We recently attended the Norwescon science fiction convention.

I’ve been to a few SF cons in the past, and one was a new one that was sparsely attended. It wasn’t particularly entertaining. Many of our acquaintances online talk about cons and how they enjoy them, and one of Bryan’s colleagues helps organize this one, so I thought I’d give it a try. Norwescon is entirely volunteer run, and the folks behind the scenes are energetic and dedicated.

Rather than being a diehard multi-day conventioneer, we could only attend one day, Saturday. We picked and chose our day & times around specific events and panel discussions we wanted to attend. This may have been a mistake.

Registration took up a significant amount of time, killed many trees, and overall made a bureaucratic first impression. Some serious business process engineering, attention to line flow, and pursuit of paperless operation could make this experience much more pleasant. No badge was required to hang out and watch people and browse the vendor room; registration was necessary to attend sessions in the event rooms. The registration area, though, was where many of the more elaborately costumed convention-goers were posing for photos, which was interesting.

This particular con, rather than being sparsely attended, was tremendously overcrowded – it’s certainly outgrown its venue (the Seattle airport Doubletree Hotel). We couldn’t move through the halls, find a seat any of the more popular event sessions, or get anywhere near most of the booths in the vendor room.

I was severely disappointed at being unable to get into the room for the two events we’d come to attend – a reading by special guest of honor Naomi Novik and a panel discussion on writing with Novik and several other notable authors. There were only about 24 seats in the event rooms, and of those, a high percentage of folks stayed in their seats from session to session, making attendance nearly impossible. This frustrated me nearly to tears, it meant that we’d completely wasted our $120 in membership fees.

All my frustration aside, people watching was entertaining. I’ve never dressed up in costume for something like this, although with my sewing skills I’d sure enjoy making a costume. Unfortunately, I don’t have photos, but a huge percentage of folks did dress up, with wildly varying costumes:

• characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica
• superheros from movies, tv & comic books
• costumes that interpreted fictional character costumes from sword & sorcery to cyberpunk to ninja warriors
• lots of inventive steampunk/alternate history garb, especially zeppelin crews and quasi-military outfits
• many renaissance fair and historical gowns, either straight glamour or embellished with fantasy or SF features
• lots of pastel tulle fairies, with wings that did not work well in the uber-crowded hallways
• ethnic dress like saris, cheongsams, ceremonial kimonos
• a few furries, dressed up in varying degrees of animal costume
• a group I’d call furries on acid, mixing skin, fluorescent fur items, tattoos & eccentric makeup for a fairly eye-opening effect

One of the reasons I don’t tend to be interested in costume play is my shape. I’m, errr, tall and quite round, and I feel most costumes don’t tend to be flattering. This sentiment was not shared by a large majority of cosplay participants! Plus-sized corset-based dresses were very popular, and some of them were marvels of modern engineering. How in the world can those laces hold all that in and push all that up? I think if I were to try a costume for another event I might try a sari – graceful, loose-fitting and relatively comfortable.

We weren’t able to attend the masquerade; it was scheduled at night and we had a very long commute back home. It would have been interesting to see some of the more elaborate costumes on display.

Would I go again? Probably not, at least under current circumstances. We didn’t attend some of the more social events (I’m not big into dancing or gaming) and we didn’t know anyone at the con, so there was no social element in it for us. We couldn’t get in to see the authors we wanted to – and if an even bigger-named author had been there it would have been all the more frustrating. The writing workshops required submission of work before Thanksgiving, six months in advance of the con.

While I firmly believe we’re responsible for our own enjoyment, in this case we didn’t enjoy the event and felt that we wasted our money & travel time. If the con changed venues, maybe we’d give it another try.