Fans accept other fans, never mind the avoirdupois. She wears a huge flowered hat and has around her hips a laden leather toolbelt, the contents of which a maintenance man might envy. She is cheerful and serene, and is one of the few who doesn't broadcast a slight air of desperation, or perhaps lostness, sensed in other conventioneers encountered. I met both my husbands at conventions. I think that over the years there's been cross-pollination among SF conventions and medieval or renaissance fairs.
Costumes are an aspect of that play.
There are some who go from convention to convention. Conventions are an escape hatch, and also a chance to meet up with people. At other conventions, participants have to pay for their goodies. Then, it had seven members and two guests. Meetings are held every Thursday in the North Hollywood clubhouse, which also houses the club's huge library of more than 15,000 volumes, tapes, discs and video cassettes.