Author’s Preface: This post is going to be image heavy, so it might be best viewed on a tablet or PC.
So, as I said in that brief post from last weekend, my family and I went to Wizard World in Philadelphia a couple Saturdays ago. The TL;DR version is that we had a good time.
One of the things my family loves to do is cosplay. Now, I know that sentence just scared away a good portion of our readers. Trust me, I get it. I have a firm no dress up rule at my d&d table (alright, it’s not all that firm, but I reserve the right to mock incessantly). However, rather than raiding a costume shop for as many Deadpool morph suits we can find, we try to be more subtle. The first year we did it, we went as SHIELD agents. No, not specific characters from the show, just generic ones.
Last year, and so far my absolute favorite, we were a crew from the USCSS Pandora, a space tug in the Aliens universe. Yeah, you’ve never heard of it, because we made it up. And we went whole hog.
Dad and I designed a ship’s patch and crew jackets:
And we looked awesome.
It was great. However, one of the problems with doing such a great job was figuring out how to equal or exceed it the following year. We weren’t sure what we were going to do until my wife was struck by inspiration after watching Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We were going to be aurors. No, not those lame-ass British ones, badass American ones from the 20’s.
So, we buckled down and got to work. Really, that means we started a Pinterest board and threw together all of the props and 20’s hairstyles we could find. We didn’t just pick out some flapper outfits and carry sticks. We got into character. Just to show you the level of detail we stressed, to the right is my ID that I carried. I designed this based on the one in the movie, and we individualized them down to the vitals, ID numbers, and the fingerprint catalog numbers. You’ll notice that I even watermarked the pages. Yeah, we’re insane. Insanely awesome.
Dad, for his part, designed our badges and had them 3D printed and painted silver. They looked awesome, of course. My youngest sister, being under 18, wore hers on a patch reading “CADET” indicating that she was an underaged wizard out on a summer internship. We had holsters for our wands, period-appropriate clothes and hairstyles, and I even had a gruff attitude (I was supposed to be the grizzled captain of this unit).
It was cool, and a couple people at the con got it, but mostly we just had a good time with it.
We’re already talking about what we’re going to do next year, but we’ve got a while to figure it out. I’m sure it’ll be awesome.
