Horse Horse Horse Horse Horse · 2:55am Aug 10th, 2015
Otherwise known as Bronycon 2015, for those of you that don't speak horse.
Well, it's that time of year again, much like how three days ago, it was that time of year again. Bronycon 2015 has come to a grand and sad conclusion, and already I'm back at my computer, at home, typing this up to relive those moments just one more time.
From 3-hour lines to terrible and drunken clop story readings late at night, it was a wild time.
Day 0: The Embarkation
Money Spent: $49
Total Money Spent: $49
"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite vehicle on the Citadel."
The sun rose early that Thursday, and by 8:30 AM I was out of bed and eating a hearty breakfast of bacon and... more bacon. By 10 my brother and I were on the road, with only an hour and a half drive between us and BWI, our first destination. Why BWI? Because LoyalLiar and his girlfriend were flying in from Seattle, the plane for which had departed the night before and was landing roughly around that time. A brief and easy drive accompanied by the Galaxy News Radio soundtrack along with the score for the Count of Monte Cristo musical ended barely an hour and a half later with the arrival at the airport, and then a short 10 minute drive to the hospital in Baltimore itself. Once there, we met up with Skeeter the Lurker and Ruirik for lunch at Philips, and then my brother and I hung out with those two while Loyal and his girlfriend decided to get some sleep after being awake for more than 24 hours. The rest of the day blurred by: we picked up our badges (or at least those of us who had preregistered), met with GaryOak, Sojourner aka ChaoticSeven, and the elusive djthomp and had dinner with all of that lot at the Pratt Street Alehouse. It was a pretty damn good place to eat, if I do say so myself. Afterwards, one of my close friends from high school who was also down for the con hooked up with us, and we spent the rest of the night drinking and playing youtube roulette with the projector that Ruirik brought to the con. By the time we finally retired, it was about 1 or 2 in the morning.
Day 1: Words n' Things
Money Spent: $128
Total Money Spent: $177
As I mentioned previously, there were some in our group who hadn't preregistered; LoyalLiar's girlfriend and Skeeter were in that category. They were up very early Thursday to beat the lines, while the rest of us caught a little extra sleep. Or, well, tried to. I woke up at about 6 in the morning because it was fucking cold in the room. The thermostat had been set to 68, which isn't that bad, but it was set to cool instead of auto, which means the AC never stopped blowing all night. Therefore, when I woke up that morning, it was like 50 degrees or something in the room, and I was not a happy person. It didn't help that my brother had stolen most of the blankets over the course of the night. At the very least, it wasn't something a hot shower couldn't fix.
Following that noise, I walked down to the con with Ruirik and we popped in line for Opening Ceremonies about a half hour early. It was probably a good call, because the line got really long, really fast. Still, it was worth it; we got our first (of what would ultimately be three) showings of an incredible opening animation for Bronycon 2015, "Good Morning Baltimare". We loitered around afterwards and caught the John de Lancie panel that was held 15 minutes later. The panel was 45 minutes of Q&A, but they passed so fast; de Lancie is an incredible man, and incredibly funny. Ruirik and I were entertained the entire time. Afterwards, we went to the vendor hall, where I nabbed several posters, including an equality poster that I got signed by Kelly Sheridan the following day (no pics, sorry; it's upstairs, I'm downstairs, and I'm too fucking lazy to grab a snapshot of it now). I also got 20 Fo:E TSSSF cards (That's Fallout: Equestria Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder for you plebians who don't know what acronyms are). In total, this accounted for $80 of the day's expenses; the rest was spent on food, where I ate at Noodles & Co. for lunch and then at Kona Grill for dinner. I stopped at several panels throughout the course of the day as well, and spent a good deal of time in Quills and Sofas, but I don't have a schedule in front of me to remember exactly what all I attended. All I remember is this happening before attending the Stable-Tec Studios panel that night:
Dear God this picure is so HUGE ehrmagerd
That's my friend on the left and my brother with the fedora and ukulele. Yes, he was strumming that thing like a madman throughout the entire day. No, he doesn't know how to play a single thing on it. But it felt good to pretend, I suppose, and people thought it was funny as hell. Afterwards, we attended one last panel on how MLP G1 was the most metal cartoon of the 1980s (no, I'm actually serious right now) which was pretty amazing. Ruirik, Loyal, and I then finished off the night with desserts at Luna del Sol before we finally went back to the hotel room and passed out.
Oh yeah, the three of us plus djthomp, who we've subsumed into PoL as a beta reader, hammered out a lot of details and fixed some plot issues with the coming chapters of Ghosts of the Past. I guess that's a thing people care about.
But the next day is when things really got crazy.
Day 2: Linecon 2015
Money Spent: $112
Total Money Spent: $289
Little did I know what I'd woken up for this day, but it was sure to be something special. After getting woken up by the cold freezing my ass off yet again, I departed the hotel room at around 8:20AM and realized when I got down to the con center that the doors don't open until 9. I found this incredibly surprising and incredibly hard to believe, given that last year in Bronycon 2014, my brother and I had arrived at the con center at 7:30-ish to get into what we knew would be an incredible line of doom to get Tabitha St. Germain's autograph. Regardless, the doors opened at 9, and Skeeter (who happened to arrive at around 8:45) and I wandered into the con and hopped in the line for autograph vouchers. It was a pretty short line, and I grabbed vouchers for Kelly Sheridan, the voice of the lovely Starlight Glimmer, and John de Lancie, because of course I had to get an autograph from de Lancie. Sheridan was actually in the first autograph slot, along with Kazumi Evans and Andrea Libman. I felt really bad for Sheridan; Kazumi's line was twice hers, and Andrea's line was twice that. I was person #10 of the day for her to sign stuff for, and so I got to chat with her a little bit. She did ultimately tell me to be quiet though, which was pretty great. I later got to see her do readings of poems and Shakespeare with the other voice actors which was hilarious. #Glimmer2016.
John de Lancie on the other hand didn't have his autograph station open until later that day at 3 o'clock, so I had some time to kill. I proceeded to dutifully murder time by getting lunch, attending a few panels, and picking out a Discord poster I wanted him to sign. Again, I don't have picks, because lazy, but maybe one day soon I'll be compelled to post pictures of the art and shit I got. Ruirik had also drawn a great and terrifying picture of Pinkie that he was going to get Andrea Libman to sign, and so we wandered down to the autographs section to go get things signed...
Replay the embedded Youtube video, please.
I should have known there'd be trouble when they made a separate line for John de Lancie.
In case you're unaware of what the layout for the autograph section was like, the line goes around the blue walls, where it's broken down into specific lines for each person signing things. These lines run the length of the huge room that we were all in. So really you can only see about 2/3s of the line from where I was standing.
The short version: Mike was done in about an hour and a half with his line (Libman and Nicole Oliver had the next biggest lines). it took me three hours to make my way through the line and finally get de Lancie's signature. It was 2:20 when I left Quills and Sofas; it was 5:20 when I returned. It didn't help that the man was MIA for the first 45 minutes of the autograph panel, but at least he worked from 5-5:30, where he was supposed to have his break between sessions. I wish I could have exchanged a few words with him, but he was in speed-signing mode to make up for lost ground. At least the conversation I got to have with Kelly Sheridan earlier made up for it.
You do not understand how fucking happy I was just to get to this point in the line. You can almost see de Lancie from here!
After successfully acquiring de Lancie's signature, I returned to the hotel room, dropped off the art I'd been carrying with me for 24 hours at this point, and lay down on the bed for half an hour to give my aching legs some respite. At least I hit it off pretty well with the woman I was standing next to. It helped the time go by much faster than it otherwise would have.
Following this was the annual Writer's Dinner at Tir Na Nog. Once again, the food was of meh quality, but it's all about the company, you know? Although this time there weren't long tables like last year so I could talk to a lot of people around me; the tables had been broken up so the ends could be used to prepare seating for more people. They prepared after the havoc we wreaked on them last year. In short, lots of stories about D&D were shared and we got Ruirik to do some pretty great speed drawings of PoL characters. Maybe he'll post all the art he made at this con in a blog post of his own soon enough.
A large portion of the rest of the night is a blur, mostly because I was tired after standing in lines all day. We attempted to go see Anthology V, but by the time we got back from Tir Na Nog the line was at "Good Luck!" levels of guaranteed entry to the room. It's a good thing we didn't hop in that line; the end didn't make it in. Instead we hung out at Q&S some more and wandered the halls.
Quills & Sofas was a treasure trove for beautiful art such as this. This sticky note was adorning a drink from Noodles & Co that was covered in similar Sonic the Hedgehog sticky notes. Other common themes at Q&S included puking Fluttershy. Yeah, I don't know what that was all about.
There was also some point where me, Ruirik, Sojourner, and my high school friend got basically a standing lap dance from some Trixie cosplayer singing "Tricks up my Sleeves". I don't know what she was on, but that was a damn concoction of drugs, not something straight.
And lastly, we caught this on the way out of Q&S after one final sit down.
Pictured: Your Favorite Anime
Are you ready for things to get strange? Because things are about to get strange.
First off, what happens when you blend the April Fools chapter in Summer Lands, one of GaryOak's clop fics, copious amounts of Fireball and other alcohols, and a $400 Moondancer plushie that Skeeter bought that day?
The following, apparently:
Actual promo for Ukulele Hero 2k15
"THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM."
Prerequisite amount of alcohol consumption for reading any clop fic by GaryOak
Which of course leads to lowered inhibitions.
This one kinda speaks for itself
After a wild night... it was time once again to pass out once again for the final day.
(I walked Moondancer back home that night like a proper gentleman).
Day 3: Yeah, It's a Little Hot
Money Spent: $45
Total Money Spent: $334
The final day dawned all too early to my tired eyes. At the very least, it wasn't cold, which was a plus. In any case, I wandered over to the con at about 9:45, and caught the panel for the animators of the "Good Morning Baltimare" animation at 10. Hearing about everything that went wrong (curse you, Shot 5!!!) and seeing examples of Adobe Flash covering the screen with gore and body parts worse than somebody shoving a grenade down Puddinghead's throat was absolutely fantastic. This was also our second viewing of the animation, and it was still just as good as the first time.
Some more things happened throughout the day. I went down to the vendor hall one last time and bought a pair of banners, one of Celestia and one of Luna, that I'd missed last year in BC2k14 because they were sold out. I'd say the visit was well worth it for one more thing:
THE YEAR OF LUIGI SHALL END IN FIRE AND PONY LIMBS
I hung out some more at Q&S, and then we took a big picture of all the writers there. My high school friend snuck in, even though he's not a writer, and photobombed the picture with The Bird. If you happen to have a copy of this picture, he shouldn't be too hard to find.
What else... I happened to see Crown Prince in person (although from afar) (She's really good looking...), along with Nowacking (although she was close enough to touch) (also good looking...). I waited in line for closing ceremonies for an hour, and my brother, Ruirik, and I all sat together and saw the "Good Morning Baltimare" animation one last time (never gets old). Lots of money was raised for charity, and BC2k15 was the first pony con to break 10k attendees. Good job, guys. Applause all around.
One last stop was to be made, and that was trying out the Flashbang super hot sauce at a place at the Inner Harbor. Skeeter and I did that together at Skeeter's and Ruirik's request. Ruirik and my brother have it on film. It was painful but I handled it much better than Skeeter did (read: I wasn't the one jumping around like a madman and sweating profusely, even though I have a very low spice tolerance). It was definitely a good thing that we got ice cream beforehand instead of afterwords, because that proved to be incredibly valuable in not dying from the experience. It was painful to even breathe for several minutes.
I'll make a blog post with the video when it's on Youtube later. I'm hoping that my brother and Ruirik splice their footage together for the perfect challenge video.
After that, it was time to pack up and go home. I said goodbye to all the wonderful people who I finally got to meet and hang out with again for just the second time ever, and some people who I met for the first time, in person or otherwise. Just like that, I was back home again, back with the family and pets, and after eating dinner, I sat down to type this blog up.
So tomorrow, those of you still staying another night in the Baltimare, wish it a good morning for me when you wake. Until next year...
Ante Legionem nihil erat, et nihil erit post Legionem
24
I've been subsumed!
I regret not meeting up with you guys for the closing ceremonies, they sat some dude next to me who had weaponized body odor. That sounds terrible, because it kind of was.
I'd ship it.Moondancer? What terrible taste.
Walking her home like a gentleman has saved you from death.
3308962
Eh.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3309164
What?
3309253
It's to the terrible taste thing.
Sorry. I may or may not be hung over right now.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3309269
Sorry, was just poking a bit of fun at 24, might have come off as more aggressive than I'd have liked. Didn't mean to detract from your purchase or anything.
3309282
S'all good. Like I said, hungover.
~Skeeter The Lurker