Dawn's Victorian Costume Diary
Five of us had decided, as a group, to take costumes to wear at the con, and the plan was to dress up in wild west gear (Deadlands RPG) and crawl the vendor hall in the early afternoon. The morning started out rainy, which was a blessing to the eyes of those of us who'd been up way to late the night before. It also lowered the outside temperature about 15 degrees, making it a lot more comfortable in the layered clothing we were wearing.
Our friends Paul, Kim and Ray met in our room, since we were across from the convention center, and we all got dressed. It would be a short walk through the skywalk, and afterward we could change back to street clothes before heading to dinner.
I have to admit, we looked pretty damn good. If you saw us, I was the one in the purple dress. The other woman in our group chose more masculine clothing. I had heard that if you're in costume don't plan on getting anywhere in a hurry, and this was certainly true. From the moment we entered the con center we couldn't get 20 feet without a request for photos. A couple of the vendors for western games asked us to pose in their booth or holding their product. We got so many compliments I'm surprised the guy's hats still fit them at the end of the day. We had been worried that the costumes might be warm, as they were more layers than we were used to wearing in the summer, but because the outside temps were so low the inside temp never warmed up either, and it turned out just about perfect for us. Security did stop us once to check the guns, but we'd taken extreme precautions beforehand. One pistol was clearly a plastic capgun, and the other two were no more than replica handgrips with all moving parts removed, taped onto white PVC.
Here's a picture of us that was posted on Pinnacle's website:
Well, after four hours walking the vendor hall, stopping every other booth for photos, we were tired. Everyone had sore feet, we had seen just about everything to be seen, I think, and we were ready to go. After getting stopped for pictures about 8 more times we made it out of the hall, and into the waiting jaws of a TV crew. Specifically, the Game Show Network. They were there doing a show on GenCon and wanted to interview us. I can say without reservation that the show host is a jerk, in my opinion, and probably proud of that image. We gave them about 20 minutes of time we had really wanted to use for dinner before our next scheduled game, and they'll be editing that down to 45 seconds of footage making us look like freaks and weirdos.
Here's a couple more pictures I have appropriated from other people who took pictures of us. I will add to the selection if I find more shots of us.
http://www.hunterandlori.com/images/P8200018.JPG
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v344/RenegadePocky/Gen%20Con%20Indy%202k4/gunslingers.jpg
