When I was in high school, I felt an insidious but all too common need to shed every ounce of my childh💃ood in the name of being an adult. At 16, I was too grown up for Nintendo games, anime, or anything broadly considered juvenile. Even if in my heart I still wanted to embrace the things that made me the person I wanted to be. As I aged into college, the early 2010s brought a wave of Tumblr 90s kids nostalgia, and I rushed headlong back into the things I alleg🌠edly outgrown.

But as a woman in the age of Gamergate dominating the headlines, I caught my share of flak. I stopped playing with my mic in online games, tired of either being hit on or told to go make someone a sandwich. At school, two guys all but grilled meღ to make sure I knew “enough” to be playing an emulated Pokemon Crystal as I drank coffee between classes. A TSA agent approached me in an airport security line to ask if I actually knew what was on my shirt when I flew wearing an Attack on Titan hoodie. At the same time as I was falling in love with my favorite things again, part of me wanted to go back into hiding.

Thankfully, the days of sexism pushing me out see💦m to be (mostly) behind us, but nowadays, the pressure comes from older adults when I tell them what I do for work. Friends my own age think my job is awesome, while a good chunk of my family still thinks I work for a magazine, and occasionally send me job offers for communication positions in corporate offices &n𝔉dash; you know, “real jobs.”

But when I applied for my press pass for Anime NYC in November 2023, as excited as I was, I found myself fraught as I arrived. I came with my childhood best friend, and she tittered with excitement, wishing me luck as we parted ways at the media entrance. She and her husband, convention veterans clad in Genshin Impact cosplay in the front seat of her SUV, spent our drive to Manhattan sharing tips on what to expect from the weeke♐nd. Their experience was to be different from mine, though – while they waded slowly through the artist alley and sampled Japanese food stall delights, I waited to chat with the voice actors for a behind-the-curtain peek at a series I love.

launched on the first day of the convention, was on the horizon, and I was nervous but eager to chat with voice actors from both games. I didn’t 𒉰feel so much like a 30-year-old with a press pass around her neck, but more like the 24-year-old I was when I played Persona 5 for the first time, trying to balance my deep love for the games with my desire to appear professional.

Before getting to work, I spent an hour or so wandering the convention hall alone, taking in the spectacle of it. Tens of thousands of people had amassed on a Friday afternoon to celebrate the things they enjoyed so wholeheartedly, and there was something to see around every corner. There were artist booths by the hundreds lined with intricate works for sale covering niches big and small, cosplꩵay meetups with people posing according to the character they’d become for the day, and developers showcasing games they’d devoted months of time and love to creating. The convention had a lot going on, but what it had the most was heart.

When I asked about doing interviews, one of my colleagues told me it’s nerve-wracking, but only at first, since everyone is always eager to show off work that they’re proud of. I played his words on repeat as I waited in Robbie Daymond’s (Goro Akechi in ) meet-and-greet line. As I waited, I couldn’t help but people-watch, and a vibrant, authentic love for so many different franchises surrounded me. Ahead of me was a woman my age dressed in a stunningly accurate Shadow Sae Niꦿijima cosplay, while behind me stood a TikTok content creator who excitedly told me how friendly Robbie was, since she’d met him a few times already.

And though I’d checked IMDB pages ahead of the convention, approaching the signing table was overwhelming: no longer were these just credits, but tangible representations of years of work and so many things to so many people. Robbie stood at the end of two large, decorated folding tables, pushed together and covered in prints of characters he’s voiced, and hearing e🍌veryone in line chatter about what they were going to have him sign was enriching. Even if I didn’t recognize plenty of names, seeing the light in everyone’s eyes as they eagerly discussed which series meant most to them left a smile on my face.

I slid🌠 up to Robbie’s assistant and went to hand them my card to pay for an Akechi print to sign, but before they accepted, they lauded me with compliments about my in-progress Zelda half-sleeve tattoo. They asked if they could take a photo as inspiration to send to their♊ Zelda-loving partner who had long been considering a similar kind of tattoo.

As cosplay Sae finished up ahead of me, I nervously moved on to greet Robbie, who stuck out his hand and stared at me for a long second, asking if we’d met before. We hadn’t, I said, but as I shook his hand and introduced myself, he, too, commented on my Zelda art. “I want to make fun of your nerdiness,” he said, motioning to his arm, “but my entire l🍌eft arm from here up is Zelda, too. Mostly Wind Waker, with a big Japanese-style King of Red Lions. But you have a few, so which one’s your favorite?”

I’d waited hours in line to ask Robbie Daymond, a voice actor whose catalog of work I’ve respected for a decade, for an email interview after the con as I try to grow a career in games writing, and he was asking me questions. At once, I breathed a bit easier, feeling less like a journalist in search of her next feature and more like a fellow fan 🦩in a space dedicated en💦tirely to geeking out.

I eventually told him what I do for a living, timidly holding up my press pass like I needed to authenticate myself somehow, telling him that I was enjoying leading our coverage of Persona 5 Tactica and asking if he’d be able to talk about it sometime after the convention. He complimented my Nintendo-themed business cards as I passed him one, and he rattled off an email address for me to reach out after the convention to set something up, recalling an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:interview he’d done for TheGamer before and remembering the 💖author b🎃y name.

We posed for a few photos, a quick selfie he took in which he laughed about our identical hair texture and a more formal one for LinkedIn. As Robbie signed my Akechi poster, I told him the boss who gave me advice about interviews saying that in a previous piece of mine, I’d made Akechi sound like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a palatable roommate.

Robbie laughed as he ꦍsigned my poster with a reference to the character, and as he finished, I asked if we could take one more photo together with the poster to send to ⛄a few of my Persona-loving coworkers. His assistant took that photo for us, too, and as they gave my phone back, they smiled, “That one’s a lot cuter than the posed one, by the way.”

They were ri💛ght. The posed photo is fine, but it’s not the one I ended up sharing on social media after the event, professionalism be damned. As nervous as I had been going into the weekend, it just felt like two nerds talking about the stuff we enjoy, exactly like I’d found with the people in line waiting to talk to Robbie himself. I’m a journalist, he’s a voice actor, we both spent our afternoons talking with fans of stuff we both also liked, and every single person in the convention center that weekend was passionately in love with something. It’s an attitude that feels so wholly refreshing, after growing up with such a contentious relationship with the things I enjoy, and it’s one I can’t wait to keep exploring.