Title: Context Is For Queens
-Date: 2022-11-27 05:00
+Date: 2022-11-27 22:00
Category: other
Tags: anecdotal, cosplay, Star Trek
Status: draft
-Tom Paris 13/50 epigraph!!
+> NEELIX: One of those species is the Benkarans. They occupy just ten percent of Nygean space, but take up nearly eighty percent of the space in Nygean prisons.
+> PARIS: Maybe they commit more crimes.
+>
+> —_Star Trek: Voyager_, "Repentance"
- * despite the fact that conventions are boring, I went to Fan Expo SF to reprise my Ens. Tilly cosplay with my Crea FX mask and hip pads—would it make a difference?
- * I was disappointed to learn that one-way glass isn't actually a real thing that you could use to make sunglasses out of; what exists are _half-silvered_ mirrors
- * the plot point about the mirror universe people being sensitive to light seemed _so dumb_, but it's actually the perfect premise for this costume!!
- * encountering the author of Transcat, the "first" transgender superhero, in the vendor hall; "whose appearance I will not describe"; the art looked bad; "There's so much I could say that doesn't fit in this context", then I added, "Probably not what you're thinking" "Oh no" said the author
- * got an autograph from Brent Spiner for $60; told him that I thought the forward to _Fan Fiction_ should have been more specific about which parts were based on a true story; he said, That's the point, you don't know what's real; I was reading it as a decent detective novel, and kept being like, No way this happened, and he asked which parts, and I said, the part where the bodyguard woman has an identical twin and you're dating both of them, and attack the killer
+(**SPOILERS** for _Star Trek: Discovery_ Season 1)
+
+I [continue](/2019/Aug/a-love-that-is-out-of-anyones-control/) to [maintain](/2017/Oct/a-leaf-in-the-crosswind/) that fandom conventions are boring. I enjoy _consuming_ fiction. I even enjoy discussing fiction with friends—the work facilitating a connection with someone else present, not just between me and the distant author, or me and the universe of stories. But for the most part, these big, bustling conventions just don't seem to facilitate that kind of intimacy. At best, you might hope to _meet_ someone at a convention, and then make friends with them over time?—which I've never actually done. And so, surrounded by tens of thousands of people ostensibly with common interests, invited to a calvacade of activities and diversions put on at no doubt monstrous expense, the predominant emotion I feel is the loneliness of anonymity.
+
+<a href="/images/mask_con_morning.jpg"><img src="/images/mask_con_morning.jpg" width="240" style="float: right; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
+
+But that's okay. Ultimately, I did not come to [Fan Expo San Francisco 2022](https://archive.ph/2OI4H) on Saturday for the intimacy of analyzing fiction with friends who know me.
+
+I came because of the _loophole_. As reactionary as it might seem in the current year, I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, and I do not _crossdress_ in public. That would be _weird_. (Not harmlessly weird as an adjective of unserious self-deprecation, but weird in the proper sense, _out-of-distribution_ weird.)
+
+But to cosplay as as a fictional character who happens to be female? That's fine! Lots of people are dressed up as fictional characters at the convention, including characters who belong to categories that the cosplayer themselves do not. That guy dressed up as a vampire isn't actually a vampire, either.
+
+Conventions are actually _so_ boring that the loophole alone wouldn't have been enough to get me to come out to Fan Expo (been there, [done that](/tag/cosplay/)—seven times), but this time I had a couple of new accessories to try out, most notably [a "Taylor" silicone mask by Crea FX](https://www.creafx.com/en/special-make-up-effects/taylor-silicone-mask/).
+
+The "Taylor" is an amazing piece of workmanship that entirely earns its €672 price tag. It really looks like a woman's face! Just—a detached woman's face, wrapped in tissue paper, sitting in a box! [I had _said_ buying this product was probably a smart move](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#movie-grade-mask), and it turned out that buying this product was a _smart move!_ The skin color and texture is much more realistic than a lot of other silicone feminization products, like the cartoony beige of the [Gold Seal female bodysuit](https://thebreastformstore.com/gold-seal-naked-silicone-bodysuit/) from TheBreastFormStore.com that I _also_ blew $600 on recently (and damaged badly just trying to get it on).
+
+(As far as workmanship quality goes, I wonder how much it helps that Crea FX are visual-effects artists by trade—makers also of male masks and monster masks for movies and plays—rather than being in the MtF business specifically, like TheBreastFormStore.com. They know—[they _must_ know](https://www.creafx.com/en/crea-fx-at-the-german-fetish-fair/)—that a lot of their female masks are purchased by guys like me with motives like mine, but we're not the _target_ demographic, the reason they mastered their skills.)
+
+Somehow the mask somehow manages to look worse in photographs than it does in the mirror? Standing a distance from the mirror in a dark hotel room the other month (that I rented to try on my new mask in privacy), I swear _I actually bought it_, and if the moment of passing to myself in the mirror was an anticlimax, it was an anticlimax I've been waiting my entire life (since puberty) for.
+
+The worst nonrealism is the eyeholes. Nothing is worse for making a mask look like a mask than visible eyehole-seams around the eyes. But suppose I wore sunglasses. Women wear sunglasses sometimes! Could I pass to _someone else_? (Not for very long or bearing any real scrutiny, but [to someone who wasn't expecting it](/2020/Dec/crossing-the-line/).)
+
+It immediately became clear that I would have to cosplay at one more convention in order to test this, and decided to reprise my role as Sylvia Tilly from _Star Trek: Discovery_ (previously played at San Francisco Comic-Con 2018) at the next nearby con. There had been [a plot point in season 1 of _Discovery_](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Vaulting_Ambition_(episode)#Act_Four) that people in the mirror universe are more sensitive to light, which I had thought was lame and bizarre at the time, but now gave me a perfect excuse for someone who looks like Sylvia Tilly to be wearing sunglasses! (I was soon disappointed to learn that one-way glass isn't actually a real thing that you could make sunglasses out of; what's real are [_half-silvered_ mirrors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_mirror) that are deployed with one side in darkness.) For good measure, I also added of a pair of [padded panties](https://thebreastformstore.com/gold-seal-padded-panty/) from TheBreastFormStore.com to my outfit, another solid buy.
+
+[TODO: explain hotel rooms and money?, box of breastforms and mask]
+
+Saturday morning, I got myself masked and padded in all the right places, and suited up to walk from my hotel room to Moscone West for the convention! They had a weirdly cumbersome check-in system (wait in line to get your QR code scanned, then receive a badge, then activate the badge by typing a code printed on it into a website on your phone, then scan the badge to enter the con), and I dropped my phone while I was in line and cracked the screen a bit. But then I was in! Hello, Fan Expo!
+
+And—didn't immediately have anything to do, because conventions are boring. I had gone through the schedule the previous night and written down possibly non-boring events, but the first (a nostalgic showing of Saturday morning cartoons from the '90s) didn't even start until 1100, and the only ones I really cared about were the _Star Trek_ cosplay meetup at 1315, and a photo-op with Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden at 1520 that I had pre-paid $120 for. I checked out the vendor hall first. Nothing really caught my eye ...
+
+Until I came across a comics table hawking [_Transcat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/), the "first" (self-aware scare quotes included) transgender superhero. I had to stop and look: just the catchphrase promised an exemplar of everything [I'm fighting](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/)—not out of hatred, but out of a [shared love](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) that [I think I have](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) the more [accurate interpretation](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) of. I opened the cover of one of the displayed issues to peek at the story inside. The art quality was ... not good. "There's so much I could say that I could say that doesn't fit in this context," I said to the proprietor, whose appearance I will not describe. "Probably not what you're thinking," I added. "Oh no," [she](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) said.
+
+I wandered around the con some more (watched some of the cartoons, talked to the guys manning the _Star Trek_ fan club booth). Eventually I wandered to the third floor, where the celebrity autographs and photo ops were. Spiner and McFadden were there, with no line in front of their tables. I had already paid for the photo op later, but that looked like it was going to be [one of those](/2016/Dec/joined/#photo-assembly-line) soulless assembly-line "pose, click—next fan" procedure, and it felt more human to actually get to _talk_ to the stars for half a minute. (When I played Ens. Tilly in 2018, I got an autograph and [photo with Jonathan Frakes](/images/tilly_cosplay.png), and got to talk to him for half a minute: I told him that we had covered his work in art history class at the Academy, and that I loved his portrayal of—David Xanatos.) I had read Spiner's pseudo-autobiographical novel _Fan Fiction_ recently and wanted to say something intelligent about it. My heart pounding, I went over to Spiner's table, and paid the $60 autograph fee to the attendant. (If Gates McFadden had written a book, then I hadn't read it, so I didn't have anything intelligent to say to her.)
+
+
+ * told him that I thought the forward to _Fan Fiction_ should have been more specific about which parts were based on a true story; he said, That's the point, you don't know what's real; I was reading it as a decent detective novel, and kept being like, No way this happened, and he asked which parts, and I said, the part where the bodyguard woman has an identical twin and you're dating both of them, and attack the killer
* I gave my name as "Ens. Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. Discovery"
* autograph: "To Sylvia / A fine human!"
+
+
* I don't think I fooled anyone—not up close
* a woman in a Wonder Woman costume wanted a photo with me, rapport at the Star Trek meet; I feel like I got "Man Pearl Is Best Pearl" vibes?
* I explained the mask choice to a fellow Star Trek Discovery cosplayer
* wig was falling off at Star Trek meet
* the photo up was assembly-line as expected, Spiner said, "Sylvia, right?"; COVID theater
* I did get "ma'am'ed" on my way out
+
+<a href="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg"><img src="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg" width="320" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
+
* I was tired and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate, but I decided to stop by the vendor hall and buy Transcat; I wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a scrap of Moleskine paper, as I bought Vol. 1 (issue 1 $5 was sold out, and I said I'd take it for $25 when Vol. 1 was pointed out); I said I was disappointed that our Society has settled on a "trans women are women" narrative; author said there was more enthusiasm in 2016, but stopped going to conventions because of COVID, and public opinions seems colder now, and she's worried; I asked if she'd heard of the concept of autogynephilia, and she hadn't (!); I said I had some heterodox opinions, but that I had a blog, and handed her the slip (as if implicitly proposing a trade; I'm reading your stuff, you read mine?)
* when the author asked my name, I hesisitated, sensing my discomfort, she asked, Who should I make it out to; I said, "Ens. Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. Discovery"
+
* masturbating in the hotel room; the mask with no wig; imagining being a butch lesbian with a shaved head
* Transcat is really bad in the expected ways
+
* a slight tear in the mouth of the mask, the nostrils look kind of ragged?
+
Side life things to note—
- * need to be more careful with money because contract ending soon
+ * need to be more careful with money because contract ending soon; buying a hotel room was arguably unnecessary extravagance
* memoir progress
-last time: /images/tilly_cosplay.png; art history class at the academy—David Xanatos
+
+last time: ; art history class at the academy—David Xanatos
+
+https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Context_Is_for_Kings_(episode)
I had already used "Context Is For Queens" as the title of my Facebook photo album for 2018 Comic Con, so I went with "Crossfield Class"
+
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff
