It’s finally time to go back to Dragon Con (as of starting this piece on Thursday night)! I’ve got a couple of interviews scheduled, my Finn the Human cosplay planned for Saturday, and one day at the con already in the bag. Stay tuned for my one-on-one interview with the wonderful Emily Zarka of Monstrum and my coverage of a press conference for Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games.
Here’s a quick video I made of just a fraction of the fun I had while attending Thursday activities at the con.
Dragon Con, in my summation, is a nerdy cosplay party that keeps getting bigger and attracting more and more exciting people and people from our respective fandoms to party with us. This year was no different, and I came ready to party. To get the scoop on what’s important to the organizers this year, though, I made my way over to the Opening Ceremonies panel after doing a little wandering.
As I’m sure you know, making sure we stand in solidarity and don’t cross SAG-AFTRA picket lines with our guests this year is of huge importance. “We’re also running autographs and panels based on union guidance,” Moderator, Pat Henry, said. “We want to make sure guests can interact with the fans and still show solidarity with the Writer’s Guild of America and the Screen Actor’s Guild.” I had no doubt that this has been a peak priority for the organizers this year, and its great to see such care and attention being given to this critical need for the creators we love so much.
A lot of the above video was from the Marriott during the day and going into the night, where the biggest and ragiest of the partying occurs from what I can see. I spent the majority of the time I allotted for wandering on Thursday to Marriott to see the cosplay, and the timely costumes this year did not disappoint.
And to fulfill my role as the RPG correspondent (not to mention it sounded really fun), my last panel of the day was an Interactive Liveplay set in world of The Princess Bride with Jeff Burns as DM. It was equal parts fun and chaotic. We started with some dancing R.O.U.S. (Rodents of Unusual Size) in the fire swamp, but we seemed to lose the plot a little when we flew to a bleeding moon on the wings of a giant penguin. Of course, that’s par for the course with many tabletop groups given a lot of creative freedom, and the off-the-wall direction from the audience did much more to add to the experience than to detract from it.
So that’s my Thursday at Dragon Con! I can’t believe there are FOUR more days of this, and I am so excited! I think I’m starting to get the hang of this con here in my second year.
Are you at Dragon Con? What has been your highlight so far? Feel free to leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter at @TheConCollectve!
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