As with all Costume-Cons, the focus is on costuming in all of its varieties — SciFi, Historical, Anime, Cosplay, etc. The Friday night social is an opportunity to see old friends and make new ones, as well as see the Single Pattern Contest. The Single Pattern contest is a variety of people making their version of a specified pattern (usually one of 3-4), and showing it off to the crowd. This year’s patterns included a 3-piece suit, a bathrobe, and a jumpsuit. 17 folks showed off outfits made from one (or even two!) of these patterns.

Saturday focuses on SciFi and Fantasy, and 37 entries crossed the stage. The entries ranged from a 10 foot tall Tom Servo (from MST3K), to fairy princesses, to anime characters, you name it, it was there! Sunday focuses on the Historical costumes, with 13 entries ranging from the 2nd century to the 1960s.

There will be separate posts for each day, just because the number of photos is large. And the photos also include a variety of hall costuming.

Friday Single Pattern photos

Saturday Science Fiction & Fantasy photos

Sunday Historical photos

Hall Costume photos

Although we were definitely in relaxation mode, both of us were on programming. I was a participant on a panel titled “Medbots, Tricorders, and More” about the future of medicine, and moderated a panel titled “Weapons of Westeros” about the various mostly medieval/renaissance weapons used in the show. Stephen reprised the workshop on tea that he did in Dublin.

There were about 20 people from the Bay Area in attendance, which was somewhat surprising to many folks (although not us). Although there was less emphasis on the related timing than there was in 2014 (Loncon 3 and Eurocon/Shamrockcon), it made lots of sense for those of us with long trips to spend extra time in Ireland after Worldcon was over.

We took the train from Dublin to Belfast… with a “side” bus to finish the trip because they are working on the train lines. The Hilton Belfast hotel is just across the street from the train station. It was (of course!) raining when we arrived, so we put Stephen into a cab with all of the luggage and the rest of the group walked.

The next day we went to the Titanic Museum, which was a nice walk along the Lagan river. There were several interesting historical posts along the fence, as well as fantastic #GlassOfThrones artwork along the way (see here for more details).

I hadn’t realized just how big and busy a port Belfast was. Nor had I realized that they have been one of the premier ship building locations for 200 years. Harland & Wolff were premier shipbuilders, and then branched out into wind turbines and other newer technology in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, they declared bankruptcy about a week before we arrived. There are two huge hoists that dominate the Belfast skyline, known as Samson and Goliath, marked with H&W and used to move ships and other large objects.

I strongly recommend visiting the museum, and suggest you allocate at least three hours to go through all of the exhibits, especially going to see the SS Nomadic, which was one of the tender ships paired with RMS Titanic. Nomadic has been refurbished as she was in 1912, although she is in permanent drydock.

We started on Wednesday afternoon with a tour of the CCD Auditorium, and had a chance to meet the professional staff. We verified our plans (made from afar with just drawings of the auditorium), and solidified our volunteer staff.

We got a chance to see how the auditorium would work and the views from the upper level on Thursday evening during the Opening Ceremonies and Retro Hugos. And were able to do some blocking work on the stage Friday morning as they were setting up for the evening’s orchestra/music event.

Contestant meeting, final tech prep, and then tech rehearsals all started before 10am on Saturday. We had four of the professional staff helping us, Stage Manager, Sound, Lights, and Video, alongside our volunteer crew. Rehearsal finished by 5:15pm, so we all had chance for a brief break and some dinner, before we opened the auditorium at 7:00pm, with two waves of seating. The show started on time at about 8:02pm.

We had a total of 35 entries cross the stage. About half were novices. A couple were folks who had first competed in Helsinki 2 years ago. The performance went very smoothly.

Our halftime entertainment was Pecha Kucha Karaoke, led by our MC, who has hosted many Pecha Kucha events featuring both prepared presentations and karaoke presentations. The audience was entertained while the judges deliberated.

More photos can be seen in this Flickr album.

We coordinated with several friends and opted to stay at an AirBnB in the Silicon Docks area, just across the River Liffey from the Convention Center Dublin (CCD) where the bulk of the convention was being held. It was an even better location than we realized when we booked. There were several local restaurants within a block or two as well as a grocery store and bank just a long block away.

Most of us were involved in running the Masquerade in some fashion. We wanted a bit of time to relax before we got started with the work, so we all traveled in the weekend before.

We learned how to work with the local transport system (TFI: Transport From Ireland) as we took the bus up to the office of Shamrock Rosettes to pick up the Masquerade ribbons. EPIC The Immigration Museum was just across the river on the way to the bus station. We did a day trip with Elegant Irish Tours down to Glendalough and Russborough Estate. (Thanks to Debbie for arranging it!)

More photos on Flickr here

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• having a chance to meet and work with all of the MexicanX Initiative participants.  They were universally friendly, professional, and willing to dive in wherever needed.
• watching my husband create his own Masquerade entry and enter his first Masquerade competition.  He’s now gotten the bug and understands why most costumers are still working on things until the very last minute.
• seeing N.K. Jemisin make history, winning her third consecutive Best Novel Hugo award, for The Stone Sky.

We had a Masquerade Show & Tell scheduled for 2pm.  The contestants all came and wore or brought their costumes from the night before.  Several spoke about how they had made this or that piece.  At least 2 had props that they were not taking back to the US, and offered them to the Finns.

The winner of the Best Recreation costume, Kerttu Vähänen, was also awarded a membership to Worldcon 76, for her Doctor Strange costume.  The Cloak of Levitation was totally hand-sewn, with 5 different fabrics.  And she absolutely nailed the attitude both on stage and in the convention halls.  

After that, we were off to Closing Ceremonies.  Jukka noted that final registration was 10,516 Members (full week and day passes), and 7119 people on-site.  This made us the second largest Worldcon ever (after Sasquan for 11,742 total members and Loncon 3 for 6,946 attending members).  See the Long List for more details and history about Worldcons.

Kevin was handed the gavel as Jukka transferred things to Worldcon 76.  We showed a short video about San Jose, done to a filk version of Do You Know The Way To San Jose, which had the crowd chuckling with the puns.  It will eventually be available to the public, but not yet.

And then we had a chance to rest before repacking for our next stop: Stockholm.

A Worldcon Masquerade is a major stage event, just like a play or musical.  Except that we have one day to rehearse everything, make sure that the lights and audio are set, that everyone knows how to work on the stage, that the crew have all of their cues, for our one big night.

Chris Doyle (as Jyn Erso), Karen Lord, Debi Chowdhury

After my initial concerns about a small entry list, we ended up with 25 entries, most of whom were novices under the International Costumers Guild (ICG) rules.  My Co-Director, Debi Chowdhury, convinced nearly everyone she saw wearing a costume to enter.  We set the run order on Friday afternoon, trying to get a balanced mix of experienced and new, dramatic and humorous, etc.  One of our two Young Fan entries withdrew, and the remaining Young Fan decided she wanted to participate as a Novice.  Good choice, as you’ll see later.

The day starts with a 10am meeting for all of the participants.  We go over the schedule for the day, walk through the stage and back stage areas, discuss missing audio files and other specific issues, and then break to start the tech rehearsal at 11am.  Except that the tech crew didn’t think they needed to be there until noon.  We hung around until we got someone who knew how to run the lights and audio board, but once we started, we moved along fairly quickly.

My biggest problem was differences in expectations.  Many anime conventions expect a full skit/presentation — more like a variety show with song/dance/etc.  A Worldcon Masquerade expects a 60 second or so presentation.  The only person with a microphone is the Toastmistress.  So folks need to record their script or provide it to the Toastmistress.  I ended up as Karen Lord’s surrogate as she was scheduled for several panels during the day.  Using my best stage voice, I introduced folks, read (and edited) scripts, made sure that everyone had some sort of audio to play in the background if they didn’t already have something, and helped them figure out their staging.  My absolutely invaluable helper was Lori Meltzer, who is an experienced Masquerade stage hand.  She coached participants on movement and attitude on stage and explained how we would help cue them during the actual event.

We planned to open the auditorium at 7pm, and start just after 7:30pm.  I got the Press Room to print out the revised script at about 6:30pm.  And then realized that I hadn’t print out the intro for Karen Lord.  Husband to the rescue — I e-mailed the file to the Press Room and got Stephen to pick it up for me.  And then when he walked in to give it to me, I grabbed him to become the “Voice of God” — the person behind the curtain who does opening announcements — because all of the Finns felt they had too much accent.

  Our judges included a mix of US, British and Finnish costumers.  Both workmanship and presentation judges complained that they had too many good costumes and costumers to pick from.  But in the end, they were able to make their awards.  Best in Show Workmanship went to Leena Peippo as Dwalin the Dwarf.  And Best in Show Presentation went to Olivia Flockhart (the Young Fan who switched to Novice) as When Halley Came to Jackson in 1910 (Halley’s Comet).

We handed out a total of 20 awards.  The full list along with links to lots more photos is here on the Worldcon 75 website.