The apex of Dragon*Con came Saturday night, as the many out of town visitors converged for the final weekend, and the few days of astonishing costumes culminated in a huge celebration. This is where the true fans showed their attempts to take on the physical appearance of their idols and heroes.

Before the event George Lucas in Love was shown. It was quite a hit with the crowd; it was no funnier my second time watching it.

There were two emcees hosting the event - the comely Chase Masterson of Star Trek Deep Space Nine fame and Andreas Katsulas from Babylon 5. She was the young vixen, he the aged actor. Early on they established the tone for the evening as he immediately dropped a whole stack of papers and she bent down to help him pick them up, bent down in such a way so as to force her already exposed breast-tops to converge and create even more cleavage. She acknowledged this by looking up at the audience and smiling and moving her arms to accentuate the effect. It was rather astonishing - speaking as someone who is used to having his public sexual innuendo served medium well and not raw.

The first group of people to ascend the stage in costume were a small group of kids, who were mostly too cute for words. One girl dressed as Cleopatra danced like an Egyptian to Greek-sounding music, and didn't stop dancing even minutes after the crowd had ceased "awww"ing at her. Several young girls came up as Sailor Moon characters, one of whom did an extended dance to a Britney Spears song. Another young girl dressed as Sailor Moon wasn't acting insane enough for our hosts, so Chase Masterson took it upon herself to force the girl to spin again and again, and then she lifted her skirt for the benefit of the audience. Strange indeed!

What is science fiction? What is the community behind Dragon*Con? You can gather a good sense of the culture elements cherished by the participants from this raw list of all the adult costumes to board the stage before my eyes:

 A Robin Hood, Uhuru from the early Star Trek ("Hbari Ghani, Dragon*Con!"), a juggling couple, an impressive Voldo from Soul Blade and Soul Calibur (who managed some pretty serious acrobatic imitations of the video game fighter), anime girls with bright colored hair and a long dramatic skit, a wired up and glowing girl from Ghost in the Shell whose bare tush attracted many ovations from the judges, a group of three soldiers and an alien from Aliens acting out a montage of Alien chase and torture while the beast itself insisted on disco dancing, a Lich King, Psychlocke from the XMen, the "Daring Dragoon" from a TV show acting out a long skit to remind us of something I'd never heard of before, a Queen Amidalia who had made her dress with her mom, a guy with blue skin and jeans shorts with the ass cut out of them: "Blue Moon" (I later saw him at a party, he was completely naked and no one else was), two warrior women with ornate armored costumes and broad cleavage, two Star Wars stormtroopers on their scout bikes who attracted many cheers from the audience, an Emporer Palpatine from Star Wars who not only looked goddamn scary but also did a spine-searingly good imitation of the wretched evil leader, a Queen Amidalia with an elaborate costume she'd made  herself with many meters of taffeta who played Star Wars on the violin and acted dismissively towards Chase Masterson, a woman with a costume "Reyanna Hawkwarrior" and an incredible bird headdress who somehow got Andreas to kiss her by cocking her head to the side, Hugh the Borg from Star Trek who spoke as an android having left the collective, 7 of 9 a female Borg who came up modeling borg beauty accessories, Q from Star Trek, a young man or lady dressed as "Lady Cobra" a villain from a 30s movie, Captain Harlock who came to the stage mostly to vehemently recommend the anime film, "Arcadia of my Youth", a Victorian lady who seemed a little out of context, a lion-faced space freight handler, a Princess Mononoke who had a brilliant costume but who had only two lines to share "ha" and "ho" during an abridged skit, a roman warrior in leather and chains who had memorized a poem to share about being a part of the masquerade ball but the host Andreas made too much fun of him and he forgot his lines, another Queen Amidalia, a skinny white woman in a Victorian costume and an astonishingly tight corset, a vampire hunter dude who whirled a sword in such an energetic fashion it was quite alarming to people in the first few rows such as myself, a person(?) inside of an amazing wolf guardian costume, a full-bodied werewolf who attracted plenty of howling from the audience, a warrior dude from some book, a young woman who had sewn her own jester costume in red and black and in her own introduction she wrote "she may not know how to juggle but she's damn cute" and she did a little dance to a rockin' tune in Hebrew, a female predator, a large group of folks dressed up as a crew from Babylon 5, a flying elf, a man dressed as Conan in disguise as a beggar who asked us to guess who he was but no one could so he told us who he was and said, "stick a fork in me, I'm done" and he left the stage, a sorceress who somehow caused small bright flashes to emerge from her hands, Mink from an anime named Dragonhalf who exposed pale flesh and much of it, a gaunt boy from Team Rocket and an anemic Pikachu in some kind of extended pantomime skit and someone behind me yelled, "that's just weird" which was true, a woman in a ball gown from Labyrinth, a tall black man in layers of psychedelic spandex and women's swim suits who was dressed as a "Cosmic Energy Goddess" - he gyrated around the stage with a plastic guitar to a grating heavy metal soundtrack in a skit that was way beyond weird, Dick Tracy and his moll and some reporters in a scene from the movie - the skit consisted almost entirely of the rather comely woman removing increasing numbers of clothes which was mostly fine if a bit out of place, a skit with a knight and a dragon which seemed to be one young couples bondage drama writ large, a 17th century man, a long skit from DragonBall Z that was acted in an unsure fashion which left the emcees plenty of opportunity to poke fun and make the serious performances seem silly, and a group of people dressed up as Planet of the Apes who acted out a skit along with a tape that was so quiet as to be inaudible.

It was impossible not to be impressed with the amount of workmanship and effort these people had put into their costumes. Some people might scoff at the subject matter - that these people care too much about irrelevant stuff. But there are plenty of local and specific festivals around the world where people demonstrate their idolizations in similarly silly ways. These people were unafraid to make themselves part of SciFi. Looking at these costumes up on stage, and many of the people wandering around the fair, it's clear these people are active, engaged fans, taking part in a culture about far off places and impossible adventures. Whether it was shrinking back from Emporer Palpatine, or wondering what was flashing in the hands of a sorceress, there were moments when these fans created a similar type of magic as they had been emulating.