Costuming & Conventions

As a child I always loved costuming. When I was 5 my mom made me the Little Orphan Annie dress & it was my absolute favorite thing in the world to wear. Then she made me the blue dress with the white pinafore apron from Alice In Wonderland. I would do a few Halloween costumes but we didn't celebrate it much as a kid. One costume that really sticks out in my mind was when I dressed up as Jeannie from I Dream Of Jeannie.

Then I grew up & as The Doctor says...You never want to do that. As a teenager I was a closet geek & wished for the guts to dress up again. I had very few friends & I was afraid of what people would think it they knew. (Yes I say that a lot.)

Once I was in my 20s I started dressing up again but just for Halloween. It started out mild as Wednesday Addams, then Morticia. I had fun making costumes & had to work really hard to make Ariel, The Little Mermaid costume. I wanted to do more complex costumes so I turned to the best & most talented seamstress I have ever met, my Mom.

She would sew the really hard items while explaining to me what she was doing while I watched her every move. Or she would stand over my shoulder & tell me what to do step by step teaching me as I went. It makes me nervous when she does that but it really does teach me a lot.

Together we made Bat Girl one year then we did Harley Quinn. Mys sister & I got the idea to dress up together & our mom agreed to help us make the costumes if we would make special appearances in them for the kids at church. It was such a small price to pay that we readily agreed. My sister is blond so she went as Rainbow Bright & I was original Strawberry Shortcake with my lovely red hair. We had a blast & had professional pictures done just for our mom.

I got very ill for a few years & was unable to do much of anything. When God healed me I came back full force stronger than ever. I wanted to do everything & finally sat down to make a costume I had thought about for years but had not yet done. I made my own Poison Ivy costume. It was one of those tedious projects that was made fun by knowing how awesome it would look in the end. I walked around with various friends on Halloween & discovered that not many non-geeks really understood who I was dressed as. Too many people thought I was Eve with out my Adam or just some tree/plant lady. I had the same experience with the Harley Quinn costume being called a jester or just a Harlequin. Silly me thought that since Poison Ivy had been around longer & had greater exposure to the normals out there that she would be a little more popular. Once again the normals of the world disappointed me. That is part of what made me decide to try out going to a convention.

I had heard that the local fandom conventions were just drunk fests for geeks to gather & grope one another. I had even been told my those close to me that I wouldn't like conventions, but I wanted to give them a try for myself. I did a bit of research & got word that a newer multi-fandom con in the area was better than the others. I went in with fairly low expectations but I wore my Poison Ivy costume anyways & barely in the door when people were wanting my picture.

We walked all over & saw multiple vendors with lots of cool toys & collectible stuff. Which is great but even better, I found a group of people that I can call MY people. One guy ran 3 panel discussions all relating to my unhealthy obsession Doctor Who. There was really a place for me here! People didn't judge me & I met those that knew even more about The Doctor than I did.
My best friend & I went to many other panels but the ones that I remember the most were the Harry Potter discussions & the Whoniverse related talks. Oh & there was a great B movie Fistful of Brains- A western zombie film. I met so many wonderful people & for once, didn't feel like an outsider. There were room parties but for most people, that was where the drinking stayed & wasn't excessive.

All of us dressed in various costumes, you never knew what you were going to see next from The Cult of Snuggie to a group of Stormtroopers marching through the parking lot. Some costumes were store bought but many were hand made. Some were cheap & simple & some had spent hundreds of dollars & so complex that I had to wonder how much time it had taken to make them.

One year later I'm helping run the Doctor Who panels & volunteering to work the convention. We told the man who put ConNooga together how a small group of us had formed into a Doctor Who "fan club" because of the 2009 con. We had a fan table to help promote the love of all things T.A.R.D.I.S. related in the Tennessee Who Authority. For 2010I didn't have a Doctor Who costume so I wore my older costumes. One day I was Strawberry Shortcake & the next Bellatrix Lestrange costume that I do for the Harry Potter movies. I enjoyed being polar opposites from one day to the next.

My enjoyment of the convention grew so much that I decided to branch out & go with friends to TimeGate 2010. I felt as though someone had made a convention just for me. It was Doctor Who, Stargate, with a splash of Joss Whedon thrown in. Lets take my favorite sci-fi shows & spend a weekend of talking about just those shows. I was such a happy little fangirl!

It felt surreal meeting Carmen Argenziano who played Jacob Carter on Stargate SG-1. He just sat across the table & chilling out with us. At one point in time I actually thought to myself "Holy crap Jacob Carter is joking around with us". At that time I thought I was going to cry because when I was sick watched a lot of SG-1 & I would joke that a Tok'ra symbiote would blend with me to heal me or that The Doctor would pick me up in his TARDIS & take me into the future where they could cure my disease. I told Carmen about my time of watching him while I was in the hospital & how we would joke about the cures. The man stood up & hugged me, thanked me for sharing my story with him. He then complimented me on how healthy I look today & my excellent costume. Which by the way is my newest, & most awesome costume of them all. My mom & I spent well over 50 hours making it but she made me the red Miss Hartigan dress. I am hoping to make the Cyber Kind head piece by Dragon*Con but we shall see how that turns out.

This will be my first year at Dragon*Con. Once again I am being told I will hate it but I want to experience it for myself at least once. I know I love small conventions but at least once I want to attend a large one. There are only a handful of stars or famous people that I would want to meet. Anyone with a hand in anything Doctor Who related of course so I'll try to get in to see some of the Torchwood people. Mainly I just want to have the experience of being in that large of a group. I will be with a group called Girls of the Con since I have a small picture in their calendar.

I love costuming & having been found by GOTC I have finally made it into a calendar! I have those model friends that are gorgeous with their store bought boobs, fancy clothes, & never have a moment when they're imperfect in any way & always cool. Now I can finally tell them that I made it into a calendar & all I had to do was be nerdy self.

Girls like Science Fiction too

I have found a world totally new to myself. Other girls who are as obsessed with The Doctor as I am. I think I can get used to this, I like it. I have had some female friends in the past who were nerdy or had certain nerdy aspects but they were into different aspects of nerdiness than I have enjoyed. In a way it was a good thing because I would join them in their interests just out of the sake of having another girl around that didn't ramble on about shoes, hair or celebrity gossip for hours on end. The problem always was, that I would join in their interests, but no one wanted to join in mine, so I stood alone with my little memories of the TARDIS, my comic books or just the odd books I enjoyed that weren't popular.

Earlier this year I attended my first fandom convention & instantly I was hooked. I am very grateful that I went because I found people just as obsessed as I am, if not more so with Doctor Who. We decided to form a group or club to share our love of The Doctor & every month I find I like these people more & more. In the group was a girl but she is more familiar with the new series but seems to love the old just as much. After a short time I was introduced to another girl through Facebook, a mutual friend tells me that he knows a girl who would fit in with our group. We instantly hit it off & she gets all of my Doctor Who references. So now I have 2 whole girl friends that I can share my Doctor love with. Then I get sucked into the world of Twitter. Oh wow has it been uhm, should I say, educational? Yeah I think that's a safe word to use. There are Who fanatics galore & David Tennant fangirls that make me look like an amateur when it comes to unhealthy obsessions. Yes I absolutely adore David Tennant, but he is a branch of my Doctor obsession.

For many people a part of my present, my past isn't well known. I used to suffer greatly from a genetic blood disease called porphyria. Thanks to a God given miracle I no longer suffer but for most of 2006 & 2007 I was in the hospital or stuck in a bed at home with IVs hooked up to me. The disease caused great pain & severe sickness all over, & I needed an escape & the two places I escaped through were the Stargate & the TARDIS. Now that I am healthy I still enjoy being able to take an hour from a busy day to take a trip to an alien planet, go back in time, or visit an alternate reality. Even greater than enjoying the shows I love best is being able to have another girl on this planet enjoy them with me. I think I am slowly drawing in one of the girls I LARP with into the world of Doctor Who/Torchwood. Bit by bit I am showing a "normal" friend of mine the appeal of all the science fiction shows I like. I am a girl who is used to having these things in common with guys, so having girls who like them is a refreshing feeling.

"Magic & time travel are not only possible, but are every day occurrences." This has been something I have been telling people on a regular basis, I believe that it is true. I don't know who said this first, I don't presume to think that I was the first to come up with it but I would like for it to become a popular phrase.

A starting point

This is something I have thought about doing for a while now but I have a bad habit of talking myself out of doing things. Then I got to experience another situation (no I won't talk about it because it would name someone) that made me decide that this might be a bit therapeutic. As time goes by I will be sharing about me, why I love the things I love, do the things that I do, & things that I notice that are different about being a girl in the "fanboy" world. I'll do a good deal of complaining but keep in mind that much of this has been built up for many years & I have no desire to keep it in anymore. I am sure I shall offend someone along the way & I could apologize now but keep in mind that I mean no disrespect to anyone specifically but if you're so touchy as to take something said in general, to heart & get hurt by it...then there is nothing I can do about it.


I know of a few girls like me & actually know, even fewer. I am an odd duck, have been called a one percenter. I don't fit the mold or stereo types that the few girls with my hobbies & interests tend to be in. I am a girly girl, but I love to work on cars, I still get captivated by comic books like I did when I was 13. Almost everything I watch on TV is of the science fiction genre & the books I read are fantasy or science fiction. The only real interest in life that I have, that isn't considered weird for a grown woman to love is music. Not just listening to it either, I love to play it, to sing it, to write it.

I am a kind of "fangirl" I love to go to the comic book stores & I recently found that I enjoy comic book, sci/fi, fantasy conventions. Fandom calender has proven that fangirls can be sexy but I am just an average looking woman with a slender build. I was a lonely goofy looking kid & stayed that way into my teenage years. I finally got a little in the way of curves & became someone who was no longer an awkward shy little girl who would sit with her books in a quiet corner. I had been forced to develop a personality to make people like me because I knew that my looks weren't going to win me any prizes & since then I have been told that because of my personality, my appearance is more attractive. I am naturally slender but I have worked to stay at least semi in shape & I have moments when I have to listen to those that are only slightly over weight bitch at me for being skinny. The prejudice against the slender is real as there is against the fat. Anyways, because I am slender & do what I can to be attractive. With the hobbies & interests I have, many of the male gender tend to gravitate towards me. I agreed to date my husband because I knew we'd have something in common to talk about because I found out he liked some of the same comic book characters as I did. We grew to find that we had more in common & I am very thankful that I agreed to give him my number. It seems to be though, that because I am not fat & don't look as though I have fallen out of the top of a fugly tree, most other women tend to show their insecurities with their men when it comes to me. They get it into their heads that I am going to steal their man away from them. What is worse is when men get stupid & think that I am interested in them romantically because I share their interests. They don't take into account that I am quick to mention that I am married & that I love my husband very deeply. I do like a cute nerd so I married myself a math teacher, it doesn't get much nerdier than that.