Dragon Con 2017: We Came, We Saw, We Cosplayed

Dragon Con 2017

For the first four days in September 2017, the streets of downtown Atlanta were overrun. They were everywhere. Some had horns, some had swords. Multitudes had pale-ish blue skin and wild hair while eating Doritos. Others looked like battle angels descended from Valhalla. All around us was some form of animal or cartoon character or non-human–80,000 of them to be exact–and it was all pretty magical.

DragonCon is the annual fandom celebration that turns downtown Atlanta into a literal four day long exhibition of creative oddities and beautiful cosplays. Each day hosts a cadre of workshops and panels, categorized into different “fan tracks”. There was an Animation track which catered to interest in cartooning, voice actors, and artists. There’s a Costuming track (which I imagine to be the most popular) which focused on the DIY aspect of cosplay and went into deeper topics such as sculpting, fabricating and electronics. There’s of course tale top and gaming tracks. My favorite was the Science track which featured panels such as “The Science of Luke Cage” which aimed to answer comic book questions what it would take to give someone invulnerable skin. I attended super fun The Science Team-Up Quiz Show, an event where actual real life scientists (Earth Science, Chemists, Paleontologists, etc.) competed head to head to answer science questions that were outside of their field.

Since the convention is considered open 24 hours a day, there was no shortage of people milling about between the five host hotels. By day it was a nexus of shared geekdom with plenty of workshops and panels to attend, to the evening where it became more of an adult playground with plentiful booze and much more skin showing (most of the half naked people I saw identified as males). DragonCon is considered the place to be in order to showcase and view the best of cosplay.  In fact from everyone I spoke to, DragonCon should be considered “the Superbowl of cosplay”. Just look at some of our photos below:

DragonCon is a fantasy world in and of itself and worthy of a trip–especially if you’ve never gone before. It’s a place to dress up like your favorite character, hang out with friends, make news ones, and simply enjoy being a full-fledged nerd. Be sure to bookmark dragoncon.com and be sure to check in for announcements when tickets go live for the next Dragon Con!