This past weekend, I attended C2E2,
short for Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, for two days. Friday
I didn't have anyone to go with me, so I just went by myself, and
Saturday my sister went with me. I don't want this post to get too
long, so I am planning on Saturday's happening to be it's own post.
I had a costume to wear for the
weekend, but decided not to wear it until Saturday so instead I wore
one of my Ren Faire outfits. Yes, I have more than one, haha. It's easy to mix and match stuff to make a "new" outfit. Since I live less than a mile from the
train station, I decided to take the train into the city. I got to
the station with just enough time to purchase tickets for the entire
weekend before the train came in. It was a nice ride, not too long,
and I was then able to catch one of the shuttles to take me the rest
of the way to McCormick Place, where the convention was being held.
The convention wasn't open yet, so I got in the queue line. I only
had to wait about a half hour or so before the convention opened, and
I walked around the show floor for a while. I mostly just took
everything in since this was my first time at C2E2, but I also
started taking some photos and looked at a few stall.
A few weeks ago when they put up the
panel schedule, I saw that there was a panel on Science Fiction with
an author whose book I was currently reading. It was the only real
panel that day that I wanted to attend, and was quite surprised that
there was no line at all, you could just walk into the room and pick
where you wanted to sit. I had always heard about how you want to
show up about an hour before the panel to make sure you got in, but
that wasn't really the case here. This was actually the case all
weekend, even when it was hyper crowded on Saturday. I know this
isn't the case at a lot of conventions, so it was nice to have that
at the first convention where I went to panels.
The panel itself was fairly
interesting. The panelists were John Scalzi (I had recently
finished Redshirts and loved it), Daryl Gregory, and M.D. Waters. I
learned a few things, such as how a lot of authors don't have any
control over the covers of their books – often it is the publishers
that decide on the covers. Other than things like that, though, a lot
of it was about writing which ended up not interesting me a whole
lot.
I then went back down to the show floor
area for the rest of the day. There were a few shows on the live
stage that I stopped to see. One was a nerdy comedy sketch show where
the people came up and told funny stories from their lives that had
to do with being nerdy. I did a terrible job of describing it, but it
was pretty hilarious and had me in stitches several times. The other
one was more stand-up, where everyone got to do short (about 5
minutes or so) sets. There was also a cosplay contest that I caught a
little bit of. There wasn't any pre-registration required – you
just had to show up about half an hour before it started. I didn't do
it since I didn't really consider what I was wearing a “costume”,
I was more or less just dressing up since I didn't want to go in just
my normal clothes.
There were a lot of great costumes on
Friday. My favorite and probably the most creative costume was a
female Boba Fett in a Civil War-style dress and hoop skirt. It was
just fantastic. There was also a guy in a full Bumblebee suit from
Transformers. He definitely commanded a lot of attention, and
sometimes he could barely go two feet without photo requests, so
sometimes he just had to forge on though. I certainly didn't get
photos of all of my favorites – either they dashed on by or I didn't
want to bother them. While I was at one of the shows at the live
stage, I spotted a Tauriel and female Thorin, but they left their
seats and I didn't have a chance to catch them.
Before I left I stopped by the booth
for a local podcast network (DVM Podcast Empire – check them out!)
and talked for a while with them about Person of Interest (their
podcast on that show, Podcast of Interest, is literally one of my
favorite podcasts), Arrow, and Agents of SHIELD. I learned that they
had recently done an interview with Stephen Amell, the star of Arrow,
so I made sure to download that when I got home. I have been thinking
of picking up a SHIELD podcast, so I will likely give theirs a
listen. It was really nice to talk to Dave again, as I had a chance
to meet him last year when I was at Wizard World Chicago. He's a
great guy, and you should all check out his podcasts.
I then caught a shuttle back to the
train station, and would have made the train if it hadn't left early.
I then had to wait half an hour until the next train, leading my
parents to decide that they wouldn't wait for me and went out to
dinner without me, leaving me to fend for myself for dinner. Not the
great thing when you have nothing but the same leftovers at home and
you're hungry after a long day on your feet. However, my wig for my
costume finally arrived (there was a snafu with the company and my
order somehow got lost), so I then had time to cut it to the right
length.
Well, that's my first day at C2E2. Stay
tuned for day two soon.
