This is a weird question but I see some of yall have cosplay avatars so maybe someone will have some advice and I'm going to ask anyway
I've never been to a convention before, mostly I've never had friends that were into that sort of thing and to be completely honest I keep most "fandom" things secret from the people I do know in real life because I get a little embarrassed. My friends and family are not into it at all and would find it childish or strange. But now that I'm older I care less about that kind of stuff, and I just bought tickets to a convention I've wanted to go to for a very long time but never had the guts or the money before. I watch online videos of the panels from this specific convention and have been doing so for years (since it was the closest thing I could experience to attending), so I have a pretty decent idea of how panels work but other than that I am completely clueless! Is going on my own for the very first time a horrible idea? I'm sure I'd be able to look up the purely technical stuff like what I need to do to make sure I see the panels I want to, how to get from A to B, staying arrangements, how to make sure I see everything I want to see, etc. But the atmosphere itself is a total mystery to me.
For those of you that have gone to or regularly attend conventions, is it completely bizarre for people to go alone? Would I look like a creep if I just maybe brought a book or something and read between panels while waiting in line? It's the only thing that makes me nervous, I really want to do this and I'm dead excited to go but I'm just afraid that it will be awkward or uncomfortable being alone. Or is that not as uncommon as I'm imagining? Has anyone else ever attended any sort of convention by yourself, did you still have fun? Just any advice at all would be nice.
I know there's tons of videos and blogs online about "what to do at your first convention!" and things like that, but they mostly seem centered around how to interact with celebrities, or what photo ops will be like, or what [insert extra event here] consists of, and I don't really plan on doing any of that because I'm way too shy. It will be enough just to sit (preferably veeeeery far in the back) quietly at the panels and simply attend them. But I don't really know what is normal to do in-between or what to expect!
Edited by Kyuubey, 10 March 2016 - 01:24 PM.