Comic-Con!!! Wooo!
wheee! comic-con rocks.
I had never been to a con before... I've lived in this city for 5 years and somehow I always heard about Comic-con after it was over. It was really cool to be somewhere that I could walk up to people and babble about fannish stuff and not get looked at as if I'm insane. Nice people there. Happy happy.
I went briefly on preview night, wednesday, basically just picked up my badge and got a feel for the place, then I went for a few hours thursday night. That night I wore my White Tree dress and got a couple compliments, but compared to today it was empty there that night, not a whole lot of rowdy people, and I like rowdy people. It was pretty fun even though I got there late, I watched some hilariously crappy movies, wandered around peeking in all the meeting rooms, then I found some guy named Dan who looked bored but was actually watching cartoons on his BADASS laptop...(and now of course I have Amityville Toaster stuck in my head...) we talked for a bit about the hilariousness of people who pay 200 bucks for a fake lightsaber... and various other things...
then I skipped Friday because I had some other shit to do, but saturday night I went again, glad I did. I got there in the evening, after busting my butt to finish the last bits of my costume (it turned out rather well for under 100 bucks and a couple weeks work with no sewing machine. I found out that anyone can look badass if they wear chainmaille sleeves or a reasonable facsimile like silver-spraypainted sweater-sleeves, which answers a question that someone asked me once- why does Sean Bean look so much more badass as Boromir than he usually does... it's the sleeves. Wow.) and I wandered for a bit, waded through crowds, (oh yeah, I was doing the "Boromir's Invisible Cell Phone" bit for a while and cracking myself up... I think everyone else was just confused...) and found my way over to where the masquerade was going on but I didn't have a ticket for the ballroom, but that was okay because they were showing it on the big screen in the sail pavilion, and there was munchie-food and liquor, and it was more relaxed, but to get in there was still a line, 45 minutes before the start time. So I got in line, and the hilarious thing was that the line for the ballroom was right across the way, and all these people were wandering around trying to figure out which line they needed to be in, and for some reason like a dozen in a row decided to ask me. Me. Why? Dunno. But it was funny. When I said something about that to nobody in particular, the folx behind me said "Well, I guess everybody knows that Boromir knows what he's talking about." And I'm like... "Damn straight!" Haha. So... yeah. And I was talking to this group of guys in front of me, one of them was this white-haired older guy named Bob (he was a Nam vet, a weirdo and a gentleman, and a paronomasiac, and he had a theory that Tolkienatics hang together because ppl of similar intelligence levels generally hang together, and Tolkienatics tend to be intelligent...he also told me, bequeathed unto me, a story he tried to write years ago that began "In the basement of my father's house, there sits an old grey door. For me it holds terror."), and we were bantering Tolkien trivia back and forth and quoting Monty Python at each other (funfunfun!) and when we finally got in to watch the show, we sat together and I got a beer (MGD! My old fave brew.) There were some really nice costumes, and some not-so-great, there was an Orc and an Eowyn and a very involved Amidala (some 40 yards of fabric in the dress... wow) and an impressive General Grievous and a bunch of others. And there were a couple girls, costumed as PotC chars, who saw me and flipped, one of them went as Aragorn today, and I was saying "Hey, you've got my bracers!" and we agreed we'd have to hang out and do the Gondor Boyz thing. Haha. 'Cept I didn't see her today. >.< And about halfway into the Masquerade, Bob and his buddies left to go see the Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Animation fest and I followed, some of it was funny, some it it were duds... so anyway it was getting kinda late out so I Bravo Oscared and went back to the sail pavilion and there was a party goin' on so I went and got another beer and went to go dance for a bit, that was fun and strange because I dance weird, it's like a cross between hobbit dances and moshpit moves and headbanging and belly dancing and some weird moves that I may have invented and some stuff I picked up here and there, and there were a lot of good dancers there so I dunno what they thought about that, probably not a whole lot, except that maybe they thought it was amusing to see Boromir dancing. Yeah. That's something nobody ever saw before I did it, I bet.
Oh! Yeah, it was cool, there were a bunch of ppl who took pictures of me, with me, yaay! Wooo! Ppl liked my costume! And at least one person got video of Boromir gettin' down. Yeah. Hah *snort*. Yeah. SO anyway I danced until I was sweaty and tired and then I went outside to smoke and I walked up to this guy and I was telling him how I was looking for Frodo earlier (He has something I want) and how if he sees Aragorn to tell him I want my damn vambraces back, (that was my skit for the night... and how I supposed I must be dead because I had no horn, no sword, no vambraces... and had considered cutting arrows in half and sticking them poking out of my costume and being dead!Boromir, but I figured that would make navigating the crowds rather difficult) and then I was talking to this other chick, saying how it may not be a good idea to dance wearing full Boromir garb (I was sweating) and showing her how to do hobbit dances and there was this other guy comes up complaining that he's somehow lost his groove (and I asked where it went... heh and that started a weird bit, he says that all that stuff still exists, but sometimes it leaves and so the energy isn't lost, just moves around, and she says "So if I quit reading the schmoopy smut novels, would I get laid more?" and I say "Gosh, I wonder what that says about my slash addiction." Heheh.) and so the three of us are arm-in-arm trying to dance together and I was nearly falling down laughing because we were out of step. It was great. muah. Then I had to take off.
And today I went back again, but I couldn't drag my man out of bed until late so we only had a couple hours and spent them wandering around the big hall where all the vendors are (I wound up getting a couple LotR movie posters, a couple, uh, action figures, and I stood at the Bakshi booth screaming about his horrible treatment of Boromir...), and I babbled giddily when I saw Boromir's sword, I scared people I think, hollering "That's my sword! OMG! They have my sword! Oo! Sharp things! GUAAAH!" I think I nearly had a sword orgasm. (I've had music orgasms, so why not sword orgasms?) and I saw a guy in a very nice Aragorn costume (and Arwen with him besides!... and damn I was tempted so say something about OT3...MUAHAHAHAHA!!! (Not mine particularly but it would have been amusing)) it was hilarious, I saw his cloak and then I saw the vambraces, and I chased after him and hollered "Aragorn!" and he turned around and his eyes got big and it was cool, and I wish I had asked for a pic with them, that would have been so cool, and I told him he had my bracers (He did! They were cool! And cool is the word of the day!) And I saw some chick dressed up as Frodo and I think I scared her, her friends were like "Wow! You're together again!" and then I said in a spooky voice "You have something I want, Frodo!" and she starts running away and I chased her... haha. And I saw these three sisters, all very short, dressed as hobbits, and I did get a pic of them. And I got a pic of myself standing in the stargate. That is so anachronistic! Hahahah! So here's pix...
My White Tree dress that I wore thursday...
Me in costume, taken Saturday night after I left...
Me and the hobbit ladies!
Me in the Stargate! Hahaha!
And me in my costume in the sun outside...
I think I make a pretty good Boromir (not as good as Sean Bean, obviously... but meh. *shrugs*)
Next year I'm gonna try to get 8 other ppl and do the whole Fellowship... I'm haranguing my husband to try to get him to go as Faramir (can anybody guess what I'm thinking? goddam I'm such a slashy bastard...) but really that would be hilarious, because I'm like 5'6" and he's 6'2"... somehow that just strikes me funny.
Oh if anyone cares about the costume details... it wouldn't have taken very long except I don't have a sewing machine, I found the red dress at a thrift shop, along with a green leather trenchcoat and a black sweater, I spraypainted the sweater silver, chopped off the sleeves and sewed them to a black sleeveless tee, I dyed the trench black, chopped the arms off it and hemmed it and did some alterations to make the fit proper, and I found some detailed gold clasps at Jo-Anns, not exactly proper but they looked ok, I had to change the dress from long tight sleeves to short loose ones, and get rid of the collar, and then I got some gold edging and brown velvet ribbon for the collar, and some white lace for the sleeves which I painted gold with fabric paint, and sewed on with gold thread. Then I painted the dots and such on the sleeves. Under was black leather pants. And I whipped up a quick fellowship brooch with sculpey the night before. Oh, and I couldn't find a belt long enough, and couldn't get enough leather on short notice, so I made it out of furniture vinyl with an old belt buckle I had. I had a lothlorien cloak, but I nearly died of the heat wearing all that (well, not really, but I once walked around the desert in a winter coat. Anyone else would have died...) as it was, so why add another layer? It was a lot of work with no sewing machine, especially sewing the leather... but it was so fun to be able to walk around like that and get compliments rather than stares!
Waah I am too hyper!!!!! Boink bgee GUAH! Amityville Toaster! Fluffy bunnies and the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows! What did I tell you about waffles?! PIE! ALL FANS ARE CRAZY!
I had never been to a con before... I've lived in this city for 5 years and somehow I always heard about Comic-con after it was over. It was really cool to be somewhere that I could walk up to people and babble about fannish stuff and not get looked at as if I'm insane. Nice people there. Happy happy.
I went briefly on preview night, wednesday, basically just picked up my badge and got a feel for the place, then I went for a few hours thursday night. That night I wore my White Tree dress and got a couple compliments, but compared to today it was empty there that night, not a whole lot of rowdy people, and I like rowdy people. It was pretty fun even though I got there late, I watched some hilariously crappy movies, wandered around peeking in all the meeting rooms, then I found some guy named Dan who looked bored but was actually watching cartoons on his BADASS laptop...(and now of course I have Amityville Toaster stuck in my head...) we talked for a bit about the hilariousness of people who pay 200 bucks for a fake lightsaber... and various other things...
then I skipped Friday because I had some other shit to do, but saturday night I went again, glad I did. I got there in the evening, after busting my butt to finish the last bits of my costume (it turned out rather well for under 100 bucks and a couple weeks work with no sewing machine. I found out that anyone can look badass if they wear chainmaille sleeves or a reasonable facsimile like silver-spraypainted sweater-sleeves, which answers a question that someone asked me once- why does Sean Bean look so much more badass as Boromir than he usually does... it's the sleeves. Wow.) and I wandered for a bit, waded through crowds, (oh yeah, I was doing the "Boromir's Invisible Cell Phone" bit for a while and cracking myself up... I think everyone else was just confused...) and found my way over to where the masquerade was going on but I didn't have a ticket for the ballroom, but that was okay because they were showing it on the big screen in the sail pavilion, and there was munchie-food and liquor, and it was more relaxed, but to get in there was still a line, 45 minutes before the start time. So I got in line, and the hilarious thing was that the line for the ballroom was right across the way, and all these people were wandering around trying to figure out which line they needed to be in, and for some reason like a dozen in a row decided to ask me. Me. Why? Dunno. But it was funny. When I said something about that to nobody in particular, the folx behind me said "Well, I guess everybody knows that Boromir knows what he's talking about." And I'm like... "Damn straight!" Haha. So... yeah. And I was talking to this group of guys in front of me, one of them was this white-haired older guy named Bob (he was a Nam vet, a weirdo and a gentleman, and a paronomasiac, and he had a theory that Tolkienatics hang together because ppl of similar intelligence levels generally hang together, and Tolkienatics tend to be intelligent...he also told me, bequeathed unto me, a story he tried to write years ago that began "In the basement of my father's house, there sits an old grey door. For me it holds terror."), and we were bantering Tolkien trivia back and forth and quoting Monty Python at each other (funfunfun!) and when we finally got in to watch the show, we sat together and I got a beer (MGD! My old fave brew.) There were some really nice costumes, and some not-so-great, there was an Orc and an Eowyn and a very involved Amidala (some 40 yards of fabric in the dress... wow) and an impressive General Grievous and a bunch of others. And there were a couple girls, costumed as PotC chars, who saw me and flipped, one of them went as Aragorn today, and I was saying "Hey, you've got my bracers!" and we agreed we'd have to hang out and do the Gondor Boyz thing. Haha. 'Cept I didn't see her today. >.< And about halfway into the Masquerade, Bob and his buddies left to go see the Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Animation fest and I followed, some of it was funny, some it it were duds... so anyway it was getting kinda late out so I Bravo Oscared and went back to the sail pavilion and there was a party goin' on so I went and got another beer and went to go dance for a bit, that was fun and strange because I dance weird, it's like a cross between hobbit dances and moshpit moves and headbanging and belly dancing and some weird moves that I may have invented and some stuff I picked up here and there, and there were a lot of good dancers there so I dunno what they thought about that, probably not a whole lot, except that maybe they thought it was amusing to see Boromir dancing. Yeah. That's something nobody ever saw before I did it, I bet.
Oh! Yeah, it was cool, there were a bunch of ppl who took pictures of me, with me, yaay! Wooo! Ppl liked my costume! And at least one person got video of Boromir gettin' down. Yeah. Hah *snort*. Yeah. SO anyway I danced until I was sweaty and tired and then I went outside to smoke and I walked up to this guy and I was telling him how I was looking for Frodo earlier (He has something I want) and how if he sees Aragorn to tell him I want my damn vambraces back, (that was my skit for the night... and how I supposed I must be dead because I had no horn, no sword, no vambraces... and had considered cutting arrows in half and sticking them poking out of my costume and being dead!Boromir, but I figured that would make navigating the crowds rather difficult) and then I was talking to this other chick, saying how it may not be a good idea to dance wearing full Boromir garb (I was sweating) and showing her how to do hobbit dances and there was this other guy comes up complaining that he's somehow lost his groove (and I asked where it went... heh and that started a weird bit, he says that all that stuff still exists, but sometimes it leaves and so the energy isn't lost, just moves around, and she says "So if I quit reading the schmoopy smut novels, would I get laid more?" and I say "Gosh, I wonder what that says about my slash addiction." Heheh.) and so the three of us are arm-in-arm trying to dance together and I was nearly falling down laughing because we were out of step. It was great. muah. Then I had to take off.
And today I went back again, but I couldn't drag my man out of bed until late so we only had a couple hours and spent them wandering around the big hall where all the vendors are (I wound up getting a couple LotR movie posters, a couple, uh, action figures, and I stood at the Bakshi booth screaming about his horrible treatment of Boromir...), and I babbled giddily when I saw Boromir's sword, I scared people I think, hollering "That's my sword! OMG! They have my sword! Oo! Sharp things! GUAAAH!" I think I nearly had a sword orgasm. (I've had music orgasms, so why not sword orgasms?) and I saw a guy in a very nice Aragorn costume (and Arwen with him besides!... and damn I was tempted so say something about OT3...MUAHAHAHAHA!!! (Not mine particularly but it would have been amusing)) it was hilarious, I saw his cloak and then I saw the vambraces, and I chased after him and hollered "Aragorn!" and he turned around and his eyes got big and it was cool, and I wish I had asked for a pic with them, that would have been so cool, and I told him he had my bracers (He did! They were cool! And cool is the word of the day!) And I saw some chick dressed up as Frodo and I think I scared her, her friends were like "Wow! You're together again!" and then I said in a spooky voice "You have something I want, Frodo!" and she starts running away and I chased her... haha. And I saw these three sisters, all very short, dressed as hobbits, and I did get a pic of them. And I got a pic of myself standing in the stargate. That is so anachronistic! Hahahah! So here's pix...
My White Tree dress that I wore thursday...
Me in costume, taken Saturday night after I left...
Me and the hobbit ladies!
Me in the Stargate! Hahaha!
And me in my costume in the sun outside...
I think I make a pretty good Boromir (not as good as Sean Bean, obviously... but meh. *shrugs*)
Next year I'm gonna try to get 8 other ppl and do the whole Fellowship... I'm haranguing my husband to try to get him to go as Faramir (can anybody guess what I'm thinking? goddam I'm such a slashy bastard...) but really that would be hilarious, because I'm like 5'6" and he's 6'2"... somehow that just strikes me funny.
Oh if anyone cares about the costume details... it wouldn't have taken very long except I don't have a sewing machine, I found the red dress at a thrift shop, along with a green leather trenchcoat and a black sweater, I spraypainted the sweater silver, chopped off the sleeves and sewed them to a black sleeveless tee, I dyed the trench black, chopped the arms off it and hemmed it and did some alterations to make the fit proper, and I found some detailed gold clasps at Jo-Anns, not exactly proper but they looked ok, I had to change the dress from long tight sleeves to short loose ones, and get rid of the collar, and then I got some gold edging and brown velvet ribbon for the collar, and some white lace for the sleeves which I painted gold with fabric paint, and sewed on with gold thread. Then I painted the dots and such on the sleeves. Under was black leather pants. And I whipped up a quick fellowship brooch with sculpey the night before. Oh, and I couldn't find a belt long enough, and couldn't get enough leather on short notice, so I made it out of furniture vinyl with an old belt buckle I had. I had a lothlorien cloak, but I nearly died of the heat wearing all that (well, not really, but I once walked around the desert in a winter coat. Anyone else would have died...) as it was, so why add another layer? It was a lot of work with no sewing machine, especially sewing the leather... but it was so fun to be able to walk around like that and get compliments rather than stares!
Waah I am too hyper!!!!! Boink bgee GUAH! Amityville Toaster! Fluffy bunnies and the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows! What did I tell you about waffles?! PIE! ALL FANS ARE CRAZY!