First DragonCon Post: Friday Night Costume Contest
We checked in to the con around 5 on Friday (which seems to be the secret to not standing in line--Saturday morning we could see the registration lines stretching around the block), then chased around looking for where to check in for the new Friday night costume contest. I'd had an email that said the check-in list would be either at Registration, the Contest Registration table, or in the Costuming Track room, but no follow-up to tell me which of these locations had been selected. Of course it ended up being in the last place we looked. :P
Aaron helped me with costume wrangling, and then we hurried down for the prejudging. On the way, a man dressed as Santa Claus rounded the corner, and I exclaimed, "You can’t be here! I’ve cursed Narnia, so it’s always winter, but never Christmas!" We paused for picture-taking, and he replied, "Yeah, well, shit happens."
The contest itself was the usual hurry-up-and-wait, combined w/ a bunch of conflicting instructions as to where to go and what to do (it's a new contest, so some amount of first year shakedown was to be expected). This was luckily leavened by running into various techops friends backstage, and chatting up the other costumers. As a costume-fabrication-focused event, it was a huge success--it drew what must have been a considerable percentage of the best costumes at the con, and wow, was I outclassed in a big way.
There were two other White Witches, but they'd both opted to do Tilda Swinton's war gown from the new movie, so while they were both great costumes, it wasn't like finding someone in the same dress at the prom! One woman had hand-knitted her "chainmail" gown, and sculpted the icicles on her staff out of hot glue; the other one had an actual chainmail dress weighing 95 pounds--and couldn't sit down in it. Dear god, I'm a costume nut, but some things are too extreme even for me.
There was a lady dressed as the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Anderson--and this is a very important distinction, since if she’d been the White Witch also, not only would we have had the "same-prom-dress" problem, but hers would have been better than mine. So, Snow Queen. Remember that. (You can see it in the top left pic here.)
The prejudging and "official" photography took for-bloody-ever, but the stage portion went much more quickly than the average Masquerade, owing to the absence of skits. They played a single continuous music loop, and the emcees read each contestant’s description of their costume. Ok, I confess to playing to the audience a bit--when the emcee got to "the wand that turns her enemies to stone," I twirled it around and pointed it at him. (Related tangent: I ran into mastacool backstage, and was complaining about all the hurry-up-and-wait. "I don’t know why I do these contests, I know they’re only going to take up half my night." "Oh, I know you, it’s for the audience." Yeah, got it in one. :D )
Unexpectedly, after reading my brief audience description, they kept going and read all my documentation notes too. I had thought those notes were only for the judges, so once my description was done, I started to leave the stage-and the emcee kept reading! Oops. I wasn’t really listening by that point anyway, since somewhere while turning the emcee to stone, my bloody &*^%$! contact lens had popped out again. The next person on after me was the 95-lb chainmail, followed by a guy in big stompy boots, so I gave it up for lost again, but the backstage staff came to my rescue-stopped the show, got out on stage with a flashlight, and actually found the bloody thing, untrammeled. All blessings on the costume contest backstage staff! (The chainmail lady actually said she saw if pop out, but thought it was a bead or sequin or something off my costume. Aaron, in the audience, said later he knew exactly what had happened when he saw the flashlight.)
The glowing crown, by the way, was a mixed success. It was really cool in dim lighting, but we didn’t get much of that backstage, and what with the hours of hurry-up-and-wait, I ended up turning it off to save the batteries. I turned it back on for the prejudging and the stage presentation, but the lights were so bright I’m not sure anyone saw it. (I had to bend down so the judges could see the wires.) It also shorted out later on that night, so it only glowed when I had my head turned a certain way. I shall have to turn it over to Dr. Lanterman to fix.
There was supposed to be a space set aside after the contest for audience photography, but that too went the way of first-year shakedown, and no one knew quite where to go or what to do. Turns out they’d told all the fan photographers to hang out in the back of the ballroom, but then they told us not to go back there bc the lights didn’t work…then we were supposed to go out on stage, but we got chased away by the techops people setting up for the next event. Finally I just wandered out into the ballroom, found Aaron, saw that the lights were indeed working in the back of the ballroom, and pointed myself at the nearest group of camera-wielding con-goers.
Wow. About forty million people took my picture, from all angles. Flashbulbs everywhere. (One of them was Misty, so you can go see her pictures here!) Since I was blind from lack of contact lens (it was safely stowed away until I could get it properly cleaned), I didn’t mind too much...ok, might as well admit it, I loved it. Attention, attention, give me attention! :D It was like being a rock star--if rock stars wore sparkly white dresses and glow-in-the-dark crowns. (Maybe some of them do? Queen of Narnia might be a good name for a band.)
Aaron helped me with costume wrangling, and then we hurried down for the prejudging. On the way, a man dressed as Santa Claus rounded the corner, and I exclaimed, "You can’t be here! I’ve cursed Narnia, so it’s always winter, but never Christmas!" We paused for picture-taking, and he replied, "Yeah, well, shit happens."
The contest itself was the usual hurry-up-and-wait, combined w/ a bunch of conflicting instructions as to where to go and what to do (it's a new contest, so some amount of first year shakedown was to be expected). This was luckily leavened by running into various techops friends backstage, and chatting up the other costumers. As a costume-fabrication-focused event, it was a huge success--it drew what must have been a considerable percentage of the best costumes at the con, and wow, was I outclassed in a big way.
There were two other White Witches, but they'd both opted to do Tilda Swinton's war gown from the new movie, so while they were both great costumes, it wasn't like finding someone in the same dress at the prom! One woman had hand-knitted her "chainmail" gown, and sculpted the icicles on her staff out of hot glue; the other one had an actual chainmail dress weighing 95 pounds--and couldn't sit down in it. Dear god, I'm a costume nut, but some things are too extreme even for me.
There was a lady dressed as the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Anderson--and this is a very important distinction, since if she’d been the White Witch also, not only would we have had the "same-prom-dress" problem, but hers would have been better than mine. So, Snow Queen. Remember that. (You can see it in the top left pic here.)
The prejudging and "official" photography took for-bloody-ever, but the stage portion went much more quickly than the average Masquerade, owing to the absence of skits. They played a single continuous music loop, and the emcees read each contestant’s description of their costume. Ok, I confess to playing to the audience a bit--when the emcee got to "the wand that turns her enemies to stone," I twirled it around and pointed it at him. (Related tangent: I ran into mastacool backstage, and was complaining about all the hurry-up-and-wait. "I don’t know why I do these contests, I know they’re only going to take up half my night." "Oh, I know you, it’s for the audience." Yeah, got it in one. :D )
Unexpectedly, after reading my brief audience description, they kept going and read all my documentation notes too. I had thought those notes were only for the judges, so once my description was done, I started to leave the stage-and the emcee kept reading! Oops. I wasn’t really listening by that point anyway, since somewhere while turning the emcee to stone, my bloody &*^%$! contact lens had popped out again. The next person on after me was the 95-lb chainmail, followed by a guy in big stompy boots, so I gave it up for lost again, but the backstage staff came to my rescue-stopped the show, got out on stage with a flashlight, and actually found the bloody thing, untrammeled. All blessings on the costume contest backstage staff! (The chainmail lady actually said she saw if pop out, but thought it was a bead or sequin or something off my costume. Aaron, in the audience, said later he knew exactly what had happened when he saw the flashlight.)
The glowing crown, by the way, was a mixed success. It was really cool in dim lighting, but we didn’t get much of that backstage, and what with the hours of hurry-up-and-wait, I ended up turning it off to save the batteries. I turned it back on for the prejudging and the stage presentation, but the lights were so bright I’m not sure anyone saw it. (I had to bend down so the judges could see the wires.) It also shorted out later on that night, so it only glowed when I had my head turned a certain way. I shall have to turn it over to Dr. Lanterman to fix.
There was supposed to be a space set aside after the contest for audience photography, but that too went the way of first-year shakedown, and no one knew quite where to go or what to do. Turns out they’d told all the fan photographers to hang out in the back of the ballroom, but then they told us not to go back there bc the lights didn’t work…then we were supposed to go out on stage, but we got chased away by the techops people setting up for the next event. Finally I just wandered out into the ballroom, found Aaron, saw that the lights were indeed working in the back of the ballroom, and pointed myself at the nearest group of camera-wielding con-goers.
Wow. About forty million people took my picture, from all angles. Flashbulbs everywhere. (One of them was Misty, so you can go see her pictures here!) Since I was blind from lack of contact lens (it was safely stowed away until I could get it properly cleaned), I didn’t mind too much...ok, might as well admit it, I loved it. Attention, attention, give me attention! :D It was like being a rock star--if rock stars wore sparkly white dresses and glow-in-the-dark crowns. (Maybe some of them do? Queen of Narnia might be a good name for a band.)