We return from the con! We are not dead! I bought more corsetry! (I’m starting to think I have a problem…)

DragonCon is indeed very very large, but I have to say, it wasn’t nearly so alarming as San Diego ComicCon, for the simple reason that D*C is big in about six rooms and three hotels, and ComicCon is even bigger and all in the same room with you. This makes a substantial difference in the level of terror. I’m very tired and a bit people’d out, but I’m not at the "I don’t need to see another human for the next week," state that I was after ComicCon.

I have no real con report. Decatur Book Festival was great, I bought earrings, I signed books, I talked to children, I did not swear or say anything wildly inappropriate. There was a near miss when the portable microphone I was wearing fell off the back of my pants and hit the floor with a distressing thud. (I had no back pockets, because women’s pants suck.) I could actually feel the obscenity rising in my throat. It hit somewhere about the larynx and I managed to choke it off. One of the A/V guys retrieved the bit of electronics, fixed it, looked at me, and said "How good of friends are we?" I’d never met him before in my life, but the show must go on. "Good friends," I said, sighing. The microphone pack wound up in my pants, hooked over my underwear. It stayed put for the entire presentation, too.

Dragoncon. Whew. I met a lot of people. They were awesome. I met fans. They were also awesome. (The one dressed very convincingly as Rorschach was a little unsettling, though. Rorschach: "I’m your biggest fan!" Ursula (warily): "….so you claim.") Ellen Million is awesome. Fatfred is awesome. Mur & Cmar & Laura and crew are awesome. Diana Stein and Jennie Breeden, also awesome. I went to the art show. I looked at the art. I said "Oh god, I’m a hack!" and went and drank heavily, which is kinda the point, and was awesome in its own self-flagellating way.

And lord, the costuming. Generally most of the con eye candy is for the guys, since you get a zillion women in corsets wandering around–Heroescon, while awful in many regards, was nice in that there were a fair number of male superheros who wore Spandex very well.* But this con, while light on superheroes, had some very nice steampunk, a Bram Stoker’s Dracula that I noticed even through coffee-and-Samubuca-induced queasiness, and a dark elf wearing nothing but bodypaint and leather pants that walked by and completely halted female conversation in the booth for some time.

Mind you, they do love the costumes a LOT, which meant that when we went to dinner with Kevin’s old roommate Mike, who was doing a very good Harvey Birdman, it took us twenty minutes to get from the hotel lobby to the corner, because everybody wanted photos with Birdman.

And now, I’m going to go laze around and look at stuff on-line and try to recuperate from both the mental exhaustion and the regrettable toll taken on my digestion. (I have got to learn to stop eating so much beef jerky on road trips…)

*Spandex is one of those things that should be a privilege, not a right. And I say this as one who cannot and should not wear it myself

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