I love reading con reports... so it seems appropriate that I should be writing one.

For most purposes, this was my first real anything convention. I went to SogenCon twice, but for various political reasons it was rather disorganized. Detour was much more interesting. The size alone shows the difference: SogenCon might have had 900 or less people. Three frelling thousand people went to Detour.

This might not seem too amazing to most of the people reading this, but it boggled the mind of this guy who lives in a small town next to a college and corporate town of 12K people. Dad said that it's the size of another local town...

So, yes. I haven't seen this much leather short of a shopping mall, this many chains probably ever, and the five women walking around in skin tight rubber, three of them dressed in Eva plugsuits, er, say no more.

I can't be too coherent, because it's my first Uber convention. But as for some of the highlights, I played the legendary Dodonpachi freaking finally, a Motoko Kusanagi cosplayer joined my twenty-people Ghost in the Shell panel, I chatted with a girl dressed as a Ragnarok Online alchemist, and I saw and slightly joined in my first rave.

When I wandered to the front of the rave, in the middle of the psychedelic lights and the electronic music in the bloody Twin Cities, I could understand why people become addicted to conventions and dances. It really does feel like you're standing in the center of the world with everything revolving around you. I hadn't felt that feeling since eighth grade.