ELearning Curve
MLP: FiM
Drama
Slice of Life
Cheerilee's new teaching career tests her passion for education when she must teach a student who is unable to learn.
Cheerilee
Other
Jack of a Few Trades · 50k words · 168 5 · 2.5k views

Midwest Brony Fest 2016 recap! · 4:32am May 31st, 2016

Whew, what a weekend! I thought I had fun at the last two cons I went to, but this one definitely takes the cake, as far as I'm concerned.

My convention experience, despite being so great, had some rocky origins. My car decided it was a good time to break down in a big way just a week before the con, and so, I was forced to use Greyhound to get there. If any of you have experience with Greyhound, you'll know that it is a generally piss-poor way to travel.

At least they weren't hours late this time around, at any rate.

So, I took my bus from the heart of Oklahoma out to Arkansas to meet my buddy, FamousLastWords. I get there around 10pm Thursday to find that another of our friends, Seventh Heaven, was already there. We went rolling around for a few hours, visiting some haunted places on our way back to Famous' place. We got in at 2 in the morning, and because we were needing to leave early to get to Kansas City by the 10am start time of the convention, we only got about 2 hours of sleep that night.

We arrived at the con at about 11 in the morning on Friday, casually late, as the really cool people like us do. We got registered and went around to check out some of the vendor stuff and checked out some panels that day. We met up with another of our crew, Arad, and we chilled out. Of course, the little bit of money in my wallet was rapidly burning a hole in my pants, so I had to go and buy some stuff. Unfortunately, the plushie department was a little lackluster this time, but the art guys were on point as usual. My main goal for the con was to get Nicole Oliver's signature or a photo with her in some capacity, because as you all know, I am the world's biggest Cheerilee nut.

And so, I commissioned a wonderful artist by the name of Bobdude0 to draw me up a picture of Celestia, Cheerilee, and Tree Hugger to get signed.

And with that, Friday ended on a relatively mellow note. We met up with the last member of our crew, Flutterpriest, and we chilled in our hotel room.

Saturday was the real day to remember. It started out on a good note with us attending a writing panel by the wonderful Quillamore, and then things got really interesting. I went to check on my commission with Bobdude, who was still working on it despite trying to run his art stand at the same time. I was in danger of missing the Saturday autograph sesssion, and I had heard rumors that Nicole Oliver wouldn't be attending one at a later time. Just when all hope seemed lost, Bob came in clutch for me. He managed to attend the VIP lunch that afternoon and got Nicole to sign the art FOR FREE. I can't give enough thanks to him, and I highly recommend that you go and check out his artworks. If you like Sweetie Belle, you'll love him. And for you who were wondering, here's the art.

And so, because of Bob's kindness, I had a spare autograph voucher to use, and therefore I got a poster signed by both Michelle Creber and Peter New!

And so, things continued to be cranked up to eleven. After lunch, our own panel came up, and we totally killed it despite being up against a voice actor panel to compete for our audience. We did really well up until the end, when one of the guys we had asked to help us read a bad story out loud, and he dropped the f-bomb in the last seconds of the panel.

So close, yet so far.

Immediately afterwards, we went to Tabitha St. Germain's super secret special panel, and I can't really say exactly what happened in there, but it was along the lines of all of the show VA's in attendance putting on a live radio play. It was fantastic.

Saturday continued to be non-stop action as we went to a panel hosted by the awesome crew over at the Stable Condition Podcast. We quickly became friends with those guys, and their panel was an absolute blast. There was also an art request panel featuring Bobdude0, Braeburned, Glacier Clear, and others. I somehow lucked out and got a request done by Braeburned, pictured below.

Ain't that both extremely predictable for me, and extremely adorable? I just love the little chin tufts he did on Big Mac, in addition to the downright dastardly look on Cheerilee's face. I absolutely love it!

That concluded our night at the convention, but there was one last bit of craziness left in our night, when we made the mistake of playing the Trixie drinking game. How it works is, you watch all three of Trixie's episodes, and then you drink every time she refers to herself in the third person. If you want to make it hard, you can finish your drink every time she refers to herself in first person.

It wasn't long before Famous was absolutely trashed. We didn't even make it past the first of the three episodes, but the damage was done. Overnight, Famous painted much of the room in puke, and that's about all of the detail I'll go into on that account.

However, it quickly took a turn when we found that the maids had actually lifted a nice Bose speaker from the room earlier that afternoon, and we decided that it was time for some revenge. We booked it out of the room Sunday morning just in time to escape the maids, and we drove past hours later to find that they were still mopping the floor in there.

We done good, if I say so myself.

And so, we went to our final day of the con. I performed another panel with Arad, which also went over very well. In addition to that, you may have noticed that I posted Chapter 9 of Learning Curve at about that time. This weekend actually marked the approximate one-year anniversary of LC, because the story got posted for the first time during MWBF last year. Sunday was nothing compared to Saturday's total insanity, but it was a good way to wrap things up. We said our goodbyes to Flutterpriest, the Stable Condition guys, and Arad, and attended the convention's charity auction, where openly lesbian IDW artist Jenn Blake kissed her first dude on stage for charity. It was a fun way to wrap things up, and then we headed back to Arkansas whilst bearing the full brunt of the inevitable post-convention depression.

After such high times all weekend, it's impossible to not feel hurt when it ends.

I consider this convention to be the best one I've ever been to. I've really been brought out of my shell and learned to step outside my comfort zone in the last year, and it really helped me have a good time this year. I'll include some final pictures to close things out, including a group picture of all of us on Saturday afternoon, and a few more bits of art I picked up. It was an amazing weekend all around, and I can't wait to come back next year!