Worldcon 2019 panel notes: Monday

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Concert: The Library Bards
The Library Bards are a nerd parody band consisting of Bonnie Gordon (ABC’s The Quest; Cartoon Network; Street Fighter V; Mega Man 11; Geek & Sundry) and Xander Jeanneret (TBS’s King of the Nerds; announcer in Divekick, Sagas of Sundry, etc.). They take Top 40 hits and transform them into the nerdy versions they should have been in the first place. With their catchy tunes and nerdy lyrics, the LibraryBards will be bringing you into the #BardLife in no time!
Bonnie Gordon, Xander Jeanneret

This was great, and the perfect thing for Monday morning. Funny and wonderfully nerdy and just the right amount of silly and very entertaining. The singers not only looked hot in leather, they also had good stage presence. (I would link to Youtube videos, but I like none of them. But you can find some songs that they sung from their new album on their Twitter, for example Princess Bride.)

Dragons, wyrms, and serpents: why the myth endures
There are a lot of mythical beasts that can and do feature in fantasy, but the dragon/wyrm/serpent seems to be one of the most popular. What are the reasons for this enduring popularity? What roles does it perform? What mythic properties does it embody and why do these continue to resonate (if they do)?
Karen Simpson Nikakis(M), Marie Brennan, Aliette de Bodard, Naomi Novik, Joey Yu

My last panel of the con, and a fun one. The panelists got along very well and had a great discussion. It seemed like the moderator wanted to go in a different direction than the panelists (lots of symbolism), which was awkward once or twice. Joey Yu is a huge Temeraire fan and got an autograph right there, it was cute. In general there's a lot of "East/West" differences mentioned in this panel, which everyone was aware was very simplified but you can go only so much in-depth in one panel.

Historically, there is a major split what Western/Eastern dragons signify, what their purposes are etc. In Ancient China, for a long time dragons stood for the power of nature. The Chinese character for "dragon" over time became more regular. Unlike in the West, in China dragons are not originally evil.
Dragons can be used in so many different roles. When did they begin to appear as helpers in Western fantasy, before Pern? (One suggestion of a children's book, but I didn't catch the name.) Was there an influence by Eastern traditions?
Later a third "role" of dragons, besides threatening or helpful, appeared: dragons that are threatened by humans. (For example in "The Hero and the Crown" by Robin McKinley.) Maybe linked to how we feel about the natural world?
In the Eastern tradition the line between humans and dragons is blurry, there are many stories about dragon shapeshifters. D&D had dragons shapeshifting into other races early on, see also e.g. Dragonlance. In Asia there's also the idea of a process where people turn into dragons through self-cultivation. In the Narnia novel "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" the transformation into a dragon is a punishment for greed. "The Hobbit" has Thorin assume "dragon-ish" greed. "A Game of Dark" has a dragon as a metaphor for a bad dad.
Carl Jung saw the serpent as a symbol of the subconscious. There are many serpent figures in mythology: in the bible, Jormungandr etc., also in Europe even though most dangerous snakes don't live in Europe. Dragons can be related/connected to a whole bunch of creatures.
That also happened with translations: Asian dragons are so different from European dragons that it's actually surprising that they were translated with that word. In Vietnamese for example there are different words for Vietnamese and European vampires. Nowadays in Chinese translations while the word for "dragon" is the same, to distinguish European monster-dragons they're often just called "evil dragons."
Historically, dragons were associated with Earth/creation energies, e.g. the Australian rainbow serpent, the Babylonian Tiamat, the Egyptian Apep. They also tend to live in caves/rivers. Dragons being staked signifies a guidance of creative energies. (…as I said, the moderator went off on tangents full of "symbolism!!" I'm leaving some of them out.)
Poland has a famous story of the Wawel Dragon, who created the hills around Krakow and threatened the king's court and was then defeated by a cobbler. Saint Margareth blew up a dragon from the inside because she was so holy. Saint George killing the dragon cemented the role of the dragon as evil for some time; (one of?) the first counter-examples was "The Reluctant Dragon" by Kenneth Graham. Discworld has a lot of pet dragons kept by Lady Sybil; there are big evil ones as well, but they work through belief. Another book with a sympathetic dragon, as a protagonist even, is "A Book Dragon." In newer versions of classical dragon tales, the dragon and the princess become friends.
In the West, dragons hoard treasures. In the East they don't, but for example a pearl. They also often give treasures.
One reason why dragons are so popular is because they're so malleable and can be adapted to fit many different stories. We keep them alive and then pick certain traits and build upon it. Sometimes small details, sometimes details change a lot/reappear…
Asian dragons often have one spot behind their ears where their scales grow backwards and they get angry if it's touched. Smaug also has a special spot, but that's used to kill him. Are dragons becoming more evil in modern Chinese stories? Yes, also with Western influences. (Japan has stories of evil dragons longer.) Nowadays the Western influence is so strong with media etc., it's hard to keep it out/apart. There's a lot more translated from English into other languages than the other way around.
In pre-Christian myths, dragons are often forces of nature – did they become demonized at the same time they were shown as more intelligent? Chinese dragons could always talk; so could e.g. the serpent of Eden. It could be connected to how much nature was seen as an adversarial force.
Dragon myths are found nearly everywhere – could they have originated with the finding of dinosaur bones? That's one theory and could be one factor. JY had a map of the world where there are dragon myths – pretty much all over.
Will dragons ever go out of fashion? A unanimous "no" from the panelists.
Favorite dragons? MB: Maleficent. AdB: From "Chronicles of Elantra." NN: Smaug. JY: Toothless and Temeraire.
What are some new and exciting dragon stories? "Dragonology", "Smoke Eaters", "Dragon Pearl", "The Memoirs of Lady Trent" (not recced by MB herself)

So, those were all the panel write-ups now! (Only took me about a month and a half.) Next, organizing my pictures - "fortunately" not too many because I was mostly too busy to think of photographs.

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

Joey Yu is a huge Temeraire fan and got an autograph right there, it was cute.

Aww, that is adorable! And thank you for this write-up. I'm especially intrigued by the detail about the backwards-growing scales.

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I hadn't heard about that before either and it sounds cool :)

[hamsterwoman]

AdB: From "Chronicles of Elantra."

Oh, neat! The Chronicles of Elantra dragons are definitely my favorite thing about that series.

Was very interesting to read the panel notes -- thank you for sharing them!

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I hadn't heard of this series at all, but a quick look tells me the dragons there are immortal, that does sound like it has a lot of possibilities :)

[hamsterwoman]

They are dragons that spend a lot of time in human form, for Reasons, while still being fairly inhuman (even in human form) and really impressive in their true form. I love this trope (have ever since encountering dragons-in-human-form in LeGuin's "Rule of Names" when I was a kid), and Elantra has a really nice take on it, I think.

I think the Elantra dragons can be killed, but are functionally immortal otherwise? Certainly very, very old compared to the human protagonist.

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Yes, human-looking long-lived dragons are fun :)

[smilebackwards]

This sounds like a cool panel! I love Temeraire and the differences in how dragons were treated in different countries was very interesting in the books.

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Naomi Novik said it was important to her to reflect that different countries have different ideas about dragons. (Obviously a bit harder to do when all the dragons are functionally very similar creatures, because then you have different ideas about one thing instead of about different things, but still interesting.)

[isis]

You are in for a treat, then, because The Priory of the Orange Tree's plot is essentially Eastern dragons vs Western dragons (and Western ideas about dragons).

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Oooh *checks library website even more impatiently*

[hokuton_punch]

I love dragons and that panel sounds like a GOOD TIME. ♥

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It was! :)

[vintagewitch]

Thank you for sharing your notes! The dragon ones were particularly interesting to me - I work in an occult shop, and there's so much "bad" dragon art/sculpture (you know the kind - heavily influenced by DND, super action -figure-y) that it got me thinking about my own fascination with dragons as a kid.

I remember in elementary school I had a book on dragons - kind of like Brian Froud's book on faeries, but not illustrated. I wish I could find it again! It was one that I continuously checked out from the library and can't remember the name of anymore.

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Oh that is annoying. I had a book like that, but fortunately I found it again years later. (No dragons, but dwarves and faeries and dinosaurs.)

Idk if I would call D&D-inspired, action-figure-y dragon art "bad" - it's a style I'm not always in the mood for, but sometimes fun :)

[vintagewitch]

That's why I put it in air-quotes! It's not necessarily bad - just not something I'm always in the mood for. There is a high level of nostalgia for it, though.

[nonesensed]

DRAGONS :DDDD

I'm always a sucker for dragons XD Thanks for sharing these panel notes! Will have to check out some of the books/series mentioned~! And many huzzahs for "The Memoirs of Lady Trent" <3 I usually prefer my dragons sentient, but that book series has won me over heart and soul, especially now that I'm at the end of the second-to-last book <3<3<3

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They have the Lady Trent books at the library, I haven't read them yet but they're on my list :)

[nonesensed]

Hope you'll enjoy the series whenever you have time to read it :) (I know how it to have a reading list...mine is faaaar too long XD)