UK PonyCon 2023 con report: Days 2 and 3 · 9:09pm Oct 8th, 2023
Day 2: Second day of UK PonyCon
I commented to Ghost Mike that our hotel reminded me of The Backrooms, but I don't think he knew the reference.
Since I wasn't costuming today and had already registered the previous day, we could afford to take things a little slower this morning, so I went down for breakfast with Mike. Mike was, alas, suffering from the same ailment he had had last year at UK PonyCon, which meant he was having trouble eating without being sick. I had no such problem, but kept my breakfast light anyway.
We trotted over to the venue in good time to catch the first panel, Britannia Master - a British-infused Taskmaster game for our special guests. It's only since last year that I've been familiar with Taskmaster, but I really like it as a concept - a game where you simply have to complete a task, and how you go about doing it is up to you. There were four contestants: Kelly Sheridan, Elley-Ray, Archer, and Ember, with Bexi as the Taskmaster and Laura Kay as Alex Horne. They even provided the tasks to the contestants in sealed envelopes and had them read them out, which is a good use of your voice talents while you have them.
The first task: Introduce yourself as creatively as possible.
The contestants were given 5 minutes to prepare, and chaos swiftly ensued. Kelly Sheridan vanished off-stage; Elley-Ray found a box of stick-on gems and upended herself on the stage so that a volunteer could apply them to her face; Archer similarly decorated herself with stickers. Remember what I said last time about stickers? Yeah, bleugh. Oh, it's horrid. Anyway, five minutes later, the contestants were ready to introduce themselves.
Ember and Archer were up first, and I intend no offense to them because I thought they did great, but I can't remember what their introductions were. I think Ember declared himself the number one Vinyl Scratch fan or something. Elley-Ray went up third, and having pushed facial bedazzlement to its limits, she crawled out from the stage like some kind of twinkly youkai and proceeded to hug the audience. All of it. One person at a time. You know, I always assumed voice actors would be cautious about getting close to people due to the danger of catching illnesses that could potentially affect their voice, but Elley-Ray Hennesey doesn't know the meaning of the word caution. Or covid.
On an unrelated note, I still haven't seen The Ring.
Recognizing that Elley-Ray's mission to hug the universe would take considerable time, the hosts decided to continue with the introductions, and moved onto Kelly. Unfortunately, Kelly was nowhere to be seen, having never returned to the stage following the carnage. I tried to find footage of what happened next online, but couldn't, so you'll have to make do with my description:
The audience are looking around in confusion, as Kelly's whereabouts are still unknown. Suddenly, "In Our Town" starts blaring out from the AV system. A few moments later, I realize that something is happening above the stage. The main stage sits beneath the first floor concourse, and there's a large UK PonyCon banner, conveniently sized for a person to crouch beneath.
A Starlight Glimmer plushie - Kelly's own, in fact - is dancing a slow march across the railing to the music. As she reaches the end of the banner, Keleanor Motorboating Glim-Glam Sheridan herself arises, continuing the perfectly-timed march as she descends the staircase with effortless confidence and struts back to the stage to much applause. In my heart, she's already won, and I think the audience concurs, as do the hosts. Elley came second, when she eventually returned, followed by Ember and Archer.
Onto the second task: Throw teabags into the teacup from behind the line. Closest wins.
If you don't know Taskmaster, this is one of those tasks where you can gain an advantage by creatively interpreting the rules. I speculated that if our Canadian guests were not familiar with the show, Archer and Ember might be able to outplay them here.
Archer went first and was given a dozen teabags to toss. Several of them got very near the cup, but none made it in.
Next up, Ember, who did what I was expecting: He moved the teacup next to the line, and simply placed the teabags in. Kelly apparently had been expecting this too, revealing that she was perfectly aware of what Taskmaster involves. Alas, Ember's rulebending was not strong enough, and the hosts noted that the rules specifically said to throw the teabags in, which would disqualify dropping or placing them.
Kelly was up next and got her teabag in, with a legitimate throw, on the first attempt, because Starlight Glimmer is just that OP. Another win to Kelly!
Finally, Elley was up, and went for more creative rulebending; she recruited members of the audience to hold the cup and try to catch the teabags as she threw them. A great idea, and very Elley-Ray, but unfortunately she forgot that you're not allowed to cross the line, and several of her throws were made from in front of it. However, a completely biased audience vote overturned the decision, and so Elley came second.
Next, the third task: Personify a Yorkshire pudding. Best impression wins.
I don't know how familiar my non-UK readers are with this English dish, so here's a photo:
It's a sort of baked batter paraboloid traditionally served with gravy. It's crusty on the outside but soft inside, and soaks up gravy well and it's really nice with a roast dinner.
Ember was up first, with an impressive monologue extolling the virtues of the Yorkshire pudding, which was well-delivered and very convincing.
Next up was Elley, who opted for a physical, interpretive performance, inverting her voluminous skirt and contorting herself to form the characteristic concave shape of the pudding. This would be good enough, but among the other words Elley doesn't know is the word "stop", for she continued with her embodiment. As I mentioned, Yorkshire puddings are traditionally served with gravy, which meant there was a liquid component to this impression too... which Ellie provided by spitting a stream of Pepsi cola into her hands. Grandma Figgy would be proud, I'm sure.
This impression momentarily left Bexi unable to speak, although a few snorts later she was back in action, and Archer proceeded with the next impression, using a Yorkshire accent for added authenticity, along with an accidental F-bomb (family con, you know).
Kelly finished up with a voicing of a Yorkshire pudding's inner monologue, followed by the inevitable horror of its demise at the hands of a hungry diner.
Finally, the fourth and final task, which was a team effort: Find out what our lucky volunteer's job is. He can only shake or nod his head, and cannot speak.
This was a simple information game, as the contestants asked probing questions of the volunteer in an attempt to zero in on the answer. Kelly's questions were quite carefully chosen, Elley's less so, and they soon figured that it had something to do with working on technology in people's homes. However, they didn't manage to get the exact answer, which was that he was a TV repairman. Honestly, I didn't know those still existed, but then I haven't owned a TV in years.
Kelly was the ultimate winner of Britannia Master, with Elley in second place. Ember and Archer's efforts were admirable, but I don't think they stood a chance, seeing as they had to overcome both the audience bias and the talents of two professional actors.
With that out of the way, I went on to a panel that I'd been most interested to see in UKPC's lineup this year: Whooves Line is it Anyway. I'm a big fan of both the original Whose Line and of the ponified version that AC Racebest has been running at pony cons for the past decade, so there was no way I was going to miss this. Whose Line is an improv show where four contestants play various games and have to invent scenarios on the spot.
I can't remember the contestants aside from Little Owl, who was also a panellist at the con. The games that I remember were: Stand/Sit/Lie Down, Number of Words, Hoedown, Three-Headed Broadway Star, Whose Line, and Greatest Hits. The Hoedown was an absolute mess as none of the contestants could get the timing right and kept starting their song one bar too early. That's not a complaint, mind you - improv is hard, and singing especially so! The contestants did their best with what they were given. Little Owl was the standout for me - he evidently had improv and singing experience and understood the game well. Also I got to yell out "cake" when they asked for scene suggestions, in reference to a convention in-joke that I won't explain any further, and they interpreted this by including Mrs Cake in the scene.
During the panel, we received a message from brick depositor and cybernetic engineer Oilyvalves, who was arriving to the con late, and asked if registrations were still open. I went upstairs to check and found a pleasant surprise on the registration desk: my Izzy plush that I'd lost the previous day! Since I had lost her near the reception desk, I had expected that someone might keep her there. I negotiated her release with Maz, the con chair, who was manning the registration desk, and welcomed her back.
After that, I had to make a difficult decision - there were two panels I was interested in happening at the same time: Room 101, and The Generation Game. These are both patterned after British game shows: Room 101 is a show where contestants nominate things to be put into Room 101, whereupon they will be deleted from existence; the catch is that they have to make a convincing argument to the host. The Generation Game is an old family game show where contestants have to complete various mini-games, the gimmick being that the contestants are always from different generations of the same family. (The only reason it was being run, I think, is because the theme of the con was "Generations").
I eventually settled on The Generation Game, as while I had enjoyed Room 101 in past cons, the setup for this one looked like it would be a bit different to the ones I had seen before, with less audience participation. Also, The Generation Game was being run by a friend, convention plotter and Flutterdash acolyte Patrick Rowberry, and so I felt a sense of duty to attend. That was my first mistake.
There was a modest audience at the panel, and Patrick asked for two contestants for each team. In keeping with my intent to be more assertive and step up for game show panels, I stepped up. That was my second mistake.
I was joined by game breaker and nuclear motorcyclist Dodj, who was either equally masochistic, or, like me, had forgotten what The Generation Game actually entails. It is not a game show where you answer questions. It is a game show where you have to do things. Where you have to be creative, on the spot. Oh dear god.
For the first game, we were each handed a farm animal puppet, and had to come up with a character for the puppet, which we would then voice as the host asked it questions. I hid my terror behind a confident smile as I racked my brains to try to think of something funny. Eventually I settled on calling my puppet, a sheep, "Barbara" (there's a pun in there, I'm sure you'll get it). This seemed to go down well, and I followed up with an observation about how sheep are second-class citizens in Equestria. Not exactly sterling material, but it placated the audience well enough and we secured the first point.
Sadly, that was the end of our success. For the second game, our teams were given LEGO and we had to make something of it. Since we had been given purple and green LEGOs, Dodj suggested creating a sculpture of Gummy with Twilight's manestyle. I thought this was a great idea, and I was sure we could work the LEGO into some kind of artistic shape. Oh, how wrong I was. I haven't actually played with LEGO for a couple of decades, and I failed to realize just how fiddly it would be. I thought the pieces would snap together securely, but we were working with such an odd assortment of oddly-shaped pieces that our efforts just fell apart, and we ended with a nonsense jumble of pieces. Dodj tried their best to pass it off as modern art, but even if they'd succeeded, the other team would easily have beated us because theirs actually looked like something.
To be fair, Dodj was involved in the construction, so it's possible that some of the pieces are just connecting in dimensions that you can't see.
Onto game three, where things got worse. If I had been told, before coming to the con, that I would be participating in a dance-off, I think I would have eventually combusted in a flagration of pure anxiety. Thus, it was at least fortunate that Patrick dropped this on me with no warning, as it only gave me a few minutes to panic. Still, my therapy has actually trained me to seek uncomfortable situations for the purpose of shame attacking, so I decided to roll with it. To make it easier for myself, I retrieved a ring of glowsticks from my bag - this gave me a prop to use to hopefully make the dance more interesting, as god knows I have absolutely no bodily rhythm.
To further perpetuate the hell I had found myself in, Patrick also asked people to get out their phones and record the dance. I'm not sure why, exactly. That sounds absolutely mortifying. It might be because the dance was supposed to be the Bunny Hip-Hop from Tell Your Tale, and that's what happened in the episode. Well, if nothing else, at least I was familiar with the song. Being a Tell Your Tale fan has its perks!
I lasted about halfway through the dance before I ran out of movement ideas and petered out, before eventually finishing with a comedic collapse on the floor. My team partner Dodj didn't fare much better - while they do got the moves, they also do got a chronic health condition that makes movement painful. You know, in retrospect, I'm not sure our team ever stood a chance.
After losing two of three rounds, we were out of the game, but Patrick saw fit to prolong our torment by including us in the final game as a living conveyor belt for the conveyor belt round, where contestants have to remember items as they pass by. I didn't mind that, at least. And with that, we finally escaped.
After this there was a short break before the Charity Auction. I encountered Dodj during this time, who had had an unfortunate setback - they had lost the keys to their motorcycle. Oh dear. Having managed to temporarily mislay a critical item myself this con, I could sympathize. Dodj suspected they had left the keys in the bike, and went to go check. I went into the Charity Auction, but resolved to hop out to check on Dodj if we didn't hear anything from them. Happily, we did eventually receive word that they had, indeed, left the keys in the ignition. They're lucky nobody took the bike, considering this is Nottingham and there's a gang of merry men on the loose.
The Charity Auction this year was ridonkulously huge - 117 items, plus a few extra ones thrown on the end. I can't remember most of them - there were the usual set of UKPC roller banners, a copy of the 2017 MLP Movie on a Game Boy Advance cartridge for some reason, a set of MLP CCG cards (won by Frost Flare, naturally), a plushie bread pony (I told you UKPC memes are always about food, also won by Frost Flare), a picture of Princess Biden (okay, that one is a Griffish Isles meme, don't worry about it), and lots more. To my pleasant surprise, Kelly Sheridan also popped into the auction briefly and offered to sign things. I didn't try to win anything this time around, having learned my lesson last time that if you get stuck at the back of the auction queue, you miss the closing ceremony.
I admit, I was tempted.
After exiting the auction, there wasn't much left to do other than wait for the closing ceremony, so I caught up with Mike, who had managed to get ahead in the auction queue, and then with Oily, who hadn't. I mentioned to Oily that I was looking for Frost Flare, as Mike also had some MLP CCG cards to give to him and I'd forgotten what he looked like (I usually recognize him by his giant OC kirin plushie, and he wasn't carrying it today). By complete fortune, Oily did know what he looked like, and pointed out that Frost had walked by literally two seconds ago, so I rushed off to introduce him to Mike. It turned out Mike had a bunch of cards that are somewhat hard to get hold of now that the CCG is out of print, so that was cool.
The closing ceremony closed out the con, giving Elley-Ray another chance to attack the audience with explosives, and with that we were ejected from the venue. Like a cluster of pub-seeking missiles, we made our way to our usual post-con haunt, the Gooseberry Bush. We had feared that it would be packed because of other events going on in Nottingham, but it was actually surprisingly quiet in there, and we were able to staple three tables together for our festivities. I tried to recruit the help of Zippster and fellow Pippsqueak Bridle Timeout to convince Mike that Pipp is, in fact, best G5 pony, but that battle is not easily won. We'll call it a draw for now.
I also tried to start a game of Palomino Gold, a social deduction game which I first played at Griffish Isles 2022 and really enjoyed. However, we needed at least 6 people and I could only find 5 interested parties, so I had to abandon that idea. However, we did at least get to play Worcester's favorite card game, Chase the Ace, and I won because I had the power of the Pie Sisters on my side. The win doesn't count for the official 2023 Worcester Chase the Ace rankings, but I consider it a moral victory.
The post-con dinner wrapped up around 2200, and so Mike and I headed back to our hotel to do some packing. Well, Mike did some packing. I couldn't be bothered and just flopped into bed.
Day 3: Post-con and the journey home
Since Mike had packed the day before, he went down for breakfast while I stayed and packed my stuff, and we checked out of the hotel around 1100. I hadn't organized any kind of official post-meet this time, but we expected there would be some ponies occupying the Starbucks next to the train station, and indeed there were a modest small handful. I've managed to refine the art of not leaving Nottingham by the latest train possible, so we had a short time to kill with some energetic post-con chit-chat before my train arrived.
Mike was heading in the same direction as me, so we travelled together down to Leicester while Mike regaled me with a reading from the movie version of his magnum pony opus which is coming to an internet near you soon, before Mike departed to be delayed at an airport for the next nine hours. Meanwhile, my train continued barrelling toward London St Pancake station, and since I had packed my Chromebook I spent the rest of the trip watching Deep Space Nine.
I had a great time at UKPC this year - the therapy has definitely helped me to get more out of it, I think. Onto next year, which is the 20th UK PonyCon, and so the theme will be... UK PonyCon. I think the con might have just divided itself by zero. We'll see how that goes next year!
Not only do I not know the reference, I don't recall you ever mentioning this to me (though I can see the connection off the image off the Wikipedia page). And while my loss of appetite woes did have their effects on the weekend (I would not personally deign to calling it being sick), memory loss ain't one of them.
I must say, you remembered a lot more than me of Britannia Master: I'd completely blanked on the last two rounds altogether, Elley-Ray's introduction in the first was so strong (and the liberties for the teabag throwing so good). And as I hadn't attended either Whooves Line is it Anyway or The Generation Game myself, I really enjoyed reading about those two; despite discussion of the latter domination the post-con meal, I didn't really grasp the full range of the stuff you and Dodj had been subjected to! Was that event rather sparsely attended, for you two to end up participating?
Ah, well, see that's why you gotta beeline for the queue as soon as the event's over, like I did.
Though I will say, they managed it much better this year, in terms of having several staff between the payments and fetching the gifts. Off that, I believe they got through everybody before the closing ceremonies started – I was nearby a bit before the ceremony and the queue was down to its last few stragglers. Probably this is why they started the charity auction a half-hour earlier this year relative to the 2:45pm time of 2022.
Haha, yep, they be the freebies I made my deck with for the 2019 tournament at the con (the first and only time I played the game), so they were prominently made of the 2017 Seaquestria and Beyond set (the movie set, basically), old enough to not be too desired then but still meta relevant. And very valuable to collectors and players now, of course.
Departed to not get home for another nine hours is more accurate (closer to ten-and-a-half, really). Spend six hours in the airport, I'd estimate.
But it is a good tease for my tale of woe, folks, coming to a Fimfiction blog near you!
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I believe I quietly commented on it one of the times we went back to our room, although you might have been too busy opening the door to hear :)
I cheated; someone filmed the stage and I referred to the recording on YouTube.
About a couple dozen people, so not too full.