How Bronycon Changed My Life and How I Look At The Fandom (Part 1) · 5:26pm Aug 6th, 2019
I'm doing a recap live cast with barcast this week to talk about bronycon, our 56 person bar meetup and all the other amazing shit that happened.
My book is for sale. If you have interest in purchasing this non-profit book, check out my online store at this link: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1662371
In a lot of ways, I feel like it would be genuinely impossible to completely reiterate everything about this Bronycon and what it meant for me. Much less can I share and remember every single person I talked to and interacted with. So I suppose I'll start Part One of this story by introducing you to the characters who will be in this story. This is everyone that I explicitly remember -talking to- and not those I saw at a distance but didn't speak to (for no particular reason other than they looked busy or it was a bad time) [Like Saberspark, Bronywriter, Skywriter, or Pen Stroke] -- If I missed you on the list, I assure you it is NOT intended to be a personal offense, and I'll probably be editing and adding names as I remember. In addition, there's no particular reason to the order.
The Roomies: The Barcast (anonpencil, Flammenwerfer, Enigmatic Otaku, Milk, Ravvij), Snu (Snowybee), and Fisting Stick (Fimfic TBD)
The Fimficcers: RBDash47, Monochromatic, ROBCakeran53, Totallynotabrony, Aquaman, Horizon, PaulAsaran, Georg, Freglz, Aragon, B_25, Majin Syeekoh, Bloons3, Vore Crimes, Shakespericles, Dubs Rewatcher, Super Trampoline, Admiral Biscuit, Twinkletail, Duelist96, Clopficsinthecomments, Undome Tinwe, Kuairu, Tangerine Dream, Saddlesoap Opera, Present Perfect, Seventh Heaven, Famous Last Words, MissyTheAngle, Muwun, Lise Eclaire, Trick Question, Fiaura The Tank Girl, Moosetasm, OldenBrony, Miller Minus, Shalrath, Wanderer D, yamgoth the moth, RTStephens, Jake the Army Guy, Skeeter the Lurker, and many more I'm sure I missed.
The Youtubers: Caitbug, RoyFury, GutiuSerenade, Wuten, ACRacebest, Wootmaster
The 4channers: Vinny, Countless Anons who preferred to keep their trips withheld. or are properly Anons.
The over 50 people who asked for my autograph, most of the people who led me to completely selling out my book.
Given this was a con where I wasn't a community guest or had a panel, I had the exceptionally strange luxury of being able to attend con as... well. A vacation. And I'd definitely agree that it shared a lot of the same aspects of what I look for in a normal vacation I'd take. Extremely anxious and stress filled flying and transportation headaches. Luxurious locations and time with friends. Great food. Unique and memorable experiences. On top of all of this, the ability to interact with a community and group of people I care about and love so so so much.
For a lot of the more granular details, I'm sure we will talk about a handful of the experiences of con that we're pushing out to youtube as well as sharing pictures on the barcast discord. Which is a marvelous source for details, bronycon pictures, and memes. Plus we have the recap cast.
It was a particularly curious experience to see the convention through my eyes, as someone who has gone to years upon years of conventions and been in the pony fandom since season one, but it was even more curious to bring along a duder by the name of Fisting Stick (for the sake of the article and pictures) who was the person I had first originally talked to about making my username for writing. I was extremely happy to see him have such a great time, despite him not being into pastel horses, and it definitely made me less nervous about the trip in general once I saw that he was having a good time and taking care of his own ordeal.
I signed up for an event called 'Bronycon Assassin' - Which I'm happy had a great turnout, but my assassin didn't find me, nor did i find my target. to be fair, there were 10k people at the event, and I was having a hard enough time meeting up with the people I was trying to meet, let alone the folks who I didn't know for a game. All in all, the game seemed fun, but it seemed like something you devote a con to doing, rather than do something 'off hand' in spare time. And I had little to no extra time.
In fact, that always seemed to be the common denominator of the weekend. Time. It seemed like once you began to do something you enjoyed, you got whisked away to the next big ordeal. Perhaps that's part of the reason I didn't go to any panels. (Despite wanting to go to the RCL and Shipping panels) I'd work a shift at the massively overwhelmed Bronycon Bookstore, then go to the room to grab food, then to Quills and sofas to meet someone, so on and so forth. I did my best to keep tabs on chats and meetups and things like that, but honestly I was more focused on the people and the conversations within my vicinity rather than the internet. I really wanted to be lost in the moment of the con.
And at one point, I got too lost.
Now I -did NOT- have it as bad as some others. Super Trampoline and Jake The Army Guy had some very disheartening blog posts about their own personal struggles at the convention, and I had nowhere near the experience or struggle they had. But I did have to come to this sort of blatant realization. Anonpencil did an amazing job at talking me through my mental block and Mono unknowingly reaffirmed it later.
You can't ever please everyone.
I got so, so wrapped up in the event. So lost in the moment. I felt like I needed to see and meet every person. Do everything for everyone. Sign every book of mine that I sold. Meet every person from fimfiction. Have deep, meaningful conversations and become friends to everyone. Eventually I began to feel... lost. Because I felt like I couldn't make everyone happy. I couldn't give everyone my undivided attention that they wanted. I had this deep inner realization that I couldn't be the friend I wanted to be to people. I felt like I was letting them down. Straight up, I was hurting people by not being the person that... well. I can't finish that sentance without being down on myself. If you're reading this, you know who you are if you've been impacted by that. I've made mistakes. I'm happy things seemed... better.
Pencil pulled me back to reality. I needed to be doing things that mattered to me. The only person's happiness who I can completely control is my own. I needed to be sure that the people I try to make happy are the people who are genuinely important to me, and that I had just 4 short days to spend time with and enjoy. I remembered feeling this huge hurt over a 'meetup' that I wasn't explicitly invited to and felt excluded from the fandom and community, but once the scales were lifted from my eyes I realized that it really wasn't one of the things that mattered. And when later on our roommates went back to our hotel room, ordered pizza, sushi, snacked on chips and cheered with cider over some Smash bros and Memes... I had this moment where it felt like everything was right. Because cons to me are never about the vendor hall, or the panels, or meeting with celebrities. It's the time you get to spend with the people and connections you've made in the fandom. Also, later I learned that the meetup was totally a misunderstanding, and if I talked to the right people I could have been in in a heartbeat. That said, I still wouldn't have given up the wonderful time I had with my Roomies.
Nine years of fandom. Six years of writing. Three years of podcast. There's so many monuments of the fandom and how much it's helped me in my life, and in a lot of ways it's given back to me. I'm not going to be the type of person who is like OH THE SHOW TAUGHT ME SOMETHING. But the people IN it have taught me a lot. And this wasn't the ONLY THING I learned and took away from this weekend.
More of that will come in part 2. For now, The proud thing I can say and without a doubt take away from this weekend, for me, is that I had a good time. And it won't be a time I forget anytime soon.
Wish I had made an effort to say hi more so than I did.
I am, however, glad you managed to "sober up", so to speak, and enjoy yourself.
To quote Dave Chappelle's Rick James: "It's a celebration, bitch!"
~Skeeter The Lurker
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5100782
Hell yes, my friend. Hell yes. The next part is much more positive and has much more nice things to say, but that's later in the week :D
I am proud to call you my friend.
5100794
Same to you, my dear, dear friend.
*hands bottle of water*
Dude, it was cool just to see you again. Pickle's Pub was a blast. I know we didn't hang out a ton, but that's fine. We're both online a lot, and we should play more co-op games together when we get time.
5100807
I think we're going to be planning a jackbox night fairly soon ;) winkwinkwink nudgenudgenudge incest
5100820
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It was great seeing you! I was tempted to get more pictures of you guys as a group, but was too nervous to ask. Pleasure meeting your acquaintance anyways.
I'll share the pictures I took on the recap cast.
I'm glad you were able to make it to the 4CC games. I haven't followed them in a while, but when I learned that the Summer Cup finals and semi-finals would be playing on the same days of the convention, I had to get hype.
This lead to some dubiously unsanctioned events within the convention hall. A story for another blog post, because the events leading up to organizing the viewing of the final game on Saturday would not be believed without the timestamps from my phone.
At any rate, I was thrilled to see you and some of the other barcast make it to both games.
5100796
*Sucks water like Nestle on a corporate contract*
Glad you're home safe.
5100882
I wish I had known about this.
I am sorry I didn't have more time to spend with you, even though I am just a background character. i was just too wrapped up in Con work.
I already made a big speech about it to you and the whole cast, but it was an absolute joy meeting you, Pencil, Milk, Flam, Enigma, Rav and Snu in person. In fact I was worried I was being needy and distracting you from spending time with people you would've been more comfortable / associated / acquainted with. Time is a bitch, yes, but I'm nothing short of grateful for getting to spend some of it with all of you.
And sharing the delicacies of Australia, of course. You're welcome, by the way.
Okay, so I looked back at my comment, and I now realize I wrote, "It wasn't great seeing you." XD
Sorry about that.
It was exceptional seeing you.
yes :D