Hello everyone! We teamed up with writer and cosplayer extraordinaire Leiland (@Cosmicmycelia) to cover SF Fan Expo 2023! We were lucky enough to attend SF Fan Expo 2022, and are so grateful to be able to share Leiland’s experience at the con in 2023. Join us as we check out all the exciting stuff Leiland experienced at SF Fan Expo 2023!
Please tell us about yourself
Hello, y’all. My name is Leiland, and I am a writer, cosplayer, dungeon master, and artist. I’ve been writing for nearly a decade with six self-published novels, run two homebrew campaigns, am currently finishing a handmade Star Wars tarot deck, and though I’ve always adored Halloween, I only took the plunge into the cosplaying world in Nov. 2022. If you’ve seen a Tusken Warrior from The Book of Boba Fett in the Bay Area, hello there! You’ve seen me. She was my first cosplay, and so far, the one I am most proud of as I built it from scratch, beading included. But I also cosplay as Dream, Death, and Delirium from The Sandman.
SF Fan Expo 2023 looked like a blast! Before we ask you about your experience, what were you most looking forward to for this year over last year?
Over the last year, I’ve built a community of con friends and acquaintances, and I was really just looking forward to seeing everyone again—talking about and celebrating the things we love and sharing in the delight of being when and where we are together. And since SiliCon and SF Fan Expo are the only cons I attend (and SiliCon tragically went the way of the dodo), a lot was riding on Fan Expo.
This year, I was also really looking forward to the talent. A lot of folks were in attendance who really shaped my childhood and the adult I am today, and of course, as a Tusken Warrior cosplayer, I really wanted to meet Temuera Morrison.
How was your SF Fan Expo 2023 experience? Also, you went in cosplay! Tell us about it! How did it go?
As always, it was a complete delight. I’m all about maximizing what I can from con experiences, so I’ll zip between panels/photo ops/autographs, snag pictures with fellow cosplayers where I can, circle back to hang out with my folks at the Bay Area Bounty Hunters, check in with friends at the Mercs and 501st, and make new friends while helping the ones I know sprint to the places they need to be. Across the weekend, I attended panels for Sean Astin, the Hobbits, Mark Hamill, John Barrowman, Temuera Morrison and Daniel Logan, Sonequa Martin Green and Mary McDonnell, Ewan McGregor, Billy Boyd, and James Marsters (not to mention photo ops and autographs.)
And of course, I did all of that while also doing four cosplays between three days with two cosplays per day. Because I am insane.
Friday, I was the Tusken Warrior for the few hours the con was open. Saturday, I was the Tusken again until about 1 pm and then switched to Delirium for the rest of the day with a quick behind-the-booth-curtain dressing change courtesy of the Bay Area Bounty Hunters and their display. And finally for Sunday, I was Dream of the Endless/The Sandman until about 1 pm again and then dressed down the Death of the Endless for the last stretch of the con. I affectionately call this whole process shapeshifting, and it’s a moment of joy when my newer friends don’t recognize me at first when I come up to them to say hi after a wardrobe and/or gender change. It is absolutely exhausting but so very worth it.
What were your most memorable moments / experiences from the con?
Oh, there are too many to recount, and if I did recount them all, this would get far too long. I could go into the raucous good time that was John Barrowman’s panel and our photo op together—complete with campy Tardis priest regalia and a tear-away sexy sequin Princess Leia outfit underneath and a striptease directed toward an (of age) Spider-Man cosplayer in the crowd. I could talk about Mark Hamill bantering with me during our photo op about what my Sandman cosplay was and how disappointed he was it wasn’t House of Usher. I could talk about reuniting my dad with Sean Astin and watching them talk about the days thirty years gone when he used to know my godparents and godbrothers (and getting called baby-faced by Samwise Gamgee). I could talk about how Ewan McGregor actually answered my submitted question at his panel on Sunday. I could (but won’t) talk about the long, private conversation I had with the lovely James Marsters or how I figured out at his panel that he not only wasn’t actually British but was also from Modesto of all places.
But the two favorite moments I will talk about are meeting Temuera Morrison and someone I think may have truly been Desire of the Endless at the DNA Lounge Afterparty.
As soon as Tem saw me walking up to him, he grinned and bowed to me over and over while saying, “My teacher is here! My teacher is here!” every time he dipped. I honestly felt bad for my friend because he kept turning to bow to me and forgetting she was with us. He guided me into position beside him with a “get on in here! You made it out of the sands! You made it out!” while rubbing my back. It was a lovely vindication, and I like to think I gave him a chance to see her walking around still alive instead of very stupidly killed off screen. He was so kind and so delightful, and I proceeded to immediately walk into his handler who was sitting in a chair below my mask’s eyeline when I tried to leave. She was also very kind and lovely, and ma’am, I once again apologize, you were in my one blind-spot!
And then…there was Desire.
I walked into the DNA Lounge Afterparty (first club in my life) dressed as a punk-leather Delirium of the Endless, which means I was wearing only shorts, a sports bra, a leather harness, some chains, a LOT of butterflies, and a lot of fishnets. For context, it’s my usual SF Pride get-up. To say it’s exposing is an understatement. It’s intimidating as a cosplayer to wear, and you’re operating under a lot of trust that people are not going to be inappropriate or crude. The Uber driver was already borderline creepy checking me out in the mirror on the way over. I was there alone, not yet having found my friends who I was meeting up with and unsure of how to begin, when I saw someone look back at me from where they were standing with their friends by the massive speakers. They were all clearly regulars, members of my community older than me, with some of them sitting and standing atop the speaker box to lounge against the pillar behind it. The one who spotted me called out over the music, “Are you Delirium?”
“Yep!” I called back, waving and tilting my head with the character’s smile.
And they nudged someone beside them, tall with dark hair combed back in a fashion long out of style now making a comeback, clad head to toe in a white suit that could have walked off the pages of a thirty-year-old comic.
“Your sibling’s here,” they said and jerked their thumb to their friend’s back.
And I watched as Desire of the Endless turned and locked eyes with me.
I grinned as wide as I could and waved, big and exaggerated, allowing my body to kind of crook and bend in the way Delirium’s did—that gangly, not entire reality-bound stance of hers.
And, true to character, Desire looked me over head-to-toe in the single most perturbed and bored manner possible and turned back to watch the club dancefloor without a word. They, and their companions, disappeared shortly after.
It was one of the best Sandman-related interactions of my life.
Anything else you’d like to share form your experience of SF Fan Expo 2023?
The DNA Lounge Afterparty was a blast, and I wish I had been able to stay later and arrive earlier. You can actually find photos of me on their website in that Delirium outfit, and folks were taking pictures as me and my friends crammed all five of us into a photobooth to take pictures together. Also, I watched a Klingon woman do a Bat’leth weapon dance and burlesque routine to first Klingon war opera and then Unholy by Sam Smith, and as someone who has been a Trekkie since age 13, who found himself in Spock and Data, who learned how to be the person I am from the values and messages of that franchise, who can still to this day sing the Warrior’s Anthem in Klingon, um. That may have changed me on an atomic level. Phenomenal experience, 10/10, would do it again.
Where can we find you and what you are you currently working on?
You can find me mainly on Instagram @cosmicmycelia! I had a great many cosplans for 2024. Buuut unfortunately something else I took away from Fan Expo was a severe case of COVID, and I am still recovering from long-term effects. So, this year I’ll be returning to my roots as primarily a writer. I finished a 100k word Sandman novel for a fan project in March 2024 and collaborated on it with the fantastic artist @shrugsinchinese whom you can find on Instagram and Tumblr. I am also working on my space opera YA series The Alympa Chronicles, which is available on Amazon under the name R.L. Stanley and is currently standing at 5 out of 7 books published. The final two are well underway in the outlining process, and I am hoping to finish Minutes to Midnight by the end of the year.
As for cosplans, I still have a few. I plan to debut my human version of The Sandman’s Jessamy the Raven at the NorCal Ren Faire in September. If I can fix my 3D printer in time, I would like to reveal Welcome to Night Vale’s Huntokar the Destroyer at San Jose FanimeCon (pushing it) or Galaxy Con (definite). And the big one will be a personal passion project that my abuela and I will be working on all year and plan to debut on Halloween (in fact, we just got back from Mexico City itself for both a heritage trip and supply run): Death of the Endless as an all-black baile folklórico dancer adorned with marigolds and poppies instead of roses.
(Tragically, I will be retiring the Tusken Warrior after one final photoshoot due to damage the outfit has taken over the last year and the physical harm to myself that comes from wearing it. So, keep an eye out for that in the summer months, as well!)
The coming year will be a delight, if I can keep up with it, and I hope y’all come along for the ride!
Huge thanks to Leiland from sharing their Fan Expo 2023 experience here at SKKAW.BLOG. It looked like such an amazing time, and we can’t wait to see what Fan Expo 2024 will be like this year.
If the above peaked your interest, do check out our coverage from SF Fan Expo 2022.
We also previously collaborated with @cosmicmycelia on Making a Dream Real: The Sandman Fan Art
If you enjoyed reading this post please be sure to like, and follow us here at SKKAW.BLOG (IG: @skkaw) for more geek and pop-culture goodness.
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