Sailor Moon at the Faire...
Here's the story behind the photos....
Huh?, you may ask? A little background: the NY Renaissance Faire is open on the weekends during August through mid-September. It's also open on Labor Day. Being *that* day is the ONLY weekday it is open, the actors (and rennies alike) have turned it into a twilight-zone-like day, known as Black Monday. Scripts get changed, ad-libbed...cross-dressers abound...Robin Hood may actually DIE..that sort of thing. Anything can happen. It's complete chaos, with a Renaissance flair!
In the past it's been more of a "fantasy" faire, where historical accuracy was thrown out the window and pretty much anything was "allowed". (Mind you, I'm being REALLY general here...patrons can wear whatever they want--no rules for them...ever.) Anyway, some Trekkies began the tradition of showing up in costume--Enterprise "away teams" and Klingons alike--for a friendly scavenger hunt. Mo got evil thoughts...if the Trekkies can pull off a time-travel story, so can the Moonies!! (The Silver Crystal *is* able to cause a time/space warp, after all.) And the Ren Faire veterans were getting a little tired of the same ol Trekkie invasion.
I pulled together a Mercury fuku for my friend Tasha and we were ready to go! We've done it 2 years so far, but the last one was the best.
I warned all the rennies about the reappearance, so they wouldn't be *completely* freaked. Warned a couple of the actors I knew. Little did I know, a friend told oh, the Captain of the Sheriff's Guard what was brewing and he turned out to be a BIG anime fan, along with the actress who played Maid Marian.
Tasha & I entered and were PROMPTLY surrounded by *all* the Sheriff's Guards, like two steps inside the gate. We got the "who are you and what the hell are you doing here?" drill, looking all mean and intimidating. Then they escorted us inside, with the intention of bringing us to Sir Francis Drake for more questioning. He wasn't around for some strange reason. They let us go. We then proceeded to freak out the horsey-boys. Then we strolled off to the booth I use as "home". Sir Francis found us there (accompanied by Friar Tuck of all people) and asked us to attend the Queen's Noon Address to be inducted into Her Majesty's service -- we being "sailors". We had nothing better to do, so we went. We had no freakin' clue what we were gonna do or say, but we went along with it anyway. Just before we were presented to Queen Elizabeth, Tasha got an idea to form a peace treaty, being that SM was the *Princess* of the Moon Kingdom. I let Sir Francis in on it...he was all for it and we followed his lead (and Tasha's for that matter, for I was completely brain-dead--didn't eat anything and I'm *really* bad at roleplaying). It was cheezy..he introduced us as navigators, using a method called "Japanimation". <cue rolling eyes> We did the curtsy thing. I don't remember much of the conversation, but we got Queen Bessie, along with myself and Tasha, to hold my Moon Wand and shout "Cosmic Moon Power!" together, thus sealing the treaty between the Moon Kingdom and the Kingdom of England.
Unfortunately, within an hour the skies opened up and POURED for over 2, dropping the temperature by 30 degrees-- too cold for fuku --hadda change. Who knows what the rest of the day would have been like. All the actors seemed to like having us there. Frankly, I thought we were gonna get thrown out, or at least advised not to do it again.
So that's my freak-out-people-in-public-dressed-like-an-anime-character story.
© 1999 Sailor Mo