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Megaplex 2024
a year ago
While the trip always seems to cause problems for my roommate, the con itself has impressed us enough to make it a guaranteed annual thing. My roommate tells me he had the best con ever but for me it was an extreme roller coaster of emotions, so I'm not sure where it ranks.
It started with my implant literally breaking the night before the con, rendering me completely deaf. Since my implant is nearly a decade obsolete I knew I was screwed...the chances of getting a loaner on short notice without financially committing to an upgrade that would have pushed me into bankruptcy was close to zero. With a proverbial gun to my head I went to the audiologist the morning we were supposed to leave and bet everything. To my great surprise, she just happened to have a brand new unit of the same exact model that I was using on hand. Since it was a model that was no longer being serviced, she had no use for it and let me have it for free. So not only was I able to hear, I was hearing through "brand new" equipment and it made a world of difference compared to the unit I had been using since 2012.
Once we got to the con, a room party I had been invited to months prior turned out to be fake; it was some sort of scheme intended to catfish straight guys for fun. The usual indifference once again makes me wonder if even the party cons are worth attending any more; the more time that passes the more I get the feeling that maybe these aren't 'my people' after all. If I were gay or non-binary or ace or otherkin it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm not. And because I'm not, no matter how inclusive the fandom tries to be, I am still essentially a bystander watching other people make connections.
I've been a bystander for my entire life, and I don't want to do it any more.
It started with my implant literally breaking the night before the con, rendering me completely deaf. Since my implant is nearly a decade obsolete I knew I was screwed...the chances of getting a loaner on short notice without financially committing to an upgrade that would have pushed me into bankruptcy was close to zero. With a proverbial gun to my head I went to the audiologist the morning we were supposed to leave and bet everything. To my great surprise, she just happened to have a brand new unit of the same exact model that I was using on hand. Since it was a model that was no longer being serviced, she had no use for it and let me have it for free. So not only was I able to hear, I was hearing through "brand new" equipment and it made a world of difference compared to the unit I had been using since 2012.
Once we got to the con, a room party I had been invited to months prior turned out to be fake; it was some sort of scheme intended to catfish straight guys for fun. The usual indifference once again makes me wonder if even the party cons are worth attending any more; the more time that passes the more I get the feeling that maybe these aren't 'my people' after all. If I were gay or non-binary or ace or otherkin it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm not. And because I'm not, no matter how inclusive the fandom tries to be, I am still essentially a bystander watching other people make connections.
I've been a bystander for my entire life, and I don't want to do it any more.
I hear of so many straight men going to conventions expecting to "hook up" with a female that hopefully turns into a relationship. Then being disappointed because it didn't happen and going home with negative feelings and blaming the convention, the over abundance of gayness or the fandom for it. Wrong attitude. Go to see friends, make new ones and network with others. Yeah, I get it, you're scared of being rejected, but you'll find that's a rarity if you just open up and stop being a fly on the wall. Not once did I go to a convention expecting to hook up, but I end up meeting people, and yes, I've gotten "lucky" once or twice, but I've never been disappointed in a con because a hook up didn't happen. I've seen the geekiest of guys end up with a girlfriend, just don't be going to a con looking for it.
On the flip side, that's good news about the replacement implant. I hope it lasts as long as the old one did.
I learned early on that if you go to a convention expecting things of it that you won't have a good time; including trying to stick to a schedule. There are some things I wish I had gotten more experience with, as I just seem to suck at interpersonal things, but I can keep and maintain friendships and that's better than what I could manage before. I suppose I am mostly just frustrated that, after all this time there is either still something holding me back or I'm not realistically as much a part of the group as I'd like to be. I like going to cons and participating in this zany fandom and I don't think that will change.