Socialising with a Young Hermione Cosplayer and Her Family at GeekCon Nine Worlds

The Text

I went on a trip to England, especially for the Nine Worlds GeekFest con (but continued later on in the Peak District and in Cambridge) and want to share various anecdotes for it. Here's the first one:

On the convention, I saw a young girl (about 10 or 11 y.o) cosplaying as Hermione from the Harry Potter films. Now, she had dirty blonde hair as opposed to Emma Watson's original black-brownish hair, and had a problem recalling the spell she tried to memorise, but was still quite convincing and cute. She visited the con along with her parents, and brother, and I decided to give them these things:

  1. A blue pallet/blue token for good cosplaying. Each con attendee was given a number of those, which they could hand out and there was a competition for it later.

  2. A ten-sided die (d10) - which I give to many people as a token of appreciation because for various reasons I found the 1d10s to be personal symbols so-to-speak. (I used to buy such dice in relatively large quantities).

  3. My new business card with my contact details.

  4. I also told them about some of my Harry Potter / Emma Watson fan fiction, such as Emma Watson applying for a software developer job or "Muppets: Harry Potter" and they seemed interested to hear about it from me.

  5. Her family and I befriended each other.

  6. I saw that cosplayer again, while venturing on her own away from her parents, but in the convention's premises, and while still wearing the costume, during the last day of the conference. And she asked me if I was going to come next year, and I told her that I hope to go there (and I did hope to).

Air balloon hammer duel

During the same con, I invited a young boy to an air balloon hammer duel and he accepted. I later realised that as we fought, we both tried not to make the opponent's hammer fall. The point was to prolong the duel.

Accusing me of being a pervert

Now for something a little less pleasant: when I told some people on Freenode IRC about it, someone kept insisting that I was a pervert, just because I'm 1977-born and 37 years old. I didn't touch that girl, and even if I were a little sexually attracted to her, it's all right to have such insignificant feelings as long as you don't let them get out of hand. You are allowed to feel anything, including a desire for mayhem and murder - it's just acting based on that emotion that may be questionable.

There is no reason why adults close to 40 (mid-life crisis, yeah baby!!!) and younger children cannot befriend each other, so please don't accuse me of being a pervert, just because I am: 1. Young at heart. 2. Enjoy the company of good, geeky, people of all ages and all other parameters for their shapes and sizes: One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish .

Also see my FAQ about "You feature sexy women and girls in your works. Are you a pervert?"

Origin

A happy (un)?birthday to all!

(Originally a Facebook Post.)