Dragon Con 2019 Descends Upon Atlanta: Gay Cosplayer Plans Five Outfits for Annual Event

For 360 days of the year, Patric Good is a published author and full-time chef. But for the other five days of the year, he’s Spock. Or Steven Universe. Or the Notorious RBG; the Bunn-isher; or several other characters that strike his fancy.

Those five days are coming up again in 2019: Yes, Atlanta, it’s Dragon Con weekend.

“I tell everyone, go to the parade first. If you really like the parade, follow the parade into the hotels and then if you can handle the crowd, go back. That’s what I did,” Good said.

Five ‘Good’ Cosplays for 2019

Dragon Con gets bigger every year, and it’s become more family-friendly. Though Good misses some of the more adult aspects — burlesque during the Miss Star Trek Universe pageant, for example — he enjoys the added element of being a character because of kids’ reactions.

“When you do a character that kids can relate to, like when I did Steven Universe for the first time, kids don’t see somebody dressed as Steven Universe. They don’t see someone dressed as Wonder Woman. They see Batman. They see Superman,” Good said.

This year, his cosplays will hit a few different generations of fans. He’s bringing back Steven Universe, but he’s also spending time as Finn Mertens from the animated show “Adventure Time;” a mash-up of “Teen Titans” Beast Boy and hip-hop group Beastie Boys; The Notorious RBG — a composition of both Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and late rapper The Notorious B.I.G.; and Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger, the M*A*S*H character known for dressing as a woman in the hopes of getting discharged from the military.

This is Good’s first year with a full-face of makeup involved in cosplay for Beastie Boy. He consulted heavily with a local costume shop on the appropriate makeup for his face, ears, and hands, as Beast Boy wears fingerless gloves to show off green skin. He made props for the Klinger and Notorious RBG costumes, and most of his Klinger outfit came from a vintage store.

“For a five-day weekend you can be whoever you wanna be,” Good said. “Just don’t do blackface. Please don’t do blackface.”

A Spock-tacular Start

Good moved to Atlanta in 2000 to attend culinary school. He grew up a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, not to mention the original TV shows for Batman and Wonder Woman, but it wasn’t until 2010 that he attended his first Dragon Con. For the first four years, he was an enthralled spectator, and in 2014 he came back as the Leonard Nimoy version of Spock from the original Star Trek show.

“Once you do a costume, the entire experience is a different experience,” Good said. “Walking from my car to the Brookhaven MARTA station to get on the train to go downtown, I’ve got people like, ‘Oh, can I get your picture?’ ‘Wow, great Spock!’ ‘Where are you going? What is this?’”

He went all-out on the Spock costume — purchased from the franchise, the top and pants are of the same fabric used on the show, and the hair and brows were all natural. Good grew his brows long, waxed them and brushed the long hairs upwards and out for the characteristic Vulcan look.

“I tried to find a wig and cut it, and that was a nightmare, so I was like, ‘Man, I’ll just get my hair guy at Helmet in Midtown to cut my hair,’ and he cut it and dyed it and I looked exactly like Leonard Nimoy,” Good said. “It was a lot of work and it was a lot of commitment, and I would have to let my hair grow out and my eyebrows grow out for three months after Dragon Con.”

Good’s husband only cosplayed with him once, last year as Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy in the parade.

“He thought I was joking,” Good told Georgia Voice. “I told him, ‘Hey! We’re in the parade!’ and he’s like, ‘What parade?’ We did Harry Potter and Draco and we were like grown-up boyfriends and everybody got it.”

Getting Serious About Dressing Up

“What makes [cosplay] different from Halloween is it’s usually more serious,” Good said. “Halloween, you can go in your closet and get a flannel shirt and old overalls and be a scarecrow.”

At Dragon Con, you may see a ghost, but it’s not a generic ghost. It’ll likely be the ghost of Superman or something more along those lines, he said.

“Cosplay, you are playing a character, be that character real, imaginary, a mash-up or the real hardcore cosplayers who create their own character,” Good said.

And compared to the art of drag, cosplay has some similarities, but it’s still its own entity. Good does see it moving in the direction drag has.

“We’re going to have the same sort of artistic expression in cosplay eventually that we’re getting in drag. The professional cosplayers are really turning it into an art form, but they are the minority right now,” he said. “There’s a lot less performance in cosplay … but when I put the Spock on … I’m not lip-syncing the theme to “Star Trek,” but you do start taking on the personality of that character.”