Ghost Gallivants to Glorious Galacon · 11:53pm Aug 5th, 2018
Ghost Gallivants to Glorious Galacon
-or-
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’m Totally Doing Again
(with apologies to David Foster Wallace)
Since Aragon (whose blog I’m in direct competition with) felt the need to introduce a disclaimer, I have to do much the same here. Everything I am about to write is completely 100% real. Especially the parts I made up.
Redactedstan, naturally, has no air travel.
Well, no, that’s not true, every month the elders of the village allow the bravest of the village lads to be slingshotted towards one of the major transit hub airports. So, I wrestled a bear, fought my rivals on a rotating platform covered in spikes (we patterned much of our culture after a damaged VHS copy of Flash Gordon), and was in due course loaded into a giant slingshot, waved my farewells from the cradle as it was pulled back, and was propelled towards Zurich.
I’m given to understand that this compares favorably to the experience of air travel in America. No TSA on slingshots, you see.
Upon landing—well, okay—cratering at Zurich Airport I noticed, as I brushed the odd bit of debris from my coat that the very first shop a traveler sees on this rather lovely and posh airport is a store selling caviar and little else.
Not dishes with caviar in ‘em, so that you may fortify yourself with fish eggs before being loaded into an aluminum tube awash with jet fuel which is set on fire, strategically, and hurled through the atmosphere at an unreasonable clip, as unwise as that might sound, oh no. This just sold it in packages. It was, in fact, intended for the brave traveler who wished to take highly perishable seafood either on a plane (unwise) or out into the July heat (less wise) purely out of a commitment to conspicuous consumption. Veblen would have been proud.
After a short wait and a mad scramble across the airport because it turned out I misread my gate number, I was ready to take my assigned seat on Howling Infant Airlines flight 1418.
I always fly Howling Infant Airlines, though I don’t always intend to.
In truth, I don’t ever intend to—the tickets I buy tend to have names like “Swiss Air” or the fell runes of Lufthansa on them, but once I get to the airport, sure enough, it’s good old HIA preparing to board every time. I mean, sometimes I’d like a change, but HIA has its benefits. Not a lot of airlines have live in-flight entertainment after all.
I was just settling in my seat—just next to a tall heavily muscled man who hated me with a burning fury but no more than anyone else on the plane which made us practically friends—when I heard our in-flight entertainment starting to tune up. It was the traditional piece, the Airborne Threnody for Fifteen Very Angry Infant Voices in Pain-major, Op. 492. Very moving even though I will confess it gets a little old after the first hour or so. I appreciated the unique harmonizations of the performers for a moment and turned to see who was sitting on the other side of the isle.
It was a baby sporting an uncanny resemblance to Winston Churchill. Unlike most airborne infants of my acquaintance it wasn’t howling inconsolably for reasons opaque to me and, crucially, their parents. Instead it sported a scowl of Homeric proportions one you’d expect to see on the face of a Titan resigned to his labors, perhaps, holding up the sky. Every inch of it conveyed deep disgruntlement. The baby gave me a look that, despite the language barrier (unlike the Doctor I don’t speak Baby) I instantly understood as “Can you believe this shit?”
I instantly felt better.
Disgorged onto Stuttgart airport ears only slightly bleeding (me and Angriest Baby took strength from each other in the face of adversity) I partook for the first time of the German public transit system.
It’s…
...very German.
We’ll ignore the fact that I entirely failed to comprehend that the S-Bahn station was actually in the airport and instead went on a jolly thirty minute trip out in the balmy pleasant 37-degree day (98 for Americans, 310 for scientists, and about 27 for any time-traveling Danes), that one is entirely my fault.
But once you do make it to the underground lair of the mythic train-beast (You are in a 10’ by 10’ cross-section tunnel and the ceiling starts to lower suddenly, roll your reflex save!) you are presented with a largish board thickly inscribed with diagrams, notes, and dire warnings. My brain, already reduced to a sort of semi-sapient paste by the performance of the Threnody, first mistook the board for the instruction on the operation and maintenance of a fusion reactor but, after a lot of staring and moving of lips it so transpired it was trying to tell me how to travel in the realm of the mythical train-beast without incurring the wrath of the Watchful Eye which is ever watching, ever searching, ever seeking the spoor of the Ticketless who, if caught in the labyrinthine tunnels under Stuttgart are, if I am translating the German correctly, fed alive and screaming to the Evermaw, destined to be devoured eternally.
Luckily, my education was heavy on formal systems and particularly infuriating brands of mathematics and so I managed to solve the relevant puzzles and get a token guaranteed to ward off the Eye that’d last until next sunrise. (“Day Ticket” I think they call it)
I boarded shortly thereafter and of what transpired in the sunless realms below, of the mindless gnawing in dark places underneath the world, the shadows-within-shadows that lie amids the coils of the Mythic Trainbeast I will speak no more, lest I let the darkness out of its underground places and allow it to overspread across the world.
Let’s just say that made it to the other end, though it may have been a paler, wanner me that walked on unsteady feet out the other end of the labyrinth, and if I had perhaps felt the hot breath of the Minotaur on my back as I escaped… let it pass. Let it pass.
I made it to Ludwigsburg!
Ah! Ludwigsburg! What can I say about Ludwigsburg? Jewel of Schwabia! Paramount township of Baden-Württemberg! Just the dearest little hamlet of the Ländle!
It was okay.
Sorry.
I mean, I liked it. I especially like the commitment to parks. I love a good park, me, but I’m already from a centraleuropish sort of place and as a result it just looked normal. In fact, normalcy I’d say is the defining trait of Ludwigsburg. It’s an aggressively normal-seeming place full of staid, sensible burghers going about their responsible, sensible lives. Or, if not, they expend considerable effort to convince you of this.
You couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of what these people might think when two thousand lunatics descend on the town.
But is there anything to do in Ludwigsburg of an evening? Of an evening, no. Or of a weekend for that matter. The closing hours in Ludwigsburg (and indeed Germany) are nuts. Come evening nearly everything closes down. Come the weekend and it’s like the plague is in town. Thick fog billows through the streets, the howls of those maddened by grief can be heard on the wind as the only sign of human habitation aside, of course, from the constant toiling of church-bells. You don’t even see people as you wander, desperate, hungry, and alone through the streets made slick with mist and miasma, only the occasional nightmare-silhouette you desperately hope is a plague doctor.
Figure 1. Sunday evening in Ludwigsburg, dramatization.
Which is to say that the early-closing laws in Germany are a bloody nuisance. All my illusions about teutonic efficiency have been shattered.
But if you make it before everything closes and the mists and screams come rolling in, then there’s a few things to enjoy, most of all Blühendes Barock (Blooming Baroque which sounds like a curse-word bowdlerized past all comprehensibility) and the Ludwigsburg Palace that it surrounds. The Blooming Baroque (Blistering Barnacles) is a complex of gardens that provides, I feel, a reasonable facsimile of what the Canterlot Palace Gardens might be like though there was no stone prison of the Avatar of All Chaos.
There was Herman the Cornish Flamingo, though. So there is that.
Either way, I can recommend the downright enchanting gardens. I was in them alone and with a group of friends and both times had enormous fun.
But let’s face it, I wasn’t there for the touristy stuff, now was I? No, indeed, none of us were. We were there for the con, and not just any con but Galacon 2018!
So how was the con?
I… uh… I don’t know.
I never actually entered the conspace. Even once.
Um.
Sorry.
I bought the ticket! I really did! But the conspace was very very very hot[1] and very very very crowded and I’m good with neither so I avoided it. I’m happy to pay for it, because, of course, it did work magnificently for my purpose, viz. being brony-bait. And, oh, what a catch did I fetch up on the shores of the Neckar river! A magnificent catch!
For the really real reason I went all this way was the people I’d meet and let me tell you, dear reader, they did not disappoint.
[1] Ludwigsburg is built with the assumption that it won’t ever be really hot. The weather continued to be flamethrower-y (I think that’s the term) throughout our stay, and as a result indoors space we stifling, outdoor spaces were under the Curse of the Daystar and the nights were owned by the things that looked like plague doctors but weren’t.
So what were the people like? Exactly the same! Magnificent! But also quite, quite different.
One thing that’s different is how you build up an image of someone from their online presence or mere handle and how much or how little it differs from reality. Take the highly awesome Ferret who is very much like her online persona—though I take issue with the ‘Ferret’ part. She’s more some sort of hypothetical hybrid creature genetically engineered to be cute by a coven of renegade Kawaiiologists on the Moon.
But now, I fear, I’ve said too much and the Lunar Council of Huggy-shnookums does not forgive.
Ferret’s just as personable and glad-to-see-everyone as she’s on FimFic and she graciously lent her hotel room as a general gathering-space. She did this, I hope with the consent and support of her non-pony (though I am told that the Conversion Process has been approved by the Council of Five, and is to be overseen by the Council of Six under the direction of the Council of Minus Three) friend, travel companion, and human life-support system, Garth. Garth is… serious. I don’t mean humorless because he absolutely isn’t that. And I don’t mean that he’s against all this brony horseplay-nonsense (I worked on that pun for seconds) because he showed no indication of judging us all for being a collection of utter loons. No, I just mean that he does, whatever it is he does, with seriousness. Share maple candy with people at what I’m reasonably but not entirely sure is Stuttgart pride? Serious. Joke around? Serious. Extol the virtues of Canadian whisky? Dead serious.
He gives the impression of having worked out how to live life to his satisfaction some considerable time ago, and is thus without any anxiety on the subject. As someone with a fine collection of neuroses to my name, I found myself oddly envious but mostly reassured by his presence.
Anyway, however it came to be common property, Ferret and Garth’s room was the home of The Table. What is The Table, you might ask? The Table (capitalization necessary) was a simple hotel end-table but through the application of loads of Awfully Serious Cultural Materials[2] it was transformed into The Table. The Table hosted artifacts of cultural significance[3], tokens of mutual appreciation from various rich cultural traditions[4], candy, and some purely ceremonial adult beverages[5].
[2] Booze.
[3] Hooch.
[4] Tipple.
[5] FIVE GODDAMN BOTTLES OF GODDAMN WHISKY!
I, personally, helped, ah, enrich the Table with some Redactedstani walnut brandy[6] which was described variously as “Festive,” “Christmassy,” and “What I imagine the inside of Santa tastes like.” This last comment, if my memory holds, was by Carabas.
[6] I mentioned taking some for friends in Germany to a cab driver today and he paused, nodded, sagely and said, “Ah, they are good friends of yours, then?” Damn skippy they are.
Now! What can you say about Carabas? Much! Online he’s the author of incredibly wonderful stories. Indeed, it was on occasion of Moonlight Palaver that I had cause to give the chap my most heartfelt compliment, viz. “I WISH I WROTE THAT YOU BASTARD.”
I have a way with words.
But offline, ah there the situation gets a lot more interesting. Carabas is soft spoken, slight, and as Scottish as the day is long, and he peers at the world through earnest eyes that make you want to hug him and/or stand between him and harm. I am convinced everyone who met him is at least partially under his spell and Ferret was adamant that he counts as a Disney princess and Carabas trying to look angry at the prospect may have moved Ferret to transports of cuteness-related overload. Ferret, mind you. The Lunar Council of Huggy-shnookums cannot be happy.
In fact, I am given to understand that he triggers the nurturing impulse in not just humans but also most animals and is often pursued by birds trying to regurgitate food in his mouth, which is inconvenient unless you enjoy the fine taste of partially digested grub.
Still, he is Scottish so I assume the birds get glassed if they go too far and everything works out alright in the end.
Carabas is also just as clever as you’d expect reading his stories and during our time together his modus operandi was to wait patiently and then slip in just the right thing at the right time. He’s also a superhero as far as I’m concerned because he not only enhanced my life by introducing Glenmorangie to it, but also saved it through the practical application of wisdom, viz. “Hey, Ghost, it’s nine thousand degrees out, the sky is spontaneously manifesting fire, the kiln-fired brick of this hotel is melting, and the weather forecast is just a picture of a man on fire… maybe bring some bottled water with you so as to not die as much?” Or that’s how I remember, it at least.
Speaking of saving lives: The Kettles!
Not the household appliance, though those of course are also life-savers. No, I mean Orbiting Kettle and his lovely and, I am convinced, no less spaceborne wife. If you find any central theme in Galacon blogs it is that the Kettles are saints.
I, being an independent thinker, a noted contrarian, not to mention a scalawag, blasphemer, and slayer of sacred cows have a completely different opinion.
I think they may be archangels as well.
Why, might you ask?
Well, I first thought they were Seraphim, but since I did not observe them with six wings crying “Holy, holy, holy” I assumed that—oh, you mean why in general?
Well the Kettles managed to be of some great service to just about everyone in our party, providing sage advice, translation from German (we had a party with something like four people who almost spoke German which was, actually, worse than having nobody who could speak german), and in my case shuttling me to Stuttgart to go duck hunting and then rendering great help in finding said ducks.
Not in shooting them. We didn’t shoot the ducks. They were rubber ducks.
Look, I had a friend who is a fanatical rubber-duck-from-Germany collector and so it was necessary for the Kettles, Ferret, Garth, and me to march in what I’m reasonably sure is some relative of Stuttgart pride and…
...I…
...it made perfect sense at the time, I swear.
Anyway. The Kettles were saintly patient with me when shuttling me through rather heavy traffic to our duck-hunting expedition but the chief and most wonderful thing they did was bring Pearple Prose and Lise Eclaire to us! Apparently they travelled far and wide to pick them up from sundry locations around and about Germany and shipped these rare and exotic treasures to us.
Pearple Prose is—and I have no other word to describe this—darting. There is a constant impression that when he moves from point A (somewhere without good alcohol) to point B (somewhere with) that he doesn’t bother with the intervening points. Indeed, he may not even be aware of those points. I have dark suspicions that he’s playing life as one of those old Myst games and is just teleporting from one viewing angle to another which means that, should you meet him, you need to be weary, lest you become a puzzle he needs to solve. Just a fair warning. He also has a facility for puns that is, frankly, a bit disturbing. I will forever cherish ‘abruisement’ as the rough-and-tumble cousin to amusement.
Lise Eclaire—from Undisclosedia which borders Redactedstan, though he does work in Northern Nonesuch—has the appearance of, and this is not a description I expected to ever use, your favorite and most trusted black market contract. It’s just something about him that suggests utterly trustworthy disreputability, an incredibly charming criminality. I kept wanting to say to him “We met, did we not, in Vienna, just after the war? It was… less colorful, and there was this zither music everywhere.” Uncanny is what it was. But appearances are not always indicative, and in person Lise is a charming, easy-going repository of the most offbeat weirdest knowledge including games time forgot, and shows whose half-a-season in Argentina in 1967 run has been forgotten not just by time but the original cast as well.
So. Yeah? See why the Kettles were saints? Speaking of saintly virtues I cannot but mention S.R. Foxley who is, I am increasingly convinced, the Earthly element of Generosity. When I first saw the gentleman in question he was wearing a winged cap patterned after Rainbow Dash. In public. This is a difficult sartorial choice. I mean I own a fez but I don’t exactly wear one in public. Police might be called. Foxley, on the other hand, pulls it off with aplomb. I wasn’t even sure what aplomb was until I saw him rocking the Dash wings in downtown Ludwigsburg, and yes, there it was: aplomb in its pure elemental state. Despite mastery of difficult sartorial choices and an easy, sprawling manner that’s instantly charming, S.R. Foxley sticks in my mind most because of his intense commitment to generosity. Some people will pick up a tab from time to time, some will do so regularly, Foxley collected the things.
At one point, while eating chili con carne at an Irish pub in Germany (it made exactly as much sense at the time) he snuck out in the middle of the meal in order to cover all of our food, and, lemme tell ya, a posse of pony prose peddlers pursuing plushies works up quite an appetite. S.R. Foxley also accompanied a pony scholar of great distinction whose presence at Galacon alone made it competitive with its cousin in Baltimore. I’m talking, naturally, of Skywriter.
Skywriter is not what you’d expect.
You can’t help it. When you communicate with someone online you start forming a mental image of sorts, partially because of the way the talk and partially because of the tyranny of the avatar. So, to my shock, Skywriter wasn’t a blue pegasus. It wasn’t much of a shock but it was there all the same. A much greater shock was how quiet Skywriter was in person. There was this chap with evidently so much to say and, online, an easy, witty, and friendly manner that makes a comment by him the highlight of any thread and yet there he stood. Silent.
I was really afraid I’d done something to insult the man, possibly with my generally sqeeish manner upon meeting him.
He’s Skywriter don’t you dare tell me you’d not be the same way.
But given time it turned out to just be residual shyness and from time to time you’d catch little glimpses and flashes of how Skywriterly Skywriter is and by the end of our time together, when we had faced down Herman the Flamingo Who Hates Tourists, traveled the Magic Tunnel That Didn’t Quite Make It Out In Equestria, Damn It, and crafted what I believe the kids these days call ‘dank memes’ it was evident that Skywriter was in fact, precisely, who’d you expect.
He was Skywriter.
I know, right?
However, if a meeting with him is in your future (and an envious future that would be, let me tell you) I can offer a cheat code as it were. Mention D&D. Skywriter has what I can only describe as an encyclopedic knowledge of tabletop roleplaying and a deep and abiding passion for it that cannot help but suffuse anything he says on the topic. I recommend a conversation with him on the topic in the same way I recommend breathing, sunlight, and happiness.
Also, a game DM’d by Skywriter would be an absolutely sublime experience. Fact.
Skywriter also indebted me greatly by managing to find Litho and bring him to the hotel room (Ferret’s natch) where I was currently being plied with the collected candies and alcohols of half a dozen countries. Litho is one of my long-suffering Russian translators, a noble soul blessed with the mastery of two tongues, and cursed with an appreciation of my stories. Litho, in person, was quiet, considerate, and gave the impression of knowing approximately sixteen thousand times more than he was letting on. The impression is that of a genteel, erudite black hole, in truth. You talk (and in my case talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk) and all your words just pass the event horizon where you feel they have been carefully filed for future reference. This feeling, alas, generally strikes you after you’ve said something that, on reflection, you should have considered with more care. I didn’t get to hang out with Litho enough, alas, but some future year I just might, and meanwhile I’m sure that my blathering has provided fresh materials to the cavernous vaults of knowledge hidden inaccessible past the Lithian Event Horizon.
Speaking of celestial phenomena, the people I was meeting kept talking about some ‘nighty’ person. I had no clue who this was and almost asked a few times if this was some FimFictioneer I missed (like Archonix and Cursori of whom I was inexcusably unaware until I beheld them in the beard flesh). I eventually didn’t ask because I was too overwhelmed with meeting all of these people and because asking before turned out to be… not my best moment. So, I was waiting for, presumably, some batpony enthusiast to show up when, behind me, I heard, unmistakably, peals of thunder that resolved themselves into a voice like the foundations of the Earth being torn asunder.
"כִּ֣י אָֽנֹכִ֞י יְהוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ אֵ֣ל קַנָּ֔א"
It said. Or words to that effect.
I turned and I beheld.
A figure as unto a man, and unto an eagle, and unto a lion in raiments like embers, clothed in sunlight, and crowned with the sunrise.
I turned and I beheld.
A cloud of numinous flame twice as tall as eternity with veins of the sweet smoke of sacrifices snaking through casting shadows bigger than nations upon the face of the Earth.
I turned and I beheld.
A dove with the wingspan that crosses galaxies, and eyes like oceans, and a cry as unto the End of Days brooding over the Boundlessness Before, the gravid chaos ordained to be the dark materials of creation.
I turned and I beheld.
Wheels within wheels, thick with eyes, endlessly turning and churning in places that are beyond height, length, and breadth as the ocean is beyond a puddle. Wheels within wheels supporting a light brighter than a galaxy dying, flanked with pillars of luminous shadow, and around it in a ring, a thousand figures, brighter than flame, with six wings and golden crowns crying “Holy, holy, holy!”
I turned and I, I beheld.
In person, knighty, is dark, trim, and spare and gives the impression of knowing everything you are going to say much better than you but conceding to let you say it because he’s trying to be nice. In truth, while he likely really does knows more than you, knighty isn’t trying to be nice, he is nice and he held up under the natural barrage of ‘Genfic when?’ with good humor and only slight intimations of violence.
So I didn’t ask about knighty and got, in turn, an only slightly apocalyptic vision, but I still consider this a win compared to the time I did ask. So I arrived ahead of everyone else, and I foolishly spent the first full day upon arrival walking about under a flamethrower sky developing a fine case of heat stroke. Of course when people did arrive in the evening, I had just arrived to my hotel (which I cleverly booked in an area of the town several miles from anywhere I actually wanted to be) and was busy feeling sorry for myself.
Ferret tried to get me to move and while eventually she did, Professor Plum (who was later determined to be a damson) felt compelled to grab the laptop and call me a nerd. I hold no grudges over this (I’ve hired a clan of ninjas to do that in my stead—sleep well, Professor, sleep lightly) but it helps explain the depth of my embarrassment later. For, you see, prodded by the twin forces of Ferret being her usual adorable, hyper self, and Plum calling me a nerd I eventually crawled my way to the hotel where the sane people booked and after a round of hugs, we all went to grab dinner. So far so good.
During the dinner while talking[1] I mentioned, in dead earnest, how tomorrow we’ll have to go and wait for that Professor Plum character, maybe even picking him up from the airport. There was a stretch of silence and this chap, smiling, broad shouldered and preposterously tall sort of waved to me from across the table. Yes, despite having talked to him and despite him hugging me at least once, I completely blanked on him being there and was even making plans to go and meet him at the airport.
I made a fervent prayer that the Earth should open up and swallow me. It would not be the last time. Oh no.
[1] And talking and talking and talking… I ended up talking so much during that dinner that the nice waitress lady felt compelled to wrest my pasta from me under the assumption that, since I’ve not touched it in an hour, I wasn’t really hungry. I am a bit on the verbose side. Sorry everyone who couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Speaking of embarrassing myself thoroughly there was the cringe-inducing moment of meeting Archonix and Cursori.
See, I had no earthly clue who they were.
None.
I can be a bit dense and more than a bit oblivious.
Archonix, in case you are at least in part as dense as I am is a prolific and popular author who is, among many other things, the premier authority on Donkey and Mule related worldbuilding, having noticed a crack in the worldbuilding facade of MLP and resolved himself to crowbar this crack open. As someone who made a ponyfic career out the speculation that Equestria might have some bureaucrats somewhere, I can’t help but admire it.
In person, Archonix is a dwarf. I don’t mean he’s short, because he isn’t at all. He’s quite tall, but that just makes him a tall dwarf. I could not look at him: bald, magnificently bearded, and solid and dependable even when being funny without imagining him with an axe, in a mine, possibly fighting orcs. It was just uncanny.
Speaking of people magnificently bearded, there was also Cursori whose Fimfiction presence is slight enough that I hope that I may be forgiven for not running into him before. Still, he is a sculptor of considerable skill, and in person is a very charming conversationalist who gives the impression of having redirected his body’s entire capacity for growth and flourishing into his beard which alone has more personality than most people I meet on a day-to-day basis. It is red, bushy, and in every way magnificent.
In fact, with Cursori (intensely Danish), Archonix (dwarf), and me (family spent two centuries being mercenaries in this exact part of Germany, don’t ask) around there was a certain something in the air, a blast of trumpets, a baying of hounds, a sense that we’d be doing things incorrectly if we didn’t end up leaving the town behind us simply wreathed in flames. But we were all three of us nice, civilized people, and we were guests there and so we didn’t…
...so far as the authorities can prove. I shouldn’t say anything else. Not here.
So what was it like meeting all these people? What was it like going (near) a con? Would I recommend it?
Wonderful. Amazing. And absolutely.
In fact, it is my firm intention to do it again next year, except this time I will take risk and try to make it to Bronycon. I will need to acquire a staggering amount of money, and the permission of the United States Department of State, but there’s loads more of you people I want to meet and if you are inconveniently far away, well, I won’t let that stop me.
And do be warned, fine folk of transoceanic lands, should I come ‘round and meet you I will write a blog much like this one and I, I will…
...describe you.
*shudders* No, not that, anything but that!
The council has accepted that I am an unstoppable force of nature and they only need four fingers of scotch with which to read my reports these days!
This is the most god-damned marvellous write-up a human could wish for.
The rare and elusive Happy Ghost author style is a true delight
4915119 It actually pales in comparison to seeing Happy Ghost Author in person. We must make sure you attend BC next year so you can experience it yourself.
And then we can see who talks more: Ghost or Aragon.
Well goddamn, now my writeups look like child's play.
The blog talks of death and devastation---not as something that happened but something that perhaps could--and there is the hint, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, of Germany being in danger when Galacon happened. Note how Ghost never actually entered the convention, knowing that his presence could bring misfortune. Note how Ghost went to the Gardens alone first, as if to check, just to be sure, that the Gardens could even withstand him.
In more than one occassion, a doctor is referenced. In at least one moment, Ghost does see himself as one--but not as a doctor that comes to heal, or as a doctor that comes to teach. It's a dark doctor, the one who comes at night. The one who cannot heal. The one who brings the Plague.
Note the angelic imagery. Knighty. The Kettles. Note the archaic tongues, the skies splitting in two halves, the chaos primigenial bending its knee and bowing its head to the Ones Who Do Not Burn.
And note how Ghost doesn't tremble, he doesn't hide, he doesn't run.
He beholds.
The reader focuses on the angel, but forgets to look at the storyteller. But perhaps that's a mistake. Read the blog and wonder, and feel the shiver down your spine. There are angels, and they are shown. There are humans, and they are shown. But there is devastation, and death, and destruction that could have come, and the one who brings it -- the one who causes it -- is never described.
So read the blog, and wonder. Who else can look into the eyes of a monster's reflection, if not the monster himself?
This was hella enjoyable.
Well, the Irish pub we went to in Baltimore had hummus and risotto, so yours is in good or at least strange company.
Also, one could argue that you left the town wreathed in flames... and also arrived to the same. The weather beat you to it.
Here's hoping the Redactedstani slingshot will be powerful enough to send you over the Atlantic next year.
4915123
Just make sure we test that in a well-ventilated area. There's a very real chance of suffocation if we let them loose on each other in a sealed room.
Why can’t we upvote blog posts?
4915136 Ooh, good point. I always forget since it doesn't bother me and I find it pretty easy to keep up ^^;
4915102
There may be adjectives.
4915136
You and me both. You don't want them to miss and for me to land in the icy Atlantic. My heart would not go on.
4915137
Maybe if we pray to Knighty he'll make a miracle happen?
4915130
The author of the blog dwells just behind the all-concealing I and should perhaps be allowed to remain there. As an act of mercy. Towards whom...
...it's best not to speculate.
4915137
4915144
On the upvoting and favoriting of blog posts, I remember bringing it up to Knighty and Xaquseg once. The reply I got was "Oh, great, another reason for people to nag at us that other users are being mean!"
They had this look in their eyes, man. They had seen things. They had seen things you can't forget with ease.
Elbonia? I knew it!
Well that would explain the lack of "Holy! Holy! Holy!"s from the Kettles: the appropriate receptacle was lacking at the time. (A few paragraphs lster: Dammit, Ghost, you and your being the OP beat me to it.)
Delighted your experience was so positive, if overly reminiscent of a pizza oven. Hope you (and I!) do manage to make it to Bronycon next year.
...well, I'm kinda hoping I might be able to get out that way again next year, so... y'know... that might be nice?
Ferret is an absolutely amazing human being. Met and worked with, both wonderful experiences.
Did you manage to avoid all the effects of that lady sneaking through security at Munich Airport and getting everything closed down and causing backups and cancellations for days after?
I will see you there, Ghost.
Godspeed. Glad you had fun.
You do realize that even your blog posts make me laugh more than I have all month? You're a danger to the rest of us.
It's becoming a mission for many to make it to Bronycon next year. I hope to see you there, but it feels like we might have to double the length of the con just to say hi to everyone.
A splendid and accurate summary.
Still, there's the whitewashing of the crimes against readability perpetrated by German public transport that irks me a bit, but I can forgive that.
Diggy diggy hole?
Would love to meet you. If you manage to get things worked out with our state department, I'll toss in a good chunk of money to help fund the trip. Maybe I need to inquire with my contacts in the US spy agencies to help things along.
i was there (my 4th gala) and i didn't know... so many people i could have meet if i just knew
'twas a pleasure. And I've got several stories I need to read now (several of which I had "read" chapters in since I usually go straight to top rated fics for testing stuff)
Man, I worried you'd be worried that I was cheesed off or something. Let's put it this way: on an intellectual and conversational level you all were up there doing mixed martial arts bloodsports, and I was sitting ringside, and everyone was saying, huh, I wonder if he just doesn't want to participate and have fun with our mixed martial arts death battle, and I'm all like, NO I DO NOT WANT TO GET UP THERE BECAUSE I WILL GET FSCKING MURDERED.
Thankfully y'all eventually stopped talking about the spread of Indo-European culture and broke into the topic of D&D, on which I am on more stable conversational footing. My preferred MMA style is apparently Geek Kune Do.
Things I Have Learned From Ghost's and Aragon's Con Blogs:
1) Wanderer D is not a Latias
2) Skywriter is not a blue pegasus
What is the world coming to?
(Fear not though, dear reader, for I have it on the authority of my local ponythread that the one time some of them met in the flesh[1] they came away still convinced that I was, in fact, a Lich covered by an illusion spell.)
Also, why is it there are now no shows or conventions in my neck of the woods these days? I'm as central to England as you can possibly get, and yet everything happens at the extremites of the country. I mean, REALLY. This year, my local Derby Wargames convention (which has been getting further and further away from Derby with each year) has in fact been cancelled this year, so I am especially miffed. If I find out this is an actual conspiracy... There will be words.
And by words I mean "eat rocket launcher foul conspirator! Muahahahahahaha!"
[1]Well, the five-sense-plausible-deniability-illusion anyway.
Oh my. This blog was an event unto itself!
And a wonderful event it was, too.
I can confirm that Baden-Wüttenburg (I'm not sure if I recall the spelling correctly) is exceptionally ordinary. Or at least it was when I was an exchange student there about eight years ago.
Glad you had an amazing time near Galacon. Best of luck putting together all the necessary things to get to The Final Bronycon next year.
If the real deal was even one-fifth as great as you make it sound, that must have been one hell of a great con experience!
I have found the musical interpretation of this blogpost, as composed and performed by an actual mad genius:
There is no season
When you are grown
You are always risen
From the seeds you've sown
There is no reason
To rise alone
Other stories given
Have sages of their own*
* Can you spot the Heinlein reference? Trick question--the whole song is one. Now guess which book.
This is fantastic in all possible meaning of the word.
I'm so glad I read this. I lost it at your description of the good Professor.
It was great to meet you!