Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover 2½ months ago:

For years we’ve been telling friends in other states that we’d one day do Atlanta’s Dragon Con, one of the largest conventions in America that isn’t in California or New York. We’ve been in Atlanta, but we hadn’t really done Atlanta. Hence this year’s vacation, in which we’re aiming for a double proficiency in Atlanta tourism and over-the-top Dragon Con goodness…

Upon our return home, I did my best to post our photos of the experience as quickly as possible, twelve chapters’ worth plus prologue and epilogue. Seven of those galleries were devoted to their gargantuan cosplay parade through the streets of Atlanta…

The proud annual tradition of the Saturday morning Dragon Con parade is definitely not a thing we can see back home at any of our usual cons. Multiple groups and organizations walk, ride, roll, and gallivant together in a united display of pop culture through downtown Atlanta. Hundreds of participants boast costumes and gear from across the wide spectrum of entertainment. The festivities draw thousands of onlookers every time — not just D*C attendees, but Atlanta citizens as well…the spectacle is nonetheless a staggering feat of community and imagination. Of the nearly 1800 photos Anne and I took over the course of our eight-day trip, roughly 400 of those were from the parade alone…

Some 140-150 photos later, I convinced myself it was time to move on:

…and that’s essentially it for the Dragon Con parade at long last, well after the cosplayers involved have probably already recuperated, forgotten about photos, and moved on to planning for their next major events.

And here we are today, not moving on but rather moving backward. Because I can! Feel free to try and stop me retroactively somehow.

The following surplus gallery marks where the 14-chapter Dragon Con saga fits into the larger narrative that is Our 2019 Road Trip. It also serves as one last hurrah of outtakes, excerpts, and baffling oversights. Some of these I wasn’t happy with the first time around and wish we’d done the cosplayers better justice. On some of them I’ve second-guessed whether or not I was too picky. A few were simply, inexcusably overlooked and underappreciated during the hours I spent curating, editing, uploading, labeling, sharing, and being driven to exhaustion by laboring over so many photos in such a short time frame…which I’ve gone ahead and done yet again for what I presume is the last time, but for real now. I think. Enjoy!

(Minor note of peevishness: in addition to cashing in on this week’s Mandalore Mania, that photo is also my clearest shot of the two individuals who, during the parade’s final twenty minutes, each decided to jump out in front of the more orderly fans who’d been in position and politely toeing the line for hours, and started adding to their Instagram stories at the expense of anyone standing behind them. Pieces of their anatomy appear in several of our photos as unwanted Easter eggs if you look closely. Triple extra credit points to any readers game enough to look back at the original chapters and spot the one photo where you can see the one lady standing on the other side of the street before she crossed over and began hogging ours. I was tempted to devote an entire entry to the matter, but decided to vent my pettiness in this paragraph instead and then, one hopes, let it go.)

…and here endeth our Dragon Con 2019 parade coverage. Most likely.

To be continued!

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[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for other chapters and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email sign-up for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my TV live-tweeting and other signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]