Geek-Made Paradise

It's early in the morning, rain drizzles down from the sky and splashes sadly onto the ground. Coats are covering up homemade clothing and umbrellas are covering brightly coloured hair. Despite the dullness of the sky and the queue we're all stuck in, there is a buzz in the air as people chatter excitedly to their friends and re-adjust their makeup and weapons.

Maybe one of the most amazing things about this place is that you can recognise people you've never met before, because here, they're your favourite character from a TV show you grew up with, an underappreciated character from your favourite book series, your favourite villain of all time or even the star of a movie that just came out.

The gates open and we are all met with an amazing sight, merchandise, music, props and costumes from every movie, book, comic and video game, with posters and banners that stretch to the ceiling. As everyone takes off their coats and puts away their umbrellas they scatter in all directions, making sure they make the most of their time in this geek-made paradise.

I, personally, am the vampire queen from one of my favourite shows growing up. I'm pale white and I have black hair, on which I spent too much time trying to make it look like it had never been brushed in all the 1003 years that I had been alive. The best thing I have, however, is, my homemade bass guitar that doubles as an axe. My friends include a bartender from a Japanese anime that all but a few people have never heard of and someone who just put on every costume-like thing in their wardrobe. We had a couple of supervillains on our side too.

I look through my pockets, wondering how I will be able to resist spending all the spare change I've saved up in the first 67 seconds. It's going to be an aggravating but brilliant couple of days.

After wandering around asking for and taking pictures with nearly everyone we see, and failing miserably at saving up our money, we end up in a side room, where a person with bright orange, frizzy hair sits with a host of many, many different types of people. Well, things at least. The person with red hair has decorated themselves with every gear, switch and old piece of machinery and they appear to be serving tea. As a rabbit looks over and grins at us we realise we have walked in on a mad tea party.

As I go to sit down, I manage to find a space between a machete-wielding maniac and a Viking. I strike up a conversation with a superhero as we drink our tea and tell our worst jokes.

Just before we all have to go back to real life until next time, we can all go on stage as whoever we want to be. We all wait patiently for our turn, and finally they are announcing my name, running up on stage, I drop to my knees and pretend to play the wool strings of my homemade, cardboard axe-guitar as I think about what my character would do in this moment.

This is why cosplay is so well-loved by so many people, it's a mix-up of almost every character you could imagine, and even more than characters, for example the living embodiments of websites, or a table. Yeah, a real person dressed as their dinner table. Why not? You can do whatever you want.

At the end of the weekend, we all pile into the car to go home and sadly prepare ourselves to go back to our ordinary lives. I look in the mirror as I become less and less of the rock star, evil-fighting, axe-shaped bass guitar playing, vampire queen I had grown used to acting as for the last 2 days, and I already missed it. My friend had unwillingly sacrificed his arms to be used for scrawling names and numbers of all the characters we had met over the weekend.

Time has already started to go faster in my head as we start thinking about deadlines and things we have to do back home. Until the next time, I suppose, it had better be soon.