DragonCon is OVER! (Patreon)

WOW. What a weekend!! DragonCon is a whirlwind every year, but it felt especially crazy this time — so many people to see, and time went by so quickly!

Thursday

We arrived Thursday night, which is honestly a little late to show up to DragonCon!! We had the pleasure of rooming with Yaya Han and her partner Brian!

It was lovely mostly just because Yaya and Brian are lovely people who are lots of fun to spend time with — but Yaya also has this way of just casually dropping high level cosplay and/or business wisdom into conversation as if it's obvious, which is incredible instructional! She's just learned so much over her years of cosplaying professionally, and I feel like I need to keep paper and a pen on hand when we talk so I can take notes!!

Friday

But I got going right away on Friday with Zoya, who turned out to be my new favorite convention costume.

Dragonrider Cosplay also brought a new Zoya cosplay, so we ran around together as double Zoya and honestly, it was one of my best DragonCon experiences ever!! Russian is her first language, so she even taught me how to say "you're welcome" when people thank us for photos!

This costume is amazing for two main reasons: One, it's comfortable as HECK. Since the wig is built into the hat, I don't ever get the "wig headache" or itchy/irritated temples that I usually get after wearing a wig for too long. And since I have fully opaque dance tights on underneath the leotard, I actually feel very covered, despite it being an objectively "skimpy" costume. Two, being in character as Zoya is so fun and so easy!! I don't usually do much in-character stuff in cosplay, partially because so many of the characters I cosplay are subdued (or worse, angry... haha!) which doesn't make for a fun convention experience. But it's so easy to slap on a mediocre Russian accent and yell and make bad jokes. I had a ton of fun yelling "YOU LOVE TO HATE ZOYA!!" whenever someone recognized me on the street!

Saturday

Saturday was Jester day!! I planned my whole lineup around the Critical Role photoshoot on Saturday at 1:00pm. But a wrench got thrown in the gears — on Friday morning, I cracked my phone screen at breakfast. I was so upset because it was shedding glass (danger!!) and I needed it to get/stay in touch with friends and of course, take photos! So I went to get it fixed on Saturday morning. I arrived at the shop as soon as they opened and they were very quick, but that still meant that I couldn't start getting into Jester until I got back, which was around 11:30am.

Turns out... that wasn't enough time. It took me a full hour just to do the face paint, and the rest of the costume is still a ton of work to put on — a zillion little details like securing the horns, wrapping the ribbons around the sleeves, lacing the corset, etc. ended up taking up another solid hour. I arrived at the hotel where the photoshoot was taking place just five or ten minutes after they'd finished and dispersed. :( I was REALLY SAD, and only got sadder the more I heard about how great the meetup was!!

BUT... it's also hard to be sad in a costume like this!! I was so thrilled with how it came together, and just walking around in it I felt so cute and cheerful, even despite all that! I nearly always feel good, confident, and excited when I put on a costume, but when I put on Jester I felt straight-up HAPPY.

Josh and I grabbed the camera and went over to the park to take a few shots. We had a bit of trouble with lighting and location (we're new to this camera, and shooting in direct sunlight in 90 degree weather with high humidity is... challenging) but I think we still get a few good shots! Here's a little preview:

Later that evening, I had the pleasure of shooting with World of Gwendana, where I also ran into two other Jesters, including Pearl, whose tumblr post about her own costume was a huge help when constructing mine! We got some fun Duplicity photos that I'm very excited to see.

Afterwards, I shed the blue skin (but kept the horns, fangs, and tail!) and wore a casual Jester look to the Aquarium!

We spent the evening with Valentine Costumes & Dragonriders Cosplay (his girlfriend — the Zoya I mentioned earlier!) in their Witcher Noir costumes!

Sunday

Sunday was... rough, haha. We stayed up very late partying with Valentine & Dragonrider, and Valentine and I were scheduled for an early morning Witcher shoot with World of Gwendana. We limped our way to a nearby park, armed with just two or three hours of sleep, and in my case, a wicked hangover... oops.

Good thing these characters are supposed to look grumpy!! Despite everything, the photos looked beautiful even just back-of-camera, and I'm so excited to see how they all come out!

Yaya also invited us to go to dinner with her and some friends on Sunday night, and even through my exhausted haze, it was a great time!! She keeps great company and we got to eat with a talented make-up artist, a double-threat cosplayer and photographer, and someone who works for Marvel, which was pretty dang cool, haha!

Monday

We left pretty early on Monday for our 11am flight, and thanks to the time difference, got home around noon, which left us some time to run errands, get some food, and then have a leisurely evening watching a movie and going to bed early. It was nice to have a little half-day off to recover before tackling work again!

To those of you I got to meet at DragonCon, thank you so much for saying hello!! I wish I could've met more of you, but BOY is it hard to coordinate/communicate at that con! I hope you all had a lovely labor day weekend, no matter what you were doing, and keep an eye out for photos from the weekend and hopefully some new print designs available soon! <3