Strange Tales on the Road to Virginia: Nekocon 2012 (Part 4: And Then We Came To The End)

When we last left our hero, he had collapsed in a slightly paranoid manner on the floor...

        I lurched back into consciousness to the movements of people packing. After a brief conversation with Agnes cleared up the misunderstanding from the previous night and let me know that it was time to pack up (also that it was Sunday), I packed everything into the red Time Magazine shoulder-bag I take out on the road and headed for breakfast again at the coffee bar. A quick check of the time told me that I should be heading to the LARP room to meet up with my group for the big endgame, so I headed over at a lesiurely pace while eating my muffin and drinking my cappucinawhateveritwas.

Strange Tales on the Road to Virginia: NekoCon 2012 (part 3)

           Saturday began with the sound of a klaxon jolting my semi-lucid dreams away. As it turned out, Agnes had also set an alarm, and I'd woken up to that. As I stared up at the ceiling, I felt around for my phone so my own alarm wouldn't go off. And then something hit me about that. I was looking at the ceiling. A quick stock of my surroundings also told me that my throat hurt. A sudden spike of adrenaline ran up my spine. Oh hell.

          See, I don't ever sleep on my back. I sleep sort of on my stomach, half on my side. There is a very good reason for this-- when I sleep on my back, I start to talk in my sleep-- loudly, I might add, and when I'm not doing that, I snore loudly. This hurts my throat, annoys everyone around me, and usually means I wind up with a headcold because everything drains through the updrafts and downdrafts coming from my massive sinus cavity¹ and wake up feeling like crap. Since everyone was still asleep, there was no time for a mass apology to the room, so I dredged myself out of the sleeping bag, got dressed, and headed to the shower with all the grace of a drunken ox. 

Strange Tales on the Road to Virginia: NekoCon 2012 (Part 2)

When we last left our hero, he was falling asleep on the floor of a hotel room with an ominous noise clicking through the dark...

      The next morning, my eyelids slammed open about ten seconds before my alarm went off. I turned over a little and lay there closed while my body slowly came back online, phone clutched in my grip to spare my roommates the terrible and disturbing noise of a "vibrate" setting on hard wood. After defusing my phone, I slipped out of my sleeping bag, got dressed, and headed for the shower. I had a vague outline of things I wanted to do, after all, and while they started in "don't wake anyone up" and ended in "LARP", the general order was a little out of whack. I was able to put together a few thoughts once the warm water hit¹, and sketched out a general plan that looked like this:

- Finish shower
- Cram gaping maw with whatever they had at the breakfast buffet
- Make contact with other friends
- Pay entry fee
- ???
- Roleplaying!²

         The first part was easy, and pretty much involved just turning off the water, getting dressed, and grabbing one of the tickets for the buffet. The second part meant I had to spin and pivot a little going out the door, as there was a sixth occupant of our room, Gerry, that I hadn't quite remembered the previous night. Gerry had also taken a sleeping bag on the floor. But once outside, I flipped open my phone and texted a little back and forth with my friend Abby so I could meet up with her. 

Strange Tales on the Road to Virginia: NekoCon 2012 (Part 1: How We Got Here)

I decided to drop the "A Tourist in an Unknown Land" title for this...two colons is one too many. Also, sorry, this is turning out kinda dry.            

        We struck out just as it got dark, and headed south. My friend, occasional editor, and partner-in-crime Mr. Ellis* was at the wheel, and there were six hours of driving between us and the Hampton Roads Coliseum. The two of us were headed there for NekoCon 2012 and its live-action roleplay event, a new scene for us since we started hitting cons together, but one that most of the friends we have in this group seem to dig. Fresh off my pillage of NYCC** and hungry for another con, I had made an effort to go to this one, and even worked out that I'd be able to bum a ride off of Mr. Ellis**** and crash with a few friends of ours on the circuit. We had a backseat full of Coke, some peanut butter and bread, some onigiri, and several weird bread variants***** from the Asian market/restaurant by Mr. Ellis's house, and between the two of us we were pretty much ready for anything that might pop up.

          "So who would get thrown out of the library first," I asked, grabbing another Coke from the back seat and staring off at the ominous-looking dark mounds that constitute scenery when everything around you is pitch black, "Brian Blessed, or Tom Baker?"******






*His full name is "The most esteemed and nefarious Mr. Ellis, destroyer of worlds". You'll forgive me for not using all of it.
**Funny story, Mr. Ellis was supposed to pillage with me, but due to them denying me credentials and a tangle with the paperwork***, I wound up solo
** (I know, this running gag doesn't belong here, but...) Dicks.
****Who, by the way, is a god damn saint for putting up with me and my complete inability to stop talking when there's nothing to draw my attention away. For a total of ten hours in an enclosed space.
*****I do not particularly know the names of said weird breads. I just know they are breads and I do not completely understand them.
******The question should be credited to a dear friend of mine, whose privacy I will protect unless they're cool with me using their name here. Where I own a blog, and Mr. Ellis (and indeed most of the people who're also part of the con scene) knows that since I spent a fair amount of time with him that he's gonna wind up on here with his name displayed in some form, I try not to give people too much unwanted attention. And if you're reading this (and you know who you are), hi. Hope the month's going well.

A Tourist in an Unknown Land: Seven Hours at NYCC (Part 3)

               When we last left off, our hero had made it into the Sean Astin panel and finally found the friends he had managed to swap contact info with...

              I have some trouble describing panels. I am by nature an active sort of writer...when I do things, I do a lot of things very quickly and then report them in a long, rambling wall of text. It's crazy, it's kinetic, and while it looks like wandering aimlessly and doing random things, I am to some degree building something. But panels are for the most part a sedate thing. You can report on what was said, but unless you're making a big announcement or something, reading about someone sitting in on panels gets kinda boring. But there were a lot of interesting things going on, so I'm gonna try to talk about those.

              I finally got into the Sean Astin panel only for the guy ahead of me to park his ass right in the empty seat next to my friends. I managed to find a seat on the other side of them and sat down for what I was sure was going to be described as "very definitely a panel". My friends and I chatted for a bit-- they had some very specific questions they wanted to ask (all of them loaded), I had nothing I really wanted to do or say-- and then, slowly, Sean Astin and his two moderators made their way to the stage. The moderators were guys from a satellite radio program*, and they tended to dominate a little more than the soft-spoken Astin. 

           But as Astin found his momentum, he began to take more and more of the focus. Not in the same way Morrison held a room, but in a more congenial way. It wasn't his court, it was more of a chat with a group of people he really, really wanted to tell stuff to. He was quieter. Gentler. And then, somehow, we got on a tangent about Discworld, and things got a little surreal.

       Sean Astin, as it turns out, is a huge Terry Pratchett fan**. So much so that his favorite role he's played thus far is Twoflower, the mostly oblivious tourist from The Colour of Magic. So much so that he actually invited an audience member with a Kindle onstage so that Astin could read the prologue of The Colour of Magic. And so much so that he decided his panel was going to have a special surprise guest-- Terry Pratchett himself. In fact, before we got to the Q&A, the panel turned into a Terry Pratchett panel moderated by Sean Astin moderated by two guys***. Also, the audience member with the Kindle got to stay up on stage, which gave me slight pangs of envy. The Q&A session went about the same way every session goes...people asked Astin about his roles (hanging halfway off an active volcano wearing prosthetic feet while carrying Elijah Wood was unsurprisingly a frightening moment), about what he was doing next (doing a lot of work on various projects), and one case where a guy flat-out asked him if he could make a cameo in an indie film****. Finally, the panel ended and I decided I was going to wander off again. 

     Thankfully, this time I was able to wander with friends, so we made our way around the halls. They went off to meet a friend from Temple, and I started heading in the direction of the theater for the next panel. After a few more sweeps of the various floors to look for people I knew, I headed back towards the larger theatre structure so I could see the last event I wanted to for the night. 

     There was a sort of "main theatre" sponsored by a company I won't name here***** that I'd found out early in the day in my crawls across the convention's floors had a panel from some of my favorite artist/writers, Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick. Having seen the footage of them from such places as Dragon*Con and SDCC, I knew I shouldn't pass up the opportunity to watch them in action. So about an hour before their panel started in the theatre, I broke off from my friends and went to go stand in line. For about an hour, I stood in line, surrounded by cosplayers, the only entertainment my trusty music player and the panel going on about Silent Hill: Revelation, a film for which I had zero interest. Strangely enough, I gained interest from the trailer, but had none from the panel******. 

      Finally, we were herded into the large auditorium, and after they'd made sure the whole thing was filled, the lights dimmed and...the set turned into a 70s-style talk show?!

      Yes, apparently the good people behind the show The Venture Brothers had decided to do their panel in the style of a show called "Let's All Smoking!", with voice actors Paul Boocock and Michael Sinterniklaas as "guests" and Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick (the creative duo behind most of the show) as "hosts". The "hosts" pretended they had no idea what TVB even was, and managed to keep up the pretense until just before the Q&A session. And yes, they did actually smoke during the event. Little E-cigs that were too long and apparently felt all weird, but it still completed the effect. And it's a rare panel where the people running it are actually more impressive than the product they bring to show off, but in this case, they were. So much. 

     The AstroBase Go! panel had the general aesthetic of theatre, but a very approachable type of theatre. One where everyone's in on the joke. Hammer and Publick were welcoming and very congenial, and most of the jokes they made at anyone's expense were either about themselves or an apparently very funny in-joke about Deborah Harry from Blondie*******. The Q&A session continued the tone, with fans asking Doc Hammer for hugs ("It must be like getting hugged by a fence rail dressed like Dracula"), asking the panel about their favorite Halloween costumes, and relating an anecdote about meeting Doc Hammer in an American Apparel store (Which lead to an unprintable back-and-forth session. It was hilarious, and probably caught on film somewhere. Go look for it). By the time the panel had ended, I actually started to come down, surprised that yes, the panel had given me a high of some kind.

            But finally, the charms of NYCC had begun to fade for me. I was beat, dead tired, hadn't found anyone else, and had missed the last few panels my friends were attending. So, my coat heavy on my shoulders and once again the sounds of "House Jam" by Gang Gang Dance (which is now my official "end titles" music) pumping into my ears through my tiny earphones, I trudged out of the building and out into the streets, following the brightly colored costumed people back towards the train station and home. It may not have been the best con I've gone to, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

What I learned:
- Prosthetic Hobbit feet have got a lot more comfortable since 2001
- An hour's lead time may be just enough time to get into the bigger panels and get a good seat. Barely.
- Terry Pratchett speaks very quietly these days.
- Understand that you will not be able to see everything, but you will be able to see most things
- I should really be buying my books at these things, as they have a lot of new and promising-looking titles
- "House Jam" is still the best damn end credits music, I mean, seriously, but I will allow "Midnight City" by M83 as a close second. 


*The moderators for the panels were all from satellite radio. Those that did have moderators.
**He also appeared to think Terry Pratchett was little-known. It must be that he and I travel in wildly different circles or something.
***Who, while energetic, I tried to tune out because they tended to think a ton of references to his earlier career in such movies as Goonies and Rudy were what the crowd needed.
****One of my friends later reported that he waited with the guy to talk about Astin and film appearances. Nothing ever came of it. I don't see this as a slight on Astin's part. I just think he was busy.
*****They already get more than enough press, thank you. Actually...I think they even are the press...
******I think...I think there might be something wrong with me. Isn't this the inverse effect?
*******There was also one fan who got up to ask two questions, one "in character" that was misconstrued as something about "jews" that got a good response. But it was good-natured ribbing, it seemed. 

NEXT TIME:
- A guest gives her impressions of NYCC, as she was there for longer than I was^
- Horror Show by Greg Kihn
- The Annual Geek Rage/Strange Library Halloween Special
- And much, much, much more

^Dicks.

A Tourist in an Unknown Land: Seven Hours at New York Comic Con (Part 2)

When we last left our hero, he was trying to find his way towards the panel rooms in time to meet his friends… 


     Descending to the lower depths of the building, I kept my friend talking to figure out where they are. I could use a map, but maps are useless to me-- I never wind up where I want to go regardless of whether or not I use them. Instead, I navigate by getting what I call good and lost. There's an art to getting good and lost, but it will get you where you need to be without fail. So I take the escalator and I start my technique, my friend giving me the exact place so I can figure out where they are once I get to the general area.

     Now, this is a technique just about anyone can try. What you do is you just sorta let your mind slip. Like you would if you were meditating. Keep walking, it's very important you put one foot in front of the other, but to get to good and lost, you need to stop thinking of a destination. The walking is more important at this stage. Move in and out of the crowds, and for the love of God don't run into anything, but just take the paths that stand out to you. As you wander, you'll find yourself getting more and more disoriented until you don't know where you are. Relax when this happens. It's all part of the technique. 

      Now that you don't know where you are, keep doing the same things, but be aware. If a way out of the place you are stands out to you, take it. If a door is open, walk through it. Music helps a lot, too, as it kind of shuts up the tiny engines that allow you to move based on intuition. Eventually, though it might take as long as half an hour (sometimes longer when I'm navigating Manhattan...more ground to cover), eventually you'll get exactly where you need to be. It may not be where you want to be, exactly, but usually you can get to there from here. It works best if you have an undefined idea of where you're going and a little bit of time to kill. 

     In my case, though, since this kind of intuition-based hokum is the only way I can navigate, I use it to my advantage in any big situation. Eventually, I found myself in the event room section, after finding the food court and the events theatre. The panel my friends were in was closed, so I bummed around a little more out there, and then went off in search of fresh prey. "Fresh Prey" in this case meant looking for some friends who were also around in the area. However, I'd neglected to give them my contact info until well after the point where they were out of my range, which made things a little difficult. Still, I figured, they were both in costume, there was no way I'd miss them*. 

     In hindsight, this was a mistake. Especially on a full convention floor. Especially when most people were in costume. Also, looking for a young woman with bright red hair at any geek convention short of a model train enthusiast's gathering is a bit like (in the immortal words of Mr. Neil Gaiman**) playing "spot the pigeon" in Trafalgar Square. More so if they're wearing black. I wandered around the various floors for a while, looking for anything that caught my eye, anyone who looked familiar, and that was when it happened. I was walking around the event floors, debating whether or not I wanted to kill some time watching anime in one of the viewing rooms, when a guy in a baseball cap came up to me and asked, 

"So are you supposed to be Weird Al or something?"

      I blinked for a few moments. Internally, I ran through my options. The guy may have been a little confused by the loud Hawaiian shirt and the long hair. I could do many things to him, but really, I just wanted him to leave me the hell alone. Finally, I hit on the diplomatic approach and went for it:

"Nah, I'm covering the con today and this is my only workshirt."

      He persisted. "Oh. Well...you look like him."

       So I just nodded for a moment, keeping things quiet for the most part and sort of odd. Finally, when he looked really uncomfortable, I finally said, "Yeah, it's the hair and the shirt, right? Look, I gotta go." And I shrugged back into my long black coat and slouched off back to the panels hall. 

       I noticed from the banners outside each one of the rooms that one of my idols, Grant Morrison, was doing a panel. I've wanted to ask him a few questions for a long time, but they're not the kind of thing you ask in public. Long discussions on magick and the occult and susto*** and all of that aren't really suited for a panel. Short ones, yes, long ones not so much. As I looked kind of bewildered, I was immediately ushered into the room where the Morrison panel was to take place. At the time, there was a panel on how they wrote and drew an issue on Wonder Woman, that while entertaining I didn't have much of an interest in****. The lack of sleep from the night before, combined with the heat from the convention hall and about seven or eight other factors was giving me a headache, so I tuned out the panel, until suddenly from the corner of my eye, I saw a skinny bald man approach the microphone, and I was yanked into focus by a sudden high-pitched howl. 

Morrison had arrived. 

      He was the only one on stage. There may have been a moderator sitting next to him, but she was superfluous. Grant Morrison held the audience, delivering a rambling but perfectly-coherent speech about his new projects (he's got two new movies in the works, one based on what he himself described as "A Christmas Carol on drugs"), the idea of superheroes as perfect ideals*****, and the possibility of a comic where the Ents from Lord of the Rings live in regular apartments. The questions afterwards ran the gamut from demon-banishing (you use logic and shapes...demons can't stand rationality) to what was going through his head when he wrote Flex Mentallo, one of his more famous works (Ecstasy and mushrooms, apparently), to questions about how his multiverses work (Featuring him grinning evilly at one fan's theory on a certain aspect and telling the fan, "Oh, it is so much worse than that"). As the panel grew to a close, I was invigorated, and it was clear Morrison really likes his work and likes to talk about his work. 

    I left the panel to find several missed calls from my friends telling me they were getting ready for the Sean Astin panel, and having missed the few chances I did have to talk to Grant Morrison for now (And the press badge that may have made it easier...******), I headed onward to finally meet up with them for the very first time that day, finally achieving my goal of having met up with people I know.

What I learned:
- Contact information is important
- Completely improvising your plans can often lead to plans not happening
- Italy has an entire genre of devilish anti-heroes, and there's a movie coming out called Annihilator that plays on this archetype
- Superman has been remade for every decade he's existed, and in the forties, fifties, and seventies he was a bit of a bastard
- I should really outline these looks at things. I mean, jesus.

In the next installment:
- The dangers of going off-topic
- An explanation of why I'm rubbish at panel coverage
- I almost climb into a trunk
And much more

AND AFTER MY COVERAGE:
A guest contributor weighs in on their experience of NYCC in the first piece on this site not written by yours truly. 

See you next time!

*When I later looked up a picture from the event, I think I could make myself out in the background, slouching towards God-knows-where. Had I only bothered to turn my head to the side...ah well. 
**Still have to review Neverwhere or Stardust. Maybe when I get another spot for a classic review.
***susto is a condition that occurs when you experience some sort of fear or trauma that causes you to believe your soul has left your body completely. Or, as I like to call it, "Late February to early April 2012"
****Wonder Woman is a comic that seems to be telling me at every possible moment "THIS IS NOT FOR YOU! STOP READING ME AND GIVE ME TO SOMEONE WORTHY!" So now I leave it alone.
*****Often misquoted in arguments about why comics should be dragged back to a time before the Bronze Age of Comics happened, much to my dismay
******Dicks.*******
*******Yes, this will become a reocurring theme.

A Tourist in an Unknown Land: Seven Hours at New York Comic Con (part 1)

I like the idea of these accounts having a separate title. So now they're under "A Tourist in an Unknown Land". Like it? Hate it? Let me know!

        The story actually starts a few weeks before NYCC does. I'd failed to go to New York for two years running-- the first because I simply didn't know, and the second because I was in Honolulu. So this year, I checked the website, and decided this year that maybe, I'd take the advice of one of the better first-person account writers of our century: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." and get myself press credentials. The plan was, I'd get a press pass for ComicCon and then be able to cover all four days of the show, maybe earning a little more credibility in the process*. So I went through the paperwork, got myself a fancy web URL at strangelibrary.com**, got a business card with my chop on it, and the morning of the deadline I faxed all the paperwork to New York. About a week later, I got my response: No***.

        Maybe it was that I just didn't have the circulation figures. Maybe it was that they just didn't want to give the underdog a shot. Maybe it's that most of what I do is book reviews due to not getting the press credentials I apply for. In any case, I found an alternate route in and got a day pass for Friday, figuring that I'd be able to see more than enough to report back to you guys. 

      And so, finally, on a cold October morning, about three hours late (and having forgotten my camera in the journey out of the house), I entered the Javits center for the second time in two years, once again wearing my official Hawaiian shirt of journalistic intent, and I was blown away. 

       The first thing you notice is the crowd. Most of the places I've been working and going to, there's a crowd, but it's dispersed throughout. BEA didn't have a bottleneck even half as big as NYCC. Upon entering through the proper door, I was hit by a wall of people. Almost literally. Posters and banners for all sorts of new movies hung from everywhere, and The Walking Dead's new season was advertised everywhere I looked. A car display was just off of where I came in, one that could be mistaken for an auto show were it not for the logos and banners in back, advertising something I could only barely make out.

          Navigating through the crowds was difficult even for a veteran of concert mosh pits like me, and despite the fact that it was about forty degrees out when I arrived, inside I'd already started to sweat from the heat. So naturally, the first thing I did after getting out of the crush of people streaming into the con hall was go up the stairs into the even more heavily-crowded showroom floor.

       I don't know what it is about the Javits center that always draws me to the second and third floors of the building. I guess it's just that they're the first thing that catches my eye, and between that and the large steps that always have some kind of graphic on them pertaining to the con, I get funneled upstairs. 

       I'm not the only one, apparently. The showroom on the top floor was packed with people and noise in what could only be described as an oppressive sensory-overloading gauntlet of stuff. And not really any particular order to any of it. Books were put next to video game displays, the Troma Entertainment table was smack-dab in the middle of a group of comic book companies and a few tiny independent film booths. Weirdest of all were the random anime tables scattered intermittently around the floor...I understand that the geek spheres of influence are growing closer all the time, but it just makes the whole thing feel a little haphazard...like it's trying very hard to find its voice but it can't. 

      A friend of mine from the con circuit told me this was because it merged with an anime convention in New York, but given that the merger isn't recent, the show should have found its soul by now. Instead, it feels like it's going through an identity crisis. The anime events pop up all over the place, but if they're going to have a section like that in their show, maybe not spread it out all over? I dunno, it just didn't work for me. The showroom felt anarchic in all the wrong ways, like something was trying to be cohesive and failing. 

      After spending some time wandering the halls of the showroom and looking at all the things I didn't feel like buying****, I finally went over to take in the video game displays. About one aisle over from a comic display for a book called (I shit you not) Whore with a display that would be just as offensive to me if I thought about such things regularly*****, the game displays boomed out from the corner of the convention hall, large banners proudly displaying a free-to-play  The game displays were pretty much a wall of light and noise, though the new Just Dance game had a platform where a small group of con-goers (most of them in costume) danced to some song I didn't know. To get out of the noise, I headed to the book section, narrowly avoiding buying two DVD box sets from the corrupt anime table and the Troma table******. This looked familiar to me. It looked like the tables at BookExpo America, only you're allowed to buy things and don't get confused about what's a freebie. 

     I was pleasantly surprised to see perennial favorite of the site Iain M. Banks had a new book in his fantastic Culture series, as well as that his publisher was holding a drawing for five books in the series, including the mainstay of my "to-read" list Consider Phlebas and the big, thick, and engaging-looking Matter. I quickly jotted down my name and email address in a scrawl that could charitably be called "unintelligible" and continued to make the rounds. While there were a few booths that caught my eye, my wallet kept me from spending too much time around the dealer tables and the merchandise. Soon, I recieved a phone call from a friend of mine who had also come to the show, and I made my way downward to the panels, hoping to catch up with them and maybe take in a little of what I was supposed to see as a journalist. 

Things I learned: 
- Have a backup plan so you can cover four days, in case NYCC gets stingy with their passes
- People like the creators of Whore should really try harder...it's no fun when they're just blatantly trying to offend for controversy
- Troma Films, makers of such low-budget sleaze classics as Toxic Avenger, Tromeo and Juliet, and Poultrygeist, need a bigger freaking table. They had this tiny corner square at NYCC, and they're too good for such a small space

In Part 2:

- Mad scotsmen
- An unfortunate case of mistaken identity
- I search for a needle in a haystack

*Also, less the expense of faxing them my application, press passes are comped four-day deals with access to the lounge and some nice perks. So...why wouldn't I want one, exactly?

**Which, as many of you know, leads to the tumblr site of fantastic design and horrid formatting. Blogger made their bed by not enabling url redirects, the schmucks
***Dicks.

****which is almost everything. I have another con in about two weeks, gotta save some money for not buying things at NekoCon.

*****People were convinced to sit in the "whore cage" for ten or twenty minutes for an exclusive T-shirt. Yeah. I try to keep myself distanced from any sociopolitical issues, but seriously?
******I have the opinion that at any given con where anime is being sold, there is the shady anime table (where the box sets look a little shoddier but the prices are lower and the quality's usually good), and the corrupt anime table (where the set quality is a little better but the guy calculates the price discount in his head very quickly, not always to your benefit). The Troma table, of course, just looks shady and a little corrupt but is in fact on the level. And twenty bucks for Terror Firmer, while out of my price range, is still cool. 

I am...who?

Isaac Dian, the character I played.

       I look over the tables again and frown. I'm probably running out of time, and I need to figure out who the hell I am. Taped to each table is a typed sheet listing available characters for the AnimeNEXT Live-Action Roleplay, and I still don't know what I'm going to do. Part of this is due to my not knowing very many anime to begin with. Part of it is also due to about half of the anime and manga I do have a familiarity with being outside the PG-13 guidelines of the roleplay. Finally, I take a step back and think about this, then decide on a thief character, Isaac Dian. I register my decision to the moderators, find a room full of people, and wait nervously for everything to start.


       Perhaps I should back up and explain. This actually starts on a humid Thursday evening when I decided to write for a while. There was a thunderstorm coming in, and I love the feel of humid air, so I went out to fill up my lighter and maybe bang out a few passages in the meantime. My friend Dave, who for five years has been pretty much the other half of a rather awesome duo, messages me and asks if he can hang out at my house. Since Dave lives in Philadelphia, I am more than okay with him dropping by. I would, however, like to know what he would be doing in my neck of the woods. As it turns out, he wants to go to AnimeNEXT, a convention for the tri-state area held just fifteen minutes away from my house by car. I figure I can bang a nice article out about my experiences, and also, it's a con (which I've never done before), so I tell him sure. After a small caveat that he's going to do certain things in particular, he starts trying to sell me on the LARP. I manage to wave him off for the time being and get things ready for the next day, making sure the Hawaiian shirt I wear for covering events is out and that I have enough money to actually do this.


      We head to the convention mere minutes after I pick him up from the train station, and he continues his hard sell once we're all registered and looking around for stuff. I'm a mixture of surprised and annoyed at all of this. I don't do live-action games. Live-Action Roleplay, or LARP, is considered in tabletop gaming circles as “that thing geekier than us” for the most part. While there is overlap, there's also a certain sense of, “No, of course we don't run around in the forest pretending to be elves. But sitting around a table pretending to be elves, rolling oddly-shaped bits of plastic, and constantly doing addition are perfectly okay.” Yeah, I'm well aware of the hypocrisy in that statement. So Dave keeps his hard sell up for a while, alternating between telling me how much I should do this and telling me everything his character did from an earlier roleplay at Zenkaikon, another event. Finally, I can't take it any more and decide he's worn me down. I'll go see what this is all about.


      “All right, already. I'll at least give it a look. It can't hurt to look.”


     And apparently this seemed to pacify him for about ten seconds. Since I didn't know what else was around, and I said I'd take a look, I followed him into the LARP room and took a seat near the back for the opening presentation. And just like that, I'm already curious enough to play. The whole vibe of the room is very welcoming, and these people seem less like complete strangers (which, let's face it, at this point they are), and more just like people I hadn't met yet but really should. It's like walking into a room entirely filled with ten percenters¹. The opening demonstration has the same tones of any opening, but at the same time, it's really, really informal, which I'm not used to. Rules discussions usually aren't this low-key, or this nice. Furthermore, it appears my fear of having to wear a costume or some such thing is completely unfounded and the LARP is very low-key, which I enjoy. All of this just convinces me that I should really, really stick around, so I do. I have a few ideas on who to play, anyway, thinking that I can just pick anybody. These picks may or may not have been influenced by Dave leaning over to me and muttering, “At Zenkaikon LARP, we had the largest number of kills on record.”, and the moderator leading the discussion saying “And if you get killed, remember, it's no big deal.”
       While I understand death is part of it, I don't want to make it easy for anyone to kill off whoever I play. Which brings me back to where we started-- me looking at the list of playable characters and deciding on Isaac. Once I get the sheet, it seems like very little time passes before we get started and the opening narration happens. I try to pay attention to everything, but there's a little too much to take in. I try to focus by asking myself what my character would do. That does me no good, because Isaac would probably steal everything not nailed down, and start working on a plan to steal the massive TVs giving the player characters the opening narration. So for the moment, I wait patiently. The moderators finish their narration, and we're free to go interact with each other and work out our various plots and counterplots.
The LARP is contained in four rooms-- one for the moderators, and three for the players and the various scenes. For a while, I hang around, awkwardly interacting in character with the various other people who I was sure I would click with but now am having trouble approaching. 


After a sheepish look to Dave, he leans over.
“Sam, you're playing a thief. Steal something!”
“What?”
“Go to the moderators. Tell them you're going to steal something.”


     After a moment's thought, I walk into the moderator's room. “I'm stealing a booth from the merchant's guild.” I tell them. “I'm dressing up as the Grim Reaper and stealing a merchant's purpose.”
     There is a brief rules discussion over how this would work, and after a few moments of talk including the phrase “You're Isaac, of course you would do this.”, they reach a decision.


“Congratulations, you now own a booth in the Merchant's Guild.”
“Really?”
“Really. Are you just stuffing it in a bag?”
“Sure, why not?”


This would, unbeknownst to me, set the tone for more than a few of my interactions throughout the game session.


       After thanking them, I leave and go back to the other game rooms. I'm new, so in my fervor to interact, I accidentally barge into a few scenes. Eventually, I figure out that if I hang out in certain “open” areas, then most of my interactions are okay. Somehow, despite my shyness and weirdness around strangers, I start to get the hang of this. It's only helped by my finding a woman named Jess playing a character from the same universe as Isaac, an alchemist named Maiza. Instantly, I latch on to her like a remora on to a shark, she brings me into the group she's a part of, and just like that, I'm off and running, acting as a member of the group she's a part of. Things move in a blur after that, from one scene to the next, me trying to hold on as best I can while events are set in motion around me.
      By the time I have to leave at nine that evening, I'm hooked, possibly for life. I'm figuring out my next moves, tossing out lines, doing a voice (I kind of think of him as bombastic and sounding like a suave hero with no indoor voice, so I do that), participating in dungeon crawls, and every so often going back into the moderator room to steal more things. Just before I leave, I have Isaac steal “energy from the gods” (okay, so he cuts power to the in-universe news service the mods are using for exposition...while wearing a bucket on his head...) and then run off cackling maniacally. I'm already working out plans for the next day, things like Isaac stealing “The future” (all the technology he doesn't understand), and a few other strange ideas here and there. Dave and I make it back home, watch a few episodes of Baccano!, the anime Isaac comes from (me for research, him because he'd never seen it before), and crash into bed, all ready to have at it bright and early the next morning.
       Saturday sees me off to a slow start. My brother, Ben, is with us for the day, and I'm not nearly the hard-sell Dave is. Because I can't figure out what we can do together, Ben wanders off and I'm thrown off for a little bit at first. I'm torn. I desperately want to go back to those four rooms, back to playing Isaac and the people I met...somehow, while I don't know many of their names, and we only met when we were in character for the most part, I felt like I connected on some level with them, and they with me. I spend most of the day with Ben. At his urging, I buy a T-shirt and wear it under the Hawaiian shirt that serves as my journalism shirt. When I get back to the rooms, I notice everyone's in a session. This makes me a little nervous, but I carry it off well. As it turns out, everyone is currently in a scene, leaving me in the hallway.
     I am alone. However, I am not out of things. While I'm milling around, one of the moderators comes by to tell me that due to the current crisis in game, Isaac is currently very, very unwell and losing health and energy at a steady rate. It is here where I unintentionally put a very complex and improvised plan into order, one that would echo throughout the rest of my time in game. When Dave comes by, sees me in the hallway, and once again tells me to steal something, I decide to move my timetable up a little and make my epic theft of the night a little earlier than usual. I stride into the GM's office, head held high, and announce,


“I'm dressing up in a black cloak and pumpkin mask, going to the merchant's guild and I'm STEALING THE FUTURE! Anything more technologically advanced than the 1930s, and it goes into the bag.”


      There's a moment of silence from the moderator in the office, and then he checks my sheet and nods. Isaac gets a bag full of future tech, and I go out to the hallway again to await my impending doom. I start up a conversation with another player who's been in and out during the day, though for different reasons. As we sit in the hallway and bullshit, I can hear what sounds like a two-group PVP going on as moderators go from one room to the other, working things out. Briefly, I try to dynamic-entry my way in with a teleport pad, but there's no way. After a quick chat with my newfound hallway buddy, it turns out his fiancee is playing a healer, something which gives me some amount of hope that Isaac can beat the condition slowly killing him.
    After a quick question to the moderator about healing (as it turns out, Isaac can't heal the way he normally would due to immortality, but he can be healed), it dawns on me that I probably have some medical items, items I quickly put into use, thus beating the GM crisis condition all on my own. While my character is being healed, the game takes a quick break for dinner and GM resting. In between, I have apparently gained a reputation as a magnificent bastard in this little subculture for my stunt. While this appears normal for people playing my character, it is still pretty darn cool.
      Once dinner has finished, the big moments wind down more. There are a few duels I don't take part in, two people have their characters sort of ascend to a higher plane of existence, and I'm involved in a plot to help the woman playing Maiza bring back yet another person from the Baccano! Universe. It doesn't work, but enough headway is made to both satisfy the player, and at the same time, keep the scene from dragging out. Most of the time is spent in a sort of temporary autonomous zone, where a bunch of people sit around talking out of character. This is a common occurrence whenever enough people are out of a scene, though it seemed to happen most on Friday and least on Sunday, the reverse of how I expected it might.
     The night closes with me having stolen a decent-sized drill robot (which dances!) and a sonic screwdriver, which Isaac points at everything and activates, causing both consternation and amusement when he does so. The moderators shoo us out of the LARP rooms with a cry of “You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here any more.” Dave and I leave and get a cab. Outside the hotel where the convention is, things are still lively and the first hints of stragglers are leaving. Two fellow LARPers chat for a little outside about the game, and conventions, and a few other things before they go back to their room to pass out. We get into the cab with a couple bound for New York for their train, when they're informed they can't get there in time. The whole ride home, I wonder if they made out okay. I hope they did. Dave and I spend until three in the morning doing very little but taking a lot of time to do it.


      Sunday comes and the convention hall feels strangely empty when we arrive. There's a sort of quiet air to it...no longer are people hawking things at the front entrance, costumed characters mill around still, but there are less of them now that people no longer need their elaborate cosplays. The hotel's lobby is slowly filling up with baggage, all of it in neat, orderly lines near the entrance. No desperation or nervousness, just...acceptance. The feeling of “Yes, this is all ending. We all knew it was coming, now let's all go.” Even where there are loads of people milling around, somehow it still feels empty. Like the magic is leaving, if it hasn't left completely.
       In the LARP rooms, things are off to a slow start. People gently trickle in, all of us out of play for the time being. There are donuts and other snacks brought in, and the tone, while informal as usual, carries some other kind of weight to it. In one of the rooms, I confess my fears to another player I've had no in-character interactions with. I'm afraid that on today, the grand finale day, the all-or-nothing in game day, I will run out of awesome things to think up. The young lady reassures me that I'll think of something, I respond with self-deprecating humor, and that's the end of that until game time.
      When game time rolls around, people split off into groups and prepare for the final battle. My team is put into a police car, an item whose stats include a durability rating of “one scene”. We're to be part of the “ground team”, the group bringing about the end game. However, as audacious as I can possibly be, my mind is currently blank. While there isn't much I can do, other than wait for the scene to start, it's still worrying. Finally, my part of things begins, and I get very, very nervous, wondering what it is I'm going to do.
      As it turns out, drive the car and not much else is what I'm going to do. I do pull off a wonderful job as wheelman for our four-man crew, getting us down a long stretch, followed by Isaac successfully pulling off a windshield cannon (in a pirate outfit, no less). The four of us successfully drop the defenses and allow the other group to run rampant through the base, and I use a (single-use) jetpack from the bag of future to drop us into that scene. From there, both the ground team and the people left outside during the attack launch a final assault on the machine driving the plot, hoping to take it down and end the scenario cold.
I wind up in the group taking the machine down in what seems like a race between the varied groups-- everyone is trying to reach the end of the hallway, destroy the machine, and rescue whoever we can. Sadly, my bag of tricks is used up (though I did think of trying to ride explosive decompression down the hallway to the machine using a massive sack as a sail...sadly, an aborted attempt), though I feel I do what I can to help out. Whatever mojo I had, though, appears to be lost the same way the tight, magical energy of the convention has started to go. Finally, the machine is destroyed, and after several people (my own fumbling and feeble attempt included) make our way through the epilogue, the game ends with a curtain call for the moderators, an award for the best roleplayer (a young lady who managed to pull of a high-energy character for the entire LARP and remain in character just about every time I saw her, so well-deserved) and a few plugs for upcoming LARPS, all of which I consider. Then, after that, it's time for the Long Farewell.
       If you've ever been in a big group, you know what the Long Farewell is. The process of saying goodbye is never a simple one, and when it's a big group of people and a lot of them want to say goodbye and thank you individually, well, you get the Long Farewell. When done at its most egregious, it can sometimes take an hour or more. I say my goodbyes with a series of handshakes and the occasional hug (and one rather cool jig/dance/thing), get Dave and remind him he has a train to catch, and reluctantly say goodbye to this world. A feeling of loss comes over me as I realize that I know none of these people outside of their characters and brief moments in the temporary autonomous zones, but I want to so badly. There's a brief discussion of future cons as I leave, and I hem and haw a little over them. After all, what if this was a one-time thing? What if all the mojo's gone for good?
The suitcases are all piled outside in the front lobby, our ride is on the way, and the magic is fully gone when we exit the hotel. We've still got the high, though, and can't stop talking about it, even if all we're saying is “If I only did this” or “I could have handled this better.” Somehow, a chance thing that I was partly dragged to has become one of the best experiences I've had. As we drive away from the hotel, now an echo of the high-energy, high-pressure gathering it once held, I turn that question over and over in my head...what if it was a one-time thing? Immediately, the thought is dismissed. Despite not really wanting to be one when I came in, and despite not quite knowing what I was doing, I am a LARPer. There will be other conventions, and I will be at them. I will most likely LARP at them, too. Though the time was short and we were all pretending to be someone else, I feel like I connected with a group of people I'd never connected with before. I'd do it again in an instant.

1 Referring to the theory (expounded most notably in the book Happy Hour is for Amateurs) that there are only ten percent of people in any given situation who are worth knowing, and that they're naturally drawn together by whatever forces exist in any social situation.

I hope you enjoyed the diversion from the normal program.

Next up: Lev Grossman's The Magicians