Some things are said to have been "a good idea at the time," the subtext being that it was actually a bad idea even at the moment of its conception, and that this badness was compressed during both the execution and aftermath into a kind of crystalline shit matrix. I think that my panel idea may exist somewhere in that continuum.
It's a weird thrust for a panel, in that it doesn't have the traditional interplay. It's more like improv, I guess. Game jazz. I feel like I built a heist crew and now I have to accompany them on the heist even though I've never heisted even one time, I just like theft. But let's say it did turn out okay, and I don't boil inside my own skin until delicious. What could we do with such a creature? What if it hatched, and refused to die? I want to know.
If this paragraph were on Insta, it would be appended with the hashtag #justpaxthings: all conventions are metaconventions, in their way. They are composed of concentric flavor spheres, like an Everlasting Gobstopper, and people select their threshold from the superset. PAX is a chimerical thing, and vast, to the point that there are many things I love about PAX that are creatures of the space itself.
One of those things is called called The AFK Room. You can use this mind vault as a psychic bulwark if you need to, the show can be authentically batshit sometimes, but it is also staffed by volunteers from Take This if you need to talk to someone about mental health. Whenever Gabe and I have discussed our own challenges in this context, we find out how much other people needed to hear us say it; it might do you good to know that there are people right at the show who can help. One of the incredible things about our species is that we can borrow someone's psychic reserves if we need to, and if you need to, they're posted up at 309 or in the Diversity Lounge.
(CW)TB
