UK PonyCon 2023 Report – Part 2: A True, True Con Is A Con Indeed · 5:01pm Oct 14th, 2023
Kelly Sheriden is nothing if not a method actor. Bereft of a TV-Y rating, Starlight (least, in Season Five) would totally make a cutthroat gesture. And get applause for it.
Part 1 can be read here. Where last we left off, the Voice Actor Q&A panel had concluded with aplomb that more than made up for a script reading on the softer side. And despite a rough early afternoon stretch, my appetite woes had become manageable, boding well for the evening.
There was a mostly-empty hour-long break before the event to its adult-only window (it is a family friendly con otherwise, though kids have been a smaller part of the audience with each year). As Loganberry was leaving then, I said I’d be back to say bye proper after a toilet dash, but upon returning, some crossed wires from misinformation off Hawthorn led me to believe the group had already split, so I took off for food. Hence, I did not get to say adieu properly to a dear friend. A minor bump, but I worked with it. As I needed full calories, McDonalds it was, and thanks to careful sweets management beforehand, I was able to wolf down most of the food before darting back for a panel that, while something of a con mainstay since it was birthed during the lockdown variations, I’d never experienced virtually or in spirit before: The Great Britannia Bake-Off.
You haven’t lived till you witness cutaway gags to a mechanical whisk at work set to Dead or Alive's “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”. Which was doubly funny off how frequently our group plays it.
As on-site baking isn’t allowed, the event is basically a pre-recorded video cutting between footage of four of the key con staff fumbling their way through baking pony-themed dessert, at the end of which the audience votes on the winner. The editing (by Laura Kay once again) absolutely makes this, with comic timing, awkward pauses held just right, quick cutaways (often making meta jokes in doing so), and so on, turning it into a laugh riot. I normally tire very quickly of this modern algorithm-friendly style of video editing, but this was the rare context where it’s an unambiguous positive. Highlights include a cake with strawberries in the shape of the British flag, a recipe trying to mimic cloud beignets from a recent G5 comic, playful jabs about past winners and egos, a cake coming out far bluer than it was supposed to, taste tests that went over both better and worse than the tasters predicted, and many, many jabs from Laura about sending the footage for editing so late despite her warnings. You can watch the whole 31-minute video here now (sans the winner announcement in the hall, which was Bexi).
7:30pm was a solid time to unwind, and also fill up before the drinking fountain location was closed off. By now, most people were enjoying the music concert, but as you might recall, I can barely tell my fandom music apart in isolation, let alone in a concert setting where you can barely hear the lyrics. Past identifying PrinceWhatever, I would be lost at sea, and that asides from not having the best condition for dancing. Or any legs period. 
There was a loose Rainbow Dash Attack tournament in the side room that alternates between it and My Little Karaoke, though in practice this was the same except for asking for signups and then letting each player who did so (all six!) play twice. I gave it a casual go, but could only manage 72K between both attempts, not nearly the 160K of the winner. Still, I enjoy trying this once a year, even if my skills at endless runners are comparatively withered from their early 2010s heyday.
I relaxed at the back of the concert with Hawthorn for a while before it was time for the big Worcester tradition – fumbling our way through the Pub Quiz. I say fumbling off us forming a larger group than anyone should due to laziness, the quiz’s (rightful) inclination to covering all generations, and toy questions too. Alas, a crunched seating arrangement put me and a few others a bit too far away to really lend answers, so Hawthorn took answers himself with the intention of us pooling them with the main group at the end. Unlike last year, this was just four rounds weighted evenly with a bonus 41st question.
Bugger if I know how, but along the way, we ended up doing it alone for real. Which struck me as a poor idea, especially after the toy-centric Round 2 was a wet flop with only one right answer (Dodj having watched all of G3 does not translate into knowing its toys). We rebounded with the more G4-centric round towards the end, and ended up with 17 points, same as the main group half a point behind the main group (see comments). This quiz is always won by the knowledgeable toy collector group with virtually everyone else doing just okay, so this was fine. Easily my proudest contribution was the screenshot of the episode appearances of one FiM character from the wiki, and having to guess who it was. Even prouder was explaining my deduction process to the others afterward.
The last event for the evening was Cartoon Riff, which I’d left midway through in 2019 due to being too tired. Despite still being a free-for-all showing clips of terrible and/or weird cartoons and then the hosts engaging in riffs on them with the audience, this differed in the selection. Rather than pre-chosen stiff of traditional animation from the 90’s you could barely call animation, this consisted of some of the worst-rated children’s animations on Netflix. Two of them being the Buy Our Toys type of shows (the third was a few minutes of Marmaduke, that infamous “0% on Rotten Tomatoes” film from 2022, before security had us clear out at 11).
I later learned most of my friends didn’t much care for the panel’s style, primarily off how easy it is to make something seem bad by pausing at will and dumping on it. Weirdly, despite not normally liking that myself, and having well grown out of the lazy critique style popularised by CinemaSins and its ilk (how did I ever do a take on that, even with positive points as well… 
), I actually enjoyed it. I think the right level of sleep deprivation put me in the appropriate mood, though sharing a lot of the same points as the host helped (this was a panel where I got involved quite a bit). The first flick, LOL Surprise: The Movie was just normal laughably terrible, a “meta” tv special of a girl making a movie about her dolls (with Playmobil-style designs) that fluctuates between animation styles out of the filmmakers’ boredom and has all manner of nonsensical worldbuilding. The second, an episode of Rainbow High, had so much nightmare-inducing CG animation in ungainly interpolated tweens and motion captured lip sync, that the influencer protagonist passive-aggressively distancing her friend to be with the cool kids barely registered. Makes the worst of G5 look like alloyed gold!
And with that, the evening adjourned, leaving Hawthorn and I to trek downhill and turn in after what minimal preparations had to be made. Similar to last year, the mid-afternoon had been softer than I’d have liked, and I definitely didn’t get as much out of the stalls, owing to a bumpy health. And yet, I did, honest-to-Celestia, really enjoy myself, helped by being better in the evening and partaking in new or might-as-well-be-new events in the evening (seriously, Great Britannia Bake-Off was a riot). Plus, with virtually no queue tomorrow, I could get a little extra beauty sleep. This silky smooth protoplasma doesn’t come from nothing, you know! 👻
Sunday: A True, True Con Is A Con Indeed
[yawns] Least AJ's a morning pony…
This morning, with no duties of his own, Hawthornbunny joined me for breakfast, and while I still had to stick to bread and water, I at least got through more of it. A bit past 10, we set out for the venue and were through and in barely ten mins later. Well-timed, after the usual personal refresh at the bog, for the first panel of the day: continuing the tradition from last year, a goofy British cultural thing for the VA guests. But where that was a sampling of British cuisine (culminating in Andrea Libman’s conclusion that she does not care for marmite), this was a parody of the most signature of British game shows – Taskmaster! Or Britannia Master, featuring Special Guests. Plus two con staff in Ember and Archer, to round the game out.
If you’re not aware, Taskmaster, hosted by the one and only Greg Davies, consists of that season’s five chosen comedians running through pre-recorded game show tasks, and then the winner is decided off the performance. The selling point is that the fun comes from approaching the given task however you see fit. The major difference here was omitting anything gross or physically unfair, and more of a leaning on the friendship spirit of MLP than the typical British snark. Otherwise, beside the tasks being executed live, it was Taskmaster through and through, down to passing around slips to read the tasks off of.
Take the first round, which was to introduce one’s personality creatively, given five minutes and a box of goodies to prepare with. After a kooky one from Ember (plushies of Vinyl and his Vinyl-like OC were involved) and a more grounded “what I like” from Archer, the spotlight for the guests of honour began with Elley-Ray. She’d already started to show off the wild side she’s known for during preparation, off getting some in the front row to adorn decorative stickers to her face and then doing yoga. But when it was her turn? She crawled out like a pony, then proceeded to hug everyone in the audience (okay, in the downstairs chairs, not the balconies), which was a hundred folks or more. Safe to say, for those doubting her reputation off a fun-yet-normal showing from her yesterday, that this cemented why she’s such a darling of the fandom despite being such a late VA on the show. The hugging took long enough for Kelly Sheridan to take her turn, poking her Starlight plush over a balcony, then come down the stairs lip-syncing to “Our Town” while it was still happening.
Nothing like capturing the winning shot in motion, don't'cha know? The Iron Pony competition may have a new challenger…
Little after that could compete in memorability, though I think the creative liberties taken during the “throw a teabug in the cup” round certainly stuck out. Kelly (who knew of the show and its “find the loophole” gimmick) got it first try proper, while Ember worked around the “don’t throw over the line” rule by moving the cup to himself, though he was still dinged for dropping instead of throwing in. Elley-Ray, fittingly, had the cup passed around the front rows while she threw it in, continuing her audience interaction. The other two rounds consisted of personifying a Yorkshire pudding (some described themselves in-character, others assumed the shape of one), and trying to collectively guess the day job of one con volunteer (they hit the correct answer of tv repairman yet didn’t realise it and kept going, not getting it in the end). Kelly won off winning most rounds, even if Elley-Ray was probably the audience fav.
I had not instantly committed to my next panel, though most of my friends had defaulted to another spoof on a British game show in Whooves Line Is It Anyway. After a break and some stall browsing, I consulted the schedule and saw the big cinema room had Equines in Animation, where noted UK Pony artist Stormblaze would be taking a look at the evolution of horse character design in animation through history. There probably wasn’t another panel all weekend more suited for me in topic, so off I went.
I was a few minutes late, coming in when the early part on cartoony horses not overtly anatomically correct from Disney’s shorts plus the skinny-legged noble steeds in their first few films was just wrapping up. But that was little trouble, as mere moments later, there was the “Sleepy Hollow” segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, with the first notable dip into a truly scary horse in the Headless Horseman. As Stormy noted, the design was simple, just a few details of hair against his mane, and yet the lightning and sharp angles and movement just made such an impression. Certainly a great start!
The ’54 Animal Farm as a film has stuck with me ever since seeing it while studying it in school, so it being used as a pivot on breaking the Golden Age Disney tradition of either cartoony dog-like horses or skinny-legged noble steed for burly, muscular work horses was very satisfying.
As Stormy herself is a big member of the horse-drawing art community, there was a balance between the history and what said community most likes between the different design styles. She tended to do some jumping around the pre-90’s decades a bit, with some facts occasionally wrong, but none I couldn’t forgive. It was certainly neat to note how the horses in Cinderella were largely the same as the background designer weren’t yet doing the same for the characters, while this had happened by the time of Sleeping Beauty. And even I hadn’t connected the 1910’s hat fashion on the horse Frou-Frou in the Aristocats.
Observations on the heavier detail of those in Charlotte’s Web followed (I didn’t agree personally), with another standout in the dainty, thinly legged titular equine of The Last Unicorn (a must-see, if you never have). Stormy noted both the trend then of outsourcing the animation to Japan and how it wasn’t as typically anime because it was still being made for a Western audience, as well as the horse being rather muted in her expression because of the plot. There was a humorous bridge with the big-lipped alligator horses in Don Bluth’s All Dogs Go To Heaven, which Stormy best summed up as Don Bluth spending all his energy having made wonderful dogs for the film.
Stormy was very pleased that enough audience members recognised early Hanna Barbera character Quick Draw McGraw, noting how despite being bipedal and anthropomorphic, enough horse features were kept to make him still read as equine. Mostly the shape of the hooves, never lapsing into just human gloves.
The Disney Renaissance had observations on Belle’s horse being a work horse rather than a noble steed due to the film’s setup, and the usual-but-effective technique of the horse reflecting the owner in Mulan between Mulan’s the stoic but helpful Khan and the shadowy mountain horses of the huns, both analogues of breeds from the region and the time period. They bookended one of her favourites, a pair from The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Phoebus’ white steed Achilles who’s is stoic even when carrying out silly sitting orders, and Frollo’s terrifying black horse Snowball (understandably not named in the film), the latter dwarfing the former in a perfect reflection of their riders.
Dreamworks’ flicks took the centre stage thereafter. Stormy felt the simplified graphic art approach in The Prince of Egypt wasn’t well adjusted for The Road to El Dorado, but all that was a prelude to the big guns in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. With its magnificent horses so anatomically correct that even superstar animator James Baxter was challenged to learn how to animate them, it’s no surprise it’s the default style most artists go to when drawing horses now. And how they made a female horse without using typical human signifiers of femininity was praised too. Say what you will about the film (personally, I rather like it), but it is jaw-droppingly beautiful.
There was also a slide on a cult Australian cartoon The Silver Brumby, a new one on me, and how magnificently realistic its horses looked within the budget. The show came across as an Animals of Farthing Wood type of story, especially in tone.
The rest did feel a bit milder as a result, though there were good observations on a sort of mocking of the noble steed – Donkey turning into a horse in Shrek 2 (Stormy didn’t have kind words for Marty the zebra in the Madagascar films) – or an outright rejection, like in how the German horses neighbouring the bull farm in Ferdinand were made so snobby so the bulls would be more endearing. Merida’s horse Angus in Brave, reflecting her not wanting to be a princess and being so huge and burly as to make her seem small and dainty and thus dwarfed by her fate she’s running from, was of note too. Maximus from Tangled was an expected standout here, with them wanting to make a full-on character of the horse and not just a reflection of its owner.
There was also a great return to scary horses with the Nokk water spirit from Frozen II, which she used to bridge to the MLP cameos in Ducktales also taking cues from kelpies, something else she adored. Stormy wrapped us with a gloss over the design trends in MLP, mostly noting how the designs tend to be kept the same in each show for toy/budget purposes, and that she thus loves when it’s broken and a horse gets more burly (Alphabittle got a mention). But she made it clear that, the overtly cartoony ones excepted (G3, Pony Life), there’s enough correct horse anatomy in the majority of ponies across the franchise to satisfy.
Overall, the whole panel did a good balance of feeling like it was showing trends, evolutions and current drawing fashion in horses throughout history, and not just plucking examples out of context. Lads, you all really missed something wonderful!
Too much detail? Only reflecting how much I liked the panel. Put it this way: it’s one I felt I could have given, had I been asked to, I loved the material that much, even if very little of it was new to me. The next hour didn’t have much I wanted, so it was my browsing hour. I spent a lot of time with Ace and Zen, and gave a Wonderbolt keychain capsule thing a go, getting Derpy (I know many fans would have killed for that). The restocking of the tombola, centred on official for-kids MLP merch, had lost the few items I’d been interested in (okay, several copies of one item, an Izzy sleeping mask 
). I spent most of the end of this free period hemming and hawing over whether to donate the G1 lunchbox I’d won yesterday to the donations for next year’s tombola, and took long enough that I had to dash to the next event, missing getting to sit with my friends. Which was a slight hurdle, given the thing was easily going to last two hours again, what with 117 lots (up from last year’s 111), or 119 after two bonus ones at the end.
Yep, fillies and colts, it was time for the big boy. The Charity Auction.
Don't let the lower activity of a mid-Sunday fool you – this thing was chocker-block enough at points that it was hard to float through without passing through folks and giving them a bone-chilling… well, chill. 
Next time, in Part 3: We wrap up with an acquisition or two – or seven – for the collection, a pair of group meals where I circulated debates on what makes certain aspects of FiM excel, and an unforeseen complication getting home.
I'm sorry
I can't remember what I said but I think I misunderstood what Logan told me
I forgot they did this
What happened is that a hippie flower pony who shall remain nameless got greedy and decided to try and outcompete the Worcester team
Oh now you tell me
5750521
Oh, it's no sweat. It's not like I'm going three years between cons again, after all! Goodbyes were exchanged later in a digital manner.
Is it any surprise I am careful about what I play in? I get competitive too easy, brings out the worst in me.
Least, when there's anything on the line. 
I mean, we still tied with the main Worcester group (yes, I am standing on that hill, dunno where you're getting their extra half-point from), and it was the right level of kooky fun for a tired spirit, so I'd say it worked out fine. The hardcore toy collector group wins every year anyway (think they had 38/41 this time). Good thing it's bereft of anything but a token/gag prize!
5750528
I have photographic evidence (taken by Zen)
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/833268716262260757/1157784360196517918/20230930_215801.jpg?ex=65343c36&is=6521c736&hm=11541f182a84daaeddfa6456081de3818c191491b07d567e84bb6c182b9437ac&
5750537
Well, for a few of us against a group of ten, being that close ain't nothing.