So, Batman, Cookie Monster and a Jawa walk into a bar....

Stop me if you've heard this one.  So, Batman, Cookie Monster and a Jawa walk into a bar because the Abbey Underground in Denton, Texas was hosting a Fandom Dinner and Cosplay Cocktail Party Saturday night from 5pm-2am.  A bar hosting a party for people in costume with drinks, food, a Lego Minifig vendor, a band, a costume contest and a DJ?  Hail yiss!

I decided to attend purely on a whim. Did I know anyone going to this party?  Well, no.  Did I have a costume ready to go within a day's notice?  Actually, I did!  I made a couple of cosplay costumes last winter after attending last year's Wizard World Comic Con in Tulsa, OK, where I came away ablaze with inspiration.  

Prior to that convention I rarely attended cons and truly believed that I would never cosplay simply because I am plus-sized.  However after witnessing so many young cosplayers at the Tulsa Comic Con, from little children to teenagers dressing up in costumes they had made themselves.  I changed my mind.  Drastically.  Cosplay is for everyone.  I get a huge thrill out of someone recognizing my fandom and a huge surge of happiness whenever I make decent looking props from a pile of garbage, or clay, or felt, or cardboard.  

So for the cosplay party at the Abbey Underground, I donned my Ramona Flowers costume from Scott Pilgrim comic/movie, complete with the "Power of Love" sword made from a plastic Halloween ninja sword and Ramona's iconic purse made from a spray painted cookie tin and went forth to meet a bunch of strangers, in costume.

I arrived a little early.  Most people arrived later in the night, but I didn't know what to expect so I got there a little after the doors opened at 5 pm, to be sure I would be allowed in.

I met the featured cosplayer, MisspmjCosplay, who was dressed as the upcoming Suicide Squad movie version of Harley Quinn.  She was there to raise proceeds for the non-profit agency Heroic Inner Kids.  I loved that she is a HUGE DC fangirl, like myself.  She had recently completed the Dagger Type, gold and black version of the new 52 Batgirl Comic costume, which she explained the plotline in precise detail to me, and my jaw practically dropped.  She is the real deal and a lovely person to boot.

As the costume contest was taking place, I met a super-cute, friendly cosplay couple.  She was dressed as Kagura of the Wind from Inuyasha, which I used to beg my younger sister to tape for me on VCR whenever it aired on Cartoon Network back in the day.  Her husband was dressed as Metal Gear Solid's Snake. 

My new friends in line for the cosplay contest, standing behind Elsa and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.

Kagura of the Wind by @t0xicassie

Lil' Link and Twilight Sparkle!

Sadly, my new friends didn't win.  Top Prize went to a cosplayer from Borderlands but as the night I geeked out with new people on superhero movies from the 90's such as The Phantom and Dark Man.  My metal cookie tin purse felt apart twice but both times cosplayers immediately came to my rescue, corralling my wallet, keys and phone, handing them back to me. Thank you, Princess Leia!

The band Luna Royale played dressed as Obi-Wan, Doctor Who, and Batman on the drums.  It's too bad I didn't take a full photo of Batman in costume as he was wearing the black underwear over grey leggings version.

Princess Leia and Jafar looking on.

After the band and some weird Dragon-Ball Z male fight/strip show?!? (it was weird. Two actors play-fought then stripped to the waist, grinding up on Harley Quinn.  I took pictures as first but even my camera was like, "wha??? Ah hell, no!") the DJ started spinning, mostly playing Michael Jackson and oldies.  No Drake or Bey.  I stayed until my purse exploded for the last time, all over the dance floor. Then left awash in a vague feeling that I just experienced a very odd but fun fever dream.

I don't know that I would go again to small events outside of the larger conventions, it makes for a memorable experiences but it is really difficult to remember different cosplayers you might have met before, because they look soooo different from costume to costume.  Also some of the cosplayers have pre-established groups or family members that they cosplay with, so it seemed to me that they weren't super open to outsiders.  I usually make friends quite easily but with costumes involved, it just seemed different, not quite as easy.  People do kind of look at your costume and what it represents, rather than seeing you as a person.  It's just what we do as humans.

I want to definitely keep cosplaying but sometimes I just got to remember that the friendliest face I have, is actually my own.

Until next time!

(All photos are my own.  Please let me know if you'd like to be credited as one of the above cosplayers.  Thanks)

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Speed Dating at a Comic Con

Hey guys and gals.  Over Valentine’s Day weekend I attended the Dallas Comic Con Fan Days 2016 with my bestie, where we decided to go in costume and attend the speed dating event hosted by SciFi Speed-Dating.  Ah, Nerds in Love!  The headline practically writes itself.

Meet a life size Ninja Turtle is off my bucket list.

“Do it for the story!”  I urged my also single, best friend.  “We will go in costume!  It’ll be hilarious.”  I promised.  This seemed to me to have all the potential in the world to be the best meet-cute scenario in the history of adorkability. 

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Convention Spotlight: Wizard World Tulsa - Day Three

Day Three – October 25, 2015

On the last day of Wizard World Tulsa I actually got to the convention kind of early, partly because I was terrified I would sleep past my check-out time at the hotel so I woke up super early and grabbed breakfast downtown. Afterwards I walked around to see more of the city until the convention started. Downtown Tulsa is very walkable.

(All photos are my own.  Please let me know if you'd like to be credited as one of the below cosplayers.  Thanks)

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Convention Spotlight: Wizard World Tulsa - Day Two

Day Two - October 24, 2015

I arrived at the convention center on Saturday close to noon and walked around the Exhibition Hall, where I found out vendors were selling beer!  Beer at a comic con?  How is this possible?  This is allowed?  I love Wizard World Tulsa!!!  I spotted the most adorable mother-daughter cosplay team walking past me, I love – LOVE that the mom was Peggy Carter and her daughter vintage Captain America, because, really, any mom will tell you their baby is the absolute love of their life.

(All photos are my own.  Please let me know if you'd like to be credited as one of the below cosplayers.  Thanks)

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Convention Spotlight: Wizard World Tulsa - Day One

Hello again.  In my first post for 2016, I mentioned how I wasn't ready to review 2015 in full.  This is because I got the opportunity back in October to cover all three days of the Wizard World Tulsa Comic Convention 2015 for a pop-culture website for women, PaperDroids.

Update - My full coverage has been posted at PaperDroids blog - please read for coverage of all three days.

(All photos are my own.  Please let me know if you'd like to be credited as one of the below cosplayers.  Thanks)

Day One - October 23, 2015

Before Wizard World Tulsa, my convention experience was limited to the time I went about 8 years ago with my younger sister to a local anime convention inside a halfway crumbling janky-looking mall, in the pre-streaming anime days, when you had to buy dubbed DVDs from Sam Goody and Borders.  I went more recently with my friend to Dallas Comic Con Fan Days for Saturday only, where I dressed up as a casual Wonder Woman lugging around three to four merchandise bags at a time, and not generally knowing how to do “hero poses” despite dressing as superhero.  Would I be able to stand all three days of full blown convention put on by Wizard World in a different city four hours away? 

Day One, I got to the Cox Convention Center in Tulsa just as the door were opening at 3pm.  I didn’t take a costume this time, preferring to dress comfortably, but I did bring a back-pack with an empty water bottle.  The convention was nicely laid out, well-staffed and brimming with excited volunteers.  The building itself is very pretty inside and it’s hard not to go “ooh” and “ahh” immediately as you walk in.

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two

Who could have known?  Who could have known that esteemed and hallowed British actor Alan Rickman would have passed away last week, along with David Bowie?  Both after battling forms of cancer. 

I first became aware of Alan Rickman when my dad made us watch Die Hard on VHS.  Before Die Hard, the most effective villains were either Emperor Palpatine or the Nazis, not even counting Darth Vader because he redeemed himself in the end.  All other villains, in my limited child-hood knowledge of movies, mostly came from the earlier Bond films and many made the most bone-headed moves that would later spawn the Austin Powers parodies.  

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

Hello there, I decided to break up the last book of the series into two parts, first reading Chapters 1 through 24, and stopping to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One.

I started this project of re-reading and re-watching the Harry Potter series several years as a full-fledged adult.  The release of the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows occurred in 2007.  Films, 7 and 8, were released November of 2010 and July of 2011, respectively. At the time of this post, that marks eight and a half years from the last time I read Book Seven.  Eight years ago, I was 25.  If you had told me what would have happened in those eight years, I would not have believed you.  Not one bit.

I will explain why below, but for these reasons the last book resonates with me as an adult so much more so than when I initially read it at age 25.  At least the first half, anyway.

Again, spoilers to follow.

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Happy New Year, guys and gals!  I didn’t want to stop in my on-going series of re-reading and re-watching the Harry Potter series to do some sort of 2015 year in review.  Most of what happened you probably saw on my blog and to be honest, I wasn’t into reviewing the year, not just yet anyway.

So, to continue on, I have just finished the penultimate book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  I’m re-reading from a more adult perspective ten years and some months years later from the original summer release of Book Six back in 2005.  Initially I started this project as an attempt to pick out more details of Houses Ravenclaw and House Hufflepuff since Pottermore, would later sort me into Ravenclaw and my best friend into Hufflepuff.  Like almost everyone else I was convinced I would be in Gryffindor. 

Book Six is one of my favorite books in the series, along with Book Two.  As soon as I finished reading Book Six for the first time, my mind was ablaze with the possibilities of what kind of object the seventh Horcrux would turn out to be.  Like my pronunciation of Hermione, the actual pronunciation of Horcrux was, way, way off from my interpretation.  (Why can’t they be Hor-cruz/Hor-cruise?)  Book Six has one of the better endings being entirely open-ended and somewhat cliff-hanger like, leaving ALL Harry Potter fans salivating in anticipation for the final installment. 

As always, spoilers to follow.

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Resuming my quest to re-read and re-watch each of the Harry Potter books and movies, years later as a full-grown adult, I have come to the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Now my copy of the fifth book is the Bloombury edition, which was printed and sold in the U.K.  At the time of the book’s release, I was in London as part of the Radio/TV/Film overseas summer course in British Broadcasting co-hosted by my school, the University of North Texas, and the University of London.  My classmates and I stayed with host families for two months in the Muswell Hill area.   I had spied the local bookstore, Muswell Hill Bookshop, and on the night of the fifth book’s release went to stand in line to buy a copy.

Went I got to the bookshop I couldn’t help but grin in amazement.  I stood behind a long line of young local kids standing with their parents, chatting excitedly in British accents and dressed in long black robes and pointed witch hats.  I SWEAR to God, it was like being dropped off at the 9¾ platform in person.  It was like stepping into the books themselves, and I’ll never forget that treasured memory.

The book itself, on the other hand, is my least favorite book, so far.  I say so far, because maybe in re-reading the last two, I may turn out not to like them as much as I previously thought but I highly, highly doubt it.  It starts sad and slow, remains at a somewhat sluggish pace and then ends in an incredibly sad manner but I’ll get to that more below.

Spoilers to follow.

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Continuing on to the fourth book in the series, I have been re-reading and re-watching the Harry Potter series, after more than a decade, from a different perspective.  I’m much older and one would hope, wiser.  I also wanted to re-read the series for more details of the much overshadowed Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff houses.

I first came across the Harry Potter series right as the Book Four was coming out.  My younger cousin had the first two books with him, the weekend my dad and stepmom got married.  I finished both in no time, found the third book and was all set when the fourth book came out later that year.  Interestingly, the beginning of Book Four does a good job of describing the past plot-lines in the first few chapters, making it seem as though it was designed to bring in new readers right away, setting them up to understand the story, and letting them read the first three books at another time, if they chose to do so.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire gets right into the trio’s growing pains and we experience Ron, Harry and Hermione going through the ugly emotions of jealousy, fear, isolation, awkwardness, and unrequited love.  This book also established the pattern of a heart-breaking death for each of the remaining books in the series.  Book Four launches head-long into puberty and emerges on the other side more mature due to darker themes.

As always, spoilers ahead.

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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

If you missed my previous posts, I've been re-reading and re-watching the Harry Potter series in order.  Mostly because I wanted to read it again from the perspective of my Pottermore assigned Ravenclaw House, but also because now I'm a full-blown adult with a home mortgage and I was curious to see how the series has held up.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is notable in my opinion for expanding the Harry Potter world to include Harry's father James' generation and for also developing Hermione into a stronger, passionate character.

(Warning - Spoilers)

Hermione is amazing as f**k, in this, although her character is put on a painful journey through a majority of the book.  She tries to genuinely protect Harry and yet is sworn to secrecy about having a time turner. Thus she has to resort in tattling on her friends and is shunned by Ron for most of the book.  I would argue that Ron isn't really unfairly harsh to Hermione since he cannot know her motivations and really reacts as anyone normally would but not even Harry suffers as much as Hermione in the third book.  Hermione undergoes a fantastic hero's journey that could rival Harry's own.


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Re-reading and Re-watching: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Continuing on my mission to re-read and re-watch all the Harry Potter books and movies, approximately 15 years later since I first started when Book 4 came out, I have to admit that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was always my favorite book prior to Books 6 and 7.

It’s not a popular opinion, and I totally understand why most prefer Book Three over Book Two.  The plotting in Book Three is denser, and has more world-building elements.

The second book in my opinion just so cinematic.  Reading it the first time, I could definitely picture an Indiana Jones type movie in my mind’s eye.  The Basilisk made for a fantastic villain, versus the whodunit aspect of the third book, which had more difficult elements to translate to film.  I’m a movie director at heart so I always read books in the same way, picturing them as movies.

Again, I was re-reading to keep an eye out for any mentions of Ravenclaw and by extension Hufflepuff students.  Ravenclaw, because that is the house I was sorted into by Pottermore, and Hufflepuff because that is the house my best friend was sorted into. 

Below are my thoughts on both the second book and the second film. 

The same as last time, spoilers are abound.

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