1 Title: Context Is For Queens
4 Tags: anecdotal, cosplay, Star Trek
7 > 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.
9 > PARIS: Maybe they commit more crimes.
11 > —_Star Trek: Voyager_, "Repentance"
13 _(Attention conservation notice: boring Diary-like post about a boring special event.)_
15 (**SPOILERS** notice for _Star Trek: Discovery_ Season 1, _Fan Fiction_ by Brent Spiner, and [_TransCat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/))
17 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, rather than 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.
19 <a href="/images/mask_con_morning.jpg"><img src="/images/mask_con_morning.jpg" width="240" style="float: right; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
21 But that's okay. Ultimately, I did not come to [Fan Expo San Francisco 2022](https://archive.ph/2OI4H) for the intimacy of analyzing fiction with friends who know me.
23 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.)
25 But to cosplay 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 does not. That guy dressed up as a vampire isn't actually a vampire, either.
27 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/).
29 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 [the Breast Form Store](https://thebreastformstore.com/who-we-are/) that I _also_ blew $600 on recently (and damaged badly just trying to get it on).
31 (As far as workmanship quality goes, I wonder how much it helps that [Crea FX](https://www.creafx.com/en/) 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 the Breast Form Store. 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.)
33 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 motel 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.
35 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/).)
37 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](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/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 why (someone who looks like) Tilly would 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 the Breast Form Store to my outfit, another solid buy.
39 So Friday night, I threw my [2250s-era Starfleet uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(late_2230s-2250s)) in my backpack, put my breastforms and wig and mask in a box, and got on the train to San Francisco. (My ticket to the con was Saturday only, but it's nice to get a hotel room for the night before, and get dressed up in the morning within walking distance of the event, rather than taking the train in costume the day of.) Carrying the box around was slightly awkward, and the thought briefly occured to me that I could summon an internet taxi rather than take the train, but it was already decadent enough that I was getting a hotel room for a local event, and I had recently learned that my part-time contract with my dayjob (which started in April as a Pareto improvement over me just quitting outright) isn't getting renewed at the end of the year, so I need to learn to be careful with money (at least until dayjob IPOs and my shares become liquid) instead of being a YOLO spendthrift.
41 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!
43 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 on a page in my pocket Moleskine notebook, 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 rendezvous at 1315, and a photo-op with Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden (best known for their roles as Lt. Cmdr. Data and Dr. Crusher, respectively, on _Star Trek: The Next Generation_) at 1520 that I had pre-paid $120 for. I checked out the vendor hall first. Nothing really caught my eye ...
45 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 [faithful 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 inside. The art quality was ... not good. "There's so much I could say that doesn't fit in this context," I said to the table's 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 didn't want to spend the day carrying anything that didn't fit nicely in my fanny pack, so I left without buying any comics, thinking I might come back later.
47 I wandered around the con some more (watched some of the cartoons, talked to the guys manning the _Star Trek_ fan society). Eventually I checked out 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 "pose, click—next fan" assembly-lines, and it felt more human to actually get to _talk_ to the stars for half a minute.
49 (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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Xanatos).)
51 I had recently read Spiner's pseudo-autobiographical crime novel [_Fan Fiction_](https://www.npr.org/2021/10/17/1046397441/brent-spiner-data-fan-fiction-review) about him getting stalked by a deranged fan and wanted to say something intelligent about it, so (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.)
53 I 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, that you don't know what's real. I said that I was enjoying it as a decent crime novel, but kept having a reaction to some parts of the form, No way, no _way_ did that actually happen. He asked which parts. I said, you know, the way that the woman hired to be your bodyguard just happens to have a twin sister, and you get romantically involved with _both_ of them, and end up killing the stalker yourself in a dramatic confrontation—
55 "I killed someone," he said, deadpan.
59 No, he admitted, but the part about getting sent a pig penis was real.
61 I gave my name as "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_", and he signed a page I ripped out of my Moleskine: "To Sylvia", it says, "A fine human!"
63 As far as my hope of the mask helping me pass as female to others, I didn't really get a sense that I fooled anyone? (Looking at the photographs afterwards, that doesn't feel surprising. _Proportions!_)
65 I guess it's not entirely obvious how I would tell in every case. A woman wearing a Wonder Woman costume recognized me as Tilly, enthusiastically complimented me, asked to get a photo of us. She asked where I got my costume from, and I murmured ["Amazon."](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C1LCMSB/) Her friend took the photo, and accepted my phone to take one for me as well. Would that interaction have gone any differently, if I had actually been a woman (just wearing a Starfleet uniform and maybe a wig, with no mask or breastforms or hip pads)?
67 People at the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous were nice. (The schedule called it a cosplay "meetup", but I'm going with _rendezvous_, a word that I'm sure I learned from watching _The Next Generation_ as a child.) A woman in a [2380s-era sciences division uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(early_2380s)) asked me my name. "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_," I said. No, I meant, your alter-ego, she said, and I hesitated—I wanted to stay in character (that is, I didn't want to give my (male) name), but some minutes later (after the photo shoot) changed my mind and introduced myself with my real name, and she gave me a card with her _Trek_ fan club's name written on the back.
69 <a href="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg"><img src="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg" width="575" style="margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
71 My wig was coming off at the beginning of the photo shoot, so I went to the bathroom to fix it. (The men's room; I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, _&c._) The man who was also in a _Discovery_-era uniform also wanted a photo, and I ended up explaining the rationalization for my sunglasses to him ("definitely not her analogue from a parallel universe where people are more sensitive to light"—but [Doylistically](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) because I'm wearing a mask instead of makeup this year), which he thought was clever.
73 Maybe I should have tried harder to make friends, instead of mostly just exchanging pleasantries and being in photos? There was a ready-made conversation topic in the form of all the new shows! Would it have been witty and ironic to confess that I don't even like _Discovery_? (I finally gave up halfway through Season 4; I don't care what happens to these characters anymore.) I guess I was feeling shy? I did join the Facebook group written on the back of the card I was given.
75 <a href="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg"><img src="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg" width="350" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
77 The photo op with Spiner and McFadden was the assembly-line affair I expected. They had a bit of COVID theater going, in the form of the photo being taken with a transparent barrier between fan and stars. Spiner said, "Sylvia, right?" and I said, "Yeah." Pose, click—next fan.
79 I did get "ma'am"ed on my way out, so that's something.
81 At this point, I was kind of tired and bored and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate. But there was one last thing left to do. I went to the vendor hall, stopped by a side table and wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a strip of paper torn out from my Moleskine, then went back to the _TransCat_ table.
83 I changed my mind, I said (about buying), where does the story start? The proprietor said Issue 1 was sold out, but that the book Vol. 1 (compiling the first 6 issues plus some bonus content) was available for $25. I'll take it, I said enthusiastically.
85 And then—there wouldn't be any _good_ way to bring up the thing, except that I felt that I had to try and that I was paying $25 for the privilege—I said awkwardly that I was—disappointed, that our Society had settled on a "trans women are women" narrative. The proprietor said something about there being more enthusiasm in 2016, but that coming back to conventions after COVID, public opinion seems colder now, that she was worried.
87 I asked if she had heard of the concept of "autogynephilia." She hadn't.
89 The proprietor asked if I would like the book signed. I agreed, then hesitated when asked my name. Sensing my discomfort, the proprietor clarified, "Who should I make it out to?" I said, "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_."
91 "Sylvia Tilly! Keep on exploring the final frontier," says the autograph.
93 Sensing that there was no way to cross [inferential distance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances) in a minute in the vendor hall, I said that I had some contrarian opinions, and that I had a blog, handing the proprietor the slip of paper before taking my leave. (Implicitly proposing a trade, I thought: I'll read yours if you read mine.)
97 I _swear_ it looks worse in photographs than it does in the mirror.
99 * masturbating in the hotel room; the mask with no wig; imagining being a butch lesbian with a shaved head
100 * a slight tear in the mouth of the mask, the nostrils look kind of ragged?
101 * if Crea FX could make a female alien mask
105 Later, I would force myself to read _TransCat_ Vol. 1. I don't want to say it's bad. I mean, it is bad, but the fact that it's bad, isn't what's bad about it.
107 What's bad is the—deficit of self-awareness? There are dimensions along which my work is bad. I can imagine various types of critic forcing themselves to read this blog with horror and disappointment, muttering, "Doesn't he" [(or "Doesn't she", depending on the critic)](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) "know how that _looks?_" And if nothing else, I aspire to know how it looks.
109 The hero of _TransCat_ is a teenage boy named Knave (the same first name as our author) in Mountain View, California in the year 200X, who discovers a cat-ears hat that magically transforms him into a girl when worn. While transformed, he—she—fights evildoers, like a pervy guy at Fanime who was covertly taking upskirt photos, or a busybody cop who suddenly turns out to be a lizard person. Knave develops a crush on a lesbian at school named "Chloie" (which I guess is a way you could spell _Chloë_ if you don't know how to type a diaeresis), and starts wearing the cat hat more often (taking on "Cat" as a girl-mode name), hoping to get closer to Chloie. Cat and Chloie find they enjoy spending time together. Until one day, when Cat makes some physical advances—and discovers, to her surprise, that Chloie has a penis. Chloie punches her and runs off.
111 And it's just—so disappointing, like _Nevada_, but worse. Superficially, this comic was clearly made for _people like me_. Who better to appreciate a fantasy story about a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who can magically change sex, than someone who remembers being a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who fantasized about magically changing sex? (Okay, I was _East_ Bay; this is _South_ Bay. Totally different.)
113 But I can't enjoy it—not just because of the bad art, or bad font choices (broadly construed to include the use of ALLCAPS rather than **bold** or _italics_), or numerous uncorrected typos, or unnecessarily drawn-out pop-culture references that I didn't get—but because the whole thing is told from inside an ideological fever dream _that doesn't know it's a dream_.
115 The magic hat is interpreted as revealing our protagonist's true form. "[A]m I a straight boy with a girl on the inside? Or am I a gay girl with a boy on the inside?" Knave wonders. And just—what does that _mean?_
120 typos: anme (name), Cloie, thier, bringin (in the afterword!), vegitarian
121 cafe painting reference in book 5
123 Side life things to note—
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