I win I-Con!

[jethrien]

Lovely weekend conning with friends.


The thing I love about I-Con is the sheer diversity of geekiness. Over the course of the weekend, I went to panels on fixing broken rpg rules, webcomics business, slushpile horror stories, movie trailer previews, the DC universe, and fanfiction. I watched folk/filk singers, went to an art show, and listened to Peter David tell funny stories. The dealer's room has everything from pretty, pretty dice to piles and piles of books to gorgeous medieval costumes. (Oh, I want one of the pretty corsets, but I have no idea what I'd ever do with the thing, and they're waaay to expensive.)

chuckro and ivy03 both did panels this year. Chuckro's panels alternated between very well attended and not very well attended at all. (The fact that they kept screwing with the schedule didn't help.) Ended up spending an hour chatting with Chuckro, Greenie, and Jon Rosenburg of Goats.com, since no one came to their panel (which was originally at 1, and got inexplicably moved to 11.) It's a little weird being the only non-guest in the group, though.


So this year, the weather was being predicted as vaguely sunny and not too cold. So I summoned courage and followed through on an idea I've been toying with for some time - I cosplayed. I'd put together a Zatanna costume a couple years ago. (For the confused - Zatanna is a Justice League member, a magician. Her costume is essentially a tailcoat with tuxedo shirt, vest, and bow tie on the top, and dance pants and fishnets on the bottom.) Well, this went over very well. Got stopped every few minutes while walking around by people who wanted to take pictures, and got a ton of compliments. Incredibly ego-boosting. I win!

One of the lessons learned here is that fishnets are startlingly flattering. It's a shame they're so damn trashy.

To follow up on the wild costume success, I found a new way home. The most directly way from Long Island to Jersey City is taking the Manhattan Bridge and crossing Chinatown on Canal to get to the Holland Tunnel. The problem is that coming through Chinatown on a weekend night is an exercise in maddening gridlock and stupid people. On the way home on Saturday, Ivy03 was exhausted and so I ended up driving her car. Due to really ugly construction, the ramp to the Manhattan Bridge was incredibly poorly marked (and currently looks like an access road, not something you're allowed to drive on). So we missed it. Same deal at the Brooklyn Bridge. (They're apparently rebuilding a chunk of the BQE.) So we ended up taking the Battery Tunnel, since we didn't particularly want to take the Verrazano. Turns out that the Battery Tunnel lets you neatly turn around the bottom of Manhattan, come up the West Side Highway through Tribecca, and sneak around to zip into the tunnel. Tribecca is deserted on weekend nights. So without traffic, taking the Battery Tunnel adds about ten minutes to the trip. But with traffic, it saves probably half an hour, all of which would have been spent in stop-and-go with crazy people. Less time, less stress. We're going this way every time now. I win!

Comments

[feiran.livejournal.com]

Yay I-Con! Sorry not to join you this year. But that Zatanna costume? Is amazing. I am thoroughly unsurprised at the attention. :D

Alas for the fishnet reputation. They're surprisingly warm, too.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Ok, I didn't find them to be terribly warm at all. But mine are a pretty open weave, so maybe the ones with smaller diamonds are warmer.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Depends on the material, too. Mine are like wool or something. They give a lot more heat-protection than you'd think.

Also, I am another who is unsurprised at the appreciation of you being in costume by all and sundry. Utterly unsurprised.

[jeths-mom.livejournal.com]

Silly. The trashiness is what makes them so attractive. It's the same concept as the naughty librarian.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But I actually meant that they're flattering even without the connotations. The way the pattern expands and contracts really highlights the narrowness of my ankles and kind of hides the squishy bits at the top of my thighs - there's an nice optical illusion that makes legs look more graceful and shapely.

[fairylane.livejournal.com]

"One of the lessons learned here is that fishnets are startlingly flattering. It's a shame they're so damn trashy."

Four years of Rocky Horror have drilled both sides of that lesson into my brain...