That's the thing. In those first two novels, we don't have those rigid preferences...F'nor canonically states that greens love a brown that's almost as big as a bronze, but there's a hint of things to come if changing Lytol's dragon from a green to a brown was intentional. (I don't think it was, as I mapped out far too many continuity errors in her works to give her that much).

But yeah, the tent peg thing, and then taking a canonically gay guy and fixing him up with the heroine in Tower and the Hive through Aliens Made Them Do It...