Everfree Northwest: A Journal (the second part) · 10:55pm May 21st, 2018
SATURDAY (cont'd)!
When Last We Left Our Hero(tm), I was biding my time 'til hitting up the Writer & Artist hangout. After getting restless from hanging out in my hotel room, I ventured out, and made a quick stop in the electronic gaming room to kill some time. I did this periodically, to be honest-- it seemed that at any given time Smash Brothers was being played continually, but for me, I went for something a little more ... specific. See, some brilliant soul brought a SNES classic, which is my JAM.
I wound up with a really, really good run on Contra III (for the record: Spread Shot vs. the Terminator kaiju at the end of Level 3 does wonders), but hung up the controller (without bothering with the several Continues I still had) so some guy could use the TV play The Lion King on Genesis. Dude was really excited about it, so I can't fault him that.
But yeah, should I make it to EFNW next year, one of you guys needs to throw down in some Contra III with me. This is not an euphemism.
Also stuck my nose into the Grand Galloping Gala for all of two minutes, just to see what the hubbub was about ... at which point I realized I was terribly, terribly underdressed. Which obviously means I need to start looking into some sort of pony-power-armor cosplay. Or something. Really I just want a robot suit-- the pony part is just icing.
But yeah! Hit up the Artist thing for a bit, and did a little socializing-- ran into some young'ns(tm), one of whom absolutely loved Fallout: Equestria-- something I'm only passingly familiar with, but I couldn't help but admire his passion for the work. There was another kid who I gave some passing, general writing advice to-- and then I had to rein myself in from being too snotty when he didn't know the difference between Picasso and Dali. So I guess the lesson here is to watch more Jeopardy, or something.
Even still, I ducked out of the Artist hangout before too long, because my circadian clock was still tuned a few hours behind. And so, I ambled back to my room once again-- and overheard some awkward kid talk to some girl his friend had set him up with. I tried not to eavesdrop, but it was super adorable and I wish the both of them the best.
SUNDAY
Woke up at a slightly less ridiculous hour, which still gave me time to eat, pack, and do all that other boring stuff ... only to find out that the Disney Channel was showing a mini-marathon of Gravity Falls just as I went off to go Do Stuff(tm). Ah well.
Where I had originally planned on hitting up some more panels on shipping and writing and writing about shipping, I instead hit up the impromptu 'second performance' session of the Tails of Equestria RPG, since the first one had filled up so fast. I'm a huge RPG nerd, so the 'official' MLP RPG got me curious. In actually leafing through the book, the whole thing is dead-simple, which is fine. It's meant to work as an introductory RPG, and I can see that working pretty well. The simplicity also lends itself to hacking it in all kinds of fun ways, which offers a bunch of potential. My one real complaint is that the Mane 6 are SO MUCH MORE POWERFUL than a starting character ... which, well, it makes sense, but it's kind of a bummer to just start out at "Background Pony" level when the show's about Twilight & Co. being awesome.
The GM (PM?) let us whip up characters from scratch (which is honestly as simple as picking out what kind of pony you are, and what your cutie mark is), and so ... well, I went the obvious, self-indulgent route. See if you can figure out what's going on here. (At least, if you can decipher my terrible handwriting and even terribler art skills. There's a reason I use a keyboard).
The funny thing is, "Cloudraker" (if that is his name), wound up being ... well, perhaps not heroic, but at least effective. He rescued one idiot pony (read: another Player Character) from Diamond Dogs by telling them that said idiot pony had fire-fleas ("they bite you, and then you catch on fire!"), and then had to yell at another PC to remind him that Twilight Sparkle was not his waifu, and therefore said PC would not get a kiss as a reward for watching her stupid owl. In fact, nopony was going to kiss anypony-- which was then proven wrong when two of the other PC's wound up being A Thing. Shipping in RPG's, man. I dig it.
(One of these days, if I get ambitious/bored, I may start whipping up character sheets for various ponies 'cause I am a super nerd).
So yeah. While the starter adventure from the corebook wasn't anything to write home about (it probably didn't help that the party split up right off the bat), the system itself has potential. I might have fun actually running this at a pony con at some point-- or maybe even making a "panel" of it which folks get to watch the players blunder around and do stupid pony things? As I'd pretty much just run it like "Fiasco, only with hooves." It'd be great.
So yeah, after the RPG stuff, I scarfed down some lunch, then caught the tail-end of TD's Q&A with the writers & animators, and then hit up the award ceremony for the Iron Writer competition. My story, This is Not a Drill, was a finalist but didn't place-- which is fine, as the folks who DID win wrote some really, really good stuff. So go read them! When, uh, they post it.
Oh, and I ran into Scratchpad, who's one of the like twelve people who read The Flash Sentry Papers, and is therefore a man of impeccable taste. He seems to have a more favorable opinion of ol' Flashy than I do, however, but that's Death of the Author for you.
Did one last circuit of the vendor's room afterward-- tried out ponyville-VR (which is my first time doing any VR, to be honest), which was a trip. Also wound up talking to TD & Whitediamonds about how Rarijack might as well be canon at this point, and about how we were shipping them before it was cool. Or ... something.
But then, sadly, it was time for me to go. I thought about sticking around a little longer, but decided against it ... for good reason, too, as for whatever stupid reason Seattle's airport was all backed up, security wise, so despite getting there a good two hours before my flight left, I barely made it through the body scanners and onto the airport's various shuttles, making it to my gate with just enough time to shotgun a beer before it was time to board my flight.
Made it home intact (if tired), and, uh, now I get to catch up with all the boring RL stuff I took a literal vacation from these last couple of days. Sigh. Still, it was good to shake up my typical routine-- and heck, I'm now giving more than vague consideration to hitting up EFNW again next year. Perhaps this time even as a panelist! (HINT HINT HEARTSHINE).
So yeah, there's a report for you. I'm sure I missed a ton of cool stuff, but hey, you can't win 'em all, right?
I do believe all of the Iron Author entries can be read at http://ironauthor.xepher.net/story/list (I think you have to make an account, though).
And yes, we all love our RariJack. I'm going to have to actually publish another RariJack story. I actually started poking at one last night, but I don't actually like what I have so far. Feels like it is missing some FIRE and PASSION. But then, I did write it when I was super tired.
You always miss tons of cool stuff at a con, I'm afraid - there's always so much going on, so many people to talk with, it's impossible to talk to them all.
It was awesome hanging out with you!
I’m in Montana on the way home. Yellowstone here we come.
Last time I played Contra III, it was considerably newer, and my friend and I went through it with cheat codes. <.<
Wings
(Not hands)
I really really really need to catch up with FSP, but life is annoyingly busy right now. Sad!