At Outlantacon, LGBQT+ pop culture fans can be selves

Candace Weslosky has been gathering her supplies, getting ready for Outlantacon, the annual sci-fi/gaming convention for LGBQT+ folks.

She’s got plenty of socks, hot glue guns and assorted gewgaws, all in preparation for the traditionally wacky “Sock Puppet Theater” event. Convention-goers make their own sock puppets. Then, in front of a raucous audience, they act out fan fiction she’s pulled from the Internet that pairs characters as they were never intended to be paired, sometimes very explicitly — say, Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock from “Star Trek,” Holmes and Watson or Spiderman and Deadpool.

“it’s going to be extremely vulgar and ridiculous,” she says with glee. “The people acting out the scenes with puppets are saying, ‘Who made this stuff up?’”

Credit: Candace Weslosky

Credit: Candace Weslosky

It’s just another night at Outlantacon, which officially bills itself as “Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ convention for Sci-fi, Pop-culture, Multi-media, and Gaming,” and which veteran Weslosky describes as “like a hotel party with 300 of your closest friends and you’ve all just decided to go there and be nerdy together.” It’s rolling out March 22-24 at Atlanta Marriott Northeast.

If Dragon Con is the booming metropolis of pop culture conventions, with 70,000 or so attendees swarming all over downtown Atlanta every Labor Day weekend, Outlantacon is more like a nightclub with a niche clientele.

Panels this year include: Adaptation: Turning Your Queer Story into a Screenplay; The Current State of Doctor Who; Neurodivergent Dating; Queer Culture and the Labor Movement: A Symbiotic Evolution; and Geek! Heal Thyself: A Tutorial on Geek Therapy. There’s a big singalong, and at night, queer-skewed, adult beverage-fueled audience participation versions of TV game shows such as “The Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares.”

In the past, minor pop culture celebrities have been part of the mix, but COVID put such a financial and logistical dent in the whole convention business, especially the smaller cons, that many are still recovering financially, which makes it hard to book celebrities.

“COVID was really so brutal. All the conventions got hit, but the small ones really took a hit,” says Weslosky, a past Outlantacon chair.

“We’re kind of getting our feet back under us,’ says Edward DeGruy, this year’s con chair. “Also, a lot of people in the LGBTQ community are very health conscious now and don’t go to large events. But a lot of our community is coming back, saying, ‘I think I can do this now.’”

Outlantacon was started in 2009 by a small group of gay Atlantans who loved events like Dragon Con but wanted a con that was tailored more specifically to their interests. The founders felt that Dragon Con was always very welcoming to non-straight people, but there were not enough panels and events specifically for them, Weslosky says.

Credit: Candace Weslosky

“Atlanta has the third largest gay community in the United States; it seemed like we should be able to have something like that every year,” says DeGruy.

This year Outlantacon is partnering with Gaylaxicon, an LGBTQ gaming convention that travels from city to city.

Cosplay – dressing up in homemade, sometimes expensive and elaborate, costumes — is a traditional part of cons. Outlantacon attendees indulge, but not in the mass quantities for which Dragon Con is famous.

“This is far more laid back,” says Weslosky, who is also a longtime Dragon Con devotee. “It’s a very casual cosplay. Occasionally we will have some people who are the top of the top who will come up with amazing group cosplays and they show up and just like kill us all.

“But then the rest of us are in cartoon onesies,” she cracks.

Because some of the con attendees may have not always felt like they fit in in their non-con lives, DeGruy says he makes it a priority to make sure everyone feels welcome. “I walk around and see that everybody is enjoying themselves,” he says. “I like to go talk to the people that seem to be sitting in the corner and just staring and make sure they’re OK.

“Sometimes they don’t even want to talk to anybody, they just want to be seen.”