Day 241: Pax Prime 2014, Day 1

You know that surprise that I’ve been hiding all this time? Oh, you already saw on Facebook? Well drats. In any case, for those who haven’t seen it on Facebook or do not have me added, I will explain to you exactly what I did.

I woke up much earlier than everyone did so that I could get into the bathroom and keep it to myself. I had to wait for my friend, Yuuiki, to get ready to help and guide me. I was going to put make up on for my very first crossplay.

A large majority of the time that I had recently gone to my friend Leah’s place was to see how my face would look under different make up techniques and experiments. Since I didn’t know how to put make-up on or how it should be done, I had to rely on them quite a bit in order for me to really understand. The plans were originally to have someone help me on the day that I would go out. Considering the conditions that would be set on the day of, it would be impossible. Thus, Yuuiki gladly agreed to help me out with my make-up. Unfortunately I had forgotten the tablet and the wifi wasn’t something that I would have been able to access nor did Kenny have the details to access it (one of his studio mates set it up).

Yuuiki did try her best to do video chat but my connection to the network was pretty terrible and it was close to impossible to have a stable video connection. I was also having issues and I realized that I didn’t have everything that was apparently necessary for a complete uh, “face of make-up”? It got worse when I could not get the tack glue to work for the fake lashes (not to mention that I just could not get them on). So I said screw it and only applied foundation, eye liner and some lip gloss.

Afterwards, I put on the Yukiko Amagi cosplay from Persona 4. With a bit of struggle with some of the clothing (mainly the wig), I finally got out of the bathroom. I knew Luke was going to wake up soon considering that I was not very subtle with my footsteps and he was stirring in his sleep anyway.

Luke took a moment to open his eyes and he took a look at me and furrowed his eyebrows a bit in confusion. Since he was without glasses, he had to sit up to reach for them and put them on. The moment he set them on and looked at me, I could see his eyes widen for a few seconds and then respond, “Oh hey uh wow. You’re definitely the last person I’d expect to do that.” It was good for a laugh between the both of us. As Luke described earlier, when he first saw me, he thought, “I knew it was you, but it just wasn’t in the typical ‘Jon’ shape that I was used to. That’s when I put my glasses on.”

Of course naturally I had to do the same to Kenny so I stood above him while he was sleeping. Eventually he turned to me and opened his eyes. He stared for a few seconds and said in a very calm manner, “You’re not Jonathan.” Definitely a great reaction and it was the perfect one. No one but a few select knew about the plan. Now it’s out there.

I’ll explain about the crossplay and why I did it in a later post. For now, I’ll just have to focus on describing the day as much as I can before my memory fades away.

Once Luke blinked the sleep away, he began to prepare for the day. Shortly after he had finished, we had to discuss our plans with Kenny so that when we would come back, we would not have to wait for Kenny to finish whatever business that he had and be stuck outside. Once we found out both of our schedules, we went out to head to the convention center.

I must have been nervous about crossplaying for I was sweating a little bit as we were walking to PAX. It was still fairly cool and it was a little after 8 in the morning. It may also have had to do with the fact that I was walking amongst “normal” people before we were around the area where most of the other PAX-goers were at.

There wasn’t really any panels in the morning that we had wanted to go to, so when we had arrived, we roamed around for a little bit. It was going to take a little while before the exhibitions would open anyway. I took photos of cosplayers here and there but today proved to be quite the lazy day as far as taking pictures went. Though I suppose I should be fortunate that I didn’t take as many considering that I took all the pictures in RAW format. I only possessed one 8G memory stick for my camera. I’ll probably have to remedy that and see if I can purchase higher capacity stick and/or purchase extras.

Luke signed up for this program called Extra Life that was outside the exhibitions. In short, Extra Life is a non-profit organization that focuses on people participating in events hosted by them (or yourself if you’d like) where you stream video games and get donations. Those donations will proceed into charity such as Children’s Miracle Network (or it may just be exclusive to them, you’ll have to click on the link above to get more information).

I didn’t sign up considering that I practically never have time to be able to properly enjoy these kind of things but Luke thought why not. There was a contest that Extra Life was holding during the entirety of the weekend as well. The game was Ms. Pac-Man. The goal was simple: get the highest score and maintain that score for the day. If you held the highest score on that day, you would receive 100 dollars to help boost you forward in your donations (though I believe it’s only for charity but still good regardless). Luke gave it a shot and managed to get third place (though later in the day, we found out that not only did he lose his place, some people got outrageous scores).

When the exhibitions did open, Luke immediately went to search for the Shovel Knight booth. He absolutely loved the game and he was really excited to see the team in person. Of course, he purchased all the goods that he could and got the team to sign all of them. Manami Matsumae, the composer for Shovel Knight (and previous Megaman games), was not there unfortunately and we would have to wait for another day for her to sign the rest of his merchandise.

The Rooster Teeth booth was right next to them and I saw Gus. I was a fan of all the team and I wanted to say a quick hello and take a picture with him. I would share the image but it is so horrifically embarrassing (since I found out after the pictures were taken that my wig was riding up and I looked extremely derp) that I’ve decided to keep it just to myself.

There were a lot of interesting booths but the biggest problem was that we just didn’t know what we wanted to do. We already knew that we were going to go to a Nerdcore Panel that featured some growing rapping artists in the genre. It was for that reason that it felt like it was a really long day for me. The longest in the whole weekend. It was fine though; I normally roam around the convention center during Sakura-Con so it was fun for me to just look around and see all the cosplayers as well.

After the Nerdcore panel, we went around to roam around some more and ended up going our own separate paths to check out random things here and there. I was getting hungry so I went to the cafe at the bottom floor to get something to eat. I ended up getting a strawberry smoothie and a tuna sandwich. It was small but it did the trick.

After a while, Luke and I decided to meet up with Ruby and Phil to eat lunch. Although I already ate, I agreed to at least accompany them. When I found Ruby and Phil, their reaction was priceless. They were playing Hyrule Warriors when I found them. I managed to get them just as they were finishing up. I was walking behind them when Ruby first saw me. At first, it was a quick glance. After a few seconds, Ruby looked at me again and realized that it was, for a fact, that it was me. She was shocked at first, however it seems as though she eventually came to terms with and and accepted it for what it was.

After meeting up with Luke, they decided to go to one of the malls inside Seattle to eat at the restaurant there. I had already eaten shortly before we had all reunited once again, so I just sat there conversing with them.

The rest of the day was spent looking at other booths, playing a few games (which always felt odd to do at cons but I had to break myself into doing considering that is essentially what this convention was for to begin with), meeting developers that I respected, and just overall enjoying the atmosphere of the convention.

There were a lot of good cosplayers, but a large majority of them were (unsurprisingly) League of Legends cosplayers. I was surprisingly able to find some Persona 4 cosplayers which was really nice and it made the other cosplayers just as happy to see me dressing up as Yukiko (I was the only one as far as I could tell). It was an exciting experience in a way and I will be more than happy to talk more about in a later post.

For a while, I had been trying to get in contact with my friend, Julia (aka Chikari). My efforts were fruitless until I finally gave her a call and found where she was. Like everyone else, she had no idea what my cosplay plans were. When Julia eventually saw me, her face quickly went from a smiling face to which melted into a face of confusion, disgust, and discontent. It was perhaps the funniest reaction I could have imagined ahaha.

The last thing I remembered before we started to get tired was finding a Shinjiro cosplayer. Luke and I were excited to find yet another Persona cosplayer and asked for a picture. When we did, he asked, “Seriously?” At first, we had felt as though we had said something wrong. My first thoughts was that he was tired and that he might have been waiting to get something to eat before getting any pictures taken. It turns out that it was merely an exclamation because we were the first to actually know who he was. The picture may not show it, but I think he was thrilled to finally have met people who knew who he was cosplaying as.

It was starting to get late so Luke and I went back to the apartment to get ready since there was going to be a concert later that night. One of his favourite musicians, Megaran, would be performing that night. To prepare and save a little bit of money, the three of us went to Uwajimaya to pick up some food so that I can cook some Hamburger Steaks. Kenny needed spices anyway so it would help him in the long run.

After making some stir fry and hamburger steak, we were about ready to go to the concert until Luke decided not to go. He felt really exhausted and felt that he needed his rest. I was fine with this and was actually relieved in a way. My feet had been killing me since I forgot to bring my tennis shoes just in case I would have issues with the heels that I was wearing for the cosplay.

Now thus ends the first day of PAX. It was an exciting day and it was the first time I’ve ever crossplayed. The games were interesting and captured my attention with fierce demand. As I laid there, I couldn’t help but just be in awe with just how much fun it had been and that I was able to participate in an event that I thought would not be possible to join. I have Ruby to thank for and I’m grateful.

Now what happens on the next day?