Highlights from BronyCon 2018: Is That Keyframe? · 11:45pm Sep 9th, 2018
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In which a delay at one restaurant leads to a chance encounter at another.
Saturday, July 28, 2018, Day 2 of BronyCon
After my talk with Lightning Bliss, I spent some time at StableTop Games (the game room). There, I finally played some Magic: the Gathering with Pink Flash.
My little brother had introduced me to MTG a few weeks before, and I had gotten his permission to bring his decks with me to BronyCon. (If you remember from “Where art thou, Firebrand?”, I had wanted to get card sleeves to protect his cards, but ended up settling for a deck case.) My brother had brought two decks home, but I decided to take only one of them with me to BronyCon. It was a Blue/Green Merfolk deck, focused on bringing creatures out early and buffing them with +1/+1 tokens.
Pink Flash, for his part, had brought two decks with him. One was a mono-Black deck, which he called his “nightmare deck”. The other deck was a Green deck focused on summoning creatures with trample. Flash’s deck contained three special land cards that, once all three are in play, produce a ridiculous amount of mana; the strategy was to survive until the late game and bringing out those high-mana-cost, heavy-hitting creatures.
However, his deck just wasn’t cooperating at the time, and if memory serves me correctly, I ended up winning against him twice.
At 3:30 PM, I went to the panel “Martial Bronies,” where a few martial-artist bronies showed off some moves and talked about how the philosophies taught in the martial arts have parallels in MLP.
Not too long afterwards, I ran across DarkWind and Pink Flash again, and we decided to try to go to Pizzeria Uno for dinner, since the rain messed up our plans to go there yesterday. We arrived, and we heard that there was a 30-minute delay in seating people; the place was full. One of the people who were waiting suggested the Shake Shack, which was right across the street. For my part, I remembered talking with DarkWind on Discord a few days ago and mentioning that there was a Shake Shack not too far from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the Greyhound bus that he was going to take to BronyCon would make a stop. DarkWind had had no idea what Shake Shack was.
Translation: this was a perfect opportunity to correct that wrong.
We decided to go to Shake Shack instead of waiting at Pizzeria Uno, and since the inside was full, we ended up eating at the patio seating outside. The three of us talked about all sorts of things, and around the time I was about to finish my meal, I noticed someone by the door. Female, nice build, dyed, cropped hair…
“Is it just me, or is that Keyframe?” I asked the other two.
“Nope. That’s Keyframe,” confirmed DarkWind, who was seated across from me.
“And there’s Thespio,” said Pink Flash, who was seated to the right of me.
“Where?” I said.
“Inside,” Flash said.
For all I tried, I couldn’t spot Thespio, but a few moments after, I did spot someone else inside the restaurant.
While we were watching, a lot of the TF2 Analysis Anarchy crew (plus relatives or significant others) had shown up: Keyframe, Lightning Bliss, Jasper Pie, Thespio, Midnight Sonata, Mad Munchkin, her fiancé, Dr.Wolf, and Teric.
By the time I finished my food, the crew had found places to sit—everyone except for Blissy and Keyframe was all around one table—so I decided to go in and ask for a picture. I needed to go in anyway to drop off the tray, so why not? Memory serving, there was some kind of discussion between Flash, Dark, and I, but I forget exactly what was said.
When I got in (and DarkWind came in behind me), I asked Dr. Wolf, “Hey, Dr. Wolf. I know that you value your privacy and all, so I don’t want to take up much of your time. May I have a picture with all of you?” Thankfully, they all agreed. I asked if we should bring in Keyframe and Lightning Bliss, but Doc declined, saying that we should not interrupt them. (They were in a conversation at the time.)
I turned on my phone and switched on the camera app, and asked DarkWind to take the picture. I said, “Just push the white button in the middle there,” and I slipped in front of Thespio.
At that point, Teric commented, “Oh. It’s one of those PhD cameras.” At the time, I assumed that he was using sarcasm to highlight how easy the camera was to use (i.e., “Oh, it’s so difficult that you’d need a PhD to know how to use it!”). I’m guessing everyone else concluded the same way, as no one took the bait.
DarkWind was still fiddling with the camera, and Teric actually had a punchline in mind, so he repeated the line: “I said, it must be one of those PhD cameras.”
Someone (I believe that it was either DarkWind or Doc) took the bait: “Huh?”
“‘Push here, dummy,’” Teric explained.
We all, DarkWind included, laughed at the joke.
DarkWind finally figured out what to do, and he took the picture.
Clockwise from SOH176: Thespio, Midnight Sonata, Jasper Pie (only the fez is visible), Mad Munchkin (not looking at the camera), Dr. Wolf, Teric.
Afterwards, he took another picture with his own camera (why he didn’t want to get into the picture himself is beyond me), and he, Flash, and I returned to the convention center soon afterwards.
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It’s fun reading your recollections of the con. It’s inspired me to post my own Bronycon 2018 memories. So awesome that you got to talk to all these famous people in the community. I’m too shy to do something like that.
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Thank you for your comments, and I'll be sure to take a look at your posts as well once you put any up! If you're coming to BronyCon 2019, try talking to one of them if you have the chance. Remember: they are people just like you. Just be respectful like you would to anyone else.