The Lawrence Public Library seemed bigger on the inside Saturday as superfans and media lovers packed both levels of the building with cosplay, fan art and a passion for all things fandom.

Friday and Saturday held the fourth annual LPL Con, a free, family-friendly media and fandom convention. 

Mother and son Ash and Dexter came to the con dressed as an elf and warrior, respectively. Dexter, 14, has recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons — his first character is a dragonborn cleric. He and his friends reserve one of the meeting rooms in the basement of the library for play sessions.

Ash is an old hand at the con and cosplay circuit, having worked the Kansas City Renaissance Festival for years, as well as some KC cons. She said the zero-dollar price tag of the library event was a huge plus, as other cons can get prohibitively expensive.

“I like the smaller venue, so you can kind of just do this in a couple of hours, versus at a giant con — it’s two or three days worth of walking around, and you will miss things for sure,” she said.

Lauren Taylor, senior children’s librarian at LPL, said she and her colleague Margo Moore dreamed up the con to celebrate all kinds of book, movie and media passions.

The two days of events are also uniquely geared toward a younger audience, an inversion of what you typically see at events like Kansas City’s annual Planet Comicon.

“We focus it more on a friendly, family-focused con, because a lot of cons, especially like the bigger cons, they’re made for adults,” she said. “Which is great, and a lot of younger kids can definitely tag along, but the program is not for them.”

Friday evening was teen night and Saturday morning held a superhero storytime for kiddos. Later in the day, middle grade author Pedro Martín and young adult author LL McKinney gave talks about writing comic books.

Adults are still welcome to LPL Con, even if they’re not the stars of the show. Workshops taught folks of all ages the tools of the superfan trade: how to dance like an idol, start sewing their own cosplay and put on cosplay skits.

Sofia Romero is a 10-year-old fan who attended the Saturday con with her cousin Bryant Alvarez. They decided to take a breather from the main festivities to explore the graphic novel section of the library.

“I was just scrolling on YouTube, watching people cosplay, and then I was like, ‘I need to stop being lazy and actually make something,’” she said. “So then I asked my uncle for some cardboard, and then we went to Dollar Tree and Michael’s to get some supplies.”

LPL Con was Romero’s first convention, but Alvarez was an old hand, having attended Anime Expo. That event in Los Angeles draws hundreds of thousands of fans each year.

Romero was debuting her first-ever cosplay as Dandy from the mascot horror survival game “Dandy’s World” on Roblox, an online gaming platform geared toward kids. Romero said it took her months to put it together at her grandma’s house with the help of her family members.

“It’s definitely packed, but here there’s a lot more breathing room,” he said. “Lots of passionate people (at) both conventions.”

The breathing room in the library — and the price point — is what has drawn Ivory Ashr to the con for the last four years in a row.

“I’ve never been able to make it to Comicon due to pricing, but being able to come here is so much more accessible because I can’t drive all the time, especially down in Kansas City,” Ashr said. “But here also is with people I know in a smaller community, and it’s not as overwhelming or overstimulating, so this makes it so much more accessible.”

Ashr said they have dissociative identity disorder, which means they have multiple distinct personalities or identities. DID personalities are clinically termed “alters,” but Ashr uses the term “system member.”

It was system member Jasper who led the charge in building their cosplay for Saturday. They dressed as Alita from the 1990s Japanese manga “Battle Angel Alita,” which was adapted into a 2019 movie called “Alita: Battle Angel.”

Ashr was in good company around the alley of costumemakers, like the Midwestern twin duo with the name Pros and Cons Cosplay. One twin goes by Pro and one goes by Con.

Pro and Con said they’ve treated cosplaying as their second job for 20 years now. Pro said they go to dozens of cons each year, but there’s something special in the local con sauce.

“It’s just kind of nice to be like, ‘Oh, that’s the first I saw at the grocery store the other day. Oh, now we’re here also celebrating ‘Spider-Man’ together,” she said. “There’s just a really cool communal aspect  to local events, especially ones that are put on by public facilities like this. It’s just such a cool community resource.”

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

Jacob Rice (he/him), photo editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since March 2026. He can be reached at jrice@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read his complete bio here. Check out his photography for the Times here.

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