Bronycon 2019 Retrospective · 6:23pm Aug 5th, 2019
Bronycon 2019 was the best four consecutive days of my life. Highlights include:
- Seeing the madness that was the Bronycon Bookstore. There was literally always a line every time I went to the vendor's hall, and throughout the convention it was one of the hottest topics of conversation. We were constantly hearing about so-and-so's book being sold out, only for someone to miraculously find another box of books and have that be immediately sold out once again. I think it was an incredibly validating experience, and a real triumph of the fimfic fandom that we were all proud of. A huge shoutout to Aquaman for making it all happen and to RBDash47 of Ponyfeather Publishing for providing so many amazing books for the store, and another huge shoutout to all the volunteers who helped man the store when it became clear that everyone had severely underestimated the demand for the books.
- Every single plan for a small group of us to do something together turning into a 15+ mob of people trying to get seats at some restaurant and failing. I've never been prouder or more stressed out over how close-knit our community is.
- Fanboying over several of my favorite authors. Apparently, I made at least one author's day by spending nearly thirty minutes talking about how much I loved their stories, so that was neat.
- The fimfic community being treated like second-class citizens and being shoved into one corner of Pastel Pastures with only 2-3 tables allocated to us and being periodically kicked out for around 15 minutes because of art events happening that required them to "reset" the room. On the flipside, it was amazing being able to flash our badges and say "Quills and Sofas" in order to bypass the line to get into the room because we weren't there for the art events. Absolutely felt like a VIP those times, especially when we came in as a group and adopted the VIP swagger while entering.
- Giving RoMS an hour-long crash course on Machine Learning and neural networks on Friday morning. It was a great chance for me to review the basics, and I hope RoMS got something out of it too. Also giving lectures is fun and I need to do it more often.
- Meeting Aragon in person finally, and then picking up day drinking as a hobby within the first few hours of hanging out with him. I swear these events are unrelated. (But actually, Aragon is a really cool guy and I'm honored to have met him and had the chance to chat with him in person. He's got some really cool insights into writing and characters and it's nice to be able to discuss them in person.)
- Monochromatic dragging me and AppleTank into a corner and spoiling the current arc of The Enchanted Kingdom to us on Friday night. As it turns out, Mono is an incredible storyteller who brought the story to life for us, and it was one of the most unique and amazing experiences I've ever had the honor of taking part in. I laughed, I cried, and I cheered, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the con. If you haven't read The Enchanted Library and its sequel, I highly recommend it. It's an absolute masterpiece of fiction, and a great study on how to do romance right.
Attending exactly one panel. Specifically, the Royal Canterlot Library's "Ponyfic: There Can Be Only One" panel, in which they attempted to determine the best work of fimfiction ever written by completely fair and unbiased methods like personal preference and the general audience reaction at the panel. The competition began with 16 finalists and took the form of a single-elimination tournament. The full bracket can be found here: https://challonge.com/30meqc3g.
- The first round with Yours Truly vs. The Enchanted Library was physically painful to watch, and Aragon can attest to the fact that I looked like I was about to keel over from the stress of having to choose between the two. It came down to a second tiebreaker, because the first tiebreaker resulted in a tie, and I'm still super sad that Yours Truly got knocked out in the first round, but in the end, I couldn't give up TEL, so I guess this is the best possible outcome.
- Aragon's Evil is Easy, Governing is Harder got put up against The Best Night Ever in round one, and we all apologized to him before the voting even started. I think I ended up voting for Evil is Easy, but it didn't really matter and it was eliminated rather soundly. Aragon was cool about it, though. Losing to TBNE is nothing to be ashamed of. Also, both are great stories that y'all should check out.
- After the rather tense first round, the rest of the tournament went really smoothly, with TEL and Hard Reset dominating their sides of the brackets, much to my delight.
The final round was TEL vs. Hard Rest, and I was already preparing to tell Mono that coming second against that absolute juggernaut of a fic (which managed to be top-rated on fimfic at one point and still sits in the Top 50 of all time, to say nothing of the fact that it has over 7400 likes as of today) was absolutely something to still be proud of and that second place among all these amazing fics was still a testament to just how amazing her story was.
And then The Enchanted Library won.
I have never been more happy to be wrong about a prediction. The Enchanted Library being acknowledged at the Last Broncyon by the RCL as being the Best Fic Ever™ is just... look, I know that external validation shouldn't matter and this contest wasn't rigorous and all that jazz. But I really hope that Mono comes away from this knowing just how much we love her stories, and just how good of a writer she is. I was rooting for her the entire panel, and I am so incredibly happy to have been present to witness her triumph. It was well-deserved, and I implore everyone to read The Enchanted Library.
- Spending way too much money at the vendor hall, because I've never been in the presence of so much pony merch before, and I just had to have everything.
After failing to find a good RariTwi print at the vendor hall and complaining about it online, being pinged by Hap and told to meet with him at the Hall of Chaos. When I got there, he pulled out a sketchbook and gave me a gift I will treasure for the rest of my days:
Thank you, Hap, from the bottom of my heart. Your generosity is truly inspiring, and I'm honored to have met you at the convention.
- Being seated next to a brony on the flight home from the convention and talking about L-train's Moonrise with him before exchanging online handles. Even when it's all over, the ride never really ends, does it?
Other thoughts:
- Despite this convention being very much Linecon 2019, I managed to spend maybe 30 minutes in lines in total, by virtue of just never going to any events besides the Community Guest Meet and Great and the RCL panel. I absolutely do not regret this decision, since there was more than enough to do without having to wait in line just to find out that an event had already reached capacity.
- Typewriters are horrid devices and I'm eternally grateful to have been born after the popularization of the computer.
- There is something intensely surreal about being able to argue the minutiae of some fanfic with a person face-to-face.
- Huge shoutout to Pearple Prose for being my keeper a few times when I started to get frazzled from the sheer everything that was happening. You're a great guy and I really appreciate it.
- I spent more time talking about engineering than I do some weeks in my engineering grad school. I also finally learned some really important concepts that I needed for my research, so somehow this pony convention managed to achieve some professional development as well. Just part of the Bronycon experience, I suppose.
- My one biggest regret for this con is not getting to see Edgar Allen Poe's grave, which was just a few blocks from the convention. Hopefully I'll get to go back to Baltimore one day to visit it.
And finally, I just want to say that I love all of you and I hope I can go to another MLP con one day. This is truly a wonderful, magical fandom, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Osto Vinya nauva ustaina!
Awesome retrospective! The crash course was great and on point. Thank you!
Huh, you never followed me before now?
... I have gone to that convention three times and I had no idea Poe's grave was that close to the convention center.
In any case, yeah, this was tremendous fun. Sorry if I never said hi to you; I saw you a bunch of times but I legitimately can't recall whether or not we actually interacted. Also, glad to hear you loved the RCL panel! It was a lot of fun to be part of it, especially since none of us knew how the others would vote ahead of time for those tiebreakers.
5100008
Anytime!
5100030
Yeah, I was surprised too. I swear I had.
5100035
I think we might have said hi once? But yeah, I definitely wished we'd had some time to chat, but the convention was kinda wild.
It was great to meet you Melessë!
It was a blast to spend time with you and everyone there! I hope to meet again some time!
Was cool to meet you, even if we didn't spend much time hanging out. Always awesome to hear someone had a great con experience.
GAY ASS POOP
Oh my god, yes. XD Major energy from ignoring that line!
5100035
Same! Shoot, that could've made for a good writers' field trip, too.
Thanks so much for the retrospective, esp the Ponyfic: There Can Be Only One recap. Reading your anguished take had me biting my nails; reviewing the full bracket gave me heart palpitations!
Congrats to Monochromatic and her epic tale - all hail the Goddess of Raritwi!