Comic Con Gamex 2015, Stockholm, Sweden

The Stockholm Comic Con Gamex was held for the second year, well Gamex is older, but the adding of Comic Con was made last year. I definitely think this is the main pop culture event of the year in Sweden. It's a great mix of film, games, panels, cosplay shows and a lot of people. I would say it was even too many people on Saturday, wen this picture was taken. Then it was almost impossible to move around on the floor. This year it was held in a new venue, the Friend's Arena. The Arena is the national football stadium, so the convention was built on a floor over the pitch. This also made for interesting stages for the panels, since they used the seats around the pitch for the main stages and jsut had them separated by temporary walls from the rest of the arena. Overall I thought it worked really well actually.

I had gone to a friend outside Gävle, Valbo to be exact, already on Thursday evening, so on early Friday morning we drove off so that we were at the arena in Stockholm by 8. The Nordic Legions were there with a stand and I trooped by being in the photostand and take part in the parades. On Friday I wore my Endor Leia, with the helmet since I didn’t want to fuzz with the hair. The Comic Con audience is a bit different from the regular sci fi cons though, so not too many people wanted to pay for taking a photo with us. It was planned that I would be in the stand quite a lot in my handmaiden together with an R2 droid and Queen Amidala. The girl doing Amidala had suffered an allergic reaction though and couldn’t wear any face make up. So we tried to just have the handmaiden and droid in the stand, but people were totally uninterested. For the rest of the weekend my handmaiden was switched for Wall-E, since he’s a lot more popular.

On Friday I also had a panel about make-up and hair. It went ok, but people were clearly more interested when I had my wigs with me and showed how you could style them, rather than going through the Amidala make-up. I think if I’m going to do a panel like that in the future it would be best to just concentrate on hairstyles, and try to show some more example than just the cinnamon buns.

I also had time to look at the qualification for the Swedish Cosplay Championships, or at least the run through of the contestants. I watched the different cosplay competitions all days, but this is where I really show my total illiteracy when it comes to games and manga/anime. I hardly recognized anyone, except for the Elsa.

It was interesting to see a competition where performance is an important part of the competition, but to be honest I thought it was more interesting to see the competition on Saturday when they just went up to the stage and showed some poses. 

Saturday was really crowded, I didn't have any scheduled trooping to do, except for the parades, that meant that I had time for just some fun. I had brought my Rarity costume with me, and in the crowds it was nice to have a costume that is quite cool, except for the wig.

I had even remembered to bring Opal with me, I forgot her at Närcon this summer, and I met a really nice looking Dischord on the floor. I had hoped for more MLP cosplays though. 

For shoes I used my Leia boots, and I thought they looked great for Rarity, and they are comfy so that's always a plus for a cosplay.

On the con floor I also found a really nice looking Rey from The Force Awakens.

We quickly recruited her for the The Force Awakens photo shoot that me and Björn, the Nordic Base’s Han Solo, wanted to do at the end of the day. We had to wait until the end of the day since he needed to put some grey in his hair, and had to wait until after he was done in the photo stand. Micke of the R2 builders in Sweden had done a BB8, and Sigge also had a droid from TFA, so together we quickly gathered all the TFA characters and droids we could find.

Me and Björn also took the chance to recreate that one Han/Leia shot from the TFA trailer.

On Sunday we were all quite tired, the after troop dinner on Saturday had been a really quiet affair and we were all in bed before 22 I think. It's great to have a really comfortable costume to fall back too on the third day of trooping, so I went as Endor trooper the whole day. 

Me and Ingeli, the CO of the Nordic Garrison, had a talk about "Ladies of the Legions - Star Wars and female cosplay" and I think there were definitely a couple of seriously intersted people, the kind that might actually think about joining the legions in the future.

As I've mentioned I'm really not into games, but it's impossible to not notice that the game Star Wars Battlefront will be released in a couple of weeks, and it's produced by a Swedish company. This also had the effect that for once people thought that a lone Endor trooper was pretty cool as well, I heard a few "wow, that's a costume from Battlefront" around me. The Battlefront stand, where you could play the beta of the game, had a huge backdrop, with an Endor trooper facing an ATAT walker, so I ended Sunday with taking my chance of making the backdrop three dimensional.

All in all this was one of the funniest conventions in a long time. I don't think I've ever had so many fun photo oppturnities, both as Rarity, Leia and Endor trooper. The Comic Con Gamex is definitely turning into one of my main events of the year.