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Welcome to Episode 17 of Cock Tales Over Cocktails! Chuck and I recorded a different episode 17, but the audio from it was unusable for boring technical reasons. Suffice to say, if you do a podcast of your own and your phone is your sound board, don’t. Forget. Airplane. Mode. All that is to say thank you for your patience. The good news is, that means episode 17 is our absolutely gargantuan episode of DragonCon 2016 coverage! Every year, Chuck and I go to DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia, along with many other friends, some of whom you know: Katja and Jordan, Chaim and Lara, Peregrine Moore Rumpole, plus 77,000 other fellow geeks and nerds and other celebrants of the finest things in fandom. You may recall we discussed DragonCon in episode 9, but this time we got to do some recording in situ in Atlanta, Georgia, so buckle up while we get a little bitchy about a panel we attended on queer representation in speculative fiction, then we go out and hit the streets to bring you a couple of sexy stories, some of the sounds of DragonCon itself, a conversation with some awesome strangers, and our discovery of a mobile business venture called The Weed Wagon. One of the remarkable things about DragonCon is the almost universality of cosplay at the convention. I love cosplay, even though I’ve only done it a couple of times. I love it for the opportunity it creates for someone to become their true self by adopting a fictional identity. In many ways it reminds me of what I hear when people describe their experience of doing drag. The right outfit becomes a whole new identity, and we all need the chance to be someone else for a while. Even as kids we get a little bit of education in that notion from the old Looney Tunes cartoon, “Bugs’ Bonnets,” in which Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd trade off roles of predator and prey when a theatrical costume company’s delivery truck scatters different hats all over the forest. Every day we get up and put on an identity and wear it to work, or to school, or down to the corner store. Every day we choose who we are to some degree. Most of us choose the same thing so many times we stop realizing it’s a choice, but it is still a choice. When I go to DragonCon, I see people choosing new identities for themselves and finding out what it’s like to be tough, or to be scary, or to be cute, or to be innocent, or to be adventurous. I think that choice of how we represent ourselves and that relationship - and that tension - between the identity we put on for the world and who we are in our heart of hearts is an essential part of the queer experience. Seeing a few thousand other people have that experience, some for the first time, is absolutely magical. (Special shout out to the Harvey Birdman from a couple of episodes back, at a different fandom convention, who we got to see walking around at DragonCon in his Harvey Birdman costume and his, um, legal briefs.) But anyway, enough of my rambling. This week’s music is “Techno Turtle featuring Martin de Boer,” by Levihica, with full attribution in the show notes. And now, without further ado, let’s go to a quiet hotel room somewhere on the periphery of DragonCon. Techno Turtle feat. Martijn de Boer (NiGiD) by Levihica (c) copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Levihica/51425 Ft: Martijn de Boer (NiGiD)