BronyCon 2013 · 5:18am Aug 7th, 2013
Alright everypony, this is going to copied pretty straight from my Facebook post since it's pretty lengthy and says most of what I wanted to say anyway, but I wanted to add a couple of FiMFic specific things first. First of all, I am finally going to be picking up my story again. I'm going to be editing what I've written rather extensively (a "how not to suck at fanfiction" panel made me realize that most of what I had written is, to one degree or another, utter garbage), and then I will FINALLY finish the damn story. Here are links to my photos from BronyCon and the few short videos (those links will be posted below since there are several).
Art of the Dress singalong during the registration line
Beyond Her Tomb in Rock Band
Discord (Living Tombstone Remix) on Rock Band
This Day Aria on Rock Band
Guy with way more balls than I have singing Art of the Dress
"Wary of the Night" clip from Bronypalooza
GREAT parody - "We're an Equestrian band!"
This past weekend was, hands down, the greatest weekend of my entire life. Friday probably ranks as the best single day of my entire life. What did I do? I went to BronyCon, the biggest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic convention in the world (and there are many conventions). I normally don't really take the time to write notes on here, but my experience in Baltimore was so amazing that I have to share it with any who will listen (or, in this case, read). I'll start by talking about the who and what of the convention - what actually happened there? After that, I'll go into detail about what happened to me - why was it such a significant event for me aside from the fact that conventions are just fun? After that, I may give a bit of opinion on the MLP:FiM fandom and the brony community.
From the very beginning - even standing in line for registration - it was awesome. Normally, a two to three hour line wouldn't be fun, but we're all bronies, and there were people in all sorts of cosplay outfits. Not just the big fursuits, but everything from intricate, incredibly amazing costumes to just throwing on a cowboy hat, some cowboy boots, and a plaid shirt and denim and calling it Applejack. It was amazing to see some of the awesome costumes that were there. It went from cool to actually fun when a guy dressed as Vinyl Scratch came by with a boombox and started playing songs from the show and fandom on his boombox; I specifically remember singing Winter Wrap Up while I waited in line probably a thousand other bronies. We chanted a LOT, too. Sometimes we started chanting a certain characters name. Sometimes we chanted Lauren Faust's name. Sometimes we chanted the word "Fun" over and over again, paying homage to Pinkie Pie. Sometimes (this one was my favorite), we chanted "Crush. Kill. Destroy. Swag." from HotDiggityDemon's .MOV videos. I'll post the link to the clip that references.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwTt2JOULXg
From that very first part of the convention, it was apparent from the atmosphere of the room that friendship was the status quo. The first thing after I got my badge was go to the first voice actors panel. Unfortunately, none of the Mane Six voice actresses were there, but I did get to see Michelle Creber (Apple Bloom as well as Sweetie Belle's singing voice), Maddy Peters (Scootaloo), Cathy Weseluck (Mayor Mare and Spike), Brenda Crichlow (Zecora), Nicole Oliver (Princess Celestia and Cherilee), and Lee Tockar (Snips and Steven Magnet). Lee Tockar might be one of the most awesome people I've ever hard speak.
That ended at 1:30, and so until 5:00, I walked around, visited the vendors, ate lunch at the Jimmy John's across the street, and visited the Baltimare Arcade. I'm going to try to keep this mainly about the convention, but I have to digress for a moment about my lunch at Jimmy John's. There was a gentleman outside selling water. What kind of water, you ask? Ice cold water. How much was the water? Only one dollar. I know that nopony reading this will find it hilarious unless he or she were there, but this guy was a TRIP. He was standing there, shirtless, with a megaphone, singing/rapping/idkwhat "We got ice cold watah! And it's only one dollah! We got ice cold watah! We got ice, we got ice, we got ice, we got ice, we got ice cold watah! For just one dollah!" Like, he did this for half an hour. I wish I had thought to record it, but fear not, everypony! I found a video online of him from Otakon 2011! He was doing it a wee bit faster when I saw him, but this is essentially it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCwecxY2-oQ
Anyway, enough about Ice Cold Water Man. Baltimare Arcade was actually pretty awesome (yes, that pony pun was intentional). They had Soul Calibur V, Super Smash Bros N64, Mario Kart Wii, and Sony's blatant Smash Bros rip off going, but the real awesome part was Rock Band. They had the normal songs, and couple got played, but most of what was played was the fan-made pony songs on there. They had the original songs from the show - This Day Aria and Smile, Smile, Smile got played a lot - but they also had a lot of fan songs. My favorites were Breaking Bonds (lots of people worked on that, but Prince Whateverer's part is my favorite), The Living Tombstone's remix of Eurobeat Brony's song Discord, and Eurobeat Brony's song Luna. It was so awesome. I've got a couple videos posted of that, though you have to suffer through my horrible singing since the entire room and I sang along to pretty much everything.
At 5:00, I went to the Brony Musicians panel. There I saw Mic the Microphone, The Living Tombstone, WoodenToaster, SilvaHound, Alex S., Black Gryph0n (a brony in the US Navy who asked his CO for leave from his station in Australia to come to BronyCon), BAASIK (not actually a brony, I found out, but Black Gryph0n's brother), General Mumble, and Omnipony talk about what it's like to be a musician in the fandom and make fan music. That was a really awesome panel because I ADORE so many of them (I fangirled so hard for Tombstone and Mic). I'm still not too familiar with SilvaHound's or General Mumble's stuff, but that's going to change shortly now that I've heard them speak and seen them perform. I'll get to the musical performances later; for now, I'm just going through what I did during the days.
After that, my friends and I had to go move the car because the concert was going to last until 2 or 3, and the parking garage where we parked closed at midnight. Yeah, first world problems. Anyway, from our new parking garage (approximately 20 yards away), we walked a couple blocks to McDonald's for some dinner before the concert. Turns out we were there at the same time as Prince Whateverer. Now, Prince Whateverer isn't super duper popular in the brony community (at least not compared to Living Tombstone, Omnipony, Eurobeat Brony, and the like), but I'm a huge fan of his. What happened was that I saw a guy at the fountain drinks with a KILLER Pinkie Pie hat, and I just walked up and was like "Dude, nice hat." Somehow Prince Whateverer came up (I think I probably mentioned that I wished he were performing), and he was like "Well, he's right over there." I was just like "...you're lying." He said "No, seriously, he's in our group. He's right over there," and he called him over. I freaked out. I hugged him and got a picture, and I actually got to make his day. One of the questions asked at the musicians' panel (of which he had not been a part) was "Who do you think is the best relatively unpopular brony musician?" to which Alex S. answered Prince Whateverer. Apparently he's a big fan of Alex S. (as most of us were), so he seemed REALLY happy to hear that. Anyway, it was an AMAZING chance encounter. After McDonald's, it was time for the concert, but since that was Friday night and Saturday night, I'm going to save that to talk about all at once.
When we got there Saturday morning, there weren't any panels that I was particularly dying to see, so I went back down to the vendors' area to buy more crap (I'm awfully good that no matter where I am, but I was especially talented at spending money at BronyCon). Then it happened. What happened, you ask? IT happened. One of the most amazing things of the convention. I saw a woman there and stopped in my tracks. "Oh my god," I said to myself. "That's Nicole Oliver." So I went up and said "Excuse me, Mrs. Oliver? I just wanted to tell you that I am a huge fan of yours and it's such an honor to get to me the voice of Princess Celestia" or something to that effect - I was fangirling awfully hard, so I don't remember for sure - and she looked at my name badge and then looked right at me and said "Aww, thank you, Stephen. That means a lot," and she hugged me. I didn't even have to ask for a hug. PRINCESS FREAKING CELESTIA HUGGED ME. I could have died right then and there. I won't go into a lot of detail about the stuff that I bought since there's pictures of it all in my BronyCon 2013 photo album, but I do have to make note of one particular vendor who had the most amazing name I've ever seen. His name is Bryan Chin, but his vendor/artist name is Engrishman (yes, he's Asian; yes, making fun of that stereotype make him a boss). I encourage everypony to go check out his DeviantArt page.
http://engrishman.deviantart.com/
At some point, and I'm not entirely sure when, I got the chance to meet DustyKatt. He's better known by another moniker - The Manliest Brony in the World. I got a picture with him along with his autograph, and it was AMAZING. I'll post a link to his really famous video.
--link--
At 1:00 on Saturday, I went to a panel called "Q:A: The Creative Process." Along the way I just happened to see LazerPon3. He's a guy from The Netherlands who makes laser light shows for conventions (he was in the BronyDoc for the B.U.C.K. part of the documentary). I hugged him, which was boss. When I got the room where the pane was to be held is when the other IT happened. The better IT than meeting Princess Celestia. The most amazing ITs in the history of IT. What was IT? Are you ready? I'm not sure you're ready. IT was....I MET THE LIVING TOMBSTONE. Yall don't understand how big this is for me. It's like if my mom just happened to meet Paul McCartney. It's like if someone who was a teenager in the 90s just happened to meet Tupac (you know, if he weren't dead and decomposing). It's like if you met one of your most idolized celebrities. I LOVE The Living Tombstone. I got his autograph, I got a picture with him, and I got to hug him. It was AMAZING. He's an amazing guy, too. That was actually the second time I saw him. About an hour earlier, I saw him jogging down one of the halls, but when I saw him, my mind went blank. In hindsight, it was probably really annoying and bit inconsiderate, but I was so overwhelmed with thoughts of, to quote Rainbow Dash, "OhmygoshohmygoshOHMYGOSH" that I blanked and didn't think about it. Anyway, he was clearly late for something since he was practically running, but I said "Tombstone, can I please hug you?!?" and despite being in a rush, he said "Sure, real quick" and stopped to hug a random fan - one of thousands there - despite being in a hurry. He's amazing. The panel, while interesting, wasn't all that noteworthy for me since I'm neither a musician nor do I make PMVs (pony music videos) or other visual thingamajigers.
Immediately after the panel on the creative process was the second voice actors' panel. It was the same group of voice actors, and it was really more or less a continuation of the last panel. I tell you what, though, the questions about Equestria Girls had me sweating. I hadn't seen the movie yet, and they kept asking questions about Sunset Shimmer. I kept praying "Please no spoilers, please no spoilers, please no spoilers, please no spoilers..." After that panel, I went to a panel showcasing the first episode of Hell Hath No Hoagie, a new webseries made by some of the artists in the fandom. It's not related to My Little Pony, but it was cool nonetheless. The link is below. It's hilarious.
Following Hell Hath No Hoagie, I went to a panel called "Fanfics in Print: How to Get it Done." My only fanfiction is terrible and still unfinished, but I was curious about printed fanfics. There's a story by Miles Prower that I'm following - The Cupcake Chronicles - that's amazing, so I was hoping to learn something to be able to harass him into doing a self-publishing project. lol I did learn a bit, but the most impressive thing that I learned was that Fallout: Equestria spans five books (all published) that look to be roughly 500 or 600 pages each. Now THAT is one hell of a fanfiction. I also want them. Badly. Haha.
After that, I don't really remember what I did, to be honest. I think I went back to Jimmy John's for more food. I don't remember. Mysteries, mysteries. Ah, but now, having gotten to Saturday night in my story, it's time to talk about Bronypalooza! It went from 8 pm until 2 am (which turned into 3 am) on Friday night and from 8 until 2 on Saturday night, and Saturday was really just a continuation of Friday, hence why I'm talking about it all at once. The concerts took place in the Mane Hall (spelled just like that) and were AMAZING. Here's a list of those who performed as it appeared in the convention program (except that I moved The Living Tombstone to the Saturday night list since the show got cut before he performed cause we almost destroyed the building, which I shall explain shortly).
Friday Night
Michelle Creber and Black Gryph0n
dBPony
BronyMike
DannyBrony
The Red Wooden Colts
Cyril the Wolf
HeyLasFas
LaserPon3
Rainbow and Rooted
Assertive Fluttershy
ArtAttack
Ibeabronyrapper
F3nning
Omnipony (the absolute KING of pony dubstep)
Speedcore Dave!
Michael A
SMOR3S
Saturday Night
Poni1Kenobi
Tarby
Replacer
Feather
Metajoker
Jeff Burgess
PhillyPu
Exploding Heart Technique
Baschfire
Foozogz
Flaedr
Chain Algorithm
Mic the Microphone
Silva Hound
Eurobeat Brony
Alex S.
The Living Tombstone
The concerts were...amazing. I don't even know how else to describe it. I've never experienced anything that AWESOME. It was my first rave, and I assure you, once the DJs got up there (because there were actual bands and a couple rappers, too), it was a legit rave. If I can ever get a cooperative video editing program, I'll post a video so you can see some of what it was like (the bass was so intense that my 3DS's microphone was like NOPE, NO AUDIO FOR YOU). I don't really know what to say (at least nothing that won't fit better in the second portion of this note), but I will tell my favorite performances. Despite the fact that he's my all time favorite brony musician, I was actually disappointed with The Living Tombstone's performance. It was amazing, don't get me wrong, but he didn't play any of his older stuff, the stuff that I know and love. It was almost a tease, because he started off playing the first five seconds of his remix of Discord (originally by Eurobeat Brony). From there, he broke into his performance, which was great, but it just wasn't what I was expecting. It's really a shame because I had hoped he'd have done Sister Hate or September since Mic the Microphone was also there.
My favorite performance was, without a doubt, Omnipony. That was like half an hour of solid, non-stop dubstep, and it wasn't watered down dubstep. That shit was INTENSE. The way he makes his songs has such a buildup of tension preceding the bass drop that it's almost palpable, and you can feel it in your gut. He alternates between very melodic portions between the heavy drop segments so that it never gets too stale or old. He's just...There's a reason F3nning (who was the MC for the concerts) described him as "the king of pony dubstep;" it's absolutely true.
Number two on my list was Mic the Microphone for no other reason than that he performed "Beyond Her Grave." That song is lyrics put over The Living Tombstone's remix of Beyond Her Garden, which was originally by WoodenToaster. There's some disagreement over the meaning of the song, but I've looked at the lyrics, and I've always interpreted it to be a song about what many bronies endure. "You try your best, but it's not quite there/You kick your hoof and say 'It's just not fair'/A simple mare living simple dreams/A rumor that's not quite as it seems" and "Six months have passed and everypony knows your name, they know the mane, and they all know the claims about how Carrot Top ain't a normal filly at all." I tend to find completely unintended meanings in songs and books, so that's probably the case here, but those two lines really say that to me. I've had a few internet discussions about what the song means, and Mic said that he wrote it when he was "in a really bad place," but as far as I know, he's never publicly gone into more detail than that. I'll post a link to the song below. He also performed Nightmare Night which is also AMAZING. Link will follow for that, as well.
Beyond Her Grave (PMV)
http://youtu.be/KN45uptfg0s
Nightmare Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PCEp8z7FNg
Number three would be Eurobeat Brony. Whereas Mic the Microphone is mainly rap and Ominpony is straight up dubstep, Eurobeat Brony is (as his name would suggest) mainly eurobeat house techno. What's probably The Living Tombstone's most popular song (Discord) is actually a remix of one of Eurobeat Brony's songs. He's just...incredible. His performance was amazing, and he didn't just play the recordings while tying them together and tweaking the audio; he kept grabbing the microphone and actually singing the lyrics to the songs that had lyrics himself, and he was incredible. The songs that he did that really got me pumped were Discord and Luna (Dream Mode; there's also a Nightmare Mode and a Nightlife Jazz Mode). I'll post links to those as well as Tombstone's remix of Discord below.
Luna (Dream Mode)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn7uMwXYU9U
Discord
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDMGv3hNMes
Discord (The Living Tombstone's Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPfMb50dsOk
Number four for me is an artist whose work I actually hadn't heard before - Silva Hound. He's AMAZING though. I won't post any links to his music since there wasn't one song in particular (that I recall, anyway) that got me especially excited, but he was amazing. My fifth favorite (I'm only doing top five for this) was Michelle Creber and Black Gryph0n. Michelle plays the singing voices of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, two of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and they had a song in an episode about Apple Bloom's cousin, Babs Seed. The song is GREAT. Hasbro might have gotten its panties in a wad if they sang that, though. It's a good thing they didn't. They did sing Crab Seed, however, which they made VERY clear was NOT at ALL related to Friendship is Magic; it was only about the city of Baltimore. DEFINITELY not My Little Pony related at all. Not a bit (they were hilariously adamant about that). They also did a really awesome cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" which had previously released on YouTube. The last song of theirs that was really amazing was one that Black Gryph0n wrote called Proud to be a Brony, but I'll talk more about that later on because it came up later.
Crab Seed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4qKDkCNzvQ
Beat It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pc4nt6rYi0
While overall Feather's performance wasn't enough to make it on my top five list, there was one song that she and Rhyme Flow performed that literally brought tears to my eyes. I don't think there were more than a handful of people in that entire room who weren't crying by the end of the song. It's called Apples of my Eyes, and it requires just a little bit of background. Applejack, Apple Bloom, and Big Macintosh are all siblings in the show, and their grandmother, Granny Smith, is in the show a lot, but never do you see or hear anything about their parents (Granny Smith's daughter and son-in-law). In Season 3, there's an episode called Apple Family Reunion. At the end of the episode, Granny Smith remarks to Apple Bloom that it was great to have the whole family together and who knows when the next time that would happen would be. Applejack looks out the window and two shooting stars are seen flying across the sky. One of the writers went on to confirm that it was quite intention that those shooting stars were allusions to Applejack's deceased parents. The song was about them from Granny Smith's perspective. It was so beautiful. The link is below. Listen to it, even if you're not a brony. It's gorgeous and heart breaking.
Apples of my Eye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mK8vkOngF8
That's most of what I have to say about the concert, but I will make a couple of remarks that I found both amazing and surprising. We got noise complaints over a mile away, but you know what's really cool and bizarre and awesome? Just from dancing, we caused an earthquake that registered a 1.6 on the Richter scale. I know that's just a little baby quake, but still, just from dancing? That's so boss. Also, they had to tell us to stop jumping because the giant roughly $2 million light and speaker arrays hanging from the ceiling began swinging about a foot on either side. Yeah, apparently bronies can rock pretty damn hard.
Anyway, having gotten Bronypalooza covered, time to move on to the last day of the convention, which ended at 6 pm. My friends and I ended up over sleeping, so we got there just in time for Who's Line is it Anypony at 1:30. It. Was. HILARIOUS. It also reaffirmed my adamant belief that the North Carolina Bronies is so full of shit for pitching such a fit about grimdark and "adult" references, and I'll tell you why. Black Gryph0on, whom I've mentioned a few times already (but just to remind a US Navy brony and probably one of the most respected members of the community) was on that panel, and you know what probably half of his jokes were? Either jokes about Cupcakes (the darkest of the grimdark fics that I've ever read) and sex jokes. Hell, one question was "How did Princess Cadance become an alicorn?" to which his answer was "Well, Hasbro has told us that she started off as a pegasus, so she had to earn her horn. She's the princess of love. I'll let you draw your own conclusions." Either he or someone else, when the topic was "Unused Songs from the Show" said "The prequel to the Cake twins - I JUST HAD SEX, AND IT FELT SO GOOD." If some of the biggest, most well respected names in the community make grimdark and sex jokes, there's no reason that I should have my head bitten off for asking what Cupcakes was (yes, that actually happened with NCB a little over a year ago). Sorry, had to vent; those jokes were hilarious, and that's always pissed me off about NCB.
Anyway, the whole thing was hilarious. One of the topics was "Things you can say to Pinkie Pie and not your girlfriend." Two the answers were "Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!" and "Wow, her body's pink all over!" It was quite often rather inappropriate, and therefore HILARIOUS. One other skit I remember quite clearly was that Pinkie Pie had finally tracked down Donut Joe (because Pinkie Pie loves sweets and pastries) only to find out that he's a changeling. Black Gryph0n was playing Pinkie Pie, and he decided, just for shits and giggles, to make Pinkie Pie lust over Donut Joe. At the end, the whole crowd was chanting "SHIP IT! SHIP IT! SHIP IT!" (A "shipping" is what one calls a romantic pairing in fanfiction or fan art; common shippings are Applejack and Rainbow Dash or Twilight Sparkle and Rarity. It's also important to note that shipping is NOT synonymous with clop, which is what sexualized stories and art is called). The guy playing Drew Carey's role made some joke about it, and Black Gryph0n tackles the guy who was doing Donut Joe (I don't remember who it was) to the ground and started pretending to make out with him. It was just about the funniest thing ever.
After that ended at 2:30, I got some more food and talked to some random bronies until the panel on how to write better fanfiction started at 4:00. I started writing a fanfiction back in like January or February, but I got both too frustrated and too busy back in April and put it down. That panel, however, got me inspired to start writing it again, so I've decided to go do some major rewriting and editing and try to finish it. Maybe even write more, I don't know.
Unfortunately, as Geoffrey Chaucer said in the 14th Century, all good things must come to an end. At 5:30, we had the closing ceremonies. It was largely uneventful; we had a bunch of thanks to and from the various parts of the BronyCon staff, the chairman brought in the woman who sang the Gen I theme about which we pretended to care (come on, we're all there for Gen IV/Friendship is Magic and nothing else), but the end was what was special. Black Gryph0n and Eileen Montgomery performed Gryph0n's song "Proud to Be a Brony" together, and it was just incredible. What made it so special is that it's true for all of us; we're all incredibly proud to be bronies. I plan to talk more about why that is in a minute, so for now I'll just leave it at that and post a link to the song, but it made a lot of us (myself included) tear up.
Proud to Be a Brony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmQErghA7MQ
So now that I've covered what HAPPENED at the convention (that took much more text than I intended; sorry), I want to talk about why the convention was so special to me. I spent a lot of time at church camp in high school between Spiritus and Carolina Cross Connection, and I can say with certainty that neither ever held a candle to BronyCon in terms of the atmosphere of love and acceptance. There were gay couples and straight couples; there were children beside teenagers beside adults middle aged and older. There were openly presenting transgender people alongside cisgender people. There white people, black people, and every color in between. There were Christians, Jews, Muslims, and atheists. There were people with obvious mental handicaps and people with VERY noticeable physical handicaps. You know what made it special, though? No one treated anyone any differently. We were all bronies, and we all loved each other. None of those other things mattered. That's a big part of why BronyCon is so special; it's the most accepting place I've ever encountered. No matter how hard they may try, churches are rarely ever truly accepting; dogma and misinterpretation keeps them from providing the love and acceptance that the "abnormal" communities (I use that term to point out the common viewpoint, NOT my own), including the homosexual community but especially the transgender community, don't have. Bronies only really have one thing to which they're supposed to adhere - Love and Tolerate. That's not to say that everyone there necessarily liked or approved of homosexuality or transgender, but the mantra is "Love and Tolerate." We don't always approve of everything that everyone else does, but so long as no one is being hurt by it, it's not our place to judge, and we won't love you any less.
Not only is as close to absolutely accepting as any human community can be, but it also is a place of trust. I left my bag unattended at the concert Saturday night just sitting up against with probably $100 or more worth of merchandise in it for seven hours and no one touched it. Nothing was gone, nothing was the disturbed, and the bag was exactly where and how I left it. Friday night, a woman who was, I would guess, in her 40s, came up to me as I was dancing (like an idiot) and a couple people with whom I was dancing and said that her daughter was really shy and reserved, and she hoped that encouragement from and dancing with some college guys would open her up a bit. Her daughter was in 6th grade. How many parents would walk up to a group of 20 something year old guy they've never met and ask them to dance with their 11 year old daughter at a rave? She did, and she didn't seem at all worried about it. Some would call this irresponsible, but it's not, not if you know the atmosphere of the community. I firmly believe that not a single person in that room would have tried anything inappropriate, and if someone had, I know for a fact that those round them would have put a stop to it before security even had a chance to get involved. One gentleman, a bigger guy who was, I would guess, in this 30s, lost a pin from his shirt during a particularly intense part of the rave Saturday night. Without a word to or from them, about a dozen people, myself included, immediately stopped dancing and dropped to their hands and knees with cell phone flash lights to help him find his pin. I saw someone get really tired from dancing and, while he didn't exactly "collapse," he pretty quickly sat down panting. Three people from different parts of the crowd went up to make sure he was okay. I saw one person make his way out of the crowd, get a cup of water, and bring it back to someone who he knew was getting dehydrated but was too stubborn to stop dancing.
That's just the kind of community it is; one of nearly absolute love and trust. No one is perfect, and no community is perfect, and to be sure, there are the excessively dark sides of the brony community, and no one denies that, but most of the community, and those at BronyCon especially, exemplify what the community stands for - Kindness, Honesty, Generosity, Loyalty, Laughter, and yes, even Magic, because I can think of no better way to describe the feeling of BronyCon except simply magical.
There were nearly 8,500 people at BronyCon this year. That's a 100% increase from last year. I'm quite aware that it's more than a little unexpected that so many adults, a majority of whom are men and most of whom are straight, would like a show intended for little girls, but what I don't get is why that's a problem. I have a LOT of people tell me that I need to stop watching it, or that it's somehow a bad thing that I love My Little Pony so much. Why?
Why is it bad that I've found something that makes me happy and can cheer me up during a hard day? Why is it bad that I've found something that can do what religion never could - make me want to be a good person without having to resort to threatening me with eternal damnation and torture? Why is it bad that I've found a community that's based around love and tolerance instead of just lying about such a foundation (i.e. religion)? Tell me how any of that is bad? What's really funny is what I get told is good. I get encouraged to get drunk, and very few people would think anything of it if I started smoking pot. None of my friends would think anything of it if I decided that I was the kind of guy who wanted to just "get laid" (I actually get shit about not having sex, too). Why are these things good (or at least not bad), but a cartoon based around friendship and love that makes me happy is bad? Yeah, it's intended for little girls. I like something for girls. What's the matter with that? I don't remember the last time a girl got threatened with an intervention because she liked transformers. Is it because I'm an adult who likes a kids show? When was the last time anyone got looked down on by his peers and friends for playing Pokemon? It's ridiculous, and if anyone would think about it rationally, they'd realize that saying that it's bad to be a brony is without any reasonable basis.
There's another thing that really pisses me off - people who assume that, because I watch My Little Pony, I'm either gay or a pedophile (or both). I'm sorry, but I just don't see the connection between enjoying a cartoon made by the best animation artist in the industry and cast with some of the most talented voice actors in the world is in any way, shape, or form indicative that I'm sexually aroused by children or the same sex. That logic simply doesn't exist. I get the social connections and all that, but it's bullshit, and any intelligent person should realize that. Wearing pink doesn't make a guy gay or less manly because it's just a damn color; watching MLP doesn't make a guy gay or a pedophile because it's just a cartoon about ponies who learn about friendship.
I know it's unusual, and jokes don't bother me. I like jokes. I like jokes at everyone's expense, my own included so long as it's not something about which I'm legitimately sensitive. I make jokes at my own expense sometimes - "Come on, guys, how manly do you expect me to be? I watch My Little Pony, for God's sake." It stops being joking when it's consistent from a vast majority of the people in my life. I know most probably don't mean anything by it, but I also know that there are some who, for whatever absurd reason, have convinced themselves that it really is a problem. Get over yourselves. What your objections really say is "I don't want you to be happy if what makes you happy is socially prescribed to a different demographic group than your own." That's not real friendship, man. Dr. Seuss once said "Always be yourself. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
Do I have an obsession? Well, let's look at the definition of the word - "a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling." Let's even take it and adapt that to it's more colloquial definition - a persistent preoccupation with an idea or feeling. So, am I obsessed? Perhaps. It could certainly be argued as such. Allow me a counter-argument. I still do my job well and am always on time. I still make grades ranging from good to excellent. I still make plenty of time for my friends. My habits aren't any less healthy than usual (gotta specify there; never been one for all that health crap). BronyCon opened my eyes to something. Loving the show, even enough to spend the money flying from other continents and putting lord knows how much time and effort into a cosplay outfit, doesn't mean that you have a problem. If you still fulfill your familial, social, and work responsibilities, then it's not a problem if it's what makes you happy.
So what did BronyCon do for me aside from giving me the most fun weekend of my life? It showed me what it's like to love everyone you meet. It showed me how great an experience it can be to strike up a random conversation with a person you've never seen before in your life. It showed me, most of all, that it doesn't matter if a grown man enjoys a show for little girls, because at the end of day, all that matters is if you can say that you can fall asleep with a smile on your face and if you can honestly say that you love your fellow human beings. I can say both of those things with complete honesty, and it's thanks to My Little Pony.
That was a good read. I got a lot of the same vibes from the con and noticed many of the same sorts of things with regards to behavior.