Disco Deatheaters

Brought to you by Dragon*Con 2005.

As you've probably guessed by now, I spent this past weekend in Atlanta hanging out with Kelly and Jennifer and attending Dragon*Con. WOO! D*C is the granddaddy of all sci-fi/fantasy conventions, 20 times the size of the ones I attend here at home. We're talking about 30,000 to 40,000 attendees, not just a few hundred, with everything on a correspondingly grander scale. Including blogging — I posted more than three dozen photos, plus a few text-only notes, live from the convention. Not that I’m a huge geek or anything.

D*C is actually several smaller cons in one. For instance, there's a whole programming track devoted to Star Trek. That's a mini-con right there, complete with its own panel discussions, actor Q&As (the Cavalcade of Stars!), autograph sessions, and a Miss Klingon Empire beauty pageant. There's also a Star Wars track with its own costume contest, a Harry Potter track, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer track, a comic book/graphic novel track, a writers' track, a Wheel of Time track, and a role-playing game track that occupied the entire Grand Hall, a room the size of at least one football field, all by itself — just to name just a few. You get a little bit of all of that at local cons, so in that sense, D*C presented nothing I hadn't seen before. There was just more of everything, and the sheer stimulation of it all was enough to send us staggering home after spending a few hours at the con Saturday and Sunday.

The big difference for me was the people. Still dorky, still playing dress-up in middle age and beyond, still overflowing their bustiers/corsets and kilts — but unlike the locals, they talked to me. They talked to me! This is huge! I've attended about half a dozen cons in Minnesota by now, but I spoke to more fellow fans in the first 2 hours at D*C than in all others combined. This, more than anything else, made the whole experience otherworldly for me. I've heard out-of-towners say they go to cons for the fan camaraderie and have wondered what the heck they were talking about, but now I finally get it. Examples (and you can scroll down to see photos of these people):

• The Blue Wizard. On Saturday, we found no available tables in the food court, so Kelly, Jennifer and I set our Chik-Fil-A loot on top of a trash station and stood there to eat. The Blue Wizard, finding himself in the same predicament, asked if he could share our space. Sure. Jennifer noted that the staff he was carrying looked like Gandalf's (Lord of the Rings), and the Blue Wizard spent the rest of the meal explaining to us how he'd removed the pink-hued marble at the top and replaced it with a blue one to make it more like Sauromon's — duh — and to match his robes and Mickey Mouse-from-Fantasia hat, of course. He also introduced us to the stuffed blue dragon perched on his shoulder, its tail curled around his neck. It was a new addition to the ensemble, and one of which Blue was very proud.

  
  This whole friendly, earnest conversation blew me away. (That, and the fact that Blue looks disturbingly like a VP from my former workplace.) In Minnesota, we would all have bolted our food in silence, eyes downcast, and scurried away from the scene as quickly as possible. In Atlanta, we were all buddies, at least for a few minutes. And it didn't hurt a bit.

  
  

• While we chowed and chatted with the Blue Wizard, we spotted a Babylon 5 fan sporting the trademark peacock hairdo of a character called a Centauri and carrying a stuffed goose. Curious, Blue hailed him, and he swanned over to hold court for a few minutes. When I asked if I could touch his elaborately starched coiffure, he glared down his nose at me as if I'd offered to polish his light saber in public, and I realized he was, and intended to stay, fully in character.

  
  Speaking in a broad Centaurian accent, he explained to us that his hairdresser had added lighter streaks to his wig in recent years to correspond with the greying of his own hair, and that the goose he was carrying was not in fact a goose but a cat, since his confused emperor had decreed it so. If the emperor says it's a cat, it's a cat, and never mind the beak or the long neck (ringed with spiked leather collars to dissuade people from grabbing it). Mr. Centauri soon took his leave of us, and as we left the food court, we heard him delivering the exact same speech to another group of lucky diners.

  
  After this incident, I was emboldened to chat up and photograph anyone who looked interesting. Everyone I asked seemed happy to pose. They had, after all, worked hard on their costumes and were ready to show them off. Some of them even smiled at me. It was weird. Not Minnesota nice; real nice.

  
  

• Walden and Rowan approached us outside a conference room in which a Harry Potter discussion was scheduled. We'd all just missed getting admitted to the overfilled room. The man in the kilt was not fazed, however. He proclaimed that we'd just have our own discussion right there. Since he was (A) blocking our exit from the area and (B) carrying a sharp hand axe in his belt, we agreed.

  
  "Guess who I am," the guy invited. Er . . . athletic shoes and socks (indicative of Muggleness?), black leather kilt/belt/axe combo (Highlander?), obligatory buzz-and-beard hairstyle for kilted gents (Bald Eye for the Kilt Guy?), black T-shirt with Army Special Forces logo on left breast (some kind of space commando?), white hand towel (definite Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference), real tattoo of the Dark Mark (definite Harry Potter devotion!), and name tag reading "Walden Macnair" (who's that?). Uh . . . we got nuthin'.

  
  Undeterred by our befuddlement, Walden proceeded to expound some HP-related theories. About this time, his ladyfriend Rowan ("That's my magical name") joined us. He encouraged her to tell us about the fanfic(s) she had written featuring Walden Macnair, which, with a giggle and a simper, she did. Rowan had taken a shine to the fictional Macnair, whoever he was, and had written a story or stories that painted him as quite the he-man. When she met a real man who was enough of a Real Man to match her conception of Macnair, she knew he was the One, and they've been together ever since.

  
  Rowan has also written at least one fanfic in which the magical worlds of Harry Potter and disco music collide. Highlights include Tom Riddle/Voldemort as a swingin' disco daddy and Snape as a hopeless square. The title is "Disco Deatheaters," and I'm going to read it if I can ever find it online.

  
  Editor's note: Jennifer and I, despite being pretty thorough readers, could not figure out who Macnair was. To the Internet! Turns out Walden Macnair got a few lines in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He's the executioner hired to whack Hagrid's hippogriff Buckbeak, but his efforts were thwarted by those meddling kids.

Well, that's all the time we have for today, but by no means all the Dragon*Con goodies. Further highlights to come, including getting in touch with your inner game master and your outer exhibitionist, and what happens when Star Wars meets The Gong Show.

Photos today? YES! Tons! Get scrollin'!

Today around the world: September 7 is Xuedun (Shoton) Festivals in Tibet.