ChessieCon 2017

With my husband and youngest son, as usual, I spent the weekend after Thanksgiving at ChessieCon (formerly Darkover). Guest of Honor was Ada Palmer, author of the Terra Ignota series. Art Guest of Honor was Megan Willis, a storyboard artist on the MY LITTLE PONY series. She gave a talk with Q & A on the animation process and her own career. The principal musical guest was T. J. Burnside Clapp. I loved her songs and was disappointed to find she doesn't have an album currently available. (The two tapes from her former group, Technical Difficulties, didn't make it onto CD because of an accidental misfortune in the transition process.) However, you can hear her beautiful "Lullaby for a Weary World" on YouTube.

I participated in two panels, on Steven Universe and the appeal of horror, and took part in the Broad Universe rapid-fire reading. My husband was on panels about animals in fantasy fiction and the burning question, "Is it harder to teach science to English majors or English to science majors?" Two of the most thoughtful sessions I attended discussed Feminist SF and Feminist Manga. Neither conversation actually managed to define feminism. The manga session brought up the important point that while a work that grapples with gender issues may be feminist, it doesn't have to be. The two overlap but aren't identical. A high note (so to speak) of the weekend for me was the "Totally Not the Clams" performance, music by members of the disbanded folk group Clam Chowder, whose Saturday evening concert was formerly a major event at this con.

Unfortunately, staffing problems didn't allow a full-scale art show as in previous years; a display of the guest artist's work was all they had. Instead of a mass signing event for all the attending authors, the con decided to offer small-group "meet and greet" sessions of about five authors each. Les (my husband) and I had the 9:15 p.m. time slot. Since it occurred in the hotel atrium, plenty of people casually passed by even at that hour. We didn't sell any books, but we had some nice chats. Saturday night ended, as usual, with a show tune sing-along and the traditional singing of the Hallelujah Chorus at midnight. I made sure of getting a room overlooking the atrium so I could listen to those. I still wish the con would reinstate its Friday night costume contest, which faded away from lack of participation several years ago. It's fun to observe hall costumes but not quite the same. One very welcome improvement that has come about in the past year or two: The hotel now has lunch and dinner buffets in addition to the breakfast buffet, plus a concession stand in the lobby for several hours around lunchtime. No more wait, wait, wait to get served, missing convention activities just to eat.

This is a friendly, relaxing con with a strongly book-focused and writer-oriented program, as well as plenty of musical performances and a thriving dealer's room. Highly recommended for any fan who lives near enough to get there conveniently on Thanksgiving weekend.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Ponies and Changelings

The latest episode of MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC offers an interesting example of applying fantasy to real-world geopolitics—a "ripped from the headlines" story—with no explicit mention of actual events or peoples. In "The Times They Are a Changeling," Princess Twilight Sparkle travels to the Crystal Empire to visit her brother and sister-in-law (the prince and princess of that kingdom) and their baby filly. Twilight's assistant, young dragon Spike, accompanies her. The capital of the Crystal Empire is in the grip of paranoid fear because a changeling has been glimpsed in the area. Spike, who became a hero among the Crystal ponies on a previous visit, joins a squad of guards searching for the creature. Getting separated from the group, Spike stumbles upon the changeling and discovers that the terrifying monster, named Thorax, isn't a threat at all. In fact, the "monster" saves his life. Parasites who feed on love, changelings infiltrated Canterlot (capital of Equestria) in a former episode, their queen disguising herself as the Empire's princess—hence the Crystal ponies' state of high alert. But Thorax left the changeling country because he yearns to experience friendship without devouring love-energy in a destructive mode. If he can make friends, generating enough love in such relationships that he won't "starve," maybe he can rise above his nature and cease to pose a threat to others. Spike welcomes him as a potential friend, introducing him to Twilight and some of the Crystal ponies in the guise of an ordinary pony. When Thorax accidentally gets exposed, Spike fails to stand up for him. Realizing how he has betrayed his would-be friend, Spike goes after Thorax, persuades him to give friendship another chance, and changes the other ponies' minds about their belief that "there's no such thing as a nice changeling."

In the MY LITTLE PONY universe, a changeling is a creature that can disguise itself in the form of any other person (pony, dragon, etc.), what the D&D game calls a doppelganger. In folklore, changelings are fairies left in place of stolen babies. In some cases, adults could be suspected of being changelings, too. An Irish woman, Bridget Cleary, was burned to death in the modern, civilized year of 1895 because her husband claimed to believe—apparently sincerely—that she was a fairy changeling; by killing the substitute, he expected to get his "true" wife back. The MY LITTLE PONY concept and the folklore concept have one factor in common, that changelings can infiltrate normal society by posing as "one of us." Because they look like "normal" people, only constant vigilance can guard against the danger they present.

Just below the surface, "The Times They Are a Changeling" fits into the "good guy vampire" subgenre. Thorax fights against his predatory nature to find happiness through friendship. At the next layer down, though, it's a story about what terrorist threats do to individuals and societies. Because the changelings attacked in an earlier episode and almost destroyed the Crystal Empire, the Crystal ponies have become so paranoid that at first they suspect Twilight and her companions of being changelings in disguise. The citizens of the empire are determined to keep all changelings out, making no distinction between the evil ones and those who might be harmless. This climate of suspicion and fear leads Spike to turn against Thorax instead of supporting him at a critical moment. When the majority demonizes all members of a different nation or culture, it's hard to speak in defense of them.

The message of this episode isn't totally unproblematic. While Thorax wants to be "good," it's clear that all the rest of the changelings (all whom we see, anyway) really are dangerous, amoral predators. He's presented as more of an exception than an example. However, the ending offers hope that other changelings can learn about friendship and alter their world-view and behavior, just as Thorax has done. Evil isn't necessarily an essential part of their nature. On the level of the show's target preteen audience, this episode conveys yet another message about friendship overcoming differences. Adult viewers can perceive (or not, as they choose) deeper layers of applicability.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt