This year, Kara and Jim initiated Chris and I in what is apparently the holiest of nerd holys, a bacchanalia of creativity and expression with a cast of tens of thousands.

Dragon*Con.

Long story short, we had an astounding time. So good, in fact, I had an epiphany on the flight home, when we were 30k feet somewhere above the Nevada desert: I will never go to Burning Man, because this is my Burning Man. These are my people, and this is where I belong.

But in any event, I bring up the weekend here because there were a few points of interest relevant to the game I wanted to share. Not as many as one would hope (and by “one” I probably mean just “me”), since WoD seems to have fallen out of the nerd pantheon lately, but enough to keep the spirit alive in those who care (which, again, probably means just me).

With a week to go before the con, I decided that now would be a good time think about costumes. I brought my Roman bellydance costume, because Kara assured me that anything 1) handmade and B) that breathes well makes an excellent D*Con costume. I also threw a small wardrobe of random bellydance accessories into my suitcase, but the coup de grace came at the last minute. I was going to be running around other nerds in costume all weekend, how could I not throw together a Tom-costume?

Even with the obvious appropriateness of it, though, I hemmed and hawed, simultaneously terrified that people would know what it was, and terrified that people wouldn’t, but finally decided to go for it, pulling together black leather pieces I already had and even going so far as to invest in a bulldog-chest harness from a leather shop downtown.

Fem-Tom shown here in his natural habitat, surrounded by jewel-tone accessories and books about yoga.

Once we got to the con, after the first night or two of running around in this, I realized the flaw in my plan rather quickly: black tshirt and black jacket is fucking hot, yo. I can’t really complain too much, since I was a breezy spring day compared to Jim in his outfit–a triple-layered Loki costume made of pleather and sweat–but I eventually decided to ditch the tshirt and rolled with my military-ish Dark Garden corset instead.

Jim was practicing his facial expressions and poses for daaaays.

Also as you can see, after a few days of being ignored in what I felt were second-tier off-menu costumes–a half-assed Roman and a Brujah with no weapons–I overcame my shyness and finally just drew the fucking Brujah logo on my arm with eyeliner. Even with that, though, no one got it.

But besides the heat issues, leather-on-leather has other weaknesses: water. It poured rain Saturday afternoon and threatened to continue into the night, the night we were planning on going to the Georgia Aquarium. I decided to ditch the Tom costume and put together some random pirate-y bellydance duds instead.

Now, all weekend we had been texting updates back home to Jason, whenever connection would allow. When I mentioned I was switching costumes, he said that’s probably for the better, since everyone knows what happened the last time I walked into an aquarium as a Brujah. I said well, unless the whale sharks are Rokea, it probably would have been fine. I mean come on, what are the chances of there being two aquariums with resident albino-dragon Mokole? I mean, really–

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!! THEY HAVE **TWO!!!!!**

Yeaaaaah….

Now, perhaps they are nothing, just another pair of albino alligators produced by statistical chance at an alligator farm and saved a handbag-fate by virtue of their novelty.

But then, Claude came from just such an alligator farm, and while he has spent his entire conscious-life in his small kingdom of Cal Academy, who knows what he would do if he thought there were more of his kind out there….

I really gotta stop going to aquariums at night….