I went to Bronycon... Shenanigans ensued. · 4:31pm Jul 17th, 2016
This year's bronycon was the most fun I've had at a convention since Bronycon 2012 in Secaucus NJ, and believe it or not, it happened without a single drop of alcohol.
This year I got to hang out with a number of friends that I never get to see. I had a bunch of people from my FOE writing group all in the same room, allowing us to swap spoilers and ideas. I usually get to hang out with a large group of friends, but it is a particularly nice thing when you get to do it with people you only see once in a blue moon and who have similar hobbies as you do. I spent a lot of time making new friends and shouting things like "Do you folks like ponies?" to large groups of people.
As per every year, I hardly have a cent to spend on anything, so dealer hall is mostly an experience of window shopping, but it is always nice to see my friends vending away, struggling for that extrabuck. Love goes out to my friend Prism, who works so damn hard to put out those gorgeous prints. One thing managed to catch my interest from the halls, and that was a little game called "Bad Decisions". I feel like anybody who knows me would understand my inability to look away from a game titled as such. It is a lovely game similar to Cards against Humanity, except with more flexibility for interesting setups.
So, panels are always hit or miss with me. I like talking too much and I get caught up in wanting to talk back with people. I did enjoy being turned into a vampire on behalf of the whims of Tabitha St.Germain. I would pretty much do anything for Tabby. There are probably pictures on the Bronycon page somewhere of it. This year, however, I managed to make a wonderful decision in spending most of my time in quills and sofas. I talked things up with a fella named "Bad Horse" who came up to me saying "So, I have this issue with comedy. I keep coming up with these rules about writing... but I keep having to amend it with 'except for comedy'." So I get to be like "Let me tell you about the wonders of humor theory." I think that gave me some credibility among some people. Sooner or later, I was being accused of being the humanized authorial pinkie pie as I had garnered a gathering of writers around me like arthur and his round table. I was told to beware people who were walking around with black top hats, so when one walked up to me I obviously had to introduce myself and shake their hand. It was kind of weird hanging out in the writer's room because you'd be talking to somebody and they would say "Oh yeah, so when I was writing 'Platinum Crown'..." and I would be thinking 'wait a second, I recognize that title... that was like a really big fic way back... wow, these people actually exist." I got to write fun things on the announcement board like crossing out "shoo-be-doo" with "Shoo-be-don't! Seaponies stole my car!" or amending statements like " By Celestia's decree, Trial by combat has been banned throughout the celestial kingdoms." with "but don't let her tell you what to do!" The next day we had the FOE meet up I had been organizing and it was a complete success. And by complete success, I mean that by gathering up an hour before the Overmare Studios panel, we managed to undermine our chances of getting in, because we did not realize how long the lines would be. But it was all okay, because we managed to pull Somber out of the panel and drag him over to the Q & S to talk for 3ish hours. So yes. Complete success. Wizards do not make mistakes. It was a lot of fun.
At Bronypalooza I got to celebrate my friend DJ-Hollow Point having a wonderful electro swing set. I had friends that I hadn't seen in an entire year show up, and we partied it up. I got to do back flips on concrete in dance circles in addition to my usual show stealing dancing. There was another great guy who went by Jetpack who has legendary timing. He managed to land a backflip on the last beat of the set, it was absolutely perfect. As the two acrobats of the dance floor, naturally we traded contacts and hung out for a bit. We got in trouble with security which is always fun, and got told not to die because it would be a lot of paperwork. Good Times.
Saturday was probably the best day. A lot of the writers had some fancy dinner thing they were going to, but that was okay. I understand that I am not one of the cool kids yet, but I enjoyed the people I got to hang out with. We got to hang out with writers later on though at a RariJack panel. The schedule labeled it as a "Shipping panel" but it was way more specific than that. There was one ship, and it was country-class. Anyway, that is all basic stuff. The real fun was after everything was done. We gathered up at the renegade stage with a bunch of martial artist bronies and bronies who wanted to learn martial arts. We even got the green light from security. We held a brony fight club where we got to throw down with many men of the horse. Horse stance intensifies. We had so many people from so many different styles! It was like the brony kumite! Enter the Pony! Waaa-cha! We had street fighters, wing-chun, ninpo, jujitsu, mantis style, aikido, and taekwando. We had people from all over coming for this great event and it was amazing. logistically, this shoudln't have happened, but it did and it was amazing. We even had a DJ show up half way through who was like "This is awesome, let me play music for you." We got to trade war stories and techniques all night and foster the fire of friendship.
The last day, Nastyhooves and I decided to come back to the convention after our carpool had to leave early, just to hang out with some of our new friends like the glorious Solobrony and Nyronus. We hung out, talked Thief: The Dark Project, World of Darkness, and a bunch of other nerdy stuff. It is cool to see other writers who have good backgrounds in history to understand how things work. Anyway, I got to hang out with Solo all day, and that was great. It is always great when somebody is like "My face really hurts from smiling the whole day." Hehehhehe, the death by smiles plan is actually working.
Anyway, it's been a week, and it was awesome. I highly recommend going, but if you do go, remember to be social. Its only magic if you go out and make friends and then fight a world destroying evil together.
Astute readers will see the "backflip" and "acrobat" parts, and will realize this has a direct implication for the "martial arts" part of this story.
Anyone trying to fight this guy will have to catch him first!
4097520 Next time I come to his place I should bring my light recurve bow and some creative anachronism society-compliant safe arrows and see if he can dodge those.
4097565
And that's when you learn he took the deflect missiles feat and we're all doomed.
4097579 There is only one way to find out!
4097565 I don't know if I am at the level of dodging arrows, but I have been trained in dodging projectiles. It's not perfect, and I have only done so much, but it is fun stuff. It is like intense dodgeball training.
4097603 Arrows that have a lot of protective cushioning on them are pretty slow, too