PAX East 2013 [CON]

We actually did stuff at this convention besides chill around in costume & nap in the hotel room – actually, no, let me rephrase that. We didn’t go to panels or anything because we were too busy in awe at the expo hall and too busy goofing off with new friends. We didn’t make it to any panels at all and this is still one of our favorite cons ever – we met some awesome people including some of our favorite game makers/developers, got some sweeeeeet swaaaaag, made some amazing new pals and spent some time in the PC Free Play MASSIVE OH MY GOD LOOK AT ALL THE COMPUTERS.

I’m sorry in advance for all the rambling about to come your way, dear reader. I still can’t wrap my head around PAX East. I wish it could’ve gone on forever. This post will include some highlights as well as costume photos! There aren’t as many costumers there as say… Katsucon or Dragon*Con, but there were a fair amount and every single one we saw was incredible. Right off the bat on Friday morning, I saw this Barret (Final Fantasy VII) in his Cargo-Ship-Trip-to-Junon sailor uniform and I squealed. Y’all know how much I love Barret, but BARRET IN HIS STOLEN SAILOR WHITES CURSING UP A STORM is even better!

We checked out the expo hall Friday morning before getting into our first costume and danced on the Dance Central 3 stage (cause we knew we wouldn’t be able to do it in any of our costumes). We danced to “You’re A Jerk” and the Kinect just flat out lost me near the end of the song cause Nate is such a giant and took over the stage. Gosh, Nate, I will forever be in your shadow (XD).

After that (and after getting our awesome DC freebies for dancing! <3), we got into our costumes from The Cave – The Creepy Twins! We have a special place in our heart for creepy twins (hello Glitterati and now hello Luteces) so when we played The Cave, we knew this costume had to happen even though our heights are so wrong. We dropped by the Double Fine booth in them (I needed to stop by anyways because I needed this print so so so so so so bad :3) and were extremely grateful and humbled at how much they loved the costumes! I was getting a Double Fine Kickstarter print signed by Tim Schafer for my brother-in-law and he cackled at the costumes and took a couple of photos (we were both all, “HUR HUR HRUHREUHRURH THANKS HURRRR HIIIIII THANKS” — seriously, we don’t know how to interact with people ever).

(Thanks to Tim Schafer for the above photos!)

(Thanks to Erin for the above photos!)

We checked out more of the expo hall and then changed into Matt Miller and Kinzie Kensington (Saints Row: The Third) costumes! WE HAD TO SEE THE SAINTS ROW IV PREVIEW. I cannot stress enough how excited we are because (I know this isn’t a popular opinion) but we both loved the ridiculousness of Saints Row: The Third even after playing the first two and we were both glad to see they’re raising the BAR OF RIDICULOUSNESS. We were planning on bringing Matt & Kinzie costumes no matter what, but once the Saints Row Twitter started saying that SR costumers would be able to skip the line, we slammed those babies into the suitcase so fast– okay, I take that back. The Matt jacket can’t fit into a suitcase because it is huge and can’t fold. So we put that beside the suitcase.

We talked to the Deep Silver employee letting people into the theater and he was extremely cool and excited for us to see the preview. He also snapped the shot to the left and sent it to the people taking care of the Saints Row Twitter – they were posting photos of costumers all weekend. (I wish we saw them all in person!) I also poked around and asked if that person in the SR4 promo shot with the gang-colored lipstick was, in fact, Matt Miller, and I got a lot of, “HEEEHEHEHEEEHEHE, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT”s, which I took as a very good sign.

The preview– I can’t even– OH MAN. Everything about it was ridiculous and as I said, we are fans of that. The DUBSTEP GUN looks like it will provide all sorts of entertainment and an interview we saw later from PAX East claiming we might sort of be going into the internal baggage of these characters in this game really makes me wish it was August already. ALIENS, SUPERPOWERS, DUBSTEP GUNS, PERSONAL BAGGAGE AHOY! For real, is it August yet?

While scoping the Dance Central stage, we met up with a darling friend Miscellaneon who I know from the worldwide interwebbs (thanks to Dance Central!) and as we stood there and nerded out, I saw a person up on stage dressed in Mo’s alternate outfit from the first Dance Central game. I waited until he was done dancing and stopped him for a photo which turned into all of us meeting the next morning for Dance Central costume shenanigans (which I will get to in a bit)!

The rest of Friday was spent loafing around. We went to the PC Free Play area and played the campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 that we hadn’t played yet (Cold Stream) – we ended up not beating it before our time was up that night, b’awww.

Saturday was mostly spent hanging out at the Dance Central 3 booth because we are nerds for that, okay. We – and by we I mean our new friend Chris as Mo, Miscellaneon as Taye, Nate and I in our new Glitterati outfits, and Denis as Glitch with the amazing light-up Boomy he made – creeped on the booth a little after noon and met all the super nice Harmonix employees who were there (my goodness they were so polite and funny and a joy to be around I can’t get over it sjdkfjaskfd). One of Harmonix’s community managers, Annette, told us we were free to hang out at the booth so we did! We also cheered for people dancing (well, Nate and I golf clapped because the Glitterati are mean, y’all) and talked to other fans about the game. It was a lot of fun and it got even better when a Lil’ T costumer (a fabulous girl by the name of Daniela) came up! We had three full crews! Another hurrah moment was when Annette said Nate and I were the perfect height for the Glitterati – even though Jaryn also looks like a giant in the game, Kerith is a frickin’ monster and she said this is what it would look like in real life. I AM STILL EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR THAT COMMENT because our height difference of roughly a foot works so well for costumes like Luke Triton and Professor Layton but it always worried me with other costumes – especially the Glitterati. SO THANK YOU, ANNETTE! XD

The other highlight in these outfits was when we wandered off to take some photos…

That last group shot was taken by someone who had a certain attachment to our outfits! We were about to ask someone hanging around where we taking photos if they could take a quick group shot of all six of us, but we were suddenly approached by a girl in a Dance Central shirt. Now, this was a shirt only Harmonix employees have, so we were all admiring it because we will never have one: “HI YOUR SHIRT IS AMAZING HUR HUR” (you know, how we usually sound) – she pointed to our Glitterati outfits and said, “I designed those!” She said the same of Daniela’s Lil’ T outfit and pointed to other bits and bobs on everyone’s outfits too! Turns out it was Jamie McKiernan – an artist from Harmonix! She said she was one floor up, spotted us from above, and rushed downstairs to get a photo! She took a couple with my camera as well, which we are very thankful for! I ALSO THANKED HER PROFUSELY FOR GIVING JARYN A FABULOUS BUTT CAPE BECAUSE I. LOVE. BUTT. CAPES. Seriously, there is a post sitting in the drafts of this blog right now about how much I love butt capes. The extra bonus moment of me rolling around on the ground crying in my head came when she said she thought she saw us online before and asked if we were the two who did the Glitterati costumes with the glowing logos on the backs of the crew outfits – Nate and I were both extremely honored that she liked the DC3 outfits we made as well as the crew ones (WEEKEND MADE ;-;) and it was so awesome to meet her AKA THE PERSON BEHIND THESE FABULOUSLY INSANE OUTFITS.

Those photos are a perfect transition into the next part of our day because it was taken by our BRO OF BROS Sonja of Soulfire Photography (I can’t count the number of reasons we love this girl, for real) who is always a joy to work with because you can’t not smile when you’re around her. She also puts up with my stupid made-up words and random costume problems I always seem to have! She was talking to Sheila and Sylar of Aicosu when we met up with her and it was really cool to meet them cause their costumes are always wonderful and look just as amazing in person (they were wearing their Dishonored costumes which looked perfect). Also, they’re both positively kind and funny which is THE BEST COMBO. We bugged Sonja and annoyed her camera for a bit with all this Lisa Frank bling then we hobbled back up to the room to de-shine ourselves!

We got back into normal clothes (and shoes, hahahahahah) after that and wandered around some more. Expo hall, dinner with Chris & Miscellaneon at the food court, Dance Central free play area (Miscellaneon & Daniela danced Nicki Minaj’s “Massive Attack” with us and it was so much fun AGGH I MISS EVERYONE), PC free play area (played L4D2 – Cold Stream again, BEAT IT THIS TIME, AW YES) – it was all pretty much a giant blur of THIS IS SO COOL I LOVE EVERYONE AT THIS CONVENTION.

Sunday we saw a tweet on the magical land of Twitter about a Saints Row cosplay gathering in the con center lobby at 12:30 so we packed up everything and threw on the last minute Saints Row IV costumes we put together after this fabulous image was released the week before the con! I collected things for Kinzie that week and Nate had everything for Presi-Boss (Bossident?)! We went down to the Deep Silver booth and watched the trailer once because we were in Saints Row costumes again, then headed up to the gathering. We were really glad we did because everyone there was just like all the other people we had met over the weekend: AWESOME. XD I’m sorry, I know I’ve been overusing that word but I just can’t use it enough here, haha.

Everyone at the gathering was really nice and we had a lot of fun goofing off with in-character photo ideas (JOHNNY GAT GET ON THE GROUND AND BE DEAD) – it was a really entertaining time! Plus, we made a group trek to the Deep Silver booth and got to watch the preview all together! Thanks to the Saints Row Twitter for these photos!

We changed after that and meandered around the expo hall some more before piling into the car and driving back home. I said this on Twitter (a shorter version of it, though): I know there are some bad apples in the gaming community (as there are in every community) but I met so many polite, funny and marvelous people here – it made me love video games even more. We had a blast at PAX East 2013 and can’t wait to do it again!

In closing, here is a magnificent statue of one of the cat security guards from Battleblock Theater at The Behemoth booth (and me derping behind it)!