching, or is that just a every 200 years thing? ’Cause I feel like it would be a lot easier to program in every X generations than when an astrological body is within a certain range.
Lleu: Especially considering that they did not —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — explicitly in Dragonsdawn they did not fully understand the orbit of the Red Star.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: So I think it has to be that they're designed — because they did know how long a Pass would take and how long the Interval between a Pass would be in Dragonsdawn — so that it's set up for roughly every this many generations, you just start to get bigger sizes, and then, call it 10-15 generations after that, you go back down to smaller ones, but…
Lleu: That also doesn't make any sense.
Tequila Mockingbird: That seems like a wicked hard — yeah.
Lleu: I mean, it implies that dragons have a kind of internal biological clock, as a species as a whole, that is telling them how many generations it's been.
Tequila Mockingbird: And I mean, I don't not think that that's in line with the broader generational memory of fire lizards, question mark?
Lleu: Yeah, question, mark?
Tequila Mockingbird: Very question mark; very question mark, all of this. But also dragons can sense Thread.
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: And we don't really know how they do that other than generally, “Oh, they're sort of psychic. Dot dot dot…”
Lleu: Yeah. Well, all Pernese life, up to and including, by the Ninth Pass, humans and herdbeasts, seems to have some kind of innate awareness of the advent of Thread.
Tequila Mockingbird: Which is wild.
Lleu: Even at the beginning of Renegades — and part of this is eventually revealed to be kind of Harper Hall propaganda, but also — there's rumors circulating about the return of Thread, and people are giving them more —
Tequila Mockingbird: Right.
Lleu: — credence than you might expect after 400 years of nothing.
Tequila Mockingbird: I would be inclined to put that down to Harper Hall propaganda, rather than —
Lleu: Yeah, but I think that, like —
Tequila Mockingbird: — a latent psychic ability to sense the oncoming approach of an astrological phenomenon.
Lleu: Yes, but the, like, the Harper Hall propaganda has clearly found fertile ground
Tequila Mockingbird: Uh-huh.
Lleu: People, for example, don’t seem to have changed their opinion of the Weyr at that point, but in spite of that there does seem to be at least some popular awareness of, like, “Hmm. Thread’s gonna come back soon, maybe.”
Tequila Mockingbird: That to me feels more in line with innate superstition, or innate paranoia.
Lleu: Mm.
Tequila Mockingbird: “Something bad is gonna happen. Something bad could happen. You never can tell. You gotta be sure.” In a way that, especially since we are told that Fax is somewhat unique. He's a… visionary in terms of interpersonal violence, on a structural or a larger level, on Pern. So if you don't have internecine violence within communities, I could believe that Thread has taken that cultural place of the bogeyman under your bed, or the thing that you hate, and that there would then be a cultural reinforcement of —
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: — stories about how bad Thread is and being afraid that it's gonna come back and “behave or Thread will get you” kind of as a cultural concept.
Lleu: Yeah. I think it fits into a larger trend, of awareness of Thread, in ways that are not necessarily…
Tequila Mockingbird: Possible? Plausible?
Lleu: Immediately explicable or possible. Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: *cough* Fantasy series. *cough*
Lleu: There are a few things that I am thinking about. One is the rate at which Ramoth is having mating flights. We are told that.
Lleu: Present Pass 20, so 21 years after her first mating flight, is her 35th clutch. Which is about 1.6 per turn. Which is a lot!
Tequila Mockingbird: That is a lot.
Lleu: If every queen dragon is having the same number of clutches and also having 25 to 35 eggs per clutch…
Tequila Mockingbird: Although I do think that some of that is how special and amazing Ramoth is. We're told that her clutches are larger than other queens, that she is the largest queen, things like that.
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: And I could also believe, although I do not insist upon, the fact that she genuinely has a emotional romantic relationship with Mnementh might mean that they are rising to make more often than other queen dragons might be.
Lleu: Hm.
Tequila Mockingbird: As I said, I don't insist upon it, but it occurs to me that that could be possible.
Lleu: I'm not sure I buy that in part, because I don't think it's… I don't know. I was gonna say I don't think it's a necessary explanation. I kind of think it is a necessary explanation, because otherwise I think the number of new dragonriders per year is simply much greater than any reasonable number of dragonrider casualties per year.
Tequila Mockingbird: But, on the other hand, the books make a point of telling us that a certain number of Weyrlings just die, that learning how to go between is incredibly dangerous and learning how to fly Threadfall is incredibly dangerous, and that there's a certain, I think not low, percentage of the average dragonrider cohort that doesn't make it to even become a full dragonrider.
Lleu: Yeah…
Tequila Mockingbird: Because I do think it implies that the population of dragons is stable, which would suggest that whatever number of eggs are being hatched is the replacement rate. Now I could also believe that Ramoth, especially at the beginning, was having more clutches than. Maybe it's not 1.6 every year; maybe it was two a year for the first five years and then tapering off as there were more queen dragons, because there was some kind of instinctual, for a while she was the only queen, and so there was a significant urge to have as many eggs as possible. “The pass is starting. Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!” And then, as that becomes less and less important and she gets older, it trails off.
Lleu: Yeah, I just… I don't know. I don't think the numbers add up.
Tequila Mockingbird: No.
Lleu: And that's sort of the conclusion that News from Bree reaches, is that in order to make this make sense. You have to make a bunch of judgment calls about how many novice riders die, how many older riders die, which don't actually match up with the numbers that we are given in the book for, for example, the first Threadfall of Ninth Pass, where only one person dies, and there are some other serious injuries, but none of them are permanent injuries.
Tequila Mockingbird: Sure.
Lleu: If there's one death in the first Threadfall —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — when they have no prior experience actually fighting Thread.
Tequila Mockingbird: But I think what Moreta suggests is that deaths come from complacency as much as anything else.
Lleu: Mhm.
Tequila Mockingbird: And that that might be much more likely towards the end of a pass, both in terms of, you think you know what you're doing so you're not as desperately focused on — right? Because I really believe that all of those dragonriders in that first Threadfall of the Ninth Pass were giving it 110% of their focus and energy. This was, like, “Oh, my God!”
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: Whereas it might become more workaday. And you're like, “Oh, yeah, okay.” And then that's when you fail to visualize, and also you would get tired, right?
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: Because, deaths coming in and out of between are, I would say, vastly more likely when you're tired.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: And as the Pass continues, you would get more and more exhausted.
Lleu: Yeah…
Tequila Mockingbird: So I would believe that you aren’t generally getting a lot of dragonrider casualties the first, you know, four or five years of a Pass, but in the last four or five that number might really go up.
Lleu: I'm just a little skeptical still —
Tequila Mockingbird: I mean, fair.
Lleu: — in part, because I think that News from Bree’s speculation based on some information that we get a little bit obliquely in Moreta is that queens are generally having smaller clutches later in the Pass, which seems to me like, actually, you would want the opposite of that, because down that road lies, not only are there more dragonrider casualties, but then also more Threads getting through the wings, ’cause there are just fewer dragons, and a bunch of other things that I don't think are really supported by the text.
Tequila Mockingbird: Mhm.
Lleu: I don't know. I just think this is something where McCaffrey did not put a ton of consideration into it —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — and was thinking more about what sounded good narratively.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yes, and that is definitely in keeping with what we see in other places.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause I think the, News from Bree, the number that he gets to is 1.7 deaths per day, and that does seem like, no, we're really just not seeing that.
Lleu: Yeah. I also was going to note that one of the other things that is deeply inconsistent in connection with this is the amount of dragons of different colors that we see in clutches, and I’ll — we'll talk more in a second about actual overall color ratios. But there aren't that many clutches where we get detailed information about how many dragons of each color are available. In fact, there's no clutch where the whole clutch is accounted for.
Tequila Mockingbird: Mhm.
Lleu: But the ones where we do get large information about large, a large percentage of the clutch are way disproportionately bronzes. Prideth’s first clutch is 35 eggs, of which 14 are bronzes. Like, that's bonkers.
Tequila Mockingbird: Ridiculous. Those should be greens.
Lleu: More than those should be greens, in fact. And by the same token, in Ramoth’s 35th clutch there are, I think, 12 bronzes. Out of 35 eggs. Which is also…
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. Bonkers.
Lleu: Too many. And we're told that F’lar is dissatisfied; he’s like, “Oh, there should’ve been more browns. But the blues and greens is right at least.” But she wanted what would sound good, and what sounds good is lots of bronzes, ’cause everyone knows bronzes are objectively the best kind of dragon. Apparently.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Lleu: Which brings us to the thing that initially made me go, “Oh, we should talk about this for an episode,” which was thinking about how many dragons of each color actually are there. And I went through.
Tequila Mockingbird: How many dragons of each color actually are there, Lleu?
Lleu: That's a great question. So, per Mccaffrey's statements, but not, I believe, explicitly set out in the books, the population ratios of the different colors are: approximately 50% of the population of dragons is greens, approximately 30% blues, approximately 15% browns, approximately 5% bronzes, and approximately 1% queens.
Tequila Mockingbird: So those numbers where you had about 30 bronzes in those clutches, that was really, uh…
Lleu: Uh-huh. Something's gone wrong.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: Overall, I went through and — unscientifically to be fair, but also I think this is probably not unrepresentative — went through all of the books that I have access to, through All the Weyrs of Pern, excluding Dragonsdawn, because the —
Tequila Mockingbird: The ratios are wonky, then, yeah.
Lleu: — dragon demographics in that are explicitly, there are no browns, blues, or greens, and was like, how many dragons and riders of each color do we meet, in fact? The answer is, of the 130 dragons and riders that we meet, 37 are queens, which is 30% of the total; 49 are bronzes, which is 38% of the total; 17 plus or minus one, depending on how we feel about —
Tequila Mockingbird: Larth.
Lleu: — Lytol’s dragon, Larth, are browns, which is 13% of the total; only 11 are blues, which is 8% of the total; and 15, plus or minus Larth, are greens, which is about 12% of the total.
Tequila Mockingbird: I would, I would personally say that Larth was a brown in terms of that distribution, ’cause that seems to be what she sticks with.
Lleu: Yeah, I do think that there are probably other reasons why she —
Tequila Mockingbird: But, yeah, fair.
Lleu: — made that decision.
Tequila Mockingbird: Uh-huh.
Lleu: But in any case…
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. Now, to be fair, that's pulling from multiple different time periods. So that's not supposed to be —
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: — the dragons who’re all alive on Pern at once, and it represents — far more than an attempt to be an impartial survey — who are the protagonist characters.
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause we're frequently learning the name of every single queen and rider on Pern at the time. We know all of the queens during the Sixth Pass, and all of the queens during the Ninth Pass, in a way where it's never even suggested that we know all of the blues. Even within a Weyr.
Lleu: Yes. However, in point of fact, if we look at just dragons who are named in Moreta —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — actually, Moreta has some of the most information about blues and greens of any of the books. So I think if we looked at — I didn't do the Moreta percentages separately —
Tequila Mockingbird: Right.
Lleu: — but I believe that if we look at the Moreta percentages we will find that they are much more — I mean, still gonna be skewed towards queens and bronzes, because we do meet —
Tequila Mockingbird: Right.
Lleu: — every Weyrwoman on Pern, basically.
Tequila Mockingbird: And all the Weyrleaders at the conference, and things.
Lleu: But I think that they will be slightly less absurdly skewed.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: Which is to say, I'm looking at just the number of blues here and there are one, two, three, four blue riders named in all of the main timeline.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: And seven named just in Moreta.
Tequila Mockingbird: Although she had to have blue writers, because for some reason in Moreta she just hates blue riders.
Lleu: True, yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: They're just all out there being rude and incompetent, inexplicably.
Lleu: Yeah, it's — it’s so weird, what is —? Anyway.
Tequila Mockingbird: It's so weird. And I think, in the same way where, if you looked at the protagonist of regency romance novels you would come to the conclusion that 60% of the population of England was dukes —
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: — in the 1810s. It's who we choose to focus on narratively, because we want characters who have agency and who are fun and special and who get to do cool things in the story. That's bronzes and queens.
Lleu: Well, and who will be enthusiastic participants in monogamous heterosexual romances.
Tequila Mockingbird: Right. On one hand, it makes sense that she's focusing her protagonist energy there. On the other hand, I do think it is a little ridiculous to think about, in terms of…
Lleu: She's written herself into a corner by being so emphatic about, “Bronzes are the best. Bronze dragons are the best dragons. Everyone wants to have a bronze.” Which means every sympathetic character in the books has to be a —
Tequila Mockingbird: Has to be a bronze writer.
Lleu: — bronze rider, ’cause they're the best ones.
Tequila Mockingbird: Truly, it's F’nor for Canth, and do we really get any other significant characters who ride a dragon of a different color?
Lleu: P’tero in Dragonseye —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — and K’lon, sort of, in Moreta. And then…mm…
Tequila Mockingbird: You’d make an argument for Mirrim, I guess.
Lleu: I believe Tai is a POV character in Skies of Pern, although I haven't read it since 2003.
Tequila Mockingbird: And is Debera…?
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: So it's not that they don't exist, but that the ratios are wildly skewed.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: And I think also, yeah, just in terms of, I don't know, filling out the backstory or the the side characters, she could use a little more of a skew towards blues and browns and greens.
Lleu: Yeah. And, to be fair, we do often get kind of passing references to a green rider or a blue rider who are not named, and so it's impossible to track —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah, fair.
Lleu: — that. But I think that they might still be outnumbered overall by the number of bronzes that we are aware of.
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah. I think, to me, more damning than which characters does she give names, page time, and protagonist time, is the number of eggs in the clutch, because that is supposed to be broadly representative of the number of dragons out there.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: And that's just sloppy.
Lleu: It frankly kind of just feels to me like once she'd been like, “Hmm, green riders are all gay.” She was like, “Hmm! Also, we’ve gotta have there be way less of them than I implied there were earlier.”
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah; yeah. You were also calculating mating flight rates, right?
Lleu: Yes.
Tequila Mockingbird: If we're assuming that green dragons rise to mate.
Lleu: Oh, my god. Yeah. If we assume that green dragons are rising to me at a comparable rate to queens, and if we are also assuming — first of all, if green dragons do, in fact, make up approximately 50% of the dragon population —
Tequila Mockingbird: Uh-huh.
Lleu: Let's take 360 as our dragon population.
Tequila Mockingbird: Which I think is fair, if a little low.
Lleu: Let's pretend that that is accurate, and that the 500 that they say is —
Tequila Mockingbird: Aspirational.
Lleu: — is actually too high. Yeah, aspirational.
Tequila Mockingbird: ’Cause I think they say that that's the number of spaces for dragons in a Weyr.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: And at the point where they're actually building the Weyrs, they didn't know how many dragons they would settle on, because that was still while they were trying to build the number of dragons up.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: So I could absolutely believe that the initial settlements, they were like, “I don't know, put in 500 Weyrs. That's probably about right.”
Lleu: Yeah. Well, I think some of the numbers that we get later on when they're talking about establishing Eastern Weyr, or Monaco Bay Weyr, down the Southern Continent, I think that suggests a number more like 500 per Weyr. But in any case, let's say there's 360. That would mean approximately 180 greens, which, at a rate of 1.6 mating flights per year, would mean 288 green mating flights per year.
Tequila Mockingbird: And when you also have a handful of queen meeting flights that's like a meeting flight not every day but more than every other day.
Lleu: Yeah, which is very silly.
Tequila Mockingbird: No wonder that they need someone to tithe to them. They don't have any time to do anything other than have orgies.
Lleu: Yeah.
Tequila Mockingbird: They're so busy having orgies. How do they even fight Thread?
Lleu: This is, again, one of the inconsistencies of the series is how mating flights are portrayed. Sometimes we're told that it's all-consuming, and we're told explicitly in Dragonquest that mating flights are psychically projected on everyone in the area. And we see this also in The White Dragon with the one green meeting flight —
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: — but then also in Dragonflight there's a passing mention of a green meeting flight which is, F’lar and Lessa are down in the records room, and they hear a dragon screeching up above, and F’lar’s like, “Oh, another green's getting herself chased again,” implying that actually it's totally fine and this doesn't affect anyone. And then we get the Ista mating flight in The White Dragon, where, first of all, F’lar is just there, apparently —
Tequila Mockingbird: Just hanging out.
Lleu: — but Mnementh is somehow excluded from the mating flight.
Tequila Mockingbird: Mnementh is married!
Lleu: And also they brought Robinton to the Weyr for what we have previously been given to understand is going to be a Weyr-wide orgy, so I guess that's fine?
Tequila Mockingbird: Yes. I don't understand why you're confused about this. He gets perks.
Lleu: So it's all just very inconsistent, and I don't think she thought about the numbers, but also out of curiosity. I wonder what if we take —
Tequila Mockingbird: A lower number of greens, yeah.
Lleu: — the 11.9% to be the accurate number.
Tequila Mockingbird: Even call it 20% and assume we, we just don't know names. I think you could also plausibly suggest that greens don't rise to mate as often as gold dragons do, because…
Lleu: If we took 11% as accurate, that would only be 69 green meeting flights per year.
Tequila Mockingbird: Nice.
Lleu: Very funny; I mean it's rounded up, but still. Nice. Which is way less unreasonable, but also…
Tequila Mockingbird: Yeah.
Lleu: …doesn't align with how many greens we're told they need and also is still kind of a lot!
Tequila Mockingbird: Even that is putting it at, like, two meeting flights a week.
Lleu: Well, one and a bit, anyway.
Tequila Mockingbird: Remember, you are also gonna have some gold mating flights.
Lleu: Yes, that's true.
Tequila Mockingbird: So it's just, if you're having a meeting every four or five days, that’s chaos.
Lleu: Let's see. If they're 20%, that's…115 green flights per year, so one every three days. Ish.
Tequila Mockingbird: Just in terms of, again, the material culture, like, where are the weird getting all of this lube?
Lleu: One meeting flight every three days, and also presumably mating flights do not happen when there's going to be Threadfall, which the dragons kind of be aware of.
Tequila Mockingbird: Right.
Lleu: Otherwise presumably that would be mentioned at some point.
Tequila Mockingbird: So during an actual Pass, it’s gonna be, orgy, Threadfall, orgy, Threadfall — they're gonna be too tired to — that's why they're all dying.
Lleu: Apparently!
Tequila Mockingbird: They’re all dying because they're too fucked out to fly correctly.
Lleu: Yeah, that's kind of the only conclusion that we can reach, even with a small number of greens, and with a larger number of greens… I don't know what to say.
Tequila Mockingbird: The conclusion that we have to draw, based on the information we are canonically given, is that a large number of dragon riders die every year because they have had too much sex and they are too exhausted to safely fight Thread. And that the solution to this is to just lay more dragon eggs and have more orgies and have more dragons, so that you have a replacement rate, and you can continue to fight safely.
Lleu: And that, I think, is a great place for us to conclude this set of unhinged ranting and some very detailed numbers from Tequila.
Tequila Mockingbird: Thanks for listening to this episode of Dragons Made Me Do It! If you enjoyed it and want to hear more, you can follow us on tumblr at dmmdipodcast.tumblr.com for updates, or to send us questions or comments, and you can find our archive of episodes, along with transcripts, recommendations, funny memes, and more at dmmdipodcast.neocities.org — N E O cities.