Tag Archives: dragon con

The Last Year

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Photo on 3-23-15 at 5.30 PM

It’s been a long time since I blogged here. First it was because I hated my old job, and then I had a new job, and then it was because I had a boyfriend, and then all things taken together it’s been almost exactly a year since I last posted here. I had a nearly year-long streak of weekly posts before that. Alas!

So, what happened in the interim? I continued volunteering at the theatre. Then I met a boy and dated for a bit and it went nowhere. Then I met a boy and dated for 10 months and was in love and then eventually it was awful and I broke up with him a month ago. I’m still stupendously sad about it, even if it was the right choice. I miss what could have been if both of us had been different people.

I stopped volunteering at the theatre very regularly, as it had served its purpose. I still go back every few months, just for a night, just to remind myself that I was able to do it once. I found a whole new group of friends, some of whom have stuck around and who I cherish fiercely. Several friends of mine moved back from abroad. I met new people who might one day become friends. I dyed my hair green on the bottom. I became weirdly active on Twitter.

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A Busy Belated Labor Day

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Image courtesy of Pat Loika. Licensed under CCY BY 2.0.

Labor Day weekend is, as I have mentioned before, a Busy Weekend in Atlanta. Since, as a city, we don’t know how to schedule things in a reasonable fashion, Labor Day weekend is host to: Dragon Con (largest independent sci fi/fantasy convention in the country), the Decatur Book Festival (largest independent book festival in the country),  and Black Gay Pride (largest Black Gay Pride celebration in the country). Plus there’s a massive college football thing.

This happens every year. It is a delightful logistical nightmare. Several hundred thousand people with really intense, really disparate interests descend on a city that is an infrastructure nightmare at the best of times.

Labor Day weekend is, of course, the Best.

Normally, I confine myself to the quiet nerds at the Decatur Book Festival. They drink beer, (politely), and care about books (politely), and listen to readings (politely). They go home at 5. There are no after parties. But this year, I decided that I had to spend at least a day amongst the rowdier nerds: I was going to try to go to Dragon Con.

A bit of Dragon Con backstory: prior to this year, I had been to Dragon Con twice. I was 12 the first time and 13 the second, and at neither point was a chaperoned. It was terrifying. At the time (and this was 10 years ago, now), the con had somewhere around 17,000 attendees. It was crowded, and it was full of people in bondage gear, and it did not have anti-harassment policies on display. I got to see Anne McCaffrey speak, but made no effort to go back during high school or college.  Continue reading →

Highlights from Nerd Christmas

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Image courtesy of JKD Atlanta. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Labor Day weekend is nerd Christmas for the city of Atlanta. Most famously, this is because of Dragon Con, the three-day sci-fi/fantasy convention which rolls into downtown and briefly allows us to experience the fun and excitement of more than 50,000 nerds in steampunk storm trooper costumes taking over the metro area.

However, I tend to avoid Dragon Con after a particularly scarring experience as a 12-year-old left to wander through it on my own (protip: don’t let your tween wander around a convention alone; they will see bondage cosplayers, and they will be a alarmed).

Instead, while my classical nerdbros are having their day, I am busy spending hours hanging with my peeps (the book nerds, natch) at the Decatur Book Festival. It’s a two-day extravaganza of book nerds being quiet, earnest liberals together while eating popsicles and buying novelty bumper stickers from Flannery O’Conner’s estate. Continue reading →