Portal Pumpkin

Portal-Bob, 2011's Pumpkin Carving

In my family, we've had a tradition of carving Halloween pumpkins for at least a decade now. It began with the usual pre-drawn, pre-arranged designs one can purchase in book-form.  Then we started digging up less mass-produced designs on the internet. And then... when we tired of that, we started making up our own.  Madness and many pumpkins followed thereafter and (for reasons we have since forgotten) each has had the word 'Bob' somewhere in its name.

This is the second pumpkin Solaris and I have done together, this year in honor of Portal 2's release. We debated doing something more otaku-related, but as Solaris had only just recently gotten me addicted to Portal's two-player campaign at that point, it seemed appropriate to do a tribute.  It was a bit slap-dash since we hadn't any of the official pumpkin-carving knives, scrapers, or other implements of pumpkin mutilation, but I think we did just fine with Portal-Bob sitting between us, each of us at work with a different clay knife.

We really enjoyed the time spent with him (and each other), making Halloween something special to remember.  It has always made me sad when a holiday passed by without notice.

Solaris: So this was our first UK pumpkin, and the first that I felt I had a mite of confidence in undertaking. This is still fairly new to me, being as a) England doesn't go for Hallowe'en in the same way America does, and b) we never really made lanterns at our house anyway, for reasons too numerous and frustrating to go into right now. I remember one of our reenactment events was held at some old ruins in Midhurst, West Sussex, and we had about fifty pumpkins to carve, and I was involved in a lot of that, but not in such intricate detail. It was more akin to stabbing as many pumpkins as possible as quickly as possible until they resembled crude, polygonal faces. I liked my pirate one, though, although I never had him long enough to name him.

Portal-Bob brought to me two new and rather fascinating techniques for pumpkin-carving that I never knew existed: shaving and colouring in. I just... hadn't comprehended that you could do that with a pumpkin. I repeatedly asked Sparky if it was cheating, and she smiled, saying it was fine. I'd always assumed all shapes were carved out, but I'm always glad to learn new things, especially if it's skills I can apply to my imagination's freedom to express itself. Portal-Bob might not be as epic as other pumpkins, but there's a personal epicness to him, I feel. In the same way that one's own personal adventure might not be as huge or involved as other people's, it will be as epic to you as anything you've ever experienced. Portal's a single-player game (at least, the main campaign is), and I really enjoy the time taken in immersing yourself in that environment. I'd like to say P-Bob does that justice.