The Brittish Take Fan X

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #1:

Nerd Alert

Full disclosure: I included this prompt because I knew we would be going to Fan X this month. 

We decided to splurge a bit and take the whole family. Luckily, ages 10 & under are free because it cost a small fortune. Scotty and Nicky had been before, but the girls and I had never gone. I’ve always been curious, and as an enthusiastic people watcher, it seemed like a great place to go… um… judge people? 

I thought Fan X would have a lot of the following:

• Harry Potter
• Star Wars
• Lord of the Rings
• Mario Brothers, Zelda, & other video games
• Stranger things
• Nostalgic movies like Ghostbusters & Back to the Future
• Super heroes
• Minecraft
• Pokémon
• Doctor Who
• Board games & books

There was a little bit of all of that. But mostly it was anime. So much anime. And a lot of it was stuff I don’t want my kids to see - lots of p*rnographic manga artwork. Between that, the revealing costumes, and a bunch of people trying to hand us stuff while walking down the street, it felt a lot like Las Vegas. 

I didn’t know what 90% of the costumes were. I was kind of disappointed. Now that I’ve been, I don’t ever need to go again. 

BUT…

I looked forward to Fan X. Most of the cast of Back to the Future was there, and oh! How I wish I could have seen Michael J Fox - my first crush! I don’t need to ever meet him, but I would have liked to have seen him from a distance and checked that off my bucket list. Instead of seeing Michael J Fox, I saw the line leading to Michael J Fox and acknowledged the fact that Michael J Fox was technically in the same room as me. That’s good enough. We were *this close* to seeing Christopher Lloyd, but I wasn’t willing to wait around for him to show up. 

We did get to see these people - of whom I made a collage since photo taking is strictly prohibited unless you’re willing to fork over $80+. 

I was probably most excited about “Newman” and “Dean.” Daisy has been watching Gilmore Girls, and even though she won’t say it, I’m pretty sure she’s crushing on Dean. And it’s just nice to know that Wayne Knight hasn’t fallen completely from the earth. 

I wish I could have seen Pauly Shore. He had a strong presence in my childhood - “Hey, budddddyyyyy!” I can pretty much quote A Goofy Movie, Encino Man, and Son-In-Law from memory. His table was empty. 

Along with most of the cast of Back to the Future, there were several members of the cast of Scream. I loved Scream when I was younger and watched it all the time! All three original movies (I’m not proud). The only one who was scheduled while we were there was Neve Campbell, but Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, and Skeet Ulrich were also making appearances. Because of this, there were a lot of people dressed as ghostface. There were also a lot of Marty McFlys running around.

Therein lies my nerd alert. 

But really! There was just soooo much anime. 

So very much.

But let’s rewind to the time where I was excited to go to Fan X and didn’t know that it would be so heavily saturated in anime…

The night before the event, I decided I wanted to make costumes for my family. Last-minute costumes have been a trend in my life. I’ve been known to go to the DI on Halloween to buy components for a costume. Sometimes inspiration hits me late. On Thursday night, I started brainstorming ideas for family costumes. I came up with three options: Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version), or Care Bears (Scotty would have been Grumpy Bear, for sure). It just depended on what pieces we could find at the DI on Friday morning. 

The DI opens at 9:00, so we rope dropped with the hoarders and started our hunt for costume elements. I sent every kid on a mission, and we had great success for our first choice of cosplay: Alice in Wonderland. 

Featured cosplayers:

Nicky as the Mad Hatter

Items purchased from DI: green shirt & yellowish overcoat (found in the women’s section) (crappy, old, moth-eaten men’s blazers were $20 at DI! Are you kidding me?) 

Items purchased from Hobby Lobby: soft felt (bow tie) and stiff felt (hat).

Items from home: green pants 

Daisy as Alice

Items purchased from DI: sexy Alice costume (removed apron), blue dress, white leggings, black boots.

 

Items purchased from Hobby Lobby: black headband

Zoe as the Cheshire Cat

Zoe, of all my kids, has the most ridiculous demands for her costumes. She likes to take a lot of creative liberties. I had to talk her out of several costume components that don’t suit the Cheshire Cat. She wanted to wear tie dyed pants and a bow tie (to name just a few of her requests), and I had to compromise with her because I wanted her to be recognizable at the Cheshire Cat. 

Items purchased from DI: baby Cheshire Cat costume (cut off skirt, which happened to fit Zoe) and pink jacket (one of our compromises)

Items purchased from Hobby Lobby: boa for tail, felt for ears and tail stripes, headband

Eva as the White Rabbit

I was planning on being the white rabbit (as an homage to my love of punctuality), but Eva wanted to be the white rabbit. 

Items purchased from DI: yellow dress, red overcoat (it had a hood, but I cut it off)

Items purchased from Hobby Lobby: headband, stiff felt for ears, soft felt for bow tie, white poofy ball for tail

Items from home: pocket watch, gray leggings

Britt as Tweedledee and Scotty as a playing card

After I surrendered the white rabbit to Eva, I decided to go for the Queen of Hearts. I had some costume pieces picked out (one of which was a plus-sized pirate shirt). I tried them on and had a plan for adding card suits and some gold bling, and then as I was leaving the dressing room, I saw a yellow waterfall cardigan that was the perfect shade of Tweedle. I quickly looked at red pants and found a pair of sweatpants. The combined cost of the two items was $6, whereas the Queen of Hearts costume pieces added up to $15, and I’d still have to buy additional items from Hobby Lobby to dress it up. Combine the savings with the fact that I’d choose sweatpants over a dress any day, and I was quickly converted to being a Tweedle!

Items purchased from DI: yellow cardigan and red pants.

Items purchased from Hobby Lobby: red hat, soft felt for collar, bow tie, and flag on top of the hat

Items from home: white shirt 

Scotty was at work and unavailable for a costume fitting, so we went with something easy to make and easy to size. I just bought a white tee from Hobby Lobby and stuck some felt on it.

I wasn’t sure how we would fit into the Fan X crowd with our costumes. We were definitely one of the more “wholesome” groups. We saw one person dressed as the Queen of Hearts and three other Mad Hatters. There was also one person in the same “sexy Alice” costume we had bought from DI. Other than that, Alice in Wonderland (and everything else Disney) definitely wasn’t a common occurrence at this year’s Fan X. I saw one Ariel, one Elsa, and one Peter Pan. Then there was a family dressed as the family from Onward, and their costumes were so good! Too bad no one really watches Onward… do they? 

We ended up staying at Fan X for about three hours. After we left, we walked over to the food court at City Creek and had dinner. Then we walked through the newly designed part of the plaza by the Church Office Building. We had to go the long way around the COB to get to the Conference Center where we parked. The farther away we got from the Salt Palace, the weirder we started to look. 

We stopped in the Conference Center to use the restrooms, and we talked to some of the missionaries. We were a bit of a spectacle at the Conference Center, but we thought, hey! We probably won’t be in cosplay at the Conference Center ever again, so we might as well live it up. 

After we left Fan X, I felt like I’d run a marathon! It felt so good to sit down and take of my hat (I don’t do hats), and it was nice to get away from the masses of people.

It’s cool to have gone once, but I don’t think I ever need to go to Fan X again. I think next time I’ll just park myself somewhere downtown and do some people watching without going in. I do enjoy seeing the costumes.