A-kon, A Con

So, since I'm still trying to get into a good bloggy rhythm, I'm going to start by just talking about what's been happening to me lately, which is exactly what everyone wants to hear anyway. Except that the past few days, I've been playing embarrassing amounts of World of Warcraft and listening to Modest Mouse, so we're going to rewind just a tad farther. Let's talk about my recent escapade to Dallas, where I participated in A-Kon 21. It's an anime/gaming convention that runs for three days in Dallas. First of all, congrats to the A-Kon people, because it was crazy fun. I've run high school speech tournaments before, and I can't imagine how much worse a convention would be.

But hey! Pictures. First of all, here's a nice one of the main exhibition hall. (By the way, any picture that isn't all fuzzy and cell phone-esque was taken by my friend David, who is an excellent photographer.)

Part of the appeal is the sheer scale of the thing, I think. I've been to a Star Trek convention in Tulsa before, but this was a little different. The atmosphere was my favorite part. Not the physical atmosphere, which I'll admit often contained chemicals not meant for the human olfactory bulb, but the social one. You're dressed up like a Na'vi? You're going around pretending to kill people with a Death Note? You're a J-pop band or into hentai? You write fanfic in which Light writes "Eywa" in his note, which causes a planet-wide USB orgy? What the hell, let's hang out. The whole building buzzes with freedom to the point of absurdity. We had to get a special representative to come in and guard us against heresy.

You might be saying to yourself, "Now, Zachary, don't tease us! What were you cosplaying as?" In which case, be aware that only two people call me Zachary. I don't know why either Angus or Malia are reading this blog, but hey guys. I'm onto you. You should also be aware that I was not there to cosplay. (But if I was, I'd be something totally sweet. Rest assured.) Rather, I was there to partake in the fine art of tabletop roleplay, in particular D&D4e. How did that go? It went quite well, as the following picture should make plain:

Eh? Eh? Pretty badass, if I do say so myself. I mean, look at me in the back there, my robes flowing, my staff held high, spending a minor action each round to keep the Stinking Cloud firmly centered on my grey d4...trust me, if you were there, you'd be impressed. Probably have a boner or something. Anyway, I played six rounds of D&D over two days. Another round took place on Sunday but we were too tired to go and we wanted to take pictures of people.

But I know why you're really interested in my con experience. You don't want to hear about anything that requires dice. You want to see pictures confirming what you've always suspected: That Yuna from Final Fantasy X would be extremely cute in real life.

Rawr. Geeky Humanist out.