Friday was a great day at the con – a good sized crowd, lots of people to interact with/gawp at but not so overwhelming as to induce terror. I took the day off from work so I could make the most of it. Lots more pictures today, after the cut!
Spider-man and Lydia (Winona Ryder) from Beetlejuice. This picture does not do justice to how tight Spidey’s costume was. I wish I had gotten him from the side, but I probably would have had to label my blog as not safe for work.
I started Friday down in Artists’ Alley. It’s my favorite part of the con. I love to take my time, wandering down each aisle, checking out the art and staring slack-jawed at my favorite artists. I don’t buy prints and I’m not into autographs, so I’m sure they all love me as I meander by, taking up table space and not buying anything, but I have fun. I don’t take pictures – I feel like it’s somewhat rude to take photos of art that they’re trying to sell – so unfortunately I’ve no documentation of the high point of the con for me.
Gail Simone – gailsimone – was signing at a table towards the back. Gail is one of my absolute favorite comic writers. I actually first fell in love with her writing before she even wrote a single comic – she used to write a comics parody column called You’ll All Be Sorry! and it was freaking genius. (I still try to describe to people how funny Conan and Hobbes was and always fall flat.) Since then she’s gone on to write – well, tons of stuff, but my personal favorites are her runs on Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Red Sonja and especially Secret Six (which is coming back – hooray!).
I follow Gail on Twitter and here on Tumblr and in addition to a truly bizarre and occasionally disgusting sense of humor (which I appreciate greatly), she talks often about the importance of diversity of all sorts in writing. I can’t exactly say I make my work consciously diverse strictly because of Gail – I’m a gay theater guy in New York City, I meet a lot of different kinds of people and it would feel false for me not to reflect that in my writing, plus I’m a strong believer that diversity in fiction is simply a good and positive thing in and of itself. But what I did get from her – both directly from her advice on social media, and indirectly though studying her writing – is how to go about presenting, and representing, the viewpoints of “the other,” of anyone living a life that’s outside your direct personal experience.
In my writing, I try to remain aware that, for example, just because I’ve got friends who are lesbians of color doesn’t mean I know what it is to be a lesbian of color. I do my research, I talk to people, and I do my best to make my characters as truthful to their own lives and experiences as I can, minimizing the forty-something gay white guy lens as much as possible. I absolutely positively get it wrong sometimes – maybe often – but I do what I can and I get better the more I do it. And Gail Simone’s work and words have really helped me find my way the times that I’ve gotten it right.
Plus, dang, she writes some funny, sexy, creepy comics.
So, back to the con. I try to avoid lines where I can, but Gail’s wasn’t outrageously long and there was a cute guy in a Wonder Woman costume in front of me. (I was too nervous about meeting Gail to flirt, but nerves don’t make me blind.) She was selling limited edition scripts of some of her comics, and I was thrilled to see they weren’t sold out. In fact, I got a copy of the one I wanted most – her final regular-run issue of Batgirl. So she signed it for me, and I worked up the nerves to babble out a much less coherent version of what I just wrote. She responded with something very nice which I can’t remember a word of. (Nerves don’t make me blind but they do make my Swiss-cheese memory even worse.) I think I even spoke over her. Blergh. Anyway. High point of the con, as far as I can remember.
I felt like I was taking up too much of her time already, so I didn’t ask for a picture. Here’s one of Ultron instead.
Love the severed Vision head.
Geeks are hot. Have I said that yet? Look at these two. Damn. Black Widow and Captain America, but you know that.
I always appreciate a good cosplay from outside the comic/sci-fi/fantasy worlds, ESPECIALLY if it’s from musical theater. This is Seymour and Audrey (and Audrey II) from Little Shop of Horrors. She went with domestic-abuse-victim Audrey, which is a little dark. That’s okay, I like dark.
I spotted those two on my way out of Artists’ Alley, on my way to my first panel of the day – “Playing with Magic.” It featured a roster of fantasy prose authors talking about the rules of magic within their respective fantasy worlds. The moderator was Steve Saffel, with authors A.M. Dellamonica, Illona and Gordon Andrews, Kim Harrison, George Hagen, Jeff Somers, and Sam Sykes. None of whom I have heard of, because for a writer I am shockingly ill-read in my own genres. I attended the panel because, after I finish The Future Next Door, my next series will be urban fantasy (exclusive!), and I was hoping for some tips and inspiration. It was a really interesting discussion, but all I really got from it was “magic should have a cost,” which, well, I kind of knew. But I’m glad I went anyway. Sorry, none of my pictures of this panel came out, but you know you’re just here for the cosplayers anyway.
I had to duck out early to get to a speed dating event for gay men I had signed up for. The less said about that, the better. I kind of wish I had taken pictures, but I imagine they would have asked me to leave. (Actually, everyone was very nice.) (But I don’t think I’ll be signing up for it next year.) (Buy me a drink sometime, I’ll tell you.)
Hey, look, it’s Xena!
I tried to make it to the panel “Doctor Who: 10 Years of Fandom,” but the line was capped. So I hopped over to “Carol Corps and Beyond: The Future of Female Fandom” instead. Doctor Who is my jam, but I’m glad I caught the panel I did.
From left to right – Sana Amanat, editor of Ms. Marvel and a whole bunch of other awesome Marvel comics; Gail Simone, whom I’ve already raved about; and Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of Captain Marvel. Basically, I love everything these three women do. DeConnick was the only person announced as being on this panel beforehand, so I was pretty excited when I got in and saw the roster. (The panel was moderated by Abraham Riesman from New York Magazine, whom I sadly did not get a picture of.) (Sadly both because he was very good, and because he’s rather handsome.) (I revel in my shallowness. I almost wallow in it.)
Again, no notes and no memory make it hard for me to recount what went on in the panel – and I’m sure it’s been well-covered elsewhere on the internet – but the discussion was lively and fascinating. Amanat talked a bit about getting Ms. Marvel, which stars a teenage Muslim girl from New Jersey, made, and the massive wave of interest it generated before the first issue even hit the stands. They were quite polite to a questioner who asked the frankly ridiculous (and tired) question about how men should write women (“Like people,” I believe DeConnick answered, before expanding on that a bit.) Amanat talked about intersectionality too, in response to a question, which I was glad to hear – it’s a particular interest of mine in my own writing.
That was my last panel of the day, and it was a good one to go out on. I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, so I went up to the vendors’ floor for another wander.
I did not ask why these guys were all in their underwear, and I didn’t really care.
They were far from the only guys at the con “cosplaying” like this. I suspect mostly they just liked having an excuse to walk around the Javitz Center almost naked.
I can’t throw stones. I played Malvolio once in an outdoor production of Twelfth Night in Fort Tryon Park. My costume for the mad scene was just my underwear and a straitjacket, and I used to do my costume change way earlier than I had to. It was very liberating, running around the park in my boxer-briefs. I highly recommend it. Maybe leave out the straitjacket, though.
Zombie Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe. Why not?
I went by the GeeksOUT booth again before I left. A lot of vendors’ booths have “Booth Babes” – hot women in very skimpy costumes – to drum up attention. GeeksOUT does the same thing (sort of). Lion-O!
Friday’s loot! Again, saving my pennies so as not to run out. That’s the signed Batgirl script I mentioned above. And the squeeze toy stress reliever I got for free at the speed dating event – it was sponsored by The Flash TV show. (Get it?)
A great Friday at the con. In previous years I’ve only done one day – Saturday – and I always felt exhausted and done after. I wondered if I’d call it quits after my first full day, but I went to bed raring to go. Bring on day three!
Hi Brian! I just wanted to say thank you for posting the great photograph you took of my friend and me as Seymour and Audrey (and Audrey II)! I worked really hard making Audrey II, and I’m really glad that the work my friend and I did went appreciated by fans like yourself. I will say though: your comment about domestic abuse makes me feel…uncomfortable. I do not appreciate the act of making light of the serious topic of abuse; it was certainly not my intention to do so in dressing up as Audrey in that way. Perhaps this was a simplification on your part or a misunderstanding on mine, but I wanted to come forward with my feelings on the matter since I do have the opportunity to respond here. Still, I’m glad you had a good time at NYCC 2014! My Seymour and I had a great time too!
PS – That production of Twelfth Night sounds like it was a lot of fun!
Hi Caitlin! My tone was probably a little lighter than the topic warrants, and was most definitely a simplification on my part, but I didn’t want to veer too serious in what was meant to be a fun series of posts. Still, I don’t think I was completely inaccurate – your costume is of Audrey after she’s been beaten by her boyfriend. That’s a little dark.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I admit when I first saw you, I did have a split-second sensation of, “Oh, man, that’s so wrong.” When I was writing this post up, I wanted to acknowledge that, as I thought some of my readers might have the same reaction. But I also could tell how much love and work had gone into your costumes, and I didn’t get the feeling that you were in any way trying to get inappropriate laughs out of the injuries.
So I also wanted to acknowledge that I thought your costumes were pretty great, which is why I added, “That’s okay, I like dark.” Maybe a little too flippant once I had introduced a pretty serious topic, but I was torn between not mentioning it at all, which didn’t seem right, and giving a long explanation like this one, which also didn’t seem appropriate. I do apologize for any offense I might have caused, to you or anyone else – my comment was not meant to suggest I was “okay” with domestic abuse.
I already feel like I’ve gone on long enough that I’m risking man-splaining, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you – were you thinking about Audrey in these terms at all when making your costume? Have I read way too much into it?
(And I’d love to hear from anyone else on the topic as well – take me to task, if I deserve it! I can handle it! I’d rather be called out and learn something than wallow in my own ignorance.)
I’ll just close by saying thank you again for letting me take your picture, and please do know that I took it because I genuinely loved your costumes, and loved that you and your friend came to NYCC dressed as characters from one of my favorite musicals. I in no way intended to poke fun of you or suggest that you were trying to joke about a very serious issue.
Thanks for getting back to me so promptly! I appreciate the opportunity we have here for some dialogue on a topic that might otherwise never get addressed.
In doing our cosplay, my friend and I were definitely predisposed to a dark perspective on Little Shop. If we ignore the Hollywood movie ending and go by the true ending from the original B-movie and the musical, Audrey’s story is a tragedy. She is a character whose central arch of redemption – finally having enough self-worth to consider herself deserving of a nice person like Seymour rather than an abuser like Orin – to death. Little Shop is pretty freaking dark on its own. So is it inappropriate to portray Audrey in a dark tone? I think not.
To be honest, I made myself up with the cast and black eye for several reasons: first, because the image of the makeshift scarf-cast is iconic to the character, and second, because the scene in which the plant is the size I made our prop to be (the number “Ya Never Know” from the musical or “Some Fun Now” from the movie) is directly followed by the scene in which Audrey is seen with the scarf-cast (the number “Somewhere That’s Green”). So for us it was part accuracy, part recognizability. After all, Audrey is far less recognizable than Seymour once he’s got the plant! We met some people at NYCC who didn’t even know I was part of the cosplay even with my makeup being the way it was!
It didn’t occur to me that my choice to make myself up with shiner and broken arm would be perceived with such hostility as the thought of “Oh, man, that’s so wrong,” as was your reaction, but I think that, in hindsight, maybe that’s not such a bad reaction to elicit? That the most iconic image of this woman is the abuse she suffers from a sadistic boyfriend, that many women suffer through abusive relationships just like that is pretty awful. What rubs me the wrong way is not that reaction, but the way this depiction of her becomes summarized into “domestic-abuse-victim Audrey.” Does Audrey face domestic abuse? Yes. But is she a victim? On both film and stage, Audrey is seen to cover her bruises in makeup, smile through physical pain, cover up a broken arm with a fashionable scarf, treat her friends and neighbors on Skid Row with kindness and respect, and eventually realize that she deserves better than a creep like Orin Scrivello (DDS). So I say no, Audrey is not a victim; she is a survivor.
I won’t comment on most of what you said, because I agree and would just be rehashing. Also, you said it better than I could.
I would quibble somewhat with your final point, though, only in that I’m opposed to the stigmatization of the word “victim.” A person who is still in a situation in which they’re being victimized needs help, and a victim requires urgent help in a way that a survivor may not. While I am all for survivors of abuse of any kind claiming the term “survivor” for themselves and rejecting the label “victim,” that shouldn’t attach any blame, shame or stigma to the latter term.
I’m still trying to decide if I used a loaded phrase like “domestic abuse victim” in too light a context, but I don’t believe it’s an inappropriate label to apply to your Audrey costume. I believe that Audrey’s arc is exactly as you describe it, but at the point at which you portrayed her – when she is hiding and lying about the injuries she’s suffering at the hands of her abuser – I don’t believe she’s yet reached the point where victim would be an inaccurate term.
In the end, though, Audrey is a fictional character – and not just any type of fictional character, but a character in a piece of theater. As such, her journey is subject to interpretation and re-interpretation by actors, directors and audience members, again and again and again. To label a real person in this way, especially in this context, would be monstrous; but we are able to – we have to – do so for Audrey. So for now, at least (I can always be persuaded I’m wrong), I stand by my description, as I don’t believe it’s reductionist or insulting. But I also accept yours. I do think Audrey’s a survivor, I just think she takes a little longer to get there.
Thank you for giving me something to think about – I’ve been mulling this over for a day now! (When I probably should be mulling over my next book…)