Grand finale of PAX was today and we were ready. I decided to cosplay as Yukiko yet again. It was because I had saw that there was a cosplay meet up outside the door of the cosplay lounge hosted by Riot Games. Since I figured that I might as well make the most of the cosplay (and that I most likely won’t crossplay for a long time afterwards), why not. I got a lot of good reactions and feedback for it so it wouldn’t hurt to have it on one last time.
The routine was the same old one. Once we had exchanged our agendas one last time, we went out to go enjoy PAX one last time. This time, however, we wouldn’t be able to hang out with Ruby and Phil.
We got there fairly early so we wandered about the halls. The exhibitions were not yet open so we couldn’t really do much. We went back down from the 6th level back to the 4th level to see if there was anything else that we could do. We later found out that we could not enter through the same way we had exited. Instead, we had to wait in an extremely long line outside just to be able to enter the exhibition hall. I was fairly okay with it (albeit slightly annoyed), but Luke appeared to be a little bit more upset than I was about the situation. Luckily the line moved faster than I had anticipated and we were able to enter at a reasonable time.
The first thing we did was have Luke try the Adventures of Pip since I had told him about it and he seemed very interested in it. The only problem was that as he was playing, it someone from some kind of media outlet was being introduced to the game so Luke had to cut his gameplay short. As a way of apologizing, they gave him Pip in his 1 pixel form (which had all four pins that you would normally get if you were able to save all 10 villages from the demo).
There really wasn’t much to do since it was a Monday so we broke off to go see things on our own. I actually had to visit the cosplay lounge a few times. One, to double check to make sure that there was, in fact, a cosplay meet up. Then two, to brush and comb my wig. I had actually visited the cosplay lounge before in previous days but I never really knew what they had in there until yesterday when I really needed the wig to be brushed. So today I had to brush and comb it a lot so that it wouldn’t look ridiculously tangled. The intervals between when I would visit the lounge surprisingly became shorter and shorter. Plus, it was nice to be able to rest my feet due to the heels. If only I had found the right kind of shoes for Yukiko, I would not have had to deal with the pain.
The time finally came when the cosplayers would gather. I was still unclear as to where it was. The paper said it was going to be in the “courtyard” but some said it would be the lobby while others said it’d be outside of the lobby (which would make more sense). When I got down there, I was drawn back a bit seeing how there were so many League of Legends cosplayers. I did eventually meet other cosplayers but we ended up just sticking around outside of the courtyard (which ironically means that we were still inside the building).
It was a little funny with how I ended up meeting one cosplayer. I kinda already knew her (though somewhat indirectly). I had told her about the cosplay meet up but it turns out, as I mentioned, that it was most likely for the League of Legends cosplayers. We both agreed that if the convention were to be named after the majority of its cosplayers, PAX Prime would be renamed to League of Legends Con. The way I found her though was kind of funny. I turned around to go back inside the building and I saw Atashi and her friend just standing there and there was this awkward yet stout “Hi!” from the both of us. Shortly after, the cosplayer that I saw last night showed up (whose name I later found out was Stephen). Since the three of us felt somewhat alienated from the rest of the cosplayers, we just ended up chatting away between the four of us.
It was actually the first time I spent time getting to know random people from the convention. I really didn’t spark that many conversations with other people since I was usually with Luke for the most part. Since I was at the cosplay gathering, Luke decided to experience the exhibition hall himself and ended up going to the Borderlands: The Prequel demo booth.
For a while, it was the three of us until someone else came by and somehow just ended up joining our conversation. I can’t exactly remember how the flow of our conversation went originally, but I know that it ended up talking about the bad things about conventions, how corrupted Anime Revolution (the convention) was, and then finished with Atashi having to leave and the other two that remained talking about how they make their props and cosplays. Since I did not really have the time to either develop the skills or even make them, a lot of it just ended up going over my head but I was okay with it. The knowledge was fairly interesting considering that I was given a small insight on what most cosplayers have to go through when making their costumes.
While I may still not remember what we talked about, I do recall one part of the conversation while it was only the four of us. For some reason, I had made an exclamation saying, “Oh my god” and had to stop for a little bit because I noticed Steve and Atashi laughing. After a while, they noticed my confusion and were making a comment how I had done a hair flip and wondered if it was on purpose. For a few seconds, I was processing what had just happened those last few seconds. I then realized that I did do a hair flip as I was exclaiming. I was shocked and I could not believe that I had done that. It was such a cliche thing to do and I did it unconsciously! Even now it’s still surprises me that I even did that.
In any case, I had an enjoyable time actually conversing with these guys and it was the first time I got to meet Atashi. Once Luke came back from playing the prequel of Borderlands, we went off on our own to experience as much as we could of PAX before we would have to leave. It was funny because I did see my childhood friend again in PAX (I didn’t know he’d be going), but I didn’t want him to see me crossplaying. I think his mind would not be able to handle it.
After we experienced as much as we could, we called it good and went back to Kenny’s apartment where we could begin to pack up and get ready to go. When we did get there, we also decided that we would at least eat lunch together but we had forgotten that it was Labor Day and many of the restaurants were already closed. We ended up going to a Taco Del Mar and bringing the burritos back to the apartment and eating there. It definitely saved us time.
When it was time, Luke and I said our farewells to Kenny and we went off to go to the train station. It was the longest walk ever considering that I was carrying a duffel bag with no wheels. When we got to the station, I noticed that there was something wrong: no one was waiting for the train. It was later I realized that again, it was Labor Day. It had never occurred to me that the train would not be operating during Labor Day. Luckily enough though, the buses were still an option and we managed to get a bus back home (and it ended up being cheaper). It was just embarrassing initially since my bag was uncomfortably large in an uncomfortably tight vehicle (it was packed inside). Once the bus had stopped at its first stop, people got off and we were able to put our stuff down and finally relax.
We finally got home and packed all of our stuff into the car that I had not driven in days. It was almost a surreal moment that marked the end of PAX for us. Like last night, there was a bit of silence between us both but we knew what we were thinking: PAX is already over and Luke will have to leave soon.
We finally got back home and we just kinda crashed and just sat around not doing much. I had to sift through the 400+ pictures that I had taken (I wish I could have taken more, but I took all of my pictures in RAW format so I could not even if I had wanted to). We were eventually just waiting for my father to arrive back home so that we would be able to eat dinner.
I was really glad to at least have Luke try my mother’s cooking. I don’t normally have the liberty of having my good friend try it. The more friends that try out my mother’s cooking, the more validity I have whenever I say that my mother’s cooking is pretty bad ass.
Since Luke’s flight was going to take off at 7, we decided that it’d be a good idea to wake up around 4:15 to get ready, leave at 5 to get there around 5:30-6:00am. I still wasn’t done editing the pictures and I wanted Luke to be able to leave with pictures in his flash drive (since he had bought them specifically to be able to take back home some pictures. Thus, I stayed up all that night so that I could do that for Luke. Now we finally draw close to the end.