Dragon Con 2008 Wrap Up

The title of my blog is "Bears, Beets, and Battlestar Gallactica", which is technically an "Office" reference. However I am a big nerd and love Battlestar Gallactica. That's why this past weekend my husband and I made the trek down to Dragon Con in Atlanta, Ga.





Dragon Con is a huge sci-fi/fantasy convention. I had known about "Cons" for a while but had never really looked into going. But after coming across some material about Dragon Con, I figured I wanted to check it out. And when I found out about some of the celebs attending, I just had to go.





So we made costumes (me in my Nibbler costume to the right) and packed up our car, and went to Dragon Con.





If you think its just a big nerd convention, then you are completely mistaken. I'll admit, I thought it was going to be a bunch of super geeky people carrying around pocket protectors and talking about parsecs and other obscure Star Trek references. But Dragon Con is so much more...





Yes, you do have a bunch of uber nerds walking around. As you walk through the crowded halls you'll catch conversations and debates over which captain is better (Kirk or Picard) and over whether your character in D&D should be a Mage or a Shaman?





But in addition to those gems, you also get the following:

• a wide array of "panels", which are sessions with guest speakers. Many of these speakers are celebrities/actors from famous Sci Fi/Fantasy shows. I got to see panels with Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Jewel Staite and Morena Baccarin (from Firefly - saw them twice), Half of the Cast of Battlestar Gallactica (Edward James Olmos, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Jamie Callis, and the guy who plays Helo), and James Marsters (Spike from Buffy).
• Fan panels where super fans of various shows discuss what they like/love/hate/dislike/spoilers for their favorite shows.
• Meeting lots of different and very interesting people
• Seeing people in costumes ACT like their characters
• Seeing the wide variety of costumes - I thought they would all be superhero/sci fi related, but so many were completely not (for example, I have a Mr. Rogers picture).
• There is a distinct "stinky" smell that happens when you get all of these nerds together.
• I learned what "Steam Punk" is - look it up.

A good bit of the action takes place in the main lobby areas of the hotels. There you will see a who's who of super hero/character costumes. I think my absolute favorite part was seeing some of these characters doing absolutely mundane things (I'm thinking about a Catwoman taking a smoke break). It was awesome.

All of my photos can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/gamecockjen214