November 8 - Dragon*Con

Beginning Word Count: 14,811

I am a geek.  A nerd. A dork.  Whatver you choose to call the people who celebrate their fandoms by reading oodles of fan written fiction and dress in costume of favored characters and watch their favored movie / television show / cartoon or read their favored book or play their game of choice to extreme levels.   We are absolutely passionate about the fandoms we support.

There are a few major geek meccas around the country -- nay, around the world.  Some are more populated by celebrities (like San Diego Comic Con). Some are about the fans.  Some are about the games (one of the Ohio cons).  Each one has its merits.  For me, the biggest determining factor in deciding to go to Dragon*Con was proximity. Dragon*Con is in Atlanta, Georgia.  I live in Birmingham, Alabama.   It is approximately 2 and a half hours away.  Easily drivable, which means that the primary expenses aside from registration are hotels and food.  And an additional benefit:  proximity allows for greater flexibility in costume transport.

Many people do not wear even one costume to such an event.

That would be completely unthinkable to one such as myself.  Or my husband.

Going to Dragon*Con meant coming up with costumes.   I'm one that does not like to dress up like everyone else.  I didn't want to do the costumes that seemed to be more popular -- Marvel or DC, or Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Doctor Who. No, for me, the fun is coming up with something that you would only see one or maybe two of throughtout the weekend.

To that end, my husband and I came up with three costumes each.  Admittedly, one of my costumes would have been very common had I worn it:  My Ravenclaw robes.   I didn't wear it.  It was WAY too hot to conceive of putting that on.

Our first costume was for Speed Racer.   John dressed up as Speed Racer, and I dressed as Trixie.   He was very cute in his blue polo shirt with white color and the yellow G.  He also had his red bandana and red sox, and the iconic white pants and yellow gloves.   I wore a pink ruffly shirt with a red M and red capri pants, a yellow hair bow and red shoes.   I worked very hard at coming up with anime make up, since this was old school style.  Trixie does not have impossibly big eyes, and she wears a minimal amount of make up.  But she still had anime eyes.  I was very proud of the fact that one guy asked me who I was.   He did not watch Speed Racer, but he knew that I was an Anime Character.

Of course, the most exciting moment for me while I was dressed as Trixie was when I was talking to Larry Dixon (I'll go more into who Larry Dixon is later, which will explain exactly why this meant a lot).   Larry Dixon told me he loved my costume and he had loved that show, and when he was a race car driver, he was called Racer X.

Throughout the weekend, we saw only one other Speed Racer, and I did not see any other Trixies.  Mission of uncommon costume accomplished.

The other costume that we did was a Steam Punk Pac Man Ghost set.  Unfortunately, due to circumstances, the foursome never made a joint appearance.   (Inky and Clyde were off chasing down rumors of Pac Beast sightings elsewhere!)   The concept was rather cute, although I'm not truly sold on the execution.   It was the first time I'd ever designed a costume, and certainly the first time my husband and I jointly designed one.   Still, I thought they were adorable, and had we shown up as a foursome, the costume would have been very successful.  As it was, when we explained it, people immediately got it.

I wore the pink ghost, and John wore the red ghost.   The costume construct was pretty elementary:  a grey plaid cloack covered with three layers of tulle in the color of our ghost.   Each ghost had its own at style, with eyes made using welders glasses and googly eyes.  I wore a minature top hat that was covered in pink tulle.  I also sewed little pearls all along the edge and gears in a few places.  In short, it was really actually a very cute ghost.  John used a bobby helmet as his base hat.  The two of us looked, if I might say it, adorable.

I also learned something very important about group costumes, and this is not just because two of our group were unable to come that day (and please note: I am not upset or angry or anything.  Life happens and loves to interfere with plans.).   Dragon*Con is huge.  Bigger than I possibly imagined.  In my mind, when we designed this costume, we would be together during the day.  That is not true at all -- unless we just wanted to hang out posing for pictures.  If we wanted to actually do anything, we were going to be split four ways, no matter what we did.   When you do a group costume, each costume needs to make sense on its own.  For example:  Scooby Doo theme.  You see Fred walking down the street, you know it's Fred.  You see the whole gang together, and that is more awesome.   But when you see one Pac Man ghost, particularly a stylized one, it does not make sense.    So our costume, which really was an awesome idea, turned out to be a fail.  (I still love the costume though.)

We did not kit out for more than two days, simply because, as I said, it was hot.   And days were long.  I could not have imagined wearing my Ravenclaw robes out in that heat for the entire day.  I began to see the appeal to those skimpy things that a lot of people wore.  September heat in Atlanta, Georgia is hot and wet.  And they were, at least, cool.

So yeah, costumes were absolutely imperative for Dragon*Con.   At least for us.  I don't understand why you'd go and not even suit up for one day of the event.  I'm sure that is because it is antithetical to my person.   Massive costume party?  Of course you suit up!  Any excuse to flaunt my inner geek!

And there were some seriously impressive costumes at the convention.  We saw brilliant costumes while we were in line the day before Dragon*Con officially started, just waiting to pick up our passes.  (Might I add, they have lines down to a science in some of the areas -- in particular, the Sheraton.  They really know how to do a good queue.)   But the day we arrived, it was mayhem.  I was really not prepared for the number of amazing costumes.  Many of these cosplayers truly take this craft seriously and strive for authenticity.  They do some truly beautiful work that honors the fandom they love.

And while we saw hords of similarly costumed people, the ones that stood out were for the obscure. They were the ones who wore costumes for shows I had forgotten about, but when I saw their passion, it made me smile.

And I learned how to truly crowd surf!  (Simple: Find someone who knows how to do it and follow in his wake!  I followed "Captain Jack Harkness")

Dragon*Con is about the fans.  It really does seem to be a very fan oriented event. They do have a lot of great celebrities.  If you can't find at least one celebrity from one of your favorite shows, you clearly didn't ever watch anything worth watching.  Seriously.   They have hordes of panels to go with the hordes of fans.  I was excited by some of the guests.  Richard Dean Anderson was one that I seriously geeked out about getting to see.  I have been known to refer to myself as "the Gadget Goddess" and I can recognize any (and I do mean ANY) episode of MacGyver from just about a minute of watching -- truly, less than that...unless I happen to walk into one of the annual "remember this?" episodes.  And he has some serious fans.  It was funny and inspiring to hear all these people who went into particular fields because of that show.  He was very humbled by it.  My favorite story from this panel, though, was when he was talking about MythBusters (a show he loves) and how they busted a MacGyverism.   He told us the set up (and, of course, many of us knew that episode)....then he told us what happened when the MythBusters guys got at it.   Spoiler alert:  MacGyver died.  

I also got to meet my absolute favorite author, who is apparently a regular at this event.  This is where I'm going to tell you about Larry Dixon. He's not my favorite author....his wife, Mercedes Lackey, is.   But Larry was with her in almost all of her panels, and you can really truly see the love and respect that he has for her.  He is an artist and an author in his own right.   He did the eagle work in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.  And he signed my Nook.  As he was signing it and drawing the eagle he draws on every autograph he does where he interacts with the person, he told me that he loved my costume.  It was so awesome to find that the people I am fans of are also geeks over other things. And make no mistake, Larry Dixon and Mercedes Lackey are geeks. 

The celebrities who come to this event are not just celebrities...they are fans.  They are geeks, and they get as much excitement about the people they meet here as we do.

For the most part, my experience with the fans at Dragon*Con was awesome.  (My experience at the Marriott is a very different story.  I do not like them.  They were horrid. And I so reviewed them.)    I think my favorite story of fans coming together was the first evening.  We were walking from the Hyatt to the Vendors area, and crossing the street.  We were almost to the curb when one of the girl's heel broke off of her shoe, and she fell down hard.  The light turned green and we were in the middle of the street.  My husband and someone else helped her to stand up. However, all of us remained in the street blocking traffic until she was clear. 

People came up to others and admired their costumes, and it was awesome and a wonderful event.

Would I go again?  Oh, probably.  And armed with experience, I know there are things I would do differently.  This in no way diminishes the fun I had this year.   I got to watch my husband turn into a 10 year old and bounce all over with glee.  I got to listen to Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy do a duet.  I got to listen to Mercedes Lackey read from an unpublished work in progress.   I saw wonderful people in amazing costumes.  And I got to have a great deal of fun with two dear friends.   In short, Dragon*Con was a wonderful experience.

And yeah, I got to stand inside a TARDIS.  My favorite picture of the whole weekend is me looking out of a TARDIS. 

Short piece today. 

Tomorrow, I've got plans for another story, so we'll see if that happens.

Today's Word Count:  1,915
Total Word Count:  16,726