BronyCon, Day 1 · 9:10pm Aug 9th, 2019
QUICK EDIT: Okay, I think images are fixed now! Yeah, they're fixed. Yay! 
Day 1:
Hi there! This is part of my blog series on the adventure that was the last BronyCon! If you're just joining us, you should probably start here:
Day 0
Part 1 of Day 1
Part 2 of Day 1
Part 1 of Day 2
Part 2 of Day 2
Part 1 of Day 3
Part 2 of Day 3
Day 4
Epilogue
Sorry about the delay in getting this part out. Remember that Data Structures and Algorithms class I had to work ahead in to be able to go to BronyCon? The final exam was yesterday. Getting ready and taking that test used up my whole day, which I otherwise would have devoted some time from to write this next part of the BronyCon epic.
Anyway. So, when we last left off, I was on an airplane. Flying coast to coast from west to east is a little weird to think about in solar terms; it's like you're kind of, uh, "helping" the sun, in a way. Or at least hitting a fast-forward button. It's a five-and-a-half hour flight from Seattle to Baltimore, but eight and a half hours pass, according to timezone-respecting clocks. The magic of Celestia is real! 
If only your body knew what was going on.
We landed at around 5:20am, which, after subtracting those "bonus" three hours, feels like 2:20am. This wasn't particularly a problem for me at the time, since I have to admit I'm usually a naughty little pony without much heed for the concept of a "consistent bedtime" and it's pretty typical for me to still be wide awake at 2am. 3 or 4 is more where tend to I hold out to. Turns out, when you're an adult living on your own, no one can make you go to bed. It's a double-edged sword, just like the fact that as an independent adult you can have ice cream for breakfast and no one can tell you no (there's a little pro-tip for you, BTW - use it as wisely or unwisely as you wish).
The point here is, I didn't really sleep on the flight and I hit the ground wide awake, having effectively pulled an all-nighter that my circadian systems had no idea was an all-nighter, and didn't even think it was really bedtime yet when in fact the entire window of feasibility for a bedtime was long gone.
Oh, yes. This would be a fun day.
The sky was just beginning to glow to herald the imminent Vanquishing of the Night and the glorious Coming of the Sun as we deboarded from the plane. No messing with the baggage claim, since everything my roommate and I brought was carry-on (although getting it out of the overhead bins was a game, since we were the literal last ones onto the plane and had to really kinda fudge to find space). We made our way out of the secure area and towards ground transportation.
The question at hoof to be faced on the next leg of the quest: how do you get from BWI to Baltimore Convention Center? Wouldn't you know, it's almost like some bright spark involved in Baltimore's city planning processes realized that this would be a frequent problem and thoughtfully designed a solution into the Light Link Rail system. Actually, I'd had the foresight before the flight to do a Google search for "How to get to Baltimore Convention Center from the airport," (because sometimes I'm a smartass Twilight Sparkle like that) and this was the suggested answer. I was unsure of this route being viable, at first, because Baltimore hasn't had the best luck with its light rail lately; flooding and resulting terrain collapse have been an issue and closed some stations (and, of course, these issues were perfectly timed for BronyCon, because they would have to be, right?). But the Baltimore transit authority's website assured me that the light rail from the airport was still open up to Camden station, easily within walking distance of the convention center. Perfect. Also, a one-way ticket only costs $1.90, easily beating the price of any other option. Even more perfect.
While I was waiting for the train, I noticed this:
Huh. I hadn't thought about it, but I guess it is Maryland, so I could have gone down to the Naval Academy in Annapolis if I wanted to.
I mean, I really didn't particularly want to, but I could have.
The train ride took about half an hour to reach Camden station, during which the sun rose and brought on the morning proper. It was daylight by the time we arrived, and the August air was already warm and humid even in the early morning. When we got off there, we had to kind of weave our way through the various barriers (including, at one point, kind of a sketchy walk along the side of the tracks where I'm pretty sure people aren't supposed to walk) as we pushed north toward the convention center. As promised by the maps, it wasn't far.
There were BronyCon stickers on the convention center windows as we walked past. We'd arrived! The fabled BronyCon! The biggest and most storied of pony conventions! The hype was REAL!
...Well, not yet it wasn't. 6:30am or so was well before anything was open. There were some con-goers milling around outside and already forming up for the registration lines, though. Yeah. I could see where this was going.
Welcome to Linecon!
Oh well. When an event draws 11,000 people, that's kinda what you expect, if you're realistic. And anyway, we were still carrying all our stuff, which we really didn't want to be doing. To the hotel!
My roommate had booked the hotel room, which was the Renaissance a few blocks north of the convention center (but fortunately still inside the Inner Harbor area so we didn't have to walk through anywhere not-good late at night). It was right across the street from Tir Na Nog, actually. Just one hitch, though: check-in time there isn't until 4pm. Meh. We walked on in anyway, to see what we could do, and found out that in fact it would likely be possible to check in much earlier, at around 10-11am, once some double-queen rooms were cleared. Until then, we checked our bags with the front desk and wandered on back to the convention center.
Outside the convention center doors, the line had only grown longer by this time, now running away down the sidewalk. I settled in to solidify my place, lest it only get worse later. My roommate, not really into that and having not been fed during our all-night flight, wandered off to go find breakfast. I'm sure I was hungry at that point, but at the time I didn't feel it enough to make it a priority. Conventions are funny like that. The excitement tends to mask over a lot of things you might normally want to pay attention to, like, "Gee, I'm starving."
Even just waiting wasn't dull, though. There was a reporter and her cameraman wandering up and down the line, briefly interviewing people. They didn't get to me, which I think is just as well, since I have no idea what I could have said anyway.
The doors opened at... 8:20? Maybe? A little later than the advertised 8am, if I'm remembering correctly. The line moved forward into the convention hall, and formed back up in the downstairs Charles Street lobby, in front of the doors for exhibit hall A. Actually, it was chopped up into a bunch of segments, standing side by side in order. It looked something like this:
I was probably in like the fourth or fifth such segment. I was worried that reg would take forever, because I've certainly been to cons where that's been the case.
I needn't have worried, though! BronyCon had their act together (for this particular instance of line management, at least) and it was no more than about 15-20 minutes from exhibit hall A doors opening to getting badged. There were a ton of general reg booths open, as they seem to have anticipated demand quite well. So that started off my at-the-actual-con experience on the right foot, which I took as an auspicious sign.
Now, it was 8:45 or so, and I was badged and had access, but there weren't actually any events until noon.
About this time, the time hit me. 8:45am Baltimore is... 5:45am Seattle. Now I'm tired.
Right. Caffeine time. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but through all of undergrad I'd relied on a 20oz of Coke to do the trick for those morning classes because those seem to have just about the right amount. And the convention center had more than enough vending machines, so that was the order of the morning. I walked up and down the convention center, familiarizing myself with the layout of everything and surveying the vending machine locations (which is what I like to do first thing when I arrive in any convention space). I found a machine with diet Coke, which is much preferred for morning sodas because bombing myself with tons of real sugar too early in the AM can sometimes do painful things to my stomach.
All the machines at the convention center have those credit card slot things, but I try not to use those - it seems silly to run a charge for a mere bottle of soda, right? They also all purport to take cash, if the "insert bills here" slot and their coin slots are to be believed. Except sometimes they don't actually. The one I used was one of those. I tried feeding in a five. It spat it back at me. I tried feeding in a one. Again, raspberried. I think at one point I actually told the machine to "shut up and take my money!" but it just wasn't having any of that old-timey physical currency stuff. Okay, fine, I just want my damned caffeine. I'll run the card.
$6 plz. Thank you.
WTF.
Actually, the machine claimed $3 on its LCD display, but my bank informed me that this was a dirty lie via the text message I had it configured to send me whenever a charge is authorized on my card. The authorization amount was $6, not $3. I always expect convention center markups on everything during a convention weekend, and $3 would be in line with what I expect to see for a 20oz. Give the devil his due, fine. I can live with it. But $6? That's just kind of an F-you. I also suspect there might have been something wrong with that machine, since it displayed $3. Needless to say, I didn't use that one again this con.
Oh well. (Overpriced) diet coke in hand and nothing much to do, I meandered on down to the second level of the convention center, where they have a bunch of cool model ships on display:
Also, apparently olives are self-serve at the convention center:
There was also some artwork that was, uh... bagel-themed, I guess?
I feel like this was probably sponsored by someone who wants to sell you bagels, but I didn't notice who.
I didn't do a whole lot until 10:45 or so, when I met back up with my roommate and we walked back to the hotel. A room was ready by then, so we reclaimed our bags and checked in. We were on the 9th floor, in a room that had a lovely view of... part of the hotel roof, and the windows of some other rooms. Wasn't all bad, though. There were a lot of fellow bronies staying there, and many of them put plushies and other merch in their windows, so the roof view was at least decently ponied-up for the weekend.
Then, back to the convention center to rejoin the fray.
There were two panels at 12, and the one I wanted to go to was "The Most Metal 1980s Show Ever Invented: My Little Pony Generation 1." I wanted to see this one because I saw that on the schedule, and I was like, THANK YOU! Someone else gets it! I watched MLP G1 (at least the MLP movie) when I was a little kid, and I recently re-watched the entire series a year or so back to do research for a MLP RPG I'm running for my gaming group. What's always struck me about it is that My Little Pony Gen. 1 was, in fact, pretty heavy stuff - at one point, for instance, Applejack just kinda straight-up kicks a dude off a cliff to his (presumable) death. I have a theory on why this is so: MLP Gen.1 as a TV show/movie was, let's admit it, basically a long toy commercial. The same treatment was given to other toy/cartoon franchises at the time, as well: He-man, Thundercats, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and etc., and what you'll notice about these contemporaries of MLP G1 is that they were all pretty grim because they were selling "boy's toys" based on action figure characters from stories centered around a grand (and conveniently long-running) violent conflict. Eternal war makes for eternal action, and eternally exciting action makes for eternal toy sales. So I think the 1980s toy marketing wisdom went. MLP was... well, a thing I think they ("they" being executives) knew was a success as a toy, but were a bit puzzled by how to handle and market as a story, so they tried to fit it into this same known-constant mold of action/adventure stories with high stakes and consequent dark elements. So it became what was ostensibly a "girl's" toyline, interestingly (if sometimes awkwardly) crowbarred into cartoon storylines that were made in much the same image as those of the "boy's" toys, because that's what the people at Hasbro knew at the time. The villains were thoroughly ill-intentioned. The ponies had a lot on the line in those cartoons - vicious exploitation, enslavement, threats to their own existence, sometimes the fate of their very world. Just like the "boy's" toy storylines did. In that sense, you might say that MLP has been challenging gender stereotyping not just with the G4 Brony phenomenon, but from all the way back in G1. Or at least I like to think so!
Anyway. No, I didn't get into that one. In hindsight, this was sort of predictable; it was one of only two panels going on in the opening timeslot of the opening day of the biggest convention in fandom history. Of course everyone rushed it. And by "rushed it," I mean showed up way early and formed a horrendously long line that got the room capacity capped before most people even had a chance.
Oh well. I guess I'll wait for the YouTube video of that panel, like so many others I missed. That's the nice thing about BronyCon. I may not have been able to get into everything in realtime, but I'll pretty surely be able to get to them in internet-time.
I probably could have made it in if I'd gone into this thing determinedly with a plan, been well early for the line ("Welcome to Linecon!"), and so forth, like a good little Twilight Sparkle. And I realized that. Not doing so was a deliberate choice, and there's a reason I did it that way: this con is the first one in a long time I've been to as just... general attendance. A guest. A nobody. Free to just... drift. And sometimes, that's a nice place to be! At Everfree Northwest, I work staff (Writing track! Woo!) every year. I love doing that, and I usually get into everything I want to even with staffing responsibilities, but what it does mean is that, before the con even begins, I pretty much know exactly what I'm doing, at least in the major strokes, ALL WEEKEND. It's all blocked out and planned, in some ways FOR me, rather than BY me. I know I'm helping to run ORCs. I know I'm judging ScribbleFest. I know the writing room schedule back and forth and inside and out, and I know that's where I'm hanging. And it's great! Nothing beats how rewarding it is, and that sense of being part of it all. But it's a different experience than my first couple times at cons, where I had no preconceptions of what these things were like so I just went in blind and reveled in the menagerie of rampant, unbridled fandom flourishing all around me. There was something really special about that. They were a kind of fun that's hard to recapture otherwise.
That's what I wanted my first, last, biggest BronyCon experience to be - that sense of something fresh and wondrous. I wanted it to be something to discover, not something to be scripted. So, beyond a cursory glance on the website, I very deliberately didn't even even look at the BronyCon schedule of events until I was handed the conbook and the folding paper schedule with my badge at registration. That is to say, in very un-Twilight fashion, I intentionally didn't plan my con before the con. Doing things this way is messy, it forces your decisions to arise organically, in the moment, in the way of those very first con experiences. Like most decisions in life, this carries tradeoffs; the end result is that, yeah, you miss some things in exchange for recapturing that spontaneous, moment-by-moment exploration. One of them was that panel.
But! Not making it into that one left plenty of time to get in line early for the next panel in the Hall of the Moon, which was the 1:15pm "Chaos and Cuddles: Writing About Children and Families" with BlazzingInferno and Epic Yarn (who are a married couple with kids, and therefore well qualified as panelists here - and who had their own adventure just getting to the con, calling into question whether they'd make it to this panel, but they did, fortunately!) and a third person to whom I'm terribly sorry but I can't immediately remember your name. I'm sure the comment section will remember, though. You guys are great like that.
Lots of good points brought up in that panel. No, children aren't just mini-adults, so don't write them as smaller versions of cynical grown-ups. They are, however, people, and some empathetic thought, putting yourself in their shoes, is essential to writing them right. Children are perceptive, moreso than you realize, so A. write child characters with this in mind, and B. don't dumb things down if you're writing for kids. They know. And often, they don't like it. At least, I know that I didn't when I was a kid (going back to that empathy point).
let's see, what did I do after that? Actually, after that, frankly I felt I was going to fall over where I stood, I was so tired. Conveniently, there wasn't really anything on the schedule for a long while that I really wanted to go to, so I decided to go back to my hotel room for a break. The trek back through the streets of Baltimore didn't help my tiredness along the way; it had been warm and muggy in the early morning when I'd showed up, but now, at 2pm, it was downright hot and the humidity hadn't improved any. Also, maybe I should have invested in sunglasses, because I had to squint most of the way, feeling snowblinded by the sunlight both from above and reflecting off all the fairly light-colored sidewalks and pavement.
After fighting through that, gaining a greater appreciation for Baltimore's one-way pedestrian friendly streets and good walk signals, I was back in my room at last. At that point, it seemed like a very good time to finally get some sleep.
And this seems like a good time to break from the adventure for now. I don't think there's that much left to tell of Thursday, but I am starting to realize this is running very long for a blog post. We'll pick up again soon, though! Until then... Thanks for coming along, and see you in the next blog post. 
Can confirm that the G1 panel was a lot of fun, though the presenter was unfamiliar with the comics, so no mention was made Applejack straight up killing an evil wizard. Still plenty of horrific things happening to and around ponies, up to and including cryomantic penguin Hitler.
Balancing red and black trees is no problem when you've already dealt with red and black alicorn OCs!
I almost forgot that we met in the QNS room. It was fun talking to you. :)
The third person on the panel was bookplayer
I wish I could get by on that little sleep. I only recall pulling one genuine all-nighter in college; listening to birds chirping in the early morning hours (that felt like middle-of-the-night hours) was… unsettling.
Glad you enjoyed the panel!
I have to admit, I did a bit of “let the con take me here or there” with Blazzing. By that, I mean I let Blazzing dictate the schedule and I went with it instead of giving (too much) input. It was definitely a different experience, but also very pleasant :)
RE: heat and humidity -- I know that feel.
I've spent the majority of my life in Louisiana, SE Texas, and then Missouri. So you'd think I'd be well used to hot and humid conditions. But wow, less than a year in Seattle completely robs one of that "resistance factor" per se. I was about two steps off the plane in Baltimore when the humidity ran me over like a train.
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Seattle spoils you, for sure! I love it here.
Sounds like a lot of fun. Wish I could have gone, but it wasn't in the budget this year, and I'm not sure I could have handled the crowds (and I'm happy with EFNW anyway). Looking forward to reading about the rest of the con!
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I personally wouldn't mind it a bit warmer here in the winter, but I can definitely trade that for the year-round mild climate. Seattle is pretty great that way.
Einstein Brothers Bagels. I'm not sure why. Maybe they used to have a location inside the convention center?