#saw catherine do it so I thought I'd join in on the fun!

[tardis-stowaway]

I spent the weekend at DragonCon, a convention I've been attending off and on for decades. Some notable experiences and thoughts this year include:

Jodie Whittaker was there, and her panel was an absolute delight. I lined up almost an hour in advance and ended up with a pretty good seat. She talks with her hands constantly. The other celeb panels I saw (Catherine Tate and a LOTR panel with Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan) were also really fun.

One of the more notable moments of the con happened as I was failing to get into a panel. A huge line formed waiting for the Science vs. Movies panel Sunday night, and it got routed down a corridor of the Hilton that I'd never seen before. It wasn't signed as a staff-only area, but it was an intensely liminal and weird space. After passing through multiple turns, I ended up finding the end of the line in an area where half the overhead lights were out! The carpet had weird swirls and a bit of color theory. Many of the locked doors along the corridor were labeled as meeting rooms (why wasn't the con using them in its constant need for more space?), but others had signs like "Fire Control." Even through my mask it smelled faintly of mildew. The Distortion vibes were strong. I am delighted to report that someone on reddit posted a photo of what I believe is the exact area where I joined the line. Luckily the people in line near me were all good-humored and fun. When the line finally moved we did not make it into the panel, but the corridor did allow us to exit with our lives and what remained of our sanity.

I spotted a Magnus Archives/Protocol photoshoot on the schedule Friday, so I went to that to see cosplay and say hi to people in the fandom. It was held at night outside on a very noisy party patio, which impaired photography and conversation. Still, I had fun! There were some very cool costumes. A Jane Prentiss cosplayer gave me (gummy) worms.

I cosplayed one day this year. I was Carpenter from The Silt Verses, during S2 when she's carrying the homesick corpse. I'd originally conceived of trying to make a backpack into a whole cloth-wrapped corpse with limbs, but I wasn't able to get that construction to work in the time I had. Instead I just had a wrapped head sticking out of a backpack with attached speech balloon saying "Please...I have to get home." Presumably the rest of the shriveled corpse is shoved in the bag. I knew that the odds of being recognized were very low since the costume is for a podcast, and not even a podcast where fanart is super widespread or settled in distinguishing characteristics. Still, I figured that horror podcast fan overlap meant that I might find other Silt Verses fans at the Magnus event. Sure enough, I had one (1) person recognize me there. Silt Verses fan with the long colorful hair, you made my con!

The Our Flag Means Death fan panel was a good time. The love was strong in that room.

Masking, while more common at the con than in your average store or public building these days, was still way too low considering how many people were crowded in after traveling from all over. I kept my mask on indoors except when eating or drinking, and ate almost all of my meals outside. We'll see if that was enough to keep me healthy.

The Brit Track needs to do a better job at getting some new voices with more varied opinions on their Doctor Who discussion panels.

I saw lots of Fourteenth Doctors, which I expected, but I was sad not to have seen any Fifteenth Doctors cosplayers.

In general I feel like I saw slightly less really impressive cosplay than in some past DragonCons, but that may have been just my habit of avoiding some of the really crowded lobby zones when possible. Still plenty of awesome cosplay work around.

As usual it was far too crowded inside and too hot outside. I'm now tired and super achey (in a too much time on my feet way, not in a con crud/covid way for now). Nevertheless, I had an excellent time.

[fanartofthelostcities]

Send me a number from 1-50 and I'll tell you what song it corresponds to from my Top 50 songs of 2021