a bit more laid back today, but no apparent drop in attendence. spoke for awhile with a girl dressed as sophitia from soul calibur 2; she is a costumer, and we discussed design, misconceptions of others in regards to her outfit and the SCA. she also designed the outfit for ’strawberry spankcake’, which was a nod to the satirical PA character (which was itself a riff more on american mcgee’s ‘alice‘ than S.S.) that american greetings forced them to rescend, owing to the sensitive nature of their powerful ’strawberry shortcake’ brand, or something. bastards. meanwhile, to my left, an enforcer is being politely flirted with by a ninja.
got the nice guys at red vs. blue to help me send greets out to lotek, via a hastily-written sign. he found it ‘wooterific’.
saw janna again today - almost didn’t recognize her ‘out of vinyl’. she was deep in thought creating a ‘city of heroes’ skin for herself, so i elected not to disturb her.
found out today that there’s about 7000 people registered at PAX this year. amazing.
witnessed the procession moving the omegathon prizecage from the exhibition hall to the theatre - quite a sight, enforcers swarming around it like stern worker bees as they slowly trestled it into the depths of the conference center. this con is the perfect opportunity for that fleeting moment in the sun for so many of these folks - i can’t think of where else this sort of thing is so readily accepted and celebrated. this is their superbowl, their burning man, their lollapalooza. perhaps the members of every subgenre, circle and clique deserve such a gathering. beats killing each other in urban and desert warfare by a damnsight.
is that one of the things the internet has encouraged - grouping with similar minds, wherever they may be found, rather than with those in your physical community? this trend may have created a fair amount of dissonance and single-mindedness in the short run, but i want to believe it will ultimately encourage a union of the ‘human family’, trumping that of any nation, creed or color. or so the ad-copy goes.
i know i haven’t talked a lot about the games themselves, or reported on who won this or that tourney - there are others better qualified to this task, i feel. beyond the fact that i really don’t play the newer games much myself, i suppose i’m more interested in the larger experience, the mood, the flow, the stories that people share, the ways they interact. i certainly won’t claim to have captured it all, or even most of it; such a feat would require you to, well, be here, and perhaps be several people at once - much of what i experience is wordless and sublime. maybe what’s here will at least satisfy casual interest, and encourage the curious to look further.
pictures here; share and enjoy.
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