DragonConned

Comic Book convention my ass! "Oh yeah, Julia, its all about the comic books...and a few people might be in *cough*...costume!" A few = EVERYONE. All 20,000 of them. But for the voyeur deep down inside of all of us, this convention was people watching at its best. No regrets to report, but I'm still trying to figure out why Pat wanted me to take my picture with these cute little wolves!??

I'm so much more a nerd, by sheer association, than I was 4 days ago. You could not imagine what a spectacle DragonCon is. To call it a "Comic Book Convention" gives you not even a glimpse of sheer weirdness of every facet of that event. We actually attended very little in terms of the organized conference, but, truly, people watching was all there was for me to do. And there were people to be watched. A parade of people...hundreds of them in costumes of every kind...marched the streets to kick off the event on Saturday morning. The rest of the day, I would say 60% of the convention marched about in costume, taking each other's pictures, and just, more or less, playing the part. Things from stars wars, classic comic books, and various sci-fi books/movies were present. But there was so many more in costume that I did not recognize. And there were literally over 20,000 people there, so the volume alone was enough to over stimulate the senses. Some of the women wore so little that I don't even know if you qualify it as a costume. Because of the mass amount of people crammed into 3 linked hotels for the event, the hotel staffs and security did nothing but try to manage the crowd. By late on Saturday night, it was sheer pandamonium. Debauchery at its nerdiest.
There is something to be said for it all though. You know, there is no greater feeling than that of belonging. The honest fact is that there are a lot of people who who feel like they belong in so very few settings. Their families don't get them, their peers don't accept them, and their communities shun them. They toe a different line, and, perhaps, this one time each year, they feel like they have a place where they can be themselves and feel that themselves is just right. Just right in their droopy superman costume or storm trooper get-up. Welcome to the Church of DragonCon, where, for the low,low price of $30 (and FOUR hours of waiting in line to pay that $30) 20,000 people get you for one whole day and want to take your picture. Quite a bargain.