Record of Brony Convention: Day 1 · 11:19am Aug 10th, 2015
So it's 4:30am and I can't sleep. I guess that means it's a good time to jump on the bandwagon and start writing BronyCon wrap-up posts. I'm going to go a different route from other folks I've seen, and provide vicarious living notes for folks who weren't able to make it.
Bradel Bound Presents
ブローニコン日記
(Record of Brony Convention)
Day 1 – The Arrivening
So I flew out from Albuquerque at 12:40am on Friday, which I'm sure everybody who met me is sick of hearing, because I just wouldn't shut up about it. I had a three-hour flight to Charlotte, a two-hour layover, and a ninety-minute flight up to Baltimore. I sprang for a first-class seat on the CLT–BWI leg, because it got me two free checked bags for $10 more than I would have paid anyway. I did not spring for first-class on the ABQ–CLT leg, because (1) I like my money in my wallet, thankyouverymuch and (2) seriously, how crowded is a flight from Albuquerque to Charlotte going to be at 12:40am?
Pretty crowded, as it turns out.
I managed about an hour of sleep on the first plane and another hour on the second. Not nearly enough, but better than nothing. Grabbed a taxi from BWI to the convention center, which cost almost as much as the first-class seat upgrade—damn you, badly misjudged online cost estimates! On the other hand, the trip from the airport to the hotel was pretty, and really relaxing after spending five hours wedged into flying aluminum cans.
I'd read online, while I was waiting around at the airport, that Hilton check-in didn't start until 4:00pm. I got to the hotel at about 10:00am. Ugh. I swung by the desk anyway, to talk to the hotel staff and find out if I could leave my bags anywhere while I headed to the convention center. I was very pleasantly surprised when the desk clerk told me they had a room free and I could head right up, even though I was six hours early for check-in. That man deserves a medal. He made my day.
Bookplayer and Bad Horse were scheduled for the Advanced Writing Panel at 3:00pm on Friday, so I figured I should probably head out and pick up my con badge early. Make sure I was able to get in, and all that. So after a much-too-short relaxation break, I headed down to the Baltimore Convention Center and hunted down the end of the badge pick-up line. Which was way, way, way down the street from the doors of the convention center. You might have heard that this year's BronyCon had 10,011 attendees? Yeah, you can probably guess where this is going.
I had to wait in line for three hours to get my badge. That sucked. But I want to emphasize that I'm in no way special here. A lot of us had to wait in line for three hours to get our badges. The place was packed. I wound up just behind a cute Luna cosplayer with a pretty good outfit, though, so that was fun. And thankfully, my phone was fully charged—so being the political junkie that I am, I spent about an hour of my line time reading write-ups about Thursday's Republican Primary Debate.
In unrelated news, Donald Trump is a troll.
Eventually I ran out of news, though. At that point, there was a lot of boring "let's stare longingly at the front of the line and count how many rows back we are" time. Also, that stupid Shia LeBoeuf motivational meme seemed to be rampant at BronyCon, and every five to ten minutes, the whole line would erupt in shouts of "JUST DO IT!" and "MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!". It's not actually that funny, y'all. And it's considerably less funny the 22nd time around. Towards the end, though, somebody had the brilliant idea to inflate some balloons and start bopping them through this dense crowd of people. It was one of the most Pinkie-perfect moments I've seen: balloons instantly fixed my boredom and frustration with this line. I had a couple little kids around me, and they were so excited to see these balloons come out and get a chance to whack them that the whole atmosphere changed. Pretty soon, the entire room is devoted to trying to keep four balloons in the air, and nobody's even noticing the Line of Endless Waiting anymore. Whoever came up with the balloon idea, you're awesome. This should be a con-sponsored event.
Okay. It's 1:00pm now. I've got my badge. Awesome. You know what'd be even more awesome? Lunch. Thankfully, there was a Chipotle right by the convention center. Chipotle and I are best friends now. Less thankfully, I hit the Chipotle around lunch time and it had another monster line. But I was an experienced line veteran at this point, and I slayed the foul creature by... waiting for another 15 minutes or so to get my food. Not all that bad, really.
Also, I want to give a quick shout-out to the Baltimore Convention Center Chipotle crew. These guys were swamped with con-goers all weekend, and churned out burritos like a freaking assembly line. Which is exactly what they are, come to think of it... but anyway, they were amazing, and patient, and they deserve a lot of kudos for their hard work. As, I'm sure, do the staff at all the other local restaurants we swamped (and that Otacon apparently swamped with 30,000 attendees two weeks before us). I know they were just doing their job, but still, thanks guys.
So! Badge, check. Food, check. I head back to my hotel room, with just enough time to eat, shower, get changed into something a bit more stylish than my airplane / badge line clothes, and head down to Quills & Sofas to see if I can meet up with anybody I know on Fimfiction. And as soon as I walk in the room, right there at the back I see a tall, black-haired guy with a baby carriage. This is Prince Rutherford, bookplayer's husband (who totally changed his Fimfiction name while I wasn't looking—dammit, James), and of course the much-discussed Baby Trixie. I've been bookplayer's friend for a while now, and I've really been looking forward to meeting her husband. I head to the back of the room to join him and we strike up a conversation—about God knows what, really. Role-playing? Ponies? Bookplayer? I don't remember. Anyway, the important thing is:
I 
Prince Rutherford.
Seriously. I didn't expect to not like him or anything, but I certainly didn't expect to like him as much as I did. He's awesome, and I had a blast spending time with him all weekend.
Around this time, bookplayer wanders back in from taking a quick smoke break and I finally get to meet her—which I've really been looking forward to, because I've been talking to her for ages online now. We all hang out for a bit, and then bookplayer and I head over to the Advanced Writing Panel while Prince Rutherford takes Trixie for a stroll.
Bookplayer is the first panelist there. Wanderer D shows up a little later—he's running the panel. Wanderer D is one of those interesting folks who's just managed to exist outside my Fimfiction circle of acquaintances for the longest time, and for no apparent reason. Obselescence was in that category, too, until a couple months ago when I started interacting with him. I seem to have a really low overlap with everybody who works for Fimfiction, for some reason. The third panelist, Bad Horse, is nowhere to be seen.
I'm sitting in the front row with a whole mess of other authors all around me (big surprise, check the panel name). I remeber totallynotabrony and Pen Stroke were both nearby, and possibly also Jake The Army Guy and FoughtDragon01, though I'm less sure about those two. (The latter may have been sitting next to me, but I didn't really learn who he was until Saturday when I had dinner with him.) I do want to say, though, that this room was packed. I mean, I don't know just how full it was (from the front, I didn't have a great view), but it looked awfully full—moreso than I'd expect, honestly, for an advanced writing panel. But there were a lot of writers running around at this convention.
Eventually, Bad Horse gallops in, and the panel gets started. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, because you'll be able to get better notes from the panelists' blogs and you can probably find a video online. The only real point I want to mention is that Bad Horse's discussion of the interrelationship between character and plot was really nice, and it gave me some new direction on the story I've been working on for the last week or two. I'm hoping I'll start having some new ponyfiction stuff you all can check out within the next two weeks or so, depending on how much writing time I can cram around stats research time while I'm on vacation. Yes, this is what vacation means to me—doing stats research in different places as I travel. It's a damn good thing I like what I do, or I'd go crazy at how much of it I'm supposed to do.
Okay, back on track. So the panel finished up, and I headed back to Quills & Sofas with bookplayer. I think it's about now that I first run into Nadnerb, which I'd really been looking forward to. If you don't know Nadnerb from Fimfiction (where he mostly just leaves occasional-but-really-good story comments) but the name looks familiar, that might be because you recognize NadnerbD from DeviantArt. He's got 13 followers on Fimfiction, and 2434 followers on DeviantArt, which just goes to show you... something, probably, but I can't quite figure out what. I got to chat with him and a few other people, I think. I did not get to chat with Bad Horse, though, because he was swarmed by throngs of adoring minions. In any case, I didn't hang out in Quills & Sofas all that long. Bookplayer and Prince Rutherford hadn't eaten in a while, so we all went out to dinner at Chipotle.
Did I mention that I love me some Chipotle? 'Cause I do.
The place was still a zoo, so Prince Rutherford and I left bookplayer outside with Baby Trixie and headed in to order food. We got to talking about roleplaying games and RPG theory, and Rutherford told me about some of the stuff he's been working on. You see, Prince Rutherford writes roleplaying modules for major companies and gets paid to do it. He doesn't get paid a lot—RPG work isn't his primary job—but he does get to do that sort of stuff professionally. That's just awesome. We talked about the new Star Wars RPG, which I just started playing with some friends in Albuquerque before heading out to BronyCon. We also talked about cold war era espionage and some cool Cthulhu mythos stuff. Chipotle lines go a lot faster when you're talking about cool stuff with someone.
This blog is getting pretty long. Now you know how my day felt. Remember, I've still only had two hours of sleep.
Okay, so the three of us (four if you count Baby Trixie) have a very nice dinner out in front of Chipotle. Then we head back to Quills & Sofas, where a wild Skywriter has appeared. I go over to say hi, and bookplayer and Prince Rutherford tell me they're heading out for the evening. Skywriter and I get to chat for a little while, with Morning Sun who I'm also meeting for the first time. Then the wild Skywriter tells us he's hungry, so we ought to go get food since it will be super effective. (Actually, Skywriter gets a call from his friend SR Foxley—more on him later—and finds out they're going to have to cancel their dinner plans because Foxley was going out with John de Lancie. That's one of those very understandable, "Oh, okay, I see why we're going to have to cancel our plans" moments.)
At this point I've just had dinner, and I've been thinking very seriously about going back to my room to sleep. Butbutbut dinner with Skywriter! Who has apparently been looking forward to meeting me! Aaaagh! I suck it up (of course I do), and he, Morning Sun, and I all head out toward the old power plant east of the convention center to hit up a sea food place. Oh, but before we go there, we stop by the Pepper Palace.
The Pepper Palace is a shop that sells salsas, barbecue sauces, hot sauces, ketchups, and all manner of other things—all of them various degrees of spicy. I pick up a jar of habanero ketchup that tastes pretty good. They've got a ghost pepper ketchup, too—and it was really good when I tried it, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that with the way I like ketchup on my fries, I'd kill myself if I bought it. Morning Sun starts chatting with the woman behind the counter and trying different hot sauces while I'm looking around. Then Sun signs her name on a clipboard and gets a sample of something, just one drop on a chip for a taste-test.
My interest is now piqued. I love me some hot food, and apparently the stuff Sun is sampling is so hot that you have to sign a release form to try it. It's hot sauce that comes in a can that's shaped like a pepper spray device—and it's rated at, get this, 2.5 million scovilles. Pure capsacin is 16,000,000 scovilles, and the hottest pepper on record (the Carolina Reaper, apparently) seems to clock in between 1.6 and 2.2 million. So let's just say 2.5 million scovilles is pretty hot.
Morning Sun gets a really big dollop of hot sauce on this chip, actually. Probably two drops rather than one. And then she puts it too far back in her mouth, so she misses the taste somewhat. So she gets another sample to try. Three drops, when most people go for one. Let's just say the response was impressive.
Not one to be left out, I sign my name and get a sample myself. And... it was pretty hot. Left a pleasant tingling sensation in my mouth for probably fifteen minutes or so—most of the time it took us to walk to dinner and wait for a table. I don't think it hit me as hard as it hit Morning Sun, but she had three drops and I only had one. Also, I've been really into Mrs. Renfro's Ghost Pepper Salsa lately, which takes some getting used to. (Y'all may think I'm crazy for liking that stuff, but it really does have a great taste to it. And the heat is manageable if you've got a tolerance and some dairy products handy. If you haven't developed a tolerance, though, you're basically just engaging in an internet challenge, so don't try it. The stuff is only going to be good if you've got a legitimate love of very hot food.)
Moving on, we go to dinner. Dinner is good. Morning Sun and I wind up talking a bunch about religion and other things while Skywriter does his Skywriterly listening and eating thing. My day isn't over, so I'm gonna try to move things along. (I had sauteed mushrooms and a glass of moscato; both were amazing.)
We head back to our hotels, and now I'm finally, finally going to be able to get some sleep. Thank godness. Or so I thought, anyway—as you may have surmised from the above comment, more is in store. I get back to my room... and Themaskedferret starts texting me because she wants me to come to Hoof of Argon and meet up with her. The conversation goes something like this:
ME: But sleeeeeeep!
HER: But ponies! And writers! And me!
ME: But sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
HER: C'mon, you'll have fun!
ME: Aaaaagh.
HER: Cold in Gardez wants you to come.
ME: ...damn it, fine.
So I leave the blissful promise of my hotel room and venture back down to the convention. And on the way to Hoof of Argon, I run into Bad Horse in the hall! Finally, he's not surrounded by minions and I have a chance to say hi. He seems pleased to meet me, and then he starts talking about how he's disappointed that... Here I'm expecting he's going to tell me he's disappointed we didn't get to meet earlier. I've been getting that all day now, because apparently I did a good job flying under the radar for people who were looking for me. No, he's disappointed about something completely different (and understandable, but not especially dignified, so I'll save him from me mentioning it). Anyway, folks, Bad Horse is awesome. He's much more quiet than I expected in person, but I really like him. And don't tell him I said this, but he's also a really nice guy. We'd just started talking when Random Congoer #5 comes up to us and starts asking him questions about certain story ideas, publishing strategies, etc. I know I'd been looking forward to meeting Bad Horse and getting to talk with him, and I think the feeling was mutual on his part, but he handles this guy like a champ. And by "handles" I don't mean "deals with him so we can get back to talking". He gives this guy his full attention, and provides the best advice he can give. He discusses some deeper points of publishing with this guy. And even when it becomes clear that this guy is falling into a lot of early writer mistakes (he's got a ponyfic magnum opus he wants to write, and he's reluctant to work on anything else before cranking it out; he has no stories so far so nobody really knows who he is; that sort of thing), Bad Horse is still very, very nice to him. Not to insult this guy—he was nice himself, and passionate about his idea, and he wasn't bein a real pain or anything—but this was exactly the sort of circumstance in which a lot of people would have just blown him off. He broke up a conversation between the two of us with his question, and he was asking for high-level advice when what he really needed was a lot of low-level advice that's fairly easy to get. But Bad Horse was very patient with him, and as helpful as he could be, and it was just very sweet. It wasn't particularly evil, but I don't mind. Don't tell him I'm reporting back on any of this, though—I don't want to ruin his reputation or anything.
Anyway, we agree to try to meet up later, and I head off to Hoof of Argon a little late, where I finally get to spend some time with Ferret and a whole crew of other people including Gardez, Archonix, and ABagOVicodin. Probably other people, too, that I'm forgetting in my exhaustion at the time and my exhaustion now. Applejinx was up on stage leading the whole thing. And... I think I've hit the point of name-dropping, because by the time I got over here, I was just too tired to be able to interact with anybody properly. I did manage to stick it out until the end of the panel before heading back to my room, though, and finally getting some much-needed rest.
NEXT UP: Saturday!
(But I don't know how soon, because this blog post took me two and a half hours to write. Jesus. I'm gonna try going back to bed now.)
Oh god Pepper Palace...
Also, sounds like the standard LineCon, heh.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I was definitely disappointed at how evil Bad Horse wasn't. False advertising!
Yeah, I've found that when writers try to write con summaries they end up less "summaries" and more "novelizations." Which are totally interesting, but I didn't have time to jump into that pool. (As if I even remember half the stuff.)
Anyway, next year hopefully you'll be on a panel, so you can
share your wisdom with the worldwalk right past the line with a headshake of pity.Also, I had an amazing time meeting you and you're wonderful, but you know that already.
Solidly entertaining blog post. 5/5.
Also, the lack of sleep in this post is making me want to take a nap.
I deeply do regret my waxing headache Friday night that kicked in slightly before dinner and set itself up on the internal couch. I would have loved to do more writing events but I was at he state of "not only will I not enjoy the things I go to tonight, but attempting to do so stands a good chance of making me miserable for tomorrow" which seemed a bad situation all around. Better to lose one evening than to achieve half an evening at the expense of the whole next day.
Bad Horse is far less bad than he wants us to believe.
3308906
You were at the advanced writing panel! I saw you there! (I think...)
Did I actually meet you? Or did I just observe that you were getting met by other people while I was sitting nearby?
3309273 We met and briefly talked.
Ah man, the Shia meme was rampant at Trotcon, too. Last year's line memes were way better. :B
Also, silly Bradel, con sleep is for the weak! :V
Man, you met all the cool kids. Sounds like a blast.
And not the kind that causes a bridge to collapse while the train is coming as part of some evil scheme, either.
3309201
Hypothetically, there's an obvious answer for that. If it were the case that a changeling snuck in to the convention in Bradel's place, and yet Bradel remembers enough about the convention to write this wrap-up … clearly the changeling released Bradel from his cocoon, and then took over Bad Horse instead.
Not that I'd know anything about that.
Just sayin'.
It's surprising how many people are constantly traveling to and from places you wouldn't expect at times you wouldn't expect for reasons you wouldn't expect. I took a 4am flight into Baltimore, and it was totally filled up too. Also, the guy who sat next to me whipped out his Surface 2, fired up Outlook and spent the entire flight composing emails about campaign finance reform in such a way as to suggest he was actually involved in some kind of effort to make it happen.
I have a tendency to eavesdrop on anything that happens near me at all times.
3309836
Well, I'm not saying you're hypothetically correct, but there was a period of time where "Bad Horse" was claiming to be Admiral Biscuit to the point of possessing his name tag. All hypothetically of course.
3309956
I remember that!
...wait, why do you know this?
ETA: Damn. Travel has addled my already weak mind. Skywriter would know that. Horizon would not. All this means is that you're probably not Horizon.
Incidentally, part two is now written, but I only have internet through my phone, so it probably won't be online before tomorrow.
3309956
Nothing unusual about that. Just Biscuit trying to set up his own hive--no biggie.
What CiG wants, CiG gets. Regardless of what sleep you might want to get.
3310610
Well technically, it's just outside the front doors of the convention center. But I suspect they get an awful lot, maybe even most, of their business from conventions.
Awww, shucks. You're awesome.
Chipotle is the bestest. It's a real and true fact.
This was an entertaining blog post! I'm sad I was never able to spot you from afar and say to myself, "Wow I'm breathing the same air that Bradel is!" which is how I "interacted" with most of the Horse Famous* people I met** at Bronycon.
*To me, at least.
**Saw/noticed/breathed the same air as.
3308906 3309201 I, too, was disappointed. It's always hard to find body doubles who are also sufficiently menacing, and I'd just lost two to the Jokermort at Trotcon.
Spicy things murder my tongue...and the rest of my mouth...you people are insane.
Only fifteen in Chipotle? Lucky, I think I waited nearly 45. I remember celebrating when my line had shortened enough to reach the back of the building.
It's great meeting everyone, isn't it? It's kinda surreal, really. You've developed visions of these people in your head, complete with personalities, and it gets blown out of the water when you see them face to face. It also reminds me of just how 'real life' the internet truly is--how real are the people on the other end, how complete. (somehow I missed Cold in Gardez. How the crap did I manage that?)