The Grand Synthesis, Part 2

                When Jace’s eyes next cracked open he realized it was not of his own free will. Small slender needles had pierced his eye-lids and drawn them back taught. He quickly suppressed his immediate reaction, which was to leap from where he lie, when he realized, firstly, that he was now very securely embedded into the operating table where he was held and, secondly, any attempt to move from this position would cause him to collide with any number of the sharp implements that now surrounded him. Very quickly between this point in time and when he had stumbled whole again from the Blind Eternities he had lost his excitement at the idea of outside forces acting upon him. He had reassumed his knowledge of reality and the oppressive truths it necessitated. He was still unable to recall the events that led to his exile into ignorance in the depths of the void, but he already found the thought of going back so comparatively pleasant to his current situation that he would’ve believed that he had done it on purpose if it weren’t for what it entailed. What it entailed, of course, was that Jace had surrendered knowledge willingly, and this, he knew, was impossible.

                The room Jace found himself in now was mostly dark, save for harsh turquoise lights that illuminated a row of operating tables, one of which Jace was currently strapped down into by spiny metal cages that wrapped around his limbs and head. The table was angled such that he was half upright, and could see into the shadows beyond. He saw mixtures of mechanical and organic shapes pulsating in methodical fashions, all of them obscured to the point where Jace could not identify them. He could not tell which were devices of surgery and mutilation, and which were limping horrors that stalked about the operating room, or if there was even any distinction to be made between the two. Great bundles of tubes wrapped around mechanical arms that descended from the ceiling. Through their transparent exteriors various fluids could be seen as they were pumped haltingly down to large bladed appendages; dark shimmering oil, glowing green toxic sludge, and deep red blood. Where leaks had sprung small puddles formed on the ground. A mixture of coagulated blood and bubbling oil sizzled beneath Jace’s feet.

                A collection of blades and needles hung on shifting, many-jointed arms before him; all converging on the base of a long segmented cylinder that hung from ceiling, on the end of which was a great eyeball that regarded him with a sinister curiosity. He also noticed a large bent form approaching at a leisurely pace from the distance. It was metallic and spindly, with great thin appendages that terminated in sharp points. It moved with a bizarre sort of grace, a sort of twisted nobility, and as it closed in on the operating table the worm-like probe turned its great eye to regard the figure submissively.

                Jace receded into his mind. The questions that seemed so pressing when he was adrift in the eternities resurfaced. “Where am I?” he questioned himself. He didn’t know. He was somewhere he had never been before, some new plane he had stumbled upon blindly surfing through waves of raw of existence. He couldn’t remember why he had fallen into such a stupor; what could have forced him into that state. A great span of time seemed to be inaccessible in his memory. Not missing, mind you, but inaccessible, as though there were a mental block. He prodded at the memories from every angle, but every avenue he traveled down lead to a dead end.

                There was another question that still hung in his mind, and that it still remained after he had reassumed himself was a troubling matter of its own. “Who am I?” he asked again. Every aspect of his autobiographical knowledge had returned to him, but for some reason his identity still felt veiled. It was as though the hazy shroud still hung over his mind and he continued to be revealed to himself merely in silhouette.

                In his present situation, however, this was of little consequence. Jace urgently needed information. He felt blue mana surging through this place, but it was strange, wrong. It was as though it were barbed, sharp spindles of pain struck out of him as he attempted to gather it. Even the fundamental material of this plane was hostile. Jace endured it, gathered his mind together and delved into mental space.

                Immediately Jace realized things were very wrong, more so than he had assumed up to this point. First of all, from the blurred splashes he could sense about him he realized he had most certainly been drugged. A lesser mind mage would’ve been completely shut off from traversing the mental space that existed in the layer between the plane’s material existence within and the Blind Eternities without. For Jace, it just made it difficult for him to navigate. What commanded Jace’s attention, however, was a pervading sense of abject horror.  Just as disturbing shapes were obscured on the edge of his vision in the operating room, looking further out through his mind’s eye he witnessed a bizarre and terrifying mass of undulations occupying the mental realm, more perverse than any stitched monstrosity of flesh and machine. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. These weren’t normal minds, these weren’t even the minds of twisted psychopaths, these were utter abominations of concept and thought. They were crimes against nature.

                Two factors pushed Jace onward in his probing. Clearly, he would have to discover something about this place if he intended to survive. Already dark fantasies danced on the edge of his awareness concerning his coming fate. More to the point, though, no matter how appalled he might be Jace was a creature driven by curiosity. To not further investigate would be, to him, an unforgivable crime. This was especially pressing given the extremes he had already witnessed on this plane. Not on Grixis, a plane formed wholesale from carnage and slaughter, where the very ground was rotten flesh, not there had he witnessed something like this. In comparison, their minds, while violent and sadistic, were simple and natural extensions of the brutality inherent in nature. No, this plane was novel in its depravity and it compelled Jace inexorably.

                Jace stumbled blindly, but carefully, between the mutated and swelled shapes of the resident minds. He was completely unable to connect a location here to a physical location on the plane, but he was able to at least determine that all of these minds were nearby. He searched for and failed to find the mind belonging to the sharp metallic creature that continued to slowly approach him. Instead he decided to take the cautious route. He found a small, shriveled little mind. It was probably already broken and quiet, but it couldn’t possibly present a threat to him and it would perhaps give him some inkling of what was going on. Carefully, delicately he delved into the mind.

                Jace screamed. He had ventured only the lightest caress of the withered psyche, but that alone filled him with immense, burning pain. The intensity of which flooded his mind as though his own body were being stripped slowly apart tissue by tissue. The few seconds he endured of merely being in contact with the shattered mind constituted the worst torture he had ever been subjected to. Worse was the fevered babbling that dominated its every thought, as though its sole mental capacity had been reduced to repeating a single phrase. The mind begged, it pleaded, its every desire encapsulated in a singular need. Jace couldn’t help but plead along with it, raising his voice in a pathetic shriek. But it was not begging for freedom from its torture, it was not pleading for a reprieve from this pain. No, when Jace opened his mouth to scream again his voice could only produce one request “I beg you – make me perfect!”

                The twisted metal figure that approached him bent its jagged jaw into a mockery of a smile. “What zeal! If only all my subjects were so willing from the start!” It spoke in a voice like the scraping of bone upon metal.

                Jace had already lost control of the course of his mind. He pulled back violently from the burning pain and his mind crashed into another. This one was lobotomized, calm and lethargic. Jace stumbled backwards through its simple memories. He vividly relived its perpetual wanderings through the darkened halls of this labyrinthine laboratory. He assumed the identity of the misshapen brute as it mindlessly dragged itself through the wards, pausing periodically to have great globs of flesh painfully sheared from its body, taken by emotionless, intricately masked surgeons who then incorporated the flesh into their disgusting experiments. The monotony of this process was only broken by the brute’s periodic visits to the flesh piles, where new pieces were slowly, excruciatingly, grafted onto its body so that it might drag this raw material back to the operating rooms. All throughout, the only protests the flesh courier could generate were pitiful muffled grunts. Jace lived these memories for what felt like a lifetime in the timeless expanse of mental space.

                When he finally struggled free from the morass of the lobotomized mind he continued to bounce aimlessly between the broken minds of the denizens and victims of the laboratory. He witnessed grotesqueries beyond his wildest imaginings. He experienced minds that has been severed in twain; their component parts operating isolated, confused half-existences. He witnessed minds that had been carefully deconstructed, reconstructed, and compartmentalized all the while fully self-aware, consciousnesses trapped within their own bodies but incapable of doing anything but witnessing in horror the atrocious acts their own limbs carried out mechanically. There were bizarre conjunctions of minds, brains strung together haphazardly, multiple identities struggling over domain of the same physical substrate. One he encountered was like a depraved cat organ of human minds, through which the subtle tone and signatures of their combined agonized screaming formed, in whole, exaltations of “Phyrexia’s beauty and grace”.

                Jace wasn’t sure how many hours or days he had been lost when he finally returned to his own mind, panting with exhaustion. The twisted metal creature had been standing patiently over him the whole time, observing intently, etching methodically with his long, sharp finger into a plate of metal. When he realized that Jace’s mind had returned he tapped the edge of the plate and the metal turned liquid, reforming his etchings into new shapes. What Jace could observe of the language was made up of harsh, sharp-edged characters. It was brutal, but orderly, like someone had rearranged the terrified scratching of a dying beast into intricately complex patterns.

                “There will be little use for us to probe your mind, Traveler, if you insist upon losing it,” the creature made a sound like the screeching of an eviscerated horse that Jace could only interpret as laughter. “I am Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Praetor of Phyrexia and Creator of the Great Synthesis,” his metallic voice boomed with power despite his hunched metal spine. “And you, Traveler, are a creature from another world.”

The Grand Synthesis, Part 1

Okay, when I first made this blog a little less than a week ago, this isn't necessarily what I had in mind. Actually, I'm pretty sure up until this point in my life I've been attempting to avoid exactly this sort of scenario like the plague. "This sort of scenario" being, in particular, the one where I write fan fiction. However, I was stricken by inspiration and really, what can you do about that? This is Part 1 of presumably many parts to come, published in serial fashion. Anyway, without further ado, this is The Grand Synthesis, Part 1:

                The lone mind drifted.

                Aimless against the rocking waves of the void, it rolled gently, swaying inwards and outwards on formless currents emanating from the vastness. On all sides it was enveloped in a storm of chaos, but a palpable serenity found its genesis within the confines of the mind and radiated out into the environment surrounding it. It was with the barest effort that the mind maintained the calm; exertion of its will over this domain came as naturally as the lungs draw in breath. Indeed, the mind hovered on the edge of consciousness, dipping below and rising above as it floated vast distances across the abyss.

                Or at least there was created the perception of vast distances, though measurements are meaningless without reference, and in this space all things lack relativity. All that truly existed here were perceptions, and all perceptions originated in the mind. These were some of the things that the mind dwelt upon when it surfaced into awareness in the colorless expanse.

                Time, like distance, was meaningless here. Yet the mind perceived that it had drifted here for some length. At least insofar as it could measure time in thoughts, and it was aware that many thoughts had passed. Many thoughts remembered; many thoughts tucked away deep into the recesses of the mind’s crumpled folds, but no thoughts forgotten. There was nothing forgotten.

                The mind retraced its thoughts, re-evaluated, re-considered. It awoke a concern long abandoned, a concern for location. It waged internal arguments within itself, the ripples of which cascaded outwards from it, reflecting on the void around it. “Where am I?”, it questioned itself. “Do I exist in a physical space? Have I been dwelling merely within my own confines?” Insecurity wrinkled the fabric of space surrounding it.

                This matter was argued hard but settled shortly, relative to the length of thoughts that had preceded it. Spatial location was clearly immaterial without reference. Location was irrelevant.

                Next it moved onto another contentious issue, that of identity. “Who am I?”, it questioned. “What am I?”, it continued. The second answer came more easily than the first. It was an originator of thoughts, this was clear. Fundamentally, it was a mind. Any further definition was irrelevant in the absence of relativity.

                The mind clung more willfully to the first question, long after the second had subsided. In fact, it clung almost desperately, and the sea around it began to toss and boil. “Who am I?” it nearly begged. The answer hung tantalizingly close, as it always had, and the mind struggled violently but despite all of its determined flailings it continued to fail to pierce the hazy shroud that clouded it. Only a dim silhouette gave the mind hints as to its own identity.

                Dejectedly, the mind was forced to accept the conclusion it had inevitably reached many times before. In the absence of relativity, identity was meaningless. The mind was at one with everything.

                Then suddenly there was a change. The mind experienced an event it had not experienced for many thoughts. Perhaps the sensation was even wholly novel, as despite how deep the mind delved it could not recall encountering the sensation before, and the mind knew there was nothing forgotten. Here was a change enacted not by the mind, but by an external force. There existed an outside universe; it had just made itself known. The mind was overcome with joy.

                It was subtle; merely a glimmer of silver. Yet in this colorless void it shined like a thousand suns. ”Suns”, the mind thought, and the thought was novel. Yet how could it be?  There was nothing forgotten.

The mind waded towards the silver glimmer. Merely the act of focusing attention drew the mind near it, and as such the mind moved quickly. And even as it moved, the glimmer drew the mind inwards; a movement entirely outside of the mind’s own will. And yet, the mere fact that such a forced movement was possible directed the mind’s will towards the glimmer ever stronger.

The silver glimmer widened around the mind. What was but a shimmer became a gaping rift, opening into a silver expanse as vast as the colorless expanse from which the mind emerged. The mind was enveloped, and encased in blinding light.

A pale hand was splayed out across a great blue-silver dome. It supported a blue-sleeved arm, around which the edge of a dark blue cloak wrapped as it whipped back and forth in the violent wind. Out beyond the edge of the dome, great blue-silver spires reached out of a blue-silver sea marred with great splotches of pitch black oil that curled and slithered. A deadly chill ran up the arm, spread through the limbs, and overtook the entire body. As his eyes gently drifted shut, he was aware of a great black mass approaching from the right. Then Jace Beleren once again, as he had for many long thoughts, passed back beneath the surface of consciousness.

Panty and Stocking (with Garterbelt)

I've long believed that the people over at Gainax happen to be artistic geniuses. FLCL remains one of the most inspiringly creative pieces of animation I've ever witnessed. They are the sort of people who can work within an environment that is dominated by convention and derivativeness and still stand out as startlingly unique in all their products. What's more is that they do it with a level of stylistic finesse that I've had a hard time spotting an equivalent to in any modern art in any medium. Almost like Tarantino's movies, their shows ooze style out of every pore, and they never stop. Part of what makes FLCL so great is that everything is essentially turned up to eleven. If there was any theme, any aspect, that Gainax wanted to emphasize they did not only emphasize it, they pushed it so far into hyperbole that reality warped around it. In the very first episode Haruko doesn't just smack Naota in the head with her bass and knock him over, she sends him careening through the air dozens of feet where he hovers for a moment flipping in place before plopping to the ground. Then when she goes to "resuscitate" him she tosses her helmet into the air before a long-distance slow-mo pull-in that wraps around the scene before zooming in on the moment of the "kiss" with sparkles and cherry-blossoms garnishing the image, then pulls back to circle around Mamimi's supremely exaggerated reaction shot before being punctuated by a return to normal speed as Haruko's helmet clatters back to the ground. This is to say nothing of later in the episode when the entire show spontaneously transforms into an animated comic book for a short sequence. I can't source a quote, but I've heard it extolled that the greatest animation is that which does things that live action can't, it displays things that so bend the laws of reality that no budget on Earth could allow you to do the things it does in live space with live actors. Gainax displays this beautifully in everything they do.

I'm taking this time to harp on FLCL so much right now because at its heart, Panty and Stocking is a direct spiritual successor to it. However, in the same way that FLCL turns everything up to 11, Panty and Stocking turns it all up to 111. If I had to describe the entire show in one word it would be "indulgent", and this overarching theme of wanton gluttony pervades every single aspect of what Gainax created here. There is absolutely nothing subtle within miles of this show. It also happens to abuse its medium to such a degree that I'm not sure I'll ever call another piece of animation a cartoon ever again (and yes, I'm going to call it a cartoon and not an anime, for some very good reasons I believe).

The basic premise of Panty and Stocking is as such: there are two angel sisters who fight ghosts who terrorize the populace, and to do so they remove their underwear and turn them into powerful weapons. If you haven't heard about the show up until now, then the emotion you are most likely feeling now is entirely intended. In fact, I'd say it's a crucial part of the experience of the show. If there's any aspect that makes you uncomfortable about anime, it will be present in this show in spades (with the notable exception of the troubling trend towards pedophilia in a lot of anime, which is certainly touched upon in S&P but gratefully never indulged). To say the show was parodying these things would be slightly misleading, though clearly the intent to make fun of the cultural milieu the show takes its context from is among one of Gainax's top priorities.   It might be more accurate to call it camp. Panty and Stocking has the same sort of relationship with anime that intentionally campy horror movies have with the classic B-movies they draw their inspiration from. It draws out every little embarrassing nugget and exploits it brutally. One of the things you may find yourself noticing after watching two or three episodes of the show is an inexplicable loss of the ability to feel shame.

This, again, is intentional on Gainax's part, because the prevailing theme of indulgence depends on it. In the grand scheme, the explicit message of the show is nearly a direct celebration of hedonism. The major character traits of the two main characters display this, Panty is defined by an obsession with sex and Stocking an obsession with decadent sweets. Their rivals in the show (demon twins named Scanty and Kneesocks) are defined by a strict obsession with rules ("RRRRRUUUUURRRS"). Hell, Panty and Stocking's last name is "Anarchy". Even more so it's displayed in the way the show was written, because the show never, ever misses a chance to take anything a step too far. There is not one instance I can recall in which the show missed a chance to "go there". It's not only in the utterly ridiculous action scenes and fan service. If they could think of something over the top, or uncomfortable, or controversial, they went out of their way to display it in full glory. Tentacle/bondage fetishes, bizarro masochism, an entire episode of masturbation puns, and incestual lesbian food sex, they nail it all, and explicitly rather than implied. Perhaps I don't even need to mention that they're pretty liberal with profanity. This is a show I couldn't possibly imagine being published in the US, and I'm honestly surprised they got away with it in Japan. I could go on and on along this vein, referencing their hilariously flagrant abuse of Christian symbolism or any symbolism at all for that matter (it's a beautiful inversion of the phallic symbolism of a key in a lock when the key in question is literally a character's penis), but I have to cut myself off at some point, because I need to get to the animation.

Gainax does something really wonderful with the animation in this show. It's not merely that they refuse to be tied down to traditional styles of animation, but they refuse to be tied down to any style at all. In fact, the show cycles amorphously through styles that run the gamut of animation, whisking out a new style for whatever fits the moment. The reason I'm loathe to call the show an anime is because it is just so incredibly varied in its influences, it nearly transcends the labels. Its visual style is as much a product of the Power Puff Girls and Genndy Tartakovsky as it is your traditional anime fair. It's clear how broad the creator's influences extend just by looking at the number of references littered throughout the show. Off the top of my head, some of the references I recall: South Park, Invader Zim, Transformers, Ghost Busters, Gorillaz, Watchmen, Phoenix Wright, Dawn of the Dead, Saving Private Ryan, Sin City, Sex in the City, the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet, High School Musical, and this is a paltry fraction.

With this show Gainax really established a tour de force of style, but to really understand what I'm talking about you more or less have to just watch it (which luckily you can do here on youtube).

Venture Brothers Panel (Acen 2011)

Featured here is the lovely Patty and her sister Amy with none other than motherfuckin' Mike Sinterniklaas

By far, the best part of Acen for me was the Venture Brother's panel that was held on Saturday. It was actually delayed from its original scheduled time due to the massive number of people who lined up outside the tiny little room they had planned to hold it in. Luckily, Mike Sinterniklaas (the voice of Dean Venture) tided them over with some "Go Team Venture!"s and by climbing up onto the railing of the nearby staircase for good measure. They had to move the whole thing to a room that was at least four times as large.

Mr. Sinterniklaas went out to dinner in the mean time, and actually showed up to the panel a few minutes late with a bag of his left overs, entertaining us while he hastily hooked up his computer. There was absolutely no structure the panel at all, we blew past the scheduled time limit and in the end Mike ended up talking to us about whatever the fuck he wanted to for two whole hours and every second of it was glorious.

He started off strong by sharing his left over strawberry shortcake with us (he actually directly handed it to my friend Patty, as we used our press passes to sneak into the front row), which we then passed around the entire audience. He then went on to hug a woman dressed as Molotov Cocktease, commandeer a guitar from a girl in the audience and play a stirring rendition of the "Ramona" song from Scott Pilgrim, and show us, I shit you not, a world exclusive video of Doc Hammer and Jackson Public reacting to 2girls1cup.

Questions concerning the show itself were on the light side. We heard another confirmation that the Venture Brothers is signed on for two more seasons. He also consoled us about the death of Molotov by drawing attention to the way that death happens to work in the Venture Brothers universe (it's not necessarily very permanent).

The more interesting stuff concerned him and his career. Interestingly enough, what supposedly got him into voice acting in the first place was the fact that he was an anime nerd. He also regaled us with the story of how he crashed the audition for his role on the ninja turtles. Also, in case any of you guys are wondering, his favorite anime is FLCL, which is a question I'm glad that he answered correctly (FLCL is objectively the best anime series).

The best part, however, was the epic finale, which he had us waiting the entire panel for while he searched fruitlessly through his hard drive for a video of Doc Hammer and Jackson Public watching 2girls1cup. It was amazing, however I'm sad to say that we all promised not to film it or post it online. I'll attempt to butcher a few comments from memory: "She had to help along the throw up there, like having poo in her mouth just wasn't enough" and "It came out like brown soft serve, she had to be eating porridge for a week." If I were you, I would write to them and encourage them to have the reactions directly transcribed into an episode of Venture Brothers as spoken by Billy Quizboy and Pete White. 

Anime Central

I have a love-hate relationship with anime (this statement will seem ironic since my first few reviews are going to consist of glowing adorations of two anime series, but they represent exceptional pieces). My particular grievances will probably be expanded upon in future articles, but they are essentially lamentations of the negative effects created by an insular community feeding off an amalgamation of detritus from another culture (one with pretty backwards sex politics to boot). 

I commonly hear the argument that anime is a medium, not a genre. It's true that anime certainly isn't a genre. The breadth of settings, themes, and intended audiences extends, at least in theory, across the entire range of entertainment media. The notion is still mistaken, however, because the medium of anime is not itself anime. Anime is embroiled within the larger context of all animation. A simplistic correction to this is to designate anime as animation produced in Japan, but this is clearly problematic because anime does not limit itself to either the nation of Japan nor the medium of animation (if we're not mincing words, you'll accept that at least our western conception of what defines "anime" extends pretty clearly to at least comics and video games). To call anime a style would be problematic too, as anime encompasses a vast wealth of visual styles, tropes, character archetypes, and sub-designations. Think of the differences from Miyazaki to Watanabe to Gainax. Even the signature "anime eyes" are hard to nail down across all works. If most of anime tends to be pretty same-y, it's more due to the fact that there is such a huge quantity of it produced and a strong willingness for creators to copy art styles and character types from one series to another (arguably a very stereotypically Japanese thing to do).

 The most accurate way to describe anime would be to call it a pedigree. You can draw an unbroken line from any anime, through its various inspirations and influences, to Astro Boy and the import of American-style cartoons to the newly modernized post-war Japan. It was a strange sort of schism in the development of the art of animation. There occurred a sort of speciation brought on by a transplantation of a developing medium followed by cultural isolation to prevent interbreeding. I could go on a tangent about how the phenomenon of anime is perhaps a prime example of memetic, cultural evolution mimicking genetic evolution through bottlenecking effects and what implications this might have, but I'll save it for later. The point I've been getting at is that the conception of anime is interwoven in an intricate mesh of influences. As such, a realization I made is that Anime Central isn't really about anime, but something that is at once more fundamental and more modern.

Now, I'll admit I'm being somewhat melodramatic for talking about an anime convention. Also, I figure that what I have to say on the matter will ultimately come as little surprise to die-hard con goers who have experienced this sort of thing first-hand. However, my goal here is to speak to anyone here who has yet to attend and either wonders whether its really their sort of thing or scoffs openly at the idea. Also, I think that the phenomenon itself is fascinating enough to have significance to people beyond the individuals who happen to devote much of their time and money to these hobbies. Mostly I'm just excited that I went to my first anime convention and I want to tell you guys about it.

I could say that the con is about "nerd culture" and leave it at that, but I'd be doing the subject a disservice; not only because "nerd culture" doesn't quite describe it, but because "nerd culture" deserves a more involved definition. When I showed up at Acen I was expecting people dressed up as anime characters. What I wasn't entirely expecting was the full gamut of "nerdy" media being represented far beyond any intersection with anime. Some of the costumes I saw originated in popular western video games, obscure indie games, western animation, popular youtube videos, flash games, webcomics, even personifications of internet memes and bizarre abstractions, and, of course, furries. There were also people who weren't dressed up as anything in particular, they were walking around in cat ears, or clinging to swords, or wearing whatever impractical outfit they happened to have designed.

Two things became immediately apparent to me: (1) people weren't trying to fit into the anime theme, or necessarily any theme at all, they were wearing whatever the fuck they happened to think was cool and (2) as my good friend Mike put it "the things I like aren't nearly as obscure as I thought they were." These two things together explained to me exactly what the con really was.

I think we've all seen horrifying "anime club" videos, or we're at least familiar with the idea; dreadfully awkward teenagers pantomiming a reality that they aren't a part of, and drastically so at that. We see children who've clung tightly to marginalized media and without the sort of socializing education inherent in conventional media they flounder in society. They're maladjusted, but its not that they've attempted to adjust to our society and failed, it's that they've adjusted to a social etiquette that doesn't jive with the reality they have to live in. A young girl might attempt to fashion her hair in a way that gravity disagrees with, may believe that pawing at her friends and mewing "nyah" is a socially acceptable greeting, but it's all because her socialization originated with a media that represents a world where she doesn't live. Other girls her age were watching high school dramas and MTV spring break reels and adjusting accordingly thanks to a media that depicts and shapes the world they'll grow up in. The reason we don't find their actions so strange is because they've been taught by media that's mainstream enough to become what we've come to expect. The mainstream defines the social reality.

Overwhelmingly, what defined the sorts of things I saw at the con was marginalized media. Things that I had been made to believe were enjoyed by the relatively few, as they weren't the sort of entertainment that was embraced by society at large. It's still a faux pas to bring up a conversation about video games randomly with a stranger, but it's certainly alright to toss out a "how about them Bears?" The things I saw weren't necessarily for nerds, though the vast majority of the things I saw were. The defining characteristic of the represented subjects was that they were weird, quirky. They were exactly the sort of things you thought were too obscure to see someone else you don't even know put hundreds of hours and dollars into a costume to resemble, or if they happened to be something very popular, they were still the sort of thing you'd think twice about before admitting that you liked them to the bully in the school yard. Yet, while they were all somewhat disparate, seeing them all displayed together allowed me to see their interconnecting threads. Fantasy and sci-fi novels have influenced table-top games have influenced video games have influenced anime, and the flow goes just as easily in the other direction, or between any two points. These were all things that had influenced one another, they're marginalized but in this they've become woven into a culture of their own. This is the nerd culture, specifically the English-speaking nerd culture, that I've been referring to. It wasn't really until the con that I realized the overarching structure to the whole thing.

What surprised me, but what shouldn't have, is that a culture actually managed to develop. These are things that are nearly defined by their lack of acceptance and relatively small adoption rate among most people. Yet, when I walked into that con I became aware of a shared cultural experience with everyone there, one that I didn't share with the rest of the outside world. Returning to the subject of not approaching strangers about video games, I had the bizarre experience of finding it nearly as natural a thing to do as talking about the local sports team. Normally when I find myself in a situation where I have to explain to someone new that I spend a lot of time and money playing Magic: The Gathering I have to preface it with a lot of embarrassed disclaimers about how I'm not usually that type of nerd (this is a total lie), but it wasn't so there. At the con, I didn't feel that sort of inherent background judgment of the things I like. Suddenly what was the marginalized had become the mainstream.

Returning to the first of the two observations I made, I realized that the people there had dressed up almost as what came natural to them. It reminded me of avatars on an internet forum. They were displaying whatever was coolest, or funniest, or most adorable to them, and using it to represent themselves. That the displays were ostentatious or bizarre or not generally socially acceptable was of little consequence because they weren't any of those things in this new context. In fact, the connection to internet forums only solidified in my mind over time as I began to realize where I had felt this sort of nerd cultural harmony before. It was actually the same exact principle.

Which brings me back to my second observation, because what struck me more than any other sense was a feeling of belonging. It's actually, I believe, a pretty common feeling to have at a con, as I've heard it reported by people on more than one occasion. Of course, I was more than a little judging of the idea before I had experienced it; what kind of person feels more at home at a nerd convention than their own neighborhood? However, everything very quickly began to make sense for me. Because, the honest truth is that the place I feel most comfortable isn't my own town. The place I tend to feel most comfortable is with a collection of nerds on the internet. It's a place where we've gathered because despite whatever society at large may think of our micro-culture, we can coexist with it. The culture, I realized, wasn't limited to our small corner of the internet either. The nerd culture that I've been exposed to is spreading far and wide across it, and becoming a shared experience for all of us, and from here the structural backbone of the whole shindig was born. Being at the con was like being at the internet given physical form. It was like knowing what it would be like if the people from our forums weren't separated by a computer screen and hundreds of miles. It felt overwhelmingly right.

Back to our awkward little "anime club", here I saw them transformed. The same young girl with the unfortunate hair cut could get a wig that would enact the transformation for her. Mimicking the strange behavior of her animated role models was no longer painfully embarrassing, but appropriate and maybe even charming as she was simply being "in character". Walking down the length of the dealer's room you could find all sorts of resources devoted to transforming our reality into the theirs. Indeed, the devoted makeup work, sewing, and role playing of the con-goers has become incredibly convincing. I found myself wandering around with a goofy smile on my face the whole time while I witnessed reality being peeled back and something else being revealed beneath, something that I had no idea I had wanted.

Now, mind you, it wasn't a full transformation. Indeed, there were plenty of people who were still ill-acclimated, and while my attention was drawn to the most bright and excellent examples of cosplay and the like there were still plenty of individuals who remained either forlorn or deluded (and dressed in sloppy cosplay). There was still plenty of awkwardness to go around. Though, as my friend Patty put it, it was okay to be awkward since everyone else was too (at least in the real world).

I can't really make any sweeping proclamations about what it all means or whether this is some unique or recent development due to either to our increasing interconnectedness via the internet or the nature of the community that produced this con or whether this is simply the phenomenon that occurs whenever you have a group of people devoted to a marginalized sub-culture coming together like this.

The only thing I can really say with any certainty is, well, I want to go back.