Dragon*Con 2012 – The day I dressed up as a Doctor

Not one of the Doctors from Doctor Who. Doctor Simon Tam from Firefly, which is my one sorta-cosplay convention outfit and I use every time, but I only use it once a convention, and with Dragon*Con this year Sunday was the day.

I thought I was up nice and early, but getting the outfit put on always takes longer than I expect, (especially the buttons on the vest,) so by the time I got down to the Sheraton for a Doctor Who props panel with somebody who worked in the BBC prop department, the room was full.

So I walked back up to the Westin, and sort of hovered around the International D-E room, because it wasn’t open and a line hadn’t started, but the schedule said that J August Richards would be there for the top 10 Whedon Universe countdown. I wasn’t feeling confident enough to start the line myself, but I sat in one of the closest available comfy lobby chairs, read a star trek book from my pocket PC, and kept getting up every few minutes to see if a line had started. While I was waiting, I had a great view of an assistance dog meeting a cosplay Lion:

Once the line did start, the sitting wasn’t so comfy, but I had a nice chat with the lady next in line.

The countdown was really cool. This year, the category was top 10 episodes, so there was a dollhouse ep or two, and a good mix of Firefly, Buffy, and Angel. The guy running the countdown had found music videos or promos for each episode, and made one or two of them himself. J started the talk afterward by asking the audience what we liked about those episodes, which got us gushing about all kinds of things about Joss Whedon’s writing.

After the top 10 was done, I went back to the Sheraton, got into the BritTrack room for a scholarly paper about the irreconcilable ethical dilemma in ‘The Girl who Waited,’ and was immediately bored stiff by all the references to Kantian imperatives. By this point, I’d also remembered that ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival would be on sale, and decided to go back to my room, re-up on the hotel pay wifi, and try to grab a ticket. On the way, I ran into a friend that I’d met back at the Charlotte Browncoats Ball, but she was busy too, just getting picked up by a friend, so a quick hug and a few hello-goodbyes were all we had time for.

On the TIFF website, I was able to get through the virtual waiting room and find ‘Much Ado’, but I couldn’t seem to get things to go right. I could find the movie, and two performances that were apparently not yet sold out:

 

Choose 1 adult ticket:

 

But apparently, the website couldn’t find anywhere to seat an adult:

 

So I went back to searching for the movie title again. Ohh… by this point the Saturday show was sold out. I must have just missed the last tickets. Okay, try again, for Friday the 14th…

 

That certainly doesn’t look good. I refilled my water bottle and tried again. Everything looks better, I could enter my credit card number, clicked on the button to confirm the purchase, and:

 

So I went through the whole purchase process, kept getting that last error message at the very end, so I gave up and headed out again. Picked up lunch at food court, and then went down to the Weyrfest room to wait for the dramatic reading of “The Smallest Dragonboy.” That was really great – a nicely adapted script that kept lots from the original story.

Next, I took a chance on a third Doctor Who panel, and was glad I did – the panelists were really funny, I got a good seat in line for the large-ish room at the Mariott where the panel was held, and was offered a novelty ‘Bingo’ card to play along – full of in-jokes about things that often happen at NeedCoffee panels, and you mark them off if you spot them. I didn’t win the bingo, but like most of the other players I was one short of a bingo at the end of the panel, and got a prize – I picked a ‘Flesh Doctor’ action figure.

Sunday was a good day for costumes all around, actually. On my way from the Mariott, I ended up behind a family including this darling Katniss:

I dropped by the Whedon Universe room again – there was a costume photosession on the schedule, and that was the reason I’d chosen Sunday as my dress-up day. I ended up finding an unattached River there and taking a few poses with her. 🙂 I haven’t found a copy of those pics yet, but here’s another Big Damn crew that I took a picture of:

Then it was back to the Mariott for the last half of a Lost Girl panel, where I whispered with a girl in one of the back rows, because we’d both seen all two seasons of the show, which people who’ve been watching on US channels haven’t. And there was another great Doctor Who panel, ‘Looking ahead’, where I spotted a cute little boy dressed up as the youngest Doctor – he got to ask the last question.

Oh, and when I got back to the room, I tried ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ tickets one more time – and I got one! For the friday show, but at least it went through without vomiting another error message on me. 😉 I’m looking forward to that.