Pensacon is a medium-sized con with big dreams, that delivers. While it may be experiencing growing pains with its increased popularity and lack of large venue space, it does an admirable job of working with what it has, especially in terms of bringing in celebrity fandom favorites. They featured 14
Saturday begins with a trip to moonbase Alpha. Space 1999 is one of those things I feel never gets enough love. The show’s look and premise, especially in the first season, was something a lot of later shows took from and built on. I enjoy a fascinating discussion of the
Thursday at Dragon Con is a liminal space, a time of in between. It begins in harsh reality, sweating through a maze of ticket lines at the Sheraton, but igniting in the evening, morphing into a colorful dreamscape of leather, fur and feathers. The crackle and buzz of potential fills
Fandom isn’t a box of groceries left on an old woman’s doorstep. It isn’t a thick blanket gifted to a child on a frigid night, and won’t keep the rain off your head. Yet to so many it is as necessary and natural as breathing. Why? If survival is dependent
Dragon Con Saturday begins with “Deconstructing Doctor Who” and ends sharing space with almost every other fictional character, some of them combined. First up is “What makes the Doctor, the Doctor”. My fellow co-hosts and I on Earth Station Who lead a fun and fascinating discussion on what character traits and story tropes define the Doctor across
It’s Friday noon and the vendor hall is a sea of bodies. It’s hard to know where to look when there are so many shiny things to catch your eye. I’m immediately drawn in by a row of beautifully hand drawn illustrations, until I see the exquisitely embroidered clothing and oh wait
Dragon Con on Thursday is a liminal space. It feels strange roaming through half full hotels. The excitement is like a low key vibration in the back of my head. There’s just enough cosplay to heighten anticipation but I’m not fully immersed yet. The low thrum of the smaller crowd isn’t enough to hide the distraction
I’m sitting in the tiny Tallahassee airport attempting to guess if any of the other passengers on my flight to Atlanta are going to Dragon Con. My knee jerk first impression is probably not but what do I know? That’s the magic of a con – you can transform yourself
WE ARE ALL STORIES IN THE END Day three of Dragon Con begins with a round of guest interviews that quickly becomes the highlight of my con. Ashley Pauls and I first speak to Timothy Zahn who writes for the Stars Wars universe among many other projects. He is engaging
Dragon Con day two is a blur of images and the constant murmur of voices. It’s the bumping of shoulders in a crowd and the tight ache of muscles from climbing the hills. It’s the homeless men and women, some so skeletal you wonder how they remain alive. It’s the
Dragon Con is a mass of contradictions. My first impression is gridlocked traffic surrounding the block of hotels and businesses. The people in the cars are anxious and sometimes rude, the crowds streaming by on the street are vibrating with delight. They are joyfully displaying their dream selves in feathers
STROLLING THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S DREAMS One thing I’ve realized as I creep closer to my mid-fifties is that growing up is a myth. Adulthood implies an end game – a place where we’ve learned everything we need to know in order to thrive in this world. Yet the older I
