Gen Con 2024: t-minus 8 days

Posted on July 23, 2024
by Beth Lynn

Gen Con 2024 is a little over a week away, and I feel like maybe I’m actually ready for the con! (Well, mostly ready, anyway.)

Costuming: a change of plans

It’s not entirely unheard of that I change my mind about costumes for Gen Con, but I don’t usually change my mind with a week to go until the convention. 😅 In my last post, I vaguely referenced recycling a costume for this year’s Gen Con – the plan there was to go as Ezri Dax instead of Jadzia, since I’m a lot closer in height and body shape to Ezri than I am to Jadzia. (Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia, is six feet tall – which I didn’t realize until I heard her mention it on an episode of The Delta Flyers recently. For comparison, I’m a little over five feet tall, so I was more of a mini-Jadzia when I cosplayed her in 2019, haha.)

However, drawing on all those Trill spots by hand is a labor-intensive process, and I don’t entirely have the spoons at the moment to wrangle creating temporary tattoo versions of Trill spots, so I decided to go with something easier: I’m going to dress as Ëlinyr, possibly for all four days! (She’s definitely got a big enough wardrobe to make that happen.)

Granted, Ëlinyr’s looking a little different than she was last time I talked about her much on the blog…

During the 2023 season of Kishar, due to some fey nonsense involving one of her partners, Ëlinyr ended up feytouched! Which involves some fun new makeup, horns, and a lot of body glitter, haha. If you’re at Gen Con and want to say hi, the easiest way to find me is to look for the elf ears, red horns, and red swirlies on my face. (I’ll likely be wearing a different red dress each day, too.)

Other convention prep: business cards and badges

I mentioned in my last post that I ordered some new business cards – they came in a few weeks ago, and I love how they turned out! Here’s Shallan from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series showcasing the old business card with the new one:

Hopefully I’ll end up handing out lots of the new business cards this year – I want to get back into the swing of regularly posting in the blog, and who knows, maybe I’ll make some contacts at Gen Con this year that’ll result in some new content for the blog.

I also dug out something I originally bought to hand out at Gen Con 2020, but we all know how 2020 went – so these ended up languishing in a drawer in my desk for most of the past five years… until now:

Badge ribbons! Almost everyone at Gen Con loves collecting badge ribbons, and right after Gen Con 2019, I made these so I could hand them out at Gen Con 2020 as part of a “here’s what I’m cosplaying as today, come find me!” thing I was going to do.

Well, it’s four years later than I’d planned, but I’m still excited to trade these babies with other people who are handing out badge ribbons at Gen Con (like the person in the Fans of Gen Con group who made ribbons featuring the pattern of the old Indiana Convention Center carpet) or hand them out to folks who ask nicely! If you’re going to Gen Con as well and want a ribbon of your own, keep an eye out for my “That’s me!” badge ribbon at the top of my ribbon collection.

My Gen Con schedule

I’m not signed up for quite as many things as I’ve done in past years, but that’s okay – I’d rather avoid overwhelming myself by packing my schedule with events. Here’s what I’ll be up to at Gen Con, for those curious:

Thursday, August 1st

11:00 am: Bradley Beaulieu Book signing (if you haven’t read any of Bradley Beaulieu’s books, they’re great – I highly recommend the Song of the Shattered Sands series!)
2:00 pm: Cross-Stitch: Make a Dice Tray

Friday, August 2nd

1:00 pm: Cross-Stitch: Intermediate and Advanced Stitching

Saturday, August 3rd

3:35 pm: Different Drummer Belly Dancers at the Costume Contest Pre-Show (I’m really excited about this – this is my friend Margaret’s belly dancing troupe, and my work friend Katie sang on a recording that DDBD will be dancing to in the costume contest pre-show!)
5:00 pm: Mark Gunn: Sci Fi Irish Drinking Songs in a Kilt

Sunday, August 4th

11:00 am: Star Trek: Into The Unknown Learn to Play

Aside from that, I plan on wandering around the convention center in costume, looking for awesome cosplays to take pictures of (with permission, of course!), and braving the Exhibit Hall to visit some of my favorite vendors and artists, and find new enamel pins to add to my collection. I’m also considering bringing the Sailor Moon quilt I bought in 2019, pieced in 2020, and quilted in 2022 to show off to Quiltoni at the Craft Hackers booth, since I bought the kit from her and am really proud of how it turned out!

I’m also going to try to do daily coverage of Gen Con like I’ve done in the past, in addition to the usual cosplay and haul posts – who knows, maybe I’ll camp out at the Starbucks at the JW Marriott with my laptop and write posts there like I did in 2013. I’m really excited about going back to Gen Con after so long – hopefully I’ll run into some of you there!

Gen Con: t-minus one month

Posted on July 2, 2024
by Beth Lynn

I feel like I’m super behind on Gen Con prep this year, y’all.

And we’ve only got a month until the convention.

A still frame from the anime Sailor Moon, showing Usagi looking very panicked.

aaaaaaaaagh

I mean, I’ve registered for some events, which is something. And even though it’s technically a recycled idea, I do have a plan for a cosplay outfit. (Just one, though. And I need to make something for it and check to see if the wig I bought for it a few years ago is still in good shape.) I’ve got a couple of games I want to try out, and I’m planning on picking up a game I backed on Kickstarter, Cyber Pet Quest, at the convention.

And I finally got off my butt and put together a business card that matches the blog’s new branding, and ordered new business cards! (It only took me, what, two years?)

A digital version of the print business card I designed to match the teal branding of The Crafty Nerd I started using about two years ago.

Even with all this, though, I still feel like Gen Con snuck up out of nowhere. Maybe because it’s been five years since I last went to an in-person Gen Con, and my life is a lot different than it was back in 2019. Maybe because I’ve been pushing myself in too many directions all at once lately without enough rest, and it feels like time’s flying by as a result. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. 🤷‍♀️

I’m still beyond excited to be going to Gen Con again, though. And hey, like I said in my last post, maybe this’ll be the spark that gets me posting regularly again, rather than just looking at my Crafty Nerd desk mat on my desk and feeling vaguely sad about not blogging enough! 😂

Going back to Gen Con

Posted on May 20, 2024
by Beth Lynn

Yes, I’m headed back to Gen Con this year! I bought a four-day badge, got lucky and got one of the mythical attached hotels, and waited patiently for my wish list of events to process yesterday and got into almost every event on my list.

I know, it’s a little weird that I haven’t posted about it all until now, but up until event registration happened, it didn’t quite feel real. I didn’t think about what events I wanted to go to until last week. Heck, I still haven’t entirely decided on what cosplays I’m going to do, and y’all know how excited I get about cosplay. (I’m currently waffling between a couple of ideas that I’ll probably write about here soon.)

A weird Gen Con

This year’s Gen Con is going to be a weird one for me for several reasons. It’s the first year I haven’t gone as press since 2013 – which feels weird, but given that I haven’t regularly updated the blog in about four years, I didn’t even bother applying for a press pass this year. Maybe next year, if I can get back into the habit of posting regularly enough.

It’s also going to be the first Gen Con without Rana since the year we met at the convention. In 2020 and 2021, we spent some time talking about how we were still going to go to Gen Con together even though we’d split up, and even talked about what cosplays we might do. It’ll be weird, being at Gen Con without her, especially since Gen Con was such a big part of our lives and was the reason we met. It’s going to be weird, going without her.

In addition, this is going to be the largest event I’ve gone to since Gen Con 2019. A lot’s happened in the five years since then, and the first convention I’ve gone to since Indiana Toy and Comic Expo back in late 2019. I’ve been to a few work conferences since then, and went to the Kate Mulgrew talk in 2022 back when she came to visit the Captain Janeway statue, so it’s not like I’ve been a hermit the entire time. The largest of those events topped out at 900 people, though, and it was exhausting for me to be around so many people. Being around large groups of people wears me out way more than it used to pre-pandemic, and I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to handle Gen Con as a result. I’m not letting it scare me away from going, though.

A good Gen Con

Despite all the weirdness, though, I think it’s also going to be a good Gen Con. I got into almost all the events I had in my Wish List (sadly, the Mistborn CCG and Star Trek CCG demos I had on my wish list sold out before my list got processed), including two cross stitch classes hosted by Craftigurumi that I’m really looking forward to. (I mean, come on, this is me – did you expect me to go to Gen Con and not sign up for some sort of crafting class?) And speaking of Gen Con crafting, I’m even considering bringing the Sailor Moon quilt I worked on at Gen Con 2020 to the Craft Hackers booth so I can show Toni of Quiltoni the finished project, since I’m pretty damn proud of how it turned out and want to show it to her.

I’m also approaching Gen Con with the understanding that I probably will get overwhelmed as heck, and won’t necessarily be running around everywhere as much as I used to, and that’s okay. Lots of my friends are going to Gen Con this year, so if I need someone to help me figure out food because I can’t brain, or just want someone to sit with me someplace quiet in the ICC while I take some time to wind down, I know someone’ll be able to help me out there.

Also: it’s been too dang long since I did any cosplay, and I’m starting to get excited about exploring different cosplay ideas that have been bouncing around in my head. (And if I can’t really make any of them work, there’s always the old fallback of wandering around Gen Con as Ëlinyr – especially now that I’ve got better costuming pieces for her! But that’s a topic for yet another post.)

Counting down the days

As I’m writing this post, it’s 73 days until Gen Con – about two and a half months until the best four days in gaming happens. I’m hoping going back to Gen Con will get me back into the swing of things with the blog here. It’s been way too long since I posted regularly, and I miss being able to say “yeah, I have a blog, it’s The Crafty Nerd” without being embarrassed by how quiet it’s been over here over the past few years. Maybe Gen Con 2024 will help me get past that. 😊