I Still Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Part 2

Hope you all enjoyed the massive block of photos yesterday! Today I've just got a few more for you - my own cosplay pictures! I further tweaked my classic Catwoman outfit from Melbourne, and found the absolute perfect little ankle boots to complete it - unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, I didn't actually end up getting any photos of the boots, but trust me, they were perfect.

In case you haven't seen it, this is the Catwoman costume I was going for - with slightly less leg, obviously.

Annoyingly, while a couple of people took my photo I've only been able to find one online, at the Costume Box Facebook page.

I Still Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Part 1

Some of you might remember my mammoth post-a-thon around my trip to Supanova at Melbourne - well, strap yourselves in kids, cause I'm at it again!

Last weekend nerds, geeks, and fans of all shapes, shades and creeds took over the Olympic Showgrounds for the Sydney leg of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo. The Showgrounds are annoyingly difficult to get to, since the only train out there runs off a special loop that only departs from one particular station, but if you're taking public transport on the day there is an easy to way to make sure you're going the right way - look for the cosplayers! There's something endlessly amusing to me about how my fellow passengers slowly become more and more oddly outfitted the closer we get to the venue. Leaving Marrickville the Boy and I are often the only ones in cosplay, but when we change at Redfern we're usually joined by a couple of dozen more. By the time you get to the special Showground train it's cosplayers wall to wall, and it's magnificent!

Imagine you're just on your way to work, and this is suddenly your train station.
MARVELOUS.

I Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Part 2

Welcome to the second part of my Supanova Melbourne adventure!

The second day I decided I was over the cape, and more importantly, over the height of the heels on my boots. I really have to find something more wearable for the Sydney event! So I went "incognito", and spent most of the day in panels, shopping, and once again, stalking cosplayers.

For some reason I can never seem to be all of The Boy's head in joint selfies.
I mean, he has a big head, but this is ridiculous.

I Wish It Was Supanova Every Day - Day 1

If you don't want to hear about my recent trip to Supanova Pop Culture Expo in Melbourne, then you should probably go entertain yourself elsewhere for the next couple of days because I had SO MUCH FUN and I have SO MUCH TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT!!

Quick background info for those who either haven't been to Supanova, or aren't Australian and therefore have never heard of our tiny little backwater convention. Supanova is held once a year in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast, and they usually spread these events out into two "tours" - one around April, one around June. Different guests go to different events, which is pretty neat because it means over the course of the tour they can get a lot of different guests, and guests don't have to block out half a year to attend. However, it alsp means that inevitably all the guests I really reaally desperately want to see end up going to the events in cities other than the one I live in, and every other year I've just sucked it up. But this year I said NO MORE. I have a decent job, I can afford the ridiculously cheap airfares to Melbourne, and best of all I have a little posse of internet acquaintances who are willing to let me crash on their floor. This year The Boy and I decided to Do This Thing. I got together a classic Catwoman outfit, as pictured here, and The Boy made himself a kick ass Riddler costume, based off the Arkham City game.

We arrived in Melbourne absolutely exhausted from staying up all the night before sewing costumes, which seems kind of like a prerequisite for any cosplay attempt. We were put up by some lovely friends of The Boy, who I technically had only previously known online, who live in a fantastic share house in what the taxi driver warned us was a "bad" suburb.

My kind of place

Once we got there, we more or less passed out, and then it was time to get into costume and on to Supanova.

Cosplay gets complicated

I love cosplay. I am a great big, unashamed nerd, and I fucking LOVE cosplay. I love the creativity, the DIY craftiness of putting together a costume that creates the illusion of an outfit that is often actually impossibly impractical. I love the opportunity for commentary that comes with things like gender swap cosplay. I love the experience of pretending to be your favourite character, I love the basic principle of putting on an awesome costume just because.

I LOVE the Gender Bent Justice League. I love everything about them. Photo via Of Foxes and Hedgehogs

I'd never been to a convention of any kind until heading to Supanova Sydney for the first time a couple of years ago, and I've not missed a year since. Here in Australia we don't have a big convention "scene" as such. While there is apparently a convention somewhere in the US just about every weekend, we get Supanova, and every now and then a competing convention. The competitors don't usually come back for a second year though, so it's more or less Supanova or nothing. I've met some really awesome celebrities at various Supanova conventions - I had an awkward moment where I confessed to Noah Hathaway that my pre-pubescent obsession with his character Atreyu in the Neverending Story was probably the origin of my fetish for guys with long hair. He very kindly didn't freak out, and instead apologised for having cut his hair off the year before. I've been THIS CLOSE to Karl Urban, who is astonishingly tall in real life. I've heard  Jennifer Hale (the female voice for Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect) say, "I'm coming for you", and talked to Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander in Babylon 5) about her Twitter account. But the part that really energises me about the convention is the cosplayers - every year I set myself the goal of getting a photo of every costume I like, and every damn year I fail, no matter how creepily I chase the cosplayers. One year I saw a family in full Alien outfits, with 50's style domestic outfits over the top - there was a mother Alien with a frilly apron, and a dad Alien with a little fedora on top of his carapace, holding a facehugger with a little pinwheel hat. AND I DIDN'T GET A PHOTO. Gah, I'm still kicking myself about that.

Fairy Princess Awareness Day

You might recall from my persistent spamming all over social media that I was taking part in Dare to Wear Day this year, in aid of an Australian charity called Fitted For Work. Fitted For Work aim to hep disadvantaged women back into the workforce by supplying them with appropriate interview clothes, as well as help building their confidence and interview skills.

I think this sort of work is really important - the interview process is often the most challenging thing about getting a job, far more so than keeping the job if you're offered the chance. If you're at a point in your life where you're out of practice answering the ridiculous arbitrary questions that recruiters throw at you, the last thing you need is to feel like you're dressed like shit. A nice skirt suit really can make the difference between answering confidently and getting the job, and mumbling into your chest and being immediately dismissed regardless of how skilled you actually are. The women Fitted For Work work see also often have big gaps in their resume from time in prison, or raising a family, or all the other things that get in the way of a career, and I really feel for people in that sort of situation. My own work history hasn't exactly been a smooth path from Point A to Point B - no matter how you spin it, a three year break from the workforce because I had a mental breakdown so severe I couldn't leave the house never looks good on a resume. Gaps in your resume shouldn't be an automatic disqualification from the interview process, but unfortunately, they often are. So if you're out of practice, out of decent outfits, and have a gap in your resume, the odds are definitely stacked against you when you're going up for a job. Charities like Fitted For Work try to tilt the odds a bit more in the interviewee's favour.

Dare To Wear Day is held once a year, and works in a similar way to World's Greatest Shave  in that people sponsor you to do something challenging. In this case, I only had to wear something ridiculous to work for one day, so I decided to go as a Fairy Princess. I figure any excuse to wear a tiara is a good enough excuse.

Since some of you lovely people who helped out by donating, I promised pictures of my femmetacular outfit - so without further ado, here is what I wore to work on Friday. This was the Fanciest of all Fancy Fridays.

I would be totally lying if I said this didn't get pretty challenging to go the whole day in. While it was great fun dressing up, and I do love floofy skirts, I'm also the kind of person who has a very fine emotional line between enough attention and TOO MUCH attention, and this outfit definitely pushed the amount of attention I got firmly into the TOO MUCH category. I had a bit of a freak out about three quarters of the way through the day and tried to figure out a way to wriggle out of it, but then a couple of new donations came through, and I realised I would be letting people down if I let my self consciousness get the better of me. 

I'm sure you're all STUNNED to hear doing my nails so sparkly they could be seen from space was my favourite part of the whole outfit. This is Alanna Renee Mardi, with a layer of Femme Fatale Ebon Roses over the top, with a smattering of Hello Kitty holographic glitter over the top for good measure. This manicure was shiny enough that it was legitimately distracting.

I also took the opportunity to really go nuts with my Femme Fatale loose eyeshadows. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know I've been obsessed with these things since a wise Twitter follower gave me the marvelous advice to use Napoleon Perdis Cake Eyeliner Sealer to keep them in place. I'll be doing up a How To on this at a future date, once I'm a little more confident.

I made it through the whole work day, and even heading out into the city for lunch with minimal panic! When my boy came to pick me  up from work I was so pleased with myself we stopped for an impromptu photoshoot in the park.

But the most exciting part of the whole day was realising the donations had hit $500 - a completely arbitrary target I had set up when I initially hoped some of my workmates would join me. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of reaching it by myself, so I just want to say a great big THANK YOU to each and every one of you who donated. And don't worry, I don't do charity things often, so it will probably be a while before I'm hassling you again!