A half hour later, the line, and by extension, the Former Pioneer College Anime Club, had been filtered into the main auditorium, taking up the folding metal seats of the twenty-first row, about halfway down. While the stage was dark, and as far as Alan could tell, empty, massive projector screens played fan-made anime music videos – the winners of the previous year's contests, if Alan remembered correctly. A barrage of speakers that any band would be happy to perform with blasted pop and techno hits of the last few years, and a few more obscure foreign songs, matching the carefully edited footage. Normally, this would have made him quite hyped-up, but…
“Hey, what anime is that?” said a girl, sitting to his right. He nearly jumped in his seat, but his nerdy instincts took over, thankfully.
“Princess Tutu,” he said.
“Wait, the one with the girl who's a duck?” she asked.
“Uh,” Alan said, not quite sure how to answer the question.
The footage saved him, thankfully, cutting to the main character being a literal duck. “Ah,” she said. Anime was, in a word, a trip.
Alan flushed with embarrassment. Objectively, there was no reason for him to do so. But there were a million better ways for that conversation to have played out, and even better, he could have never had that conversation at all, if only he'd been a little less approachable looking.
There were plenty of ways he could have played this line of thought out into psychological distress, but mercifully, this was all shut up by the lights coming up on the stage, and a man clearing his throat.
A cheer went up in the crowd before he could get a word out, and he smiled. He looked like an earlier model of nerd – wearing acid-washed jeans and a white button-up shirt, with the kind of breast pocket that a half-century before would be adorned with a pocket protector and five separate varieties of pens, and if he was smart, a slide rule – and that lent him an air of authority entirely independent of his identity. Alan could go off for hours about the history of nerd aesthetics, how at a glance you could tell where and when a nerd came from, but more importantly, this was -
“Hi, I'm George Alliston, founder of AniMass,” he said, beaming. He was a bit spindly – Alan was a bit fascinated with how older nerds trended towards lanky while his generation went a bit chunky, and was eagerly awaiting a consensus about the next generation's image – “and I'm so happy to see all of you here.”
The crowd erupted in applause. Someone behind Alan yelled out “WE'RE HAPPY TO SEE YOU TOO!”, and Alan cringed.
“We've done everything we can to put together a hell of a convention for you this year. I know the last few months have been a bit…” He paused, and as he looked for a word, tension rose in the crowd. “Chaotic.” The euphemism for what had been going on in the global economy threatened to deflate the room, but in the back, a Vector the Crocodile (from Knuckles: Chaotix, an entry in a franchise Alan could write several dissertations about) cosplayer stood up, in green skin-paint and a paper mache crocodile snout, and let out a “Woo!”.
Once heads whipped around and saw him, the Sonic the Hedgehog fans in the crowd – a large proportion, all things considered – Gave a cheer, and the depressing global situation had been successfully turned into a joke. Jack, Clive, and Bill laughed, but Jeff and Steve kept quiet, and Alan wondered just what the implications were, societially, of fandoms being linked to specific generations. The unintentional joke also failed to land with the girl next to him. He'd expected her to laugh – maybe the Sonic fandom was a younger generation thing? - but instead, there was nothing. While he didn't want to be creepy, he couldn't keep himself from keeping an eye on her.
“There's some big figures waiting for you to meet them this weekend. Saturday, we've got famous Japanese rock band, The Pillows, of FLCL soundtrack fame, holding a ninety minute concert – yeah, I know, short, but they're busy and we're just a bunch of nerds, okay?” Alan snorted. “We've got industry representatives from AVD, Central Park Media, TokyoPop, and a half-dozen other companies ready to sell you on their latest acquisitions, bringing previews of their industry-leading translations of the newest, hottest properties straight from Japan!” Cheers went up in the crowd, and while Alan was excited to see what CPM was bringing to the convention, it wasn't as a fan.
“And we've got voice actors a-plenty, here to give interviews, stories, and sign whatever you want to bring them!”, George said, throwing his arms wide. He was really getting into this. Deep in the crowd, someone called out “Hell yeah, Jiraya!”
The girl to Alan's right flinched.
“Uh,” George said. “Earl Ralston won't be here this weekend. If you haven't heard the news, he seems to be missing in action.”
“Is he skipping on us?” some nerd yelled.
“No, he's been out of contact with everyone,” George explained, hurriedly. “We think he's doing some kind of tax evasion thing.” He turned to the side, listening to someone off-microphone. “Uh, disregard that,” he said, turning back to the crowd. “Those allegations are unconfirmed and I am legally obligated to not state them. But we've got tons of others! The voice of Edward Elric is here, along with Greg and Chris Ayers!”
Cheers, again, poured out of the crowd. Alan was one of them, but the silence from the girl next to him felt even stronger. More intentional. It unsettled him.
“Come on,” he said, in uncharacteristic confidence. “Greg and Chris are legends.”
“I know,” she said, through gritted teeth. “They're great.”
“So, uh, just not a fan of-”
He was cut off by the volume of the PA system, as George continued with his monologue. “And we've got plenty of other attractions for all y'all! The 24/7 Game Room will be, as usual, in the Sheraton, with balcony access for anyone who needs a bit of air. We fully recognize that we gamers can get a bit of an odor to us, so we'll reserve that room till the end of time. The Dealer's Room is staffed with the best supply of anime merchandise money can buy, down on the first floor, and up on the third, we've got the Artist's Alley, with the best anime merchandise money can't buy anywhere else! Not only do they have posters, body pillows, and mugs of your favorite ships, many of our artists are taking commissions, so if you can find the right person, you can have your favorite Doctor Who x Supernatural ship made into something you can frame on a wall. And our Live Gaming Room has the latest exciting trading card games, board games, and Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for you to explore!”
George winked at the crowd. “You probably haven't thought of how cool it'd be to run the Tomb of Horrors with a catgirl and a celibate tentacle monster, have you? Well, I can't guarantee it, but our game room is the only place in the continental United States where you'll even have a chance of it.”
“That's bullshit,” the girl next to him said.
“Oh?” Alan said, not sure of how to engage.
“Yeah, I've run into that in at least three other cons this year.”
The gears turned in Alan's head. “It's March.”
“So?” she replied.
He desperately wanted to shut up, and a part of him wished he could just die right there, but failed miserably. “Seriously, three? What kind of schedule are you on?”
She laughed derisively. “Oh, you wanna go?”
He didn't expect combativeness. “Sure?”
“Anime Maine, West Coast Boast, and Utahegao.”
Alan had only heard of two of those. “That last one's made up.”
“Nah, it's invite-only, but I guess you aren't that cool,” she said.
The opening ceremonies continued, but Alan wasn't paying attention anymore.
“If the Bar Destroyers and 1224 aren't there, it ain't shit.” He didn't really believe that, but he was willing to say it if it meant he could feel like he 'won'.
“Those old fucks?” she laughed again. Alan grumbled. “What, would it be better if I laughed like this?”
Alan didn't know what she intended, but then, she belted out a pitch-perfect, anime villainess laugh of the “oooohohohohoho!” variety, complete with her hand coquettishly positioned in front of her mouth, to hide the decadence of the laugh itself.
He let out a low whistle. A perfect execution of the trope. “Okay, yeah,” he admitted.
A moment of silence went between them, though Alan still couldn't pay attention to the events up on stage.
“So, were you at their party last night?” she asked. “Wild, huh?”
Alan, despite himself, answered. “Yeah.” Something in him wanted to brag. “It was pretty rad.”
She elbowed him in the side. “Please tell me you weren't wearing that.”
He looked down at his Gendo Ikari cosplay. He didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but it was starting to look pretty wrinkled.
“It was better last night, okay? There wasn't an iron in my hotel room,” he lied.
“Sure,” she said sarcastically, “And I'm going to the ballroom dancing class alone because I'm way too cool for anyone to come with me.”
Alan let that sit, and they took in the opening ceremonies for a minute.
“That was a hint, idiot,” she clarified.
“What?”
She sighed in frustration. “I'm asking you to come with me to the Ballroom Dancing class. 3PM, the Sheraton Ballroom, because I'd rather have some random snarky nerd come with me than be matched up with someone at random after I show up. Got it?”
Alan nodded, and then realized that there was almost no chance she'd have seen that in the darkened auditorium. “Uh, sure,” he said. “I'm Alan.”
“That what it says on your badge?” she asked.
He looked down, even though he knew that the answer was – “Yeah.”
“I'm Sawyer,” she said. Unusual name, he thought, is that what it says on your – oh, probably. “See you there, then?” she said, and as she did, the lights came up in the auditorium. Alan stumbled through an affirmation, and the girl, beautiful and dorky in the sudden light, smiled widely at him. Before he could commit her too much to memory, she'd already stood up and started walking out, along with the rest of the row.
Alan was flabbergasted.
Steve was the one to pull him out of his chair, and keep him with the group. “Come on, Alan, we've got the Monica Rial panel to see, I've got merch that needs signing, and then who knows what, but there is no time to waste, buddy, no matter how hungover you are.”
And he was yanked upward and outward.