It's interesting to see how the fandom makes use of Changelings. On the show they're just shape-shifting monsters, malign and remorseless. But in fan-fiction they're tragic figures, misunderstood yet trying to understand, putting up false fronts in order to gain the acceptance they need to find love and the love they need to survive.

In short, they're a pretty good (if melodramatic) metaphor for autistics.

And the name "Changelings" is interesting because it comes from an old folk-belief that the faeries would sometimes steal a human infant and leave in its place a changeling, a faerie child enchanted to look just like the human one. The only way you could tell the difference was by the way it behaved as it grew: oddly, not at all like other children--as if the ways of humans were alien to it.

In short, it's a folkloric explanation of autism.

And one that contains, at heart, a pretty good observation of autism's onset. It's been described as watching one's child "go away," leaving somebody else in their place. While it was cruel to think of the resulting person as nonhuman, I suppose it might have comforted parents back then to think of their lost child serving in the halls of Titania and Oberon.

Today we understand autism better, but we're still looking for malign and remorseless monsters to blame it on.

What got me to thinking about all this was Pale Horse's "Destination Unknown," which I liked. Though I just now realized it does have somewhat of a lady-or-the-tiger ending.

(cross-posted from my blog)