Supanova Sydney 2014

Yesterday we had a family outing up to Sydney to attend the Supanova Pop Culture Expo. This is basically what it sounds like; a three day festival of film, TV, comics and, well, general nerdery. With cosplay. Lots of cosplay.

This is what it looked like at lunchtime yesterday

Busy, busy, busy.

But surprisingly easy to get around.

My daughter has been a couple of times before, and actually travelled up with some friends, as they were doing a group cosplay. But my son, my wife and I had never been before, so we decided not to get seduced by the special guests, who included George Lazenby, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, John Barrowman and even the great Stan Lee, and just spend the day soaking up the atmosphere and seeing what the event had to offer. And so we did, having a great day browsing the various stands and stalls, and revelling in the fantastic costumes that people wore.

Ah, the cosplay. If you follow this blog you'll know that I'm not averse to a little, shall we say, 'dressing up', but my daughter aside none of us had done cosplay before. But we decided to do our best.

My son (who wasn't feeling very well) went as Clark Kent, whilst his lovely girlfriend went as Dawn (from Pokemon, as any fule kno)

I can't remember what my daughter and her friends went from. They were characters from a podcast they all follow. Other people seemed to recognise them, and get excited, so they made a good choice.

She's the black-cloaked figure on the right.

On to Catherine. She and my daughter are fans of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series of DS games, so she went as the whip-wielding lawyer, Franziska Von Karma.

And what of me? Well, it was inevitable that it was going to involve a frock. And, after I was called out after a casual remark I made on Facebook, I ended up attempting ... this:

Something of an uphill struggle, you'll agree.

And the end result? This.

Yes, Kaptain Kobold - The Mother of Dragons.

It was the dragon that made it, apparently. It's a hand-puppet my daughter lent me, but people seemed genuinely amused by it as I kept it in operation a lot of the time we were walking around. There were quite a few other Daenerys Targaryens around, but as far as we know only one other had a dragon, and it didn't move.

Of course, Catherine and I had to pose with some of the props on offer. As Brits this was an obvious choice.

But I found some re-enactors to pose with as well.

Some other costumes on offer

I said that there were other people doing Daenerys Targaryen. Three of us posed for a group shot. As one spectator said, "One of these Targaryens is not like the others ...".

One of my favourite costumes - a Pikachu Space Marine.

We had a great, but very tiring, day. And we're going back next year. But what to wear ... ?