[EDIT: The first paragraph of this post inexplicably disappeared since publishing it. It said something about how my wife and two of our mutual friends went to Portsmouth Comic Con today. In fact, it probably said exactly that. I now return you to the original post, armed with Context.]
You may recall a while back that this same group went to another, smaller convention that I described as "kind of shit, but in a charming way". I think we actually, on the whole, enjoyed ourselves more at that smaller event.
Not all of this was the fault of Portsmouth Comic Con. It was a much bigger event in a considerably larger venue, and if you were into certain specific fandoms — most notably Star Wars, Doctor Who and, to a slightly lesser extent, Star Trek — there was plenty to see and do. But there were a lot of people there — way more than at the Anime and Gaming Con — and it was a very hot, humid day.
The combination of those factors, plus the fact that all of us are getting on a bit and in varying degrees of disrepair, unfitness, anxiety and obesity, meant that the overall experience was, at times, quite uncomfortable. Not enough to want to run away screaming or anything, but enough to make us, on several occasions, quit what we were doing and go back to it a bit later when there were fewer people. Also my back hurts because apparently I'm an old man now.
But as I say, none of us came away from the event feeling like we'd had a bad time. We all found some nice things to buy — I bought a few stickers to put in my sticker book, Andie bought a great picture of a Kraken that we're going to hang in our toilet — and we all got a kick out of seeing some really great cosplay from the other attendees. It's just… we were done by about 3pm, and didn't feel like we were likely to go again next year.
It was nice to go and check it out and see what it was all about. But I think for future possible events, we're going to try and focus a bit more on attending events that are a little more directly relevant to our shared interests — video games — rather than events like this, which are more adjacent to those interests rather than directly catering to them. (I did find one stall selling Mega Drive games, at least.)
Anyway, now we are home and I am sitting down. It is nice. I am going to enjoy doing that for a few hours and then really enjoy going to bed. And then with it being a long weekend for the May Day (sorry, "Early May") bank holiday we still have two days off from work to enjoy! Hurrah.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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