Schierer Space

Sigh.

Dragon*Con is over, but I’m definitely in withdrawal. The real world seems so grey after my weekend in Oz. We barely had a chance to visit with friends and there are always way too many things to do.
For me, this was quite possibly the most surreal whirlwind weekend I’ve ever experienced. Although K & I hoped that people would enjoy the costume, we had absolutely no idea the stir it would cause. I certainly had no idea the way people would react to the character or the attention it would attract.
On Friday, after we got settled in and scattered to various panels and events, I came back to the hotel room in the late afternoon and assembled the costume (pink fuzz EVERYWHERE). With none of our friends around I put on the costume and headed out (none of them had seen it).
I walked out of the elevator and into the Hilton lobby, and almost immediately had formed a camera circle. Woah. This is going pretty well, but it’s because it’s early in the Con, and not so many people are dressed up… right?
I shuffled around the hotel and across the street to the Marriot and was met by more and more camera flashes. This highlighted when a full Chewbacca costume came over to pose with me.

Way.

Some friends even went by and took pics, but I was in character and could only “yip” and “brrrrring” in their direction. (They figured it out later when the pink fluff was found all over our room.)
Later that night, Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) stopped by with his book and asked me to pose with his book.

More shrieks of joy and giggles and flashing cameras and loads of compliments to K’s creation.

Saturday was a LOT more of the same, and I spent less time in panels and more time in costume. K graciously acted as handler so I could make my way to the Hyatt for the hallway costume contest picture. We also figured out what we would need to do to enter The Masquerade (the gala event). We were completely unprepared for needing a prepared skit and audio on CD. Note: The online rules are very clear, we just hadn’t looked them up!
By evening on Saturday we were in the hotel room with blank CDs, audio editing software on my laptop and put together a plausible 90 second skit. So after registering Sunday morning, off I go to the contest on Sunday evening. I’m looking at people in highly complex costumes with moving wings and lights and other fantastic details…. and here I am in a big pink fuzzy tent with eyes (albeit a very cute big pink fuzzy tent) wondering what the heck I’m getting myself into.
Eventually, I find myself standing on a dark ramp waiting to enter the stage, and even the staff members are getting giddy about the costume. Finally I hear the emcee, Ethan Phillips say the corny intro I wrote and it’s my turn to go on. I hear my audio track [1.4MB mp3] start up and I shuffle onto stage. And then….

wow.

It felt like crashing into a wave of sound. The crowd was going NUTS. Half of my brain was saying “they like me!” the other half was saying “oh no! I can’t hear my audio!”. After about 15 seconds or so, the crowd noise abated to the point that I could actually hear to synch up with the audio. It was great hearing the crowd reply to the “Hello!” and “Greetings!”. I got the most reaction from when I hid (after the first phone ring) and the eventual “Brrrring!” sounds. The crowd response was just awesome. Thanks to everybody for being so amazingly supportive!

In the end the fantastic audience reaction netted me the “Audience Appreciation” award and a pile of dealer credits ($50* worth!!!) which Ethan dropped in my gaping alien mouth. Suh-weeet!
I then got my picture taken about a billion times (which I will try to link to as I find them) and eventually tried to figure out how to walk in my costume and carry the mounted certificate at the same time. Shout out to Bill and Courtney for rescuing me so I could be mobile. At that point I was introduced to the staff of the Daily Dragon (scroll down) who were kind enough to put a word of thanks to K for making the costume for me (PDF version of Monday’s Dragon).

Whew. Thanks for reading all of that and letting me stretch out my fifteen minutes of fame. It was a thrill to have so many people laughing and cheering for my antics. Maybe I could get K to put on a miniskirt and giggle like a fan-girl when I walk into the room…. (not bloody likely).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 am and is filed under DragonCon, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.