This past weekend, we both attended PAX East 2012, my second year and her first year at probably the largest convention I’ve ever attended, and that includes the years of Otakon long ago. We had some logistical problems in the beginning, such as me driving about halfway up before realizing I left the passes at home, driving back, driving back up, checking in the hotel, getting to the T, and realizing South Station was 0.5 miles from the BCC. I tend to be a careful planner of things, and she relies a little too closely on my plans, so there tends to be some friction when they don’t go according to keikaku

My first year at PAX was by myself since she couldn’t attend due to her job. Having a lot of time to walk around by yourself is both a blessing and a curse. I had the ability to wander around aimlessly and destroy my feet absorbing everything there was to see, but I admit that I didn’t try to see any of the panels, especially the Q&A, Omegathon, or anything that could be considered the high points of the show. This year, bringing my girlfriend along, I knew I wasn’t going to be walking around aimlessly, as she wants no part of doing that sort of thing, which saves my feet thankfully. But I think in turn, she was a bit disappointed by the lack of things to see. Not being as hard of a gamer as myself or perhaps other females in attendance, she isn’t going to really care for playing demos, watching videos, or that sort of thing. With the social component of the show, being the interaction with others around, I’m historically not good at any of that, where she is better, but she, probably via me, doesn’t tend to socialize much with people she considers to be weird, disgusting, or lacking a shower. That happens a lot at conventions, she labels them “unfortunate”. So when we finally got into the BCC around 3pm Saturday we started by going around the Exhibits Hall. It was very crowded in there, being the peak hour of the peak day, so I figured we wouldn’t last long. I did spot some cool stuff, including Zeboyd’s Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness: Episode 3 demo which I unfortunately did not try, Gearbox’s Borderlands 2 demo, which we tried to line up for but gave up since it was too late in the day and the line was long, and FireFall which had a massive booth there and looked kinda interesting. We saw some smaller booths harking some things, nothing of tremendous value that I could spy in and around other people. The Rooster Teeth booth would have been cool if there weren’t a thousand people around it, and I missed the panel from Friday. I did not get any sort of swag this year, either because the booths were not giving it out, or I missed it, or both. They apparently had some at the beginning when we got out badges, but I presume between Friday and Saturday, and the fact we arrived late, we missed out on it as they had no more. Later in the evening we went to a panel hosted by GeekDad and GeekMom that talked about “Raising the next generation of geeks” which had some interesting observations, which I’ll save for a future post. We left after that and went back to Braintree where we had dinner at Unos, mostly because they closed all of ours in Connecticut down, before turning in for the night.

Sunday we got there with enough time to get into the main theater for the Q&A session in the afternoon, only we had to sit through X-Play’s episode recording panel first, as they were not going to clear the room for the Q&A after. It actually was a pretty good time, considering I don’t get G4 at home, didn’t bother when I did years ago, and don’t have a raging nerd boner for Morgen Webb, or even Adam Sessler. The episode airs on Wednesday, so if they did any audience pan shot to the right of the stage, my green fatness might be visible from midway out. Q&A started after that, and that was a good time as well. A lot of the questions were.. not really questions. I understand people want to be seen and known for having the chance to speak to the PA dudes, but it was less Q&A and more “I love you guys, if I could sleep with you, I would.” and most of them were dudes. The guy who had beaten cancer and lost his legs, standing to give them a hug, that was probably the best moment of that panel hands down. The other stories and personal antidotes were good too.

After the Q&A we rushed to see if we could get into the Gearbox panel later in the afternoon. We managed to get into the last third of the line, which was awesome, but we had to wait nearly two hours before we filed in. The upside was we got a free slice of pizza, and an easter egg with a code that enters us into a contest to be an “easter egg” in either Aliens: Colonial Marines or Borderlands 2, with runner-up prizes of the “Loot Chest” edition of Borderlands 2 when it releases in September. The panel was pretty good, though hard to see from the back and they had no cameras trained on the front line in the QA. They showed a raw trailer for Aliens and talked about the game, and then showed some shots of the skill trees for the new classes in Borderlands 2. Then they put up some concept art for a new class they’d like to make into DLC for Borderlands 2 after the game releases, named the “Mechromancer” it was a short red-haired girl with twin-tails and arms and legs of a robot. She also had the ability to call forth another robot called D437-TP “Death Trap”. My girlfriend remarked that she looked like Vita from Nanoha a little, I was thinking more of Nina Wáng from Mai Otome. Either way, my statement as we were leaving was “Girl, red hair, twin-tails, robot. Sold.” so by all means Gearbox, bring that on. As that was near the end of the show we unfortunately did not have time to see anything else exhibits or otherwise, and we left the city to get back to Braintree.

Now, before I finish up this post with “The Proposal” let me backstory this a little.

Most proposals that include rings and knees and phrases such as “Will you marry me?” seem to be prevalent among couples who have been together a short time and the guy doesn’t really know if she’ll say yes or no, or what will happen after. Then you have girls like my girlfriend who already know they’re going to get married, have kids, buy a house, and everything else. She even linked a selection of rings she wanted me to buy. So some of that pre-determined magic of “The Proposal” might’ve been lost from the moment, but I don’t think it diminished it completely. I still had a choice on how I wanted to make the presentation. The problem was, I am terribly awkward and not very good at formal things. I had probably a dozen different ideas in my head about how I wanted to make it happen, many involving Katsucon or PAX East. I also thought about a scavenger hunt-like thing starting at Red Robin, where we met five years ago when we worked there. In the end, I tried to slot a dinner at a halfway-decent place in Boston for Sunday night after PAX where I’d do the ring and let everything fall into place. The trouble was, I was trying to keep it a secret, and that ran into some troubles during the convention, namely finding a place close to a T station, because she wasn’t willing to walk too far out from anywhere after walking around the convention all day, and most of the places I was looking at were in the South Side, away from the stations. In the end, I settled for a place outside of the city in Braintree that I could drive to on the way home. It wasn’t my first choice, but it was a good choice for the kind of people we are, and I didn’t want to make a scene out of it. Also not my first plan, but in the end, my style is to panic and just give up the goods.

For the most part, it worked out fairly well, though I kinda stumbled through the delivery, definitely not my coolest moment in life, but she seemed to like it (I hope) and it does relieve a tremendous amount of stress off my shoulders, for now at least. We got a tremendous response on Facebook as we were driving home, so I do thank everyone for their well-wishes and such. No wedding date has been put out yet, but trust me, she has those angles covered. This is her thing, she’s been clamoring for it for it for awhile. I just had to get that ball rolling I guess.

So another year of PAX is over, and I can now use the word “fiancee” instead of girlfriend. That’ll take some time to get used to. Otherwise, it’s business as usual. At least until I have to get up in front of everyone in a suit and tie. Oh boy. Next year I may try to make a full weekend out of the show, try to see a little more, and maybe get some other folks to come up with us and at least keep us entertained while we wait for things. Also, I need to get back on the diet and exercise wagon because that might help the whole death on my feet thing, though my boots served me well this year compared to last.

P.S I wasn’t there, but I did see this on the live feed during the Rooster Teeth panel on Friday. Frankly, I didn’t think much of it, but if you watch the video and consider Gabriel Grinch’s take on it, if you sign a contract by Robert Fucking Khoo and break it, it ain’t their fault you couldn’t deal.