The Best Weekend Ever · 7:53pm Sep 17th, 2012

For those of you who only care about story news, I’ll get it out of the way now and you can be on your merry way. I happen to have a bonus day off to decompress and I’ll be spending it writing. Goal is to get 5k words down. Chapter 2 of Gravity will be completed sometime next week, and then it’s a matter of seeing how quickly I can find people to pre-read it. I know I’ve been too slow to get around to it, so I’ll be nice with a teaser this time. The title is ‘Glue’. Piece together what you will about that.

Also, inb4 ‘GLEU IS MAED OF POINEZ’.

Now, on with my blog post. You’ll want to read the rest to find out why I currently own a video that could get one of the MLP:FIM writers fired.

Oh. My. Celestia.

It’s difficult for me to summarize within the context of the English language exactly how epic this weekend was, but believe me, it was quite so. This will be a long blog post about exactly all the awesome things I did while they’re still fresh in my mind. So many people have been asking about stories and it’s just easier to guide them to a blog post than type the story out over and over again.

For those of you who know me on FIMFic for my writing and not because we are bros IRL, I spent the weekend staffing a first-year ponycon called Midwestria in St. Charles, IL (about an hour west of Chicago, and luckily only 10 minutes from my house). The con was a greater success than we could possibly imagine, and I have some epic stories to share with you about it, so I’ll start from the beginning with every detail my mind can recall through the fog of alcohol and brony convention stench.

Thursday night…

Finally, at last it’s here. I had worked the previous five days (which for most is a normal work week, but I work 12 hour days) so I could have the weekend off, but I was an abnormal combination of exhausted and excited. Two of my buds from the Midwest Brony Division (join us on facebook!) were staying at my place for the con to avoid paying for a motel room. We were too excited to get proper sleep, ending up watching a couple episodes of ponies and epic wub time in preparation before passing out.

… I regret not having enough space for three mattresses in my room, since one of my guests had to sleep on the floor, and as a result, he was sawing logs all night. My other guest didn’t seem to notice. She slept like a rock (a Tom?).

Friday morning…

Wake up hella excited. Get my coffee and protein bars together (how do YOU survive a convention?), and then the cosplay… Sweet Celestia, by the end of the weekend I wanted to burn this wig. I don’t know how you ladies deal with long hair, seriously. Also, my prop glasses are one size fit all, and my head is not. It was like a vice grip on my head, but anyway I’m getting distracted. I put on my outfit, dubbed ‘Raristache’, and off we went to the con. We had to get there bright and early, since I was going to help my good friend Steel (damn furries and their ‘I don’t have a normal name’ clause) set up the game room, as well as lend him my board game collection for the weekend. I had no idea until I showed up that I was actually on staff. There were some snafus about the e-mails and such, and while they heard from me, I never heard from them, and they needed all the help they could get. Got my badge refunded and was placed on staff with the game room to operate group games and set up consoles and such. Not a problem, I was going to spend most of the weekend in the game room anyway.

The con was to officially open at 11 for reg, and 12 for the actual con, and as time approached, it looked like we were going to hit disaster and the con would fall apart. At 1130, nobody, even staff, had received badges yet… we were freaking out, but around 1145 things arrived and we avoided a total meltdown. From there, most of the weekend went smoothly (mostly because our con staff are awesome and worked their flanks off!).

To start the day, I snuck away from the game room for some Artist Alley. Not a problem. Steel had no money to spend and was determined to never leave the game room all weekend. Whereas I brought a giant wad of cash, not knowing the merch room would be far smaller than I expected. On the plus side though, there were some amazing artists (especially the ones I already knew personally). I bought a flank-load of buttons and keychains, but my big prize of the day was a chibi Octavia plushie that was begging to come home with me. This table at the con had chibi plushies of EVERYTHING PONY. They were all insanely adorable and the person running it was freaking out by the end of the con. There were at least 35 different chibi pony characters on the table and by the end of the con she was out of all but 6. Apparently the Tavi I bought was her only one, and EVERYBODY wanted it. She said she was doing Canterlot Gardens in two weeks and had no idea how she’d get restocked by then, especially since she could easily sell 3 times that many at CG.

On the note of swag, here’s my total haul for the weekend:

Okay, so I had to spend minimal time in the artist alley and rush back to the game room. Steel had a panel to run on pony gaming (apparently he’s made a name for himself as a tabletop rpg scenario writer, and I played a few of his pony scenarios this weekend. I’m new to tabletop rpgs, but they were fun), so I had to run the big game he and I run together, called ‘Are You a Changeling’. Many of you are correct in your guesses that it is a spinoff off the classic games ‘Werewolf’ or ‘Mafia’. The two of us moderated many epic rounds of 20+ players all weekend and it was a blast. My voice was shot by the end of the weekend because moderating means I need to yell loud enough for the entire group to hear me while they all have their eyes closed and tap their legs to show they’re asleep. It also meant I had to constantly come up with jokes on the fly, which I happen to be good at, so no problems there. I think a lot of people really enjoyed the games, and there was a line of people trying to get Steel’s information by the end of the weekend (I ran the games, but Steel did all the design work, kudos to him, he thought out a lot of cool stuff to change the game).

So that was most of my Friday afternoon. I was stopped sooooo many times for brohoofs from people who knew me from our facebook group, but I hadn’t met IRL. It was really cool to finally get some hugs and brohoofs from people I had talked with so much about the fandom. Many of them were on staff too.

I thought that I’d spend the night time peeking in on the rave instead of gaming. I don’t like techno, and had never been, but wanted to get a cheap laugh at what was going down.

I never made it there.

Instead, any time I left the game room, I was dragged across the hall where everypony was doing karaoke. Particularly because a very drunk M.A. Larson wanted to hang with me (oh and Amy Keating Rogers was there too and she was awesome, got both of them to sign my trading cards that night). I haven’t uploaded the videos yet, but the things I did on stage that night were the talk of the con for many people. Reminder, I spent the whole con dressed as Rarity, and I’m 6’7” with a long, curled mustache.

Sometime after Amy Keating Rogers’ awesome performance of Smile and her duet with M.A. Larson of ‘Summer Nights’ I was dragged on stage. What other song was I going to do in this costume? Rarity is fabulous. She is a model, and you what that means. She does her little turn on the catwalk.

Yup, I did ‘I’m Too Sexy’.

At first, the music didn’t start playing at all. I improvised… (“I’m too sexy for these lyrics”) but I went balls out for it for the lulz. At some point, a random pegasister dashed to the stage to stuff a dollar in my flank. The lucky bronies that got to see the spectacle were either traumatized or rolling on the floor in laughter. Unfortunately, it’s also the only performance of the weekend I don’t have a video of, so you can be spared the eye bleach.

By 1:30 in the morning, things were still crazy alive, and I snuck away from the gaming room to see what karaoke was up to again. The crowd was still pretty huge, as it turns out Friday’s rave was a failure and all the vendors went to do karaoke instead. It was sick. I had put in my name earlier for one more performance, and thought they’d run out of time, but while I was closing up the game room, one of my friends came running in and said ‘Hurry, you’re up’.

This time, it was ‘Milkshake’. And yes, I have video…

EDIT: Apparently FIMFiction fails at embedding still. Here's a link instead: link

The rest of the weekend, my two guests staying over would mock me every five minutes for how my voice sounds when I had to sing ‘La la la la la The boys are waiting’. They also said I need to go on tour to cons and do that same performance. I beg to differ, but hey, my goal for the con was to make and give memories and laughs.

I wasn’t even tired by the time I got home. 2:30 in the morning, and we had all had so much fun that our energy levels were still at maximum.

We passed out instantly.

Saturday morning…

The big day. This is when everything happens. So much happened that it was mostly a blur, so here’s a ton of highlights:

I ran epic Changeling games most of the day.

When I first showed up to the game room, right outside the door were our three writer guests (M.A., AKR, and Charlotte Fullerton) having breakfast. Got the Fullerton autographs, and the three of us chatted about how awesome they thought the trading cards were. They said they had no idea they existed until I had come up to M.A. the other day to get some autographed. I can’t begin to tell you how awesome these people were, and how sorry I am to M.A. Larson for the things I did to him this weekend.

More swag. So much swag. I am drowning in swag. And yet at the end of the day, I still had half my wad.

Got to stop Odyssey/Eurobeat Brony before the concert and give him some gifts I had ordered for him. I got a picture, but it was a total blur and I didn’t know til after since I only had time to get the one (he was in a rush). The concert staffers told me later he loved the posters I gave him from my friend’s dubstep company. One was a stormtrooper saying ‘may the bass be with you’ and the other had Bane and ‘when the bass drops then you have my permission to die’. I don’t get the whole dubstep craze, but wanted to show my appreciation for him making it to our small con (we also had some other wonderfully friendly artists, despite my feelings on their music. Cyril the Wolf, F3nning, TAPS, BluNoseReindeer, and others that I’m forgetting).

Now, the true highlight of the con: Why I blackmailed M.A. Larson.

First, I’m sorry he had to miss his child’s first steps to hang with a bunch of bronies, but he was so cool about it. That man is a god, and I did horrible things to him.

M.A. Larson happened to wander on stage for karaoke with a ¾ empty bottle of sweet tea vodka that had been passed to me and him by the pegasister that stuffed a dollar in my ass in the night before. Nah, he wasn’t really stumbling, but the image there is pretty funny. There were plenty of pics, but I took video, and I cannot detail for you what happened on stage or share the video with you or anyone for that matter. It is my con trophy.

Why, you ask?

He ended his karaoke performance by pointing at me and saying ‘If you put that on youtube, I’ll be fired! I’m trying to get more work with Disney! I need that video!’ and seriously, he wasn’t joking. There was one part of his performance that could get him in hot water (no nudity, I swear it!) and I wasn’t planning on doing anything to hurt the man, but it didn’t stop me from grabbing the mic and announcing to the audience ‘I’ll delete it on the condition that you write more Luna episodes!’. The roar from the crowd was epic and Larson and I shared a hug and some laughs over it.

I then got on stage for my performance, pointed at him, and yelled ‘This is for best princess!’ and sang ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. My voice was so shot by that point and I sounded bucking awful.

I also have a video of earlier that night when someone dashed to the game room and said ‘Come on stage! They want you to sing ‘Becoming Popular’!’

Apparently, I’m no good with pony lyrics. I fail as a brony, and a singer (oh god my voice hurts from the yelling). Here’s the video.

EDIT: More FIMFic embedding failure. link

Oh, and Josh Blue, winner of Last Comic Standing, was at the comedy club next door that night and wandered over to the con. He was claiming to be a brony, but despite the fact that obvious troll is obvious, I was still down for the game. Apparently, I’m the only one who recognized him and had to grab the photo op:
[img] http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s505/Byron_Olson/20120916_011911.jpg[/img]

That night will forever live in infamy. How I wish I could tell everyone what M.A. Larson did, but I love the man too much to sacrifice his career.

Also, I stopped by a clopfic panel run by Shrinky Frod for about 30 minutes. I wish I could have seen more of it. I still don’t get cloppers, but the guy had some halfway interesting things to say (even though he gave me the creeps). Unfortunately I kept stealing attention from him with jokes in the back and chanting ‘one of us’ whenever someone else wandered into the panel. My favorite part of that panel was when he decided to go over the emotional implications and connections involved in hornjobs. I immediately started laughing my ass off, and I nearly fell out of my chair when the guy next to me asked (and I mean serious, non-sarcasitc asked) “Yes I was wondering about that. I’m not sure, but how would you describe one of those.”

I pulled myself off the floor and said to the guy next to me, “You’re asking him as if he’s personally sucked off a unicorn.” (heavy laughter in the room) I turned to the panelist and asked him “Indeed, what is it like? Is it like a Fun Dip stick?” (whole audience falls out of their chairs with laughter). I let him continue his lecture until he mentioned that hornjobs usually end with “an explosion of magical sparks and energy… in your mouth”. Everyone was already laughing, but before the room could quiet down again, I had to yell “JUST LIKE FUN DIP!”

The room was broken after that. My job was done. My apologies and respect to Shrinky Frod. You’re a team player if there ever was one, and I have nothing but love for you, and I want so badly to understand the meaning of clop and why it exists, and hopefully I’ll learn through the course of my writing.

Sunday…

The final day. My voice gone. I’m tired, but Sunday is easy. The game room had to be moved at midnight the night before because of a wedding on Sunday. So we were in the panel area, which is great since I wanted to peek in on one and had to operate one that afternoon.

A friend of mine was running a separate “Who is best pony?” panel. The exception to her panel was that it was ONLY about Rarity. As anyone who has read my writing can attest to, I am one of the Rarity converts. I used to hate her with a passion, and while I truly don’t have a favorite pony, I can understand now how awesome she is and why people love her. It was really cute listening to people talk about how fabulous she is.

Also, they were all mad that I didn’t arrive in my Rarity cosplay that day. I can’t do three days of cosplay. I was drained… instead I had my face covered in cutie mark temp tattoos. I was applying them blindly, so Pinkie Pie ended up on my sideburn and Rainbow Dash ended up on my eyebrow…

I was freaking out and nervous about the fanfic panel. I really had nothing planned. I was placed there last minute, but it’s partly because I was one of the few staffers who writes fic, but also because I know how to lead a conversation. I talked about as many topics as I could come up with and ended up going over for time…

I forgot to record it, but I know a couple people did. There were about 9 people attending at the beginning, but by the end there were about 35 in the room. Since there was a panel later on exactly how to write well, I tried to avoid that topic aside from going over encouraging people and treating writing as a learning experience. I spent time plugging writers and such, mostly Thanqol, Cudpug, Dubs Rewatcher, and Steel Resolve (who I’ve been harassing too much lately). Also, thanks to the recommendations from the audience (and thank Celestia they helped with the discussion), my read list has doubled. I’ll never get through it…

Thanks to those of you that came out to that. I felt so at ease at the panel, and I hope you all enjoyed what I had to say and go read the buck out of the writers I was plugging.

Now, I have one final epic story from the con, and this one I don’t have to keep secret.

I left the panel and went to the main showroom in time for our charity auction. I still had too much money leftover and should have held onto it, but I started raising bids on things I knew I wouldn’t win (even when it was my friends that were bidding on it). They auctioned off donations from the artist alley, as well as some cool drawings made for a competition they held called the Iron Artist. Nobody wanted to bid on one of the drawings, so I gave it a pity bid and ended up winning a sketch of a pony drowning in mayonnaise. I should write a fic about that… just kidding.

Some of my friends on staff called me over and said I had to stick around since they had a surprise auction coming up. I immediately knew what they were talking about when it happened. M.A. Larson was in the room doing an interview with Foal Papers and Equestria Inquirer (btw, those guys were great and real friendly). When he was finished, he stood next to the stage and they announced they’re now going to auction off a hug from Larson.

“Let’s start the bidding at $5”

About a dozen hands shot in the air, followed by a single voice.

“FIFTY!!!”

Everypony was staring at me. But buck it, it was for charity. I actually thought people would keep bidding too, and I was willing to go higher…

Nobody bid.

The second they yelled ‘SOLD’ I dashed out of the audience and glomped the poor bastard. Wrapped my legs around him and everything. Nearly knocked him in to the speakers. He was laughing his ass off the whole time. I went to return to my seat and the auction staff stopped me.

“Um, you just claimed your prize early. You have to pay.”

I whipped out a couple twenties, and luckily I had ten singles.

MAKE IT RAIN!!!

If you want to see the whole thing, M.A. Larson and Equestria Inquirer put it up on their Twitters, and I have a terrible feeling it will be in the next Equestria Inquirer cast on Everfree Radio. This is the best pic I found so far:
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I also won a Rarity plush at the auction, made by my friend who did a custom Big Mac for me. Total cash dropped at auction: $135. I am gonna be broke for a while… I regret nothing.

Despite my lack of energy, the con still ended with a big gathering to thank everyone who showed up, and thanks to guests and staff, followed by a giant orgy of Gangham Style and Thriller.

It was great. I hope we get to do it for many years to come. I want to scar more writers.

I’m gonna get back to work now. You sick bastards want more clop. I’m trying.

EDIT: I forgot to share a piece of art with you guys. This is going on my front page, but my cover artist Avlo Jack made this to celebrate 100 followers. 10 points if you catch the Squidbillies reference.