Site Post » Le epic bucky face · 11:11pm Aug 26th, 2013
A few hours ago I got back from BUCK, which was my very first convention ever. I’ve never considered myself one for cons but BUCK was seriously so bucking fantastic I really cannot wait for next year, and will definitely be trying to make sure I can get to Crystal Fair Con and Galacon assuming the dates work out ok.
For anyone who doesn’t know, I was kindly selected as a guest of honour for the con, which got me free tickets (whoop) as well as an awesome little picture of my OC on the front cover of the con book (which I lost, doh). Annoyingly the con ran out of guest badges somehow so I had a standard write bracelet with the text guest scribbled on it, and while I was never going to make a fuss and it isn’t really a *huge* deal, it did bother me a bit. Surely there should have just been a pile of x guest badges for the x guests but whatever. While I’m complaining, I was also a little bothered by the general lack of information I received, I really had to keep digging at people leading up to the con to find out what I had to do, and it’s lucky I did otherwise I’d never have gotten my ticket. Maybe this is just because I’m not experienced with cons and I didn’t know if I was supposed to skip the line or what, but it was very much an issue for me.
Now that I got the negatives out the way regarding staff though, I can only give them glowing praise for everything else. You guys seriously did an amazing job at organising this con. I’ve watched enough screw ups at cons to know this one went very cleanly, with the only issues being things starting a bit late but c’est la vie. Clover if you read this I wish I could have gotten to chat with you over the weekend, but I know you were ultra busy with sound equipment, and you did an *amazing* job with all that setup. Major kudos to you and the rest of the technical staff for doing a generally thankless task that required stupid amounts of work. While I’m dropping names, Emerald did a great job MCing compared to other people I’ve seen doing it. Should have totally told people to shut up with “fun” more often though.
I also decided to drop...quite a lot of money at BUCK. I didn’t see it happening but I totally got swept up with the charity auction and decided to spend £500 on this totally adorable Snowdrop plushie, which felt great and lots of people wanted pics of her so I carried her around for the rest of the con. I kind of forgot who was running the auction but she did a great job there too, especially since I’m assuming english wasn’t her first language. It could have been hurried along a bit, but unlike other brony auctions I’ve seen it wasn’t full of people trying to slap their signatures on everything to stroke their egos. It was a really fantastic and fun auction to be involved with, and the £6,500 raised was just incredible. Sorry to the two guys who I sniped Snowdrop from :V
A surprise person I got to meet was Blitzpony who I didn’t even know lived in the UK. I love her art ( my profile is covered with it ) and she was totally cool as hell in person. Blitzy pls marry me thx xoxox. I’m sorry guy who she was with but your name totally slips my mind, but both of you were fantastic and I really enjoyed the time we got to chat (and bail from the autograph line) together, before I got whisked into judging fanfiction.
Speaking of that, if the guy who wrote the Daring Do fanfic which won reads this, please get in touch with me. We really liked it and I totally want to feature it. If the guy who wrote the poem reads this please do as well, because yours was actually my favourite. All the rhyming and flow in that poem written in 45 minutes was really impressive to me!
The highlight of the con for me was really just hanging around the lobby areas just chatting to people who recognised the shirt. I loved talking to you guys, and it was one of the most humbling things in my entire life. It made me feel validated with my work and by the closing ceremony I was finding myself really emotional at the whole thing. I didn’t expect it to hit me like it did but while singing Winter Wrap Up ( about the most painfully brony thing I can think of ) I found myself practically holding back tears because I just didn’t want it to end.
As far as the panel goes, Hazel and Sketchy it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed chatting to the two of you at other times during the con. I am pessimistic as hell so I expected like 30 people to turn out but at a rough guess I think we had about 120-130 people there which was amazing at 10am (grrrr….10am panel….). Unfortunately a lot of the questions were aimed at writing (of course) so I either couldn’t answer a lot of them or had to give kind of wishy washy motivational answers which I was annoyed with but I tried my best to say things that were as fact based as I could because people who give general motivation answers drive me mad to no end. They’re not answers. I really wanted to have a version of the Android app to show at the panel but I couldn’t finish it in time and since it was a purely Q&A panel there’s no where I could have demo’d it. Next year, Clover, Zeeraw and I are going to do a panel even if I have to move mountains to do it, because it was kind of silly me being on a writer’s panel even if I appreciate the con couldn’t put me anywhere else.
Zeeraw…..man you are one cool dude. Too cool to be a programmer. Get the hell out of my industry son. I spent the best part of Sunday with Zee (who runs cloudsdale, check it out), and we had a lot of fun chatting about code, programming meet ups, moderation and all kinds of other stuff. I can’t wait to get to hang with you again.
^ Zee and I out on the town saying goodbye :(
The cosplay contest had some really amazing entries. I’m *so* glad the Pegasus Guards and Princess Twilight won awards because they were my favourites. The Vinyl Scratch and Daring Do fursuits were very nicely done too, was fun seeing them around the place.
If I could mention another thing that got me a bit down, I did frankly feel a bit out of place as a guest of honour. Maybe I should have just been a guest because let’s be honest, compared to the musicians listed on the list I felt like a nobody. I was kind of annoyed I didn’t even know about the green room, it would have been nice to maybe chat with some of my fellow “guests of honour” or the Crebers (who I really badly wanted to chat to), though frankly I feel like hardly any of the musicians would care to talk to me anyway and I'm not one for imposing (hell, I queued in the normal ticket holder line), so whatever.
Despite that though, this was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had. I totally know what con crud is now, and I cannot wait to get to another con. Really, the ones of you that came to speak to me made my weekend. I want to be approachable. I want to be a guy you can just come and chat to and I tried to make myself that guy at the con and I was so utterly humbled and emotional that people even wanted to talk to me or get my signature. That was funny actually. When I was first asked to sign something I had no idea what to do because I’ve never signed knighty before!
I’m sure I’ve missed a load of stuff but that’s everything I can brain dump right now. Until next year!
edit: I forgot to mention Roboshi, ie my "I favourite everything on derpibooru". I wish we could have chat more but I had to get somewhere and there were a bunch of people who wanted to ask about things after the panel so I couldn't talk much. Now I know what you look like we can have a proper chat next year though :V
edit2: And HMage! God damnit my short term memory sucks. I'm so glad we got to meet finally and walk around town. The whole breakfast/lunch thing was sadly a bit awkward because I don't really know anyone else there but I'd love to hang out with you again.
What an in-depth title!
Nice job!
First con? Really?
Kinda shocked at that. But, hey, at least you had a helluva time it seems.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Hey, can you ship me over next BUCK? I want in on this shit.
1310230
Agreed on that, man. Agreed on that.
1310232
Heh, indeed.
~Skeeter The Lurker
derpicdn.net/img/2013/2/9/238245/full.png
1310226 Nice.
1310237
Imagine the postage needed, and the price for the weight, and the price for a box that big XD
Glad you had a good time!
I went to one day at BronyCon here in Baltimore, and it didn't go as planned (And I planned the whole day out the night before too) but I kicked some fun out of it anyway. Quite a bit of stuff was lost in transit from shifting from New York to Baltimore (including the entire computer sign up system) so it took a little while to get in, and one of the events I wanted to go to had 'technical difficulties' and rescheduled on top of the Doctor Whooves 'n Assistant panel
Anyway, that's my little con story, glad you had an awesome time!
1310249
Some guy here in the States did exactly that.
He was lucky it wasn't a pressurized cargo hold.
~Skeeter The Lurker
It was nice seeing you at BUCK as well Knighty! I hope you go Next year as well so you can randomly Snipe £500 for something on the Auction Still surprised about that..
Thank you for Signing my Trading cards and genuinely being an Awesome guy to talk to.
Cider Barrel
(the guy Attempting the Background pony Cosplay)
Glad to hear you had a good time. I couldn't make it this year, but at least I hear it was better-organised than last year. Yes, even with the incorrect numbers for guest passes and lack of information you mentioned, last year started out terribly - people were still only just getting inside an hour and a half after it opened, and organisation was a shambles- and yet I had immense fun anyway. And post-con blues are standard - I can't wait to get to another one, and I hope I can make it to MCM in London this October.
Anyway, maybe I'll catch you at BUCK next year. Maybe.
Sounds like an awesome time.
1310262
Your top was cool man. You should show SSnE a pic if you can sometime, I'm sure he'd love to see it!
1310243
This. ^
And also, I wish there would be one here in sunny Florida. I hear too many awesome things about this and I sadly cannot afford to travel to New York, Vancouver (or Seattle), Los Angelas or Baltimore.
Dat Snowdrop...
Too bad the ball was dropped for the stream with BronyCAN (from what I hear it was your side of the pond who dun goofed). I would have waved. Or mooned. Or something.
1310314
Ok yeah I was wondering wtf happened there. Did they just forget?
Amen to all of this! I was delighted with the turnout. And don't be so hard on yourself - you gave some useful feedback on some of the subjects, and I feel there was a good rapport between the three of us. That, and it was good to have a variety of tastes and opinions up there for contrast.
This! With it being my second year attending BUCK, I was impressed to see things running just as smoothly if not moreso than last year despite the great increase in scope of area to cover and rooms to worry about.
Oh and one last thing...
That was my thinking last year, and to be frank the bit about the musicians? Totally not true! I was fine hanging out with the other musical folks last year and this year too, and all of them are cool and totally easy to talk to. You needn't have worried so much :)
One more thing. I'll be forwarding you the winner of the fanfiction competition soon. For some reason, they forgot to mention the winner in the closing ceremonies, and what won was a very well written poetic piece. (That was in the fanfiction panel that we had the longer-running competition for.) I'll also see about poking some people in regards to tracking down the authors of the fics we really liked that you mentioned there. Would be nice to give some credit where due :D
And lastly, it was fun hanging out with you where and when we did :) I'll look forward to seeing you again next year, and of course around here too ^^
Cheers!
—Sketchy.
1310255
Skeeter, I think you mean that he was lucky that it was a pressurized cargo hold, not wasn't.
Depressurized means he would have suffocated when the plane got high enough. However, if it's pressurized, he'd still have air.
Damn, now I really wish I could have gone, I'm glad you seemed to have a great time though. There's always next year, I guess.
1310317
Yeah but you're also a musician. I'm a programmer, and while I have no issues talking to people it's kind of obvious to me a certain clique exists and I just didn't want to bother trying to break into something like that when I'd much rather talk to guys who want to speak to me, rather than trying to squeeze into something like that, especially since I haven't historically had the best of terms with various people *cough* last bronycon *cough* even though that all got sorted in the end.
I just pretend to be a programmer, I'm actually a steampunk gangster drug-lord called
Sir. Swag von Dubstep (original, pls don steal).
i.imgur.com/OKQb4FI.jpg .
Too bad you missed the karaoke yesterday it was really epic. But we'll get more opportunities, I travel large distances for less than conventions, not to mention I'm coming next year unless I die in some tragic accident.
I'm really happy you had such a pleasant experience (despite the ambiguity around your guest status) and it was truly an honour to meet you.
Lots of hugs, don't let the post con depression hit too hard, it helps being productive
~ Zee
Nice to see somepony else had fun at BUCK. Are cons really that confusing. I don't know since I never been to any?
I guess a "best" is missng here?
Great you enjoyed your stay!
1310324
Eh, a mistake. My bad.
Still. Someone did that.
~Skeeter The Lurker
1310273 My phone is on Charge Have some Potato Quality Pictures
i.imgur.com/q45mGV9.jpg
i.imgur.com/iUNFohl.jpg
1310330
Who wouldn't want to talk to you? You only own and run the largest repository of pony fan fiction ever.
You're like a bleeding rockstar of pony lovers.
~Skeeter The Lurker
1310381
Probably people who don't care about fanfiction or programming I imagine?
1310384
Eh, I can see that. Still you seem to be an easy guy to talk to.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Yeah, it was nice meeting you in person and just having a chat. Glad that you had a good time at the con.
I was the 2nd guy you sniped the Snowdrop from,
I was so tempted to match it. 
But in the end I decided not to. At least its in good hands and I got to meet you at the buffet face to face. 
I hope you come to the next Con, we may cross wallets once again,
or just maybe have a chat and drink. 
And to think, I'll probably never be able to go to a Brony convention... haha... ha..
Aha, but seriously, cool that you had a good time and stuff.
1310316
From what I heard you guys had technical difficulties. But I don't really know what happened.
1310330
I get that, sure enough. The weird bit for me though is that, seeing as I do art, music, and writing as well, I sort of don't properly fit anywhere. So I'm just a bit awkward wherever the heck I go. XD
But I've found that, despite that, most people within this community are happy enough to have me around regardless. It's just a matter of leaving your insecurities at the door and deciding to just get to know people regardless of whether there's some kinda clique or not. When you don't fit completely into any one clique, it makes it a lot easier to move around freely between them, or so I've found.
Oh and fun bit of trivia: I actually did a Degree in Computing & Networks, so I also have the geek bit going that you do. Just never mentioned it when we were chatting, I guess. XD
1310420
Depends what there is really! If there's another cute plushie I'll totally dump another £500 but really I'm not interested too much unless there's something I want :P It was really fun sitting at the side watching the 2 of you out bid each other and then grabbing it last minute ( god guys, learn how to win auctions ;) ). I'm not sure if I could stomach over 500 though haha. Anyway nice to meet you too! (I ended up speaking to both of you in the end :P )
And they say that Knighty's heart grew ten times that day.
It was lovely meeting you.
1310459
Ooh ooh a name I remember! :P You too!
Awesome times guys, awesome times...
1310440 Oh I was tempted as said good sir, I was tempted.
Beside by losing I won that Applejack & Applebloom poster, so in the end it turned out well. Yes I was that crazy fellow that whooped for joy when they should "SOLD" on the stage. 
1310533
Yeah and you got to snipe from that other Applejack fan so we both won at something ;p
Snowdrop plushie
That would have been nice to have but I'm glad ya got it anyways. 
Welcome back! 
It's nice to hear you had a great time.
Silly knighty.
Why marry BlitzPony when you can marry me?
1310608
Are you a pretty lady?
I have seen much, I know much, but there is still so much left in the dark, for it is not just a picture or thought, it is a hope, a dream, it is a drive.
1310619
I'm not trying to rush you or anything, but how is the FIMFiction app coming along? I love this site, and I would love to know how the mobile version doing! But seriously, take your time
I'm super fucking drunk and I just wanted to know that I love you.
I love you morte than swcootaloo. You are best pony.
Amnd even if I wasn't drunk ,yuorr stil sbest ap[ony.
Thakn you for the site best pony.
\\
I'm sure what evwer you blogged is opipser super cool
FiMfiction.net should adopt a mascot for knighty to cosplay as come next BUCK.
No.
xD
Been fantastic. Very very very nice to meet you in person ^.^