Queer Club Robots

The local Queer Club had their Halloween party last night. They meet in an old library - it's a big room, and they have an air filter, so it's relatively low risk activity. I've been once or twice before and had a nice time - there's usually enough structure that it doesn't feel awkward. The Queer Club had a "costumes optional but welcome" thing on their party flier, and I've not dressed up for Halloween since I was at Uni. I always end up over-thinking it and not managing to do something that lives up to my expectations, or to get around to organising things. I've been planning to do a really good Hellboy cosplay for about 20 years now...

So I thought about doing something deliberately low-key and mediocre - getting one of the boxes out of the loft from when we moved house, and making a robot costume out of it. This is a proper five year old kid level of costume, so I picked up some cheap poster paints from B&M for decoration. I happened to crack open a large cardboard box full of Diet Coke cans, which I could repurpose as a helmet. As it happens, work was too busy (or rather, I slacked too much earlier in the week) to even decorate as minimally as I had planned and I ended up largely scribbling with a few markers. Also, I got down two boxes in case I messed one up, and cosmolinguist claimed the other for his own robot outfit. He put more effort into decoration than me, as I was focussed on putting enough sellotape on the cardboard shoulder "straps" to make sure the outfits didn't collapse around us.

About half the people at Queer Club had dressed up, mostly as various characters from film etc. One of the club hosts was dressed up as Section 28, having literally printed out the relevant legislative clause in really big text on a A1-sized board around his neck. Our robot costumes were well received, and I added "beep/boop" to the pronouns on our name stickers. About halfway through the evening I took the costume off, because I couldn't sit down and I was getting too hot. We mingled and chatted and snacked.

Just as we were about to leave, the organisers called for a group photo so we put our costumes back on for that... then they reminded us that the flier had also talked about a prize for best costume, and E won for his better-decorated robot! All in all, it was a good evening. I felt good about the costumes - about having actually done something, however imperfectly.