• Member Since 15th Jul, 2016
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forbloodysummer


The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai'don.

More Blog Posts41

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  • 78 weeks
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  • 101 weeks
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Aug
25th
2019

The Great Bronycon Blog - Part IV · 11:14pm Aug 25th, 2019

Day One!

Alarm went off at 6:45. Hadn’t slept badly, and felt pretty ok. Excited for the con! No more sensation of still being on a plane, either, which was nice. No one else up yet. Had a shave and didn’t cut myself – great success. Not that I often cut myself shaving, but sod’s law says that when that does happen, it’s on an important day. So an important day where my face survives the morning intact is off to a good start.

Towels everywhere, but no bath mat. Not a great sign, remembering that kid at school who slipped in a hotel shower on the year 9 ski trip and cracked his head open. No one wants to be that guy.

Whatever. A towel on the floor will do for now. Figure out how to switch bath tap over to shower mode. Step in, and–

Shit. The bath mat had been in the bath.

Never mind, move on. Shower scalding if lever moved 2mm to the left, freezing if 2mm to the right. Fine. Next problem, please?

No hairdryer. The room was meant to have one. But there was no sign of one. Looked all over, then sat to finish up the last bits of sewing the costume, while waiting for roommates to awaken. They finally did, and – you have to ask at reception if you want a hairdryer. Fuck’s sake.

Totally not like Wonderbolts are known for all having the same windswept hairstyle or anything. Baltimore sunshine will no doubt dry mine in minutes, but without a hairdryer being involved, I’ll look like a drowned rat. But it’s too late to get one today, so ‘Spitfire on a bad hair day’ it’ll have to be.

Roommates did offer me cold pizza for breakfast, though. Usually a favourite, but this one wasn’t nice. Still appreciated. Couldn’t figure out the coffee machine, would get tea from Starbucks instead.

Time to get dressed. Disappear to the bathroom again, don all necessary undergarments, and wiggle my way into the completed suit for the first time. Feels good, and looks good in the mirror.

Back to main room to add boots, goggles and ears. Makeup, then orange hairspray, and then realise I should have done that the other way around when I spray bits of my face orange too and have to wipe it off. Remove needles and thread from tiny sewing purse and decant ID, room key, bank cards and a couple of hundred dollars into it instead. Stuff that into my right breast, my pocket watch into my left. Grab sunglasses and the convention confirmation print out, and I’m good to go.

Corridor, lift, lobby, door to outside and–

Fuck me sideways, it is hot!

The phrasing here, of a train of thought being interrupted by an expletive about the heat, is exactly the same as the last time it came up, and deliberately so. Six days in the US, and not once did I fail to be flabbergasted when leaving a building.

But the hotel lobby was in the shade, so this time I got a repeat of the experience when I stepped onto the street and the sun hit me directly.

Walked down past the convention centre. Bronies everywhere. Think that was the first time anyone complimented my outfit, which was unexpected but nice. The heeled boots were completely fine to walk in, but the outfit was just as stifling as I feared.

Baltimore has wide streets and pavements, with plenty of green trees to provide shade. Those trees just aren’t over the pavements, so there’s no shade at all when walking. Unhelpful.

Then I approached the red squiggly statue outside Starbucks, where a lady was waiting, tapping things on her phone.

I don’t really know what to say about Naiad here. I’ve spoken more to her than I have everyone else in the fandom put together, several times over. And the same proved true here – I think we said more words to each other over the span of the convention than we did to everyone else put together, several times over. I wouldn’t change that.

It sounds like ridiculous hyperbole to call someone the most important person on a continent in my eyes, but it’s really just common sense. Who else would get that title? The president? Naiad has more of an impact in my life than he does. And I only know a few people in South America and Oceania, so Naiad gets the whole of the New World to her name.

So we met up, I grabbed tea from Starbucks, and then we headed to the convention centre. By the time we got there, water was running from my eyes because of the heat.

Even from looking at Discord the night before, the understanding was that referring to the event as ‘Linecon’ was the funniest joke anyone had ever heard, an instant stamp of wit that would never tire with repetition.

After all the hype, Naiad and I got through the registration line in about twenty minutes.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the pronoun tags – it’s he/him, except I was cosplaying a character who’d be she/her. The custom in the drag scene is usually that a person is he out of costume, and she when dragged up. How easily could one switch these stickers around, depending on the outfit and situation? I grabbed all three just in case, and then saw that hardly anyone else was wearing them, so didn’t bother with any.

The red/yellow/green badges, too, were hardly used. Made things easier, not having to inspect badges before talking to people, but the information on the website dedicated to much space to explaining them that I felt disappointed they weren’t even supplied unless you asked for one. I asked for one anyway, because I was quite looking forward to turning it from “Hi!” to “Piss off!” if a Displaced writer tried talking to me.

Standing in the queue was the first of three times over the event a stranger said something to me regarding the character I was dressed as and I just had no idea what they were talking about. Some attempt at a reference to something, and… just…. Huh?

People are weird.

But Naiad is exactly the right kind of weird, in that she likes ponies and writing and me, so we wandered about the place, found most of it wasn’t open yet, and then sat down in an out of the way area. We talked about stories, studies, and all manner of things. I remember the subject of tentacles had come up sometime before 10:30, because that was a sign of a morning off to a good start.

At some point around then I had to go the bathroom, which, um, proved harder than I expected? The flight suit itself unzipped and was ok, but the underwear was tight and covered a lot, so emptying one’s bladder involved removing every garment above the knee. Had to take everything out of my bra, too, lest it should go flying when undressing, which only happened the first time. At least the bathrooms in the centre tended to have a coat hook for hanging wings on.

Naiad’s recap blog recounts the tale of the chair-stealing ninja better than I could, so I shall instead mention that I was approached for a photo by the most adorable Scootaloo cosplayer ever, who, after we’d waited a long time to get his camera all set up, got a photo with Spitfire and then gave her very excited hug.

If anyone knows who that was (saw him again on the third day, dressed as Aria Blaze), I would love to see how that photo turned out.

A few other people stopped me to ask for photos when we walked about the place. I wasn’t expecting that, and it was awkward when I was with someone and in conversation, but it felt rude saying no, so… After a lot of searching, I’ve not found any, so my fears of my face being revealed and connected to my fimfiction presence haven’t become reality yet. I’d just try to pull a Spitfire pose each time of a hand on a hip, with a raised eyebrow.

In the distance was someone playing the saxophone, along to various backing tracks if I remember rightly. I recognised Through the Fire & Flames – but not the hard bit the guitars or keyboards play, just the easy vocal melody.

We spent a delightful couple of hours chatting. My notes for this point on my timeline just state ‘Everything is good in the world.’ Then we went for a wander around the convention centre again, seeing what else had arrived in the meantime. No entry yet into the vendors’ hall, and no sign of Quills & Sofas, just a rumour it didn’t exist this year.

Crossing a skybridge, we recognised a very distinctive jacket all of fimfiction knew to look out for, and so went to say hi to Horse Voice.

About five seconds into the conversation I realised I’d never read any of Horse Voice’s stories (actually I’ve read two or three, according to fimfiction, but forgot at the time) and had never interacted with him in comments or elsewhere. So that conversation turned awkward and ended quickly, with the only common ground being the bands on his jacket.

Then it was panel time. Only a few of the panels really took my interest. Anything not run by writers was out, and anything run by Youtubers was to be avoided like the plague on fire with sharks and global warming.

But there are a few people on fimfiction who write writing advice blogs worth taking the time to read. Aragon is one, Theigi is another, and bookplayer is top of the list.

bookplayer talks about how different pairings within the mane six require different moulds of romance story. Applejack and Rainbow clash because they’re rivals in the same areas, but Applejack and Rarity hardly even understand why the other is upset with them. Rainbow and Rarity’s similarities and differences both compliment each other, and make them ideal foils for each keeping the other from going too far.

This is a level of detail most shipping authors don’t get anywhere near. bookplayer’s also one of the few authors on here that vocally rejects the ‘opposites attract’ template of shipping, which I very much agree with.

So when I heard bookplayer was doing a panel, it went on the list immediately. Add to that that it was with Epic Yarn and BlazzingInferno, and the panelists more than made up for how the subject matter was fairly outside my area of interest.

The kind of families I write about involve three immortal sisters locked in a cycle of hatred and co-dependence, sleeping together when they’re not trying to take over the world. I guess the panel had other ideas?

On the upside, although the panel did really highlight the complexities of writing children realistically at specific ages, I did take some comfort in knowing that, if that was all new to me as a writer, maybe it would be to some of the childless readers out there too, so I could get away with not knowing the first thing about it if I ever did have to write kids.

Afterwards, Naiad and I left the room, turned right, and found a sign for Quills & Sofas right in front of us. Job done.

If I remember rightly, as we got to the door, Super Trampoline emerged, who we recognised from pictures, but didn’t have much idea who we were. I got to introduce Naiad as ‘the good siren writer,’ as he’d referred to her once on fimfiction, so that was fun.

My overwhelming impression of Super Trampoline was that he looks like a man who writes Super Trampoline stories. If you had to pick from a lineup the guy who’d run a feghoot contest, you’d identify him straight away.

And if memory recalls, Super Trampoline or the staff member at the door or someone let us know that Quills & Sofas was at that moment kicking out, because it was lumped in with Pastel Pastures, which required the room to be empty each time a new activity was due.

So we figured that’d be a good time to grab some lunch, and the options were surprisingly limited for such an obvious captive market around the convention centre area. Fogo de Chao is my absolute favourite restaurant at home, but the full meat service there is £25. Here it was $55. A shame, Naiad hadn’t been done one before, that would have been awesome. But $110 between us just for the mains, without drinks? No.

There was another place, though. My recent culinary love is Mexican cuisine. I love going out to Mexican restaurants, I love getting it as fast food, and I love cooking it at home. Bowling For Soup once sang of Texas, ‘Besides, the Mexican food sucks north of here anyway,’ and, by that metric, any Mexican food in the US would be 3,600 miles better than those in the UK. Too good to pass up!

There is also the fact that, although I prefer the other two sisters, getting into Mexican food more as a thing can be blamed entirely on Sonata Dusk. So doing that at Bronycon at least once was a must.

And then I saw the Mexican fast food place in question. We don’t have that chain in England. We have the spicy flavouring it’s named after, but not the chain itself.

America exports a lot of culture globally, especially to other English-speaking countries. I knew Taco Tuesday from Sonata and The Lego Movie long before a Taco Bell arrived in my city. But this place...

I promise, there is no one thing better to know of a fast food chain from than this:

I’m not sure if Naiad quite understood why I was so keen to eat there, but I hope she does now.

So we went to Chipotle, I got a burrito (beef, maybe?) and Naiad got a bowl. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t able to finish it. My eating habits were entirely out of their usual rhythms for my whole trip, so I ate far less than normal over the week. US portion sizes are at least 20% bigger than in the UK, and I really, really wish I’d been in a state to enjoy them because I utterly loathe the UK portions, never failing to leave me still hungry.

But on this occasion, American portions defeated me.

Then we headed back outside, running into a couple local women and their young kids, all bemused and befuddled by why there were so many strange people around in such strange clothes, and why on earth I was dressed like I was. ‘Bronycon’ evidently wasn’t such a widely-known annual Baltimore phenomenon that that one word explained everything, so we sort of muddled through an explanation with lots of laughter all around involving ponies, me dressed as a character who flies, that sort of thing.

Back to the convention centre, where Quills & Sofas was now open, where we finally found familiar horsenames en masse!

This is Quills & Sofas, with two or three more tables behind where I was sitting to take the photo, all covered in typewriters.

There we met PresentPerfect. On the internet, she must be the busiest person on fimfiction. Thousands of reviews, RCL stuff, and 84 stories of her own not counting those that may or may not be on her alt. I’d hazard a guess that she’s also the person on the site that, if you had every writer on the site rank a list of which other users they feel connected to, would be top of the list when averaged out.

She comments where she reviews – rarely anything long, but always something that feels genuine, highlighting the moment in the story or aspect of it she liked most. And if she hated it, she’ll let you know. She strikes an ideal balance between professional and human.

She’s also one of the few people in the upper echelons of the site with an appreciation for troll stories (and Limestone Pie), and a welcome reassurance to have in your corner when you write stupid stories for the fun of it of characters being cheerfully indifferent to others suffering.

I remember being surprised when I published a troll story she didn’t like at all. Especially as the story everyone else had kind of gone along with. I wondered about messaging her at the time to try to clear things up, but ultimately held back. But at Bronycon, I thought, it’d be much easier to have those uncomfortable conversations without the worry of being misconstrued.

...That didn’t make such a great first impression, in person. Oops.

“That’s much worse,” she said, after I explained, which is a fair point.

We did get to speak for a few minutes, and it was lovely talking with someone who knew who we were and what we did, as we did with her.

I messed up another first impression straight after that, too!

Of everyone I met at Bronycon, Shakespearicles was the furthest from what I expected. 

If you look through his blog history, you’ll find lots more photos of him than you would of most authors. But they don’t really convey that he might be taller than me even when I’m in heels, and he holds himself with a bearing that says he will not be moved unless he decides to move. Between him running a Discord Fixes Everything writing activity and his speech on the Saturday night as something every pony writer needed to hear, he became something of a wholesome community leader at Bronycon.

I still can’t make the connection in my head between him and the person who writes so many incest stories.

Then we spotted another person with a familiar name on their badge. Familiar being the key word, because there are plenty of authors on fimfiction you probably recognise the names of, but don’t know where from. Was it a comments thread on another story? Just something you saw on the main page, or in a group? Or have you by any chance read some of their work?

The name we saw was that of Lise Eclaire, and we scurried away to a corner to look them up on fimfiction on Naiad’s phone. Oh! Lise wrote that Aria/Chrysalis story, which was, like, the only Aria/Chrysalis story out there for years, but only had two chapters and felt barely begun!

So began what became the standard fimfiction writer’s greeting for me, along the lines of, ‘You! You wrote that great story I read, and you should totally write more of it or more for those characters,’ ignoring the dozens of other stories they’ve no doubt published and I haven’t read because they didn’t star the small number of characters I really want to read about.

In this instance, Naiad and I spent an hour badgering Lise to write more of Love and Hate, and he made the terrible mistake of being open to the idea. Lise was friendly and welcoming, and happy to give up that much of his final Bronycon talking to two people he’d never heard of before.

Eventually we were all thrown out of Quills & Sofas again. This became a regular pattern. I’m not quite sure why the whole room needed clearing every time the ¾ of it making up Pastel Pastures did; it was pretty obvious who was a writer and who was a child with a parent doing arts and crafts things.

By then it was about 6:00 in the evening – I think this account has lost a few hours somewhere, but we basically had lunch mid-afternoon and then hung out in Quills & Sofas – so Naiad and I decided that might be a good time to check out the vendor hall.

Bronycon vendor hall was… about what you’d expect Bronycon vendor hall to be, really. But with less porn.

Plenty of suggestive drawings, but nothing actually explicit. I had heard tales of Sweetie Belle’s vagina being centre-stage, and this was disappointing in that regard. No gallery of wicked treasures, no open celebration of all things not family-friendly.

Not for want of actually seeing Sweetie Belle’s vagina, you understand – you’re reading this on the internet, so you could find that in ten seconds flat if you wanted – but to see a place openly displaying it in public, which I think would be quite the spectacle.

Still, we wandered around the vendor hall, with no clue as to what the best route would be, hardly sure which stalls we’d already seen and which ones were new. So many artists. So many plushies. And all so very costly.

I don’t doubt a life-size pony plush is very time-consuming to make, and takes a lot of high-grade materials. But the number of people who apparently have $1,500 to part with for one is much higher than I expected!

I love that he's sitting at his pony stall in a Kreator T-shirt.

Buried amongst all the plushie and artwork stalls was one I really wanted to see – Variety Custom Guitars! The vendor hall list gave no details, so we went to check it out, finding that they were cheapish guitars the vendor’s son would get hold of second-hand, and then revamp according to MLP themes.

A great idea, and an interesting stall to see. Have to say I wasn’t blown away by the execution, or the choices of actual guitar on show. This is the best one I’ve seen:

But when I think ‘custom-painted guitar,’ my mind seeks out something more like:

Still, the second picture was no doubt painted by a seasoned professional, where the first was by someone just setting out, so, I hope they stick with it and that that work pays off.

Then there was the stall everyone was talking about, the Bronycon Bookstore! Formerly the Golden Oaks Library, also known as the pride and joy of fimfiction and the smash success of the convention.

It was beautiful.

Something Bronycon made ever so clear is just how small the writers’ place is in the fandom. We got (less than half of) one room in the whole convention. We got half a dozen panels. A couple of days ago they published the official Bronycon photo albums; the Panels album has over 700 photos, and only two of them are of writing panels. ObabScribbler has 3,000 followers here, and 300,000 on Youtube. Likewise, DWK (the finest siren author around) has 350 followers here, and 30,000 on Youtube. The audience is literally a hundred times bigger on Youtube.

But the bookstore was our moment, and just for one shining instant we connected with the rest of the fandom.

“More stories, after having seen all the episodes? More tales of the characters we love, the reason we’re here in the first place? Yes please! I want them all! ...What, there are loads more pony fan stories on the internet? For free? Fuck off!”

The bookstore, by the time we got there, had handled most of the enormous queue you’ve heard about in other blogs, but had also sold out a good portion of its stock already. No Third Wheel series for me, or Cold in Gardez’s compilation including Lost Cities. bookplayer’s story Lost Time was still there, but I had no backpack with me to carry it in. Hopefully it’d still be there tomorrow.

Around the time I was standing there weighing up the decision of whether to buy it today or not, someone on my left read my badge, then held out a hand and introduced himself. CoffeeMinion!

CoffeeMinion has excellent taste in both Pies (the capitalised kind) and bands. He is also brave enough to ship Sunset Shimmer with an adulterous Zephyr Breeze. And I hadn’t even thought to be alert to the fact that someone might recognise me, rather than the other way around, so that was a great surprise!

We couldn’t stay long, as the stall was still busy, so didn’t get to say hi to AnonPencil and Flutterpriest who were manning it at the time. I forget where we disappeared off to or what for, but I’d guess more talking, probably in Quills & Sofas or wandering the place looking around.

Around 8:30, we made our way back to the same panel room as before, where the stage was this time occupied by Pen Stroke, Wanderer D and El Oso.

The panel was about… things? I remember it being very smoothly run, with Pen Stroke speaking authoritatively and fluently on a subject and Wanderer D supplying the necessary sarcasm. I definitely recall enjoying it at the time.

After the panel, Naiad thought best to retire for the night, having got to Baltimore at 1 a.m. the night before or something. I’d had alrightish sleep the night before, not great the night before that in Dublin, and none at all the night before that. So it didn’t seem a bad call.

So we parted ways, and each went back to our respective hotel rooms. At which point I learned that my roommates were in the room watching TV. They did that a lot over the con, actually – it was a rare event I went back to the room and they weren’t there already watching TV. I wouldn’t pay for a hotel room just to sit in it when I’d also paid for a convention ticket as an alternative, but maybe that’s just me being peculiar.

I think my response was pretty much to head straight out the door again? I could have tried to sleep while the TV was on, I suppose, but there was a hotel bar I could hit instead for a pint. Naturally, when I got to the lobby, everyone in the bar looked normal and boring and not into ponies, and I didn’t really fancy sitting there in my flight suit. But there was a convention still going I had access to, and a small chance I’d see someone I recognised, so in that direction I headed.

I meandered through mostly empty areas from the far entrance, going the route that passed Quills & Sofas, wondering if it was still open.

It wasn’t. But there was a very distinctive yellow Pikachu hat outside, and a person on the ground sitting cross-legged beneath it.

There are two implications here, of course. The first is the one thing everyone, even those who’ve never been to a Pony convention before, knows: the girl in the Pikachu hat is Monochromatic. And the second is that if Monochromatic is somewhere at a Pony convention, she isn’t alone.

I’ve read more stories from Mono than from any other fimfiction author, come to think of it – 17 of them.

Sure enough, there were three or four others camped on the floor around her, so I sat down with them and introduced myself. I’d commented on a few of Mono’s stories and blogs before, but I wasn’t surprised she didn’t recognise my name particularly. She was clearly a little worn out after a long day being mobbed by fans, and was very nice but somewhat drained.

Then I said the magic words, “I loved your story Crimson Lips,” and they evidently served as a syringe of adrenaline, with her now happily chatting about the story and thrilled to meet someone else who knew it. She said, in fact, that I was the first person she’d met all day who liked it. Which is a bit staggering, if you’ve read it – even by Monochromatic’s standards, it’s the finest Rarity POV ever bar none.

Sometimes other writers say things like “I really connect with Rarity and she’s the character I write best,” and people who’ve read Crimson Lips say “Lol that’s cute.”

Sitting beside Mono was Octavia Harmony, who I hadn’t spoken to before on fimfiction, but knew a lot of the same people I did, and had worked as an editor on several stories I’d read.

We sat for a while, but the mood turned sleepier, and sooner or later Mono decided to withdraw for the night, so the group went their separate ways. Not seeing anyone else familiar, and with most places closed down for the night, I strolled back in the direction of the hotel. Took the sky bridge this time so as to avoid the not-air-conditioned street.

I saw a guy dressed as Soarin as I walked through the Hilton, remembering earlier in the day when another Soarin had asked for a photo together. That required being in character, so I told him to stop slouching and then go shine his boots.

Through the Hilton, over the street to my own hotel, and– wait, didn’t I just see you? Sure enough, Octavia Harmony was walking into the lobby at the same time as me. So there was a mutual agreement of, “Sod it, beer.”

Explaining I had to Discord people as my only way to communicate long-distance, I grabbed my laptop from my room and went back down to the bar, where we sat and showed each other the stories we each worked on, and I asked him lots of questions about his engineering degree.

There was a random guy at the bar when I ordered who was saying something or other about vague themes of acceptance. I think he assumed I was gay, and the gentle ‘No, but not closed-minded about having tits’ discussion is often both mischievous and boring in its repetitiveness, but I really don’t remember much of it now, and I left him to his evening as soon as the drinks were poured and paid for.

Octavia had only been of drinking age for a couple of months, and his fimfiction account is dated to 2013, so he started off here very young. And he’s worked on an enormous list of stories by several big name authors, so he’s been doing that for a while. There was a decorum to him, an aura of properness and dignity, that brought to mind businessmen having a drink after a seminar more than pony writers comparing fan fictions. It was a great thing, and I was sad when sleepiness reasserted itself a pint later and demanded I hit the hay.

Bidding Octavia goodnight, I returned to my room to find the lights out and all roommates soundly asleep. Mission accomplished!

Stripped off my clothes in the bathroom – feet were sore, but not really blistered, and important manly parts were a fraction of their regular size after 16 hours crammed into that shapewear.

Wipe off remaining makeup, clean teeth, hang suit in cupboard next to dresses, stuff underwear in suitcase, don loose sleepwear, set alarm, sleep.

Comments ( 18 )

so Naiad gets the whole of the New World to her name.

:twilightblush:
:heart:

I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the pronoun tags – it’s he/him, except I was cosplaying a character who’d be she/her. The custom in the drag scene is usually that a person is he out of costume, and she when dragged up. How easily could one switch these stickers around, depending on the outfit and situation? I grabbed all three just in case, and then saw that hardly anyone else was wearing them, so didn’t bother with any.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were a thing at the con at all, especially having seen a handful of people here and there saying that, like, pony conventions are the place they feel comfortable presenting as their actual gender. Not sure they made much a difference (I can think of, like... five occasions, maybe, across the whole con, where someone used a pronoun for me where I could hear them), but I'm glad they were there.

I’m not sure if Naiad quite understood why I was so keen to eat there, but I hope she does now.

I... think I was vaguely aware you'd heard it mentioned in South Park, but I hadn't quite grasped the sort of reputation it had been said to have :rainbowderp:

Theigi is another

i.postimg.cc/cCZzJn9f/Capture.png

There was a random guy at the bar when I ordered who was saying something or other about vague themes of acceptance. I think he assumed I was gay, and the gentle ‘No, but not closed-minded about having tits’ discussion is often both mischievous and boring in its repetitiveness, but I really don’t remember much of it now, and I left him to his evening as soon as the drinks were poured and paid for.

:rainbowlaugh:

But on this occasion, American portions defeated me.

American portions are small, yo :trollestia:

Didn't we meet on Thursday? Or was it Friday? I'm unsure now :/

5111486 I really wasn't sure! It was one of the two - I remember we talked for longest on Sunday, but I thought we met on Friday, so that's what I went with here. Quite possibly I'm wrong, though :twilightsheepish:

5111492
In that case, I'll just continue making fun of you for not being able to eat American portions :rainbowlaugh:

5111494 If I'd had that portion here, I think it would have been great. But with unfamiliar breakfast, little sleep, meat for about five meals in a row on the journey over, yeah, I wasn't in the best eating shape.

5111498
All I hear are excuses :rainbowwild:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Yay, someone talked about me. :)

To be clear, I only hate that story. And that video you linked to, thanks for that. :')

5111602 You were one of the people I most wanted to meet; not so much as an author but as a person, and I was really happy I did :twilightsmile:

I think the concern there was that your review talked about it sounding like it being something other than it was, and to deceive like that was never my intent. And I think everyone else knew it was the gross thing right from the start? I'd have made it plainer, but it's quite difficult to write that while sticking to a T-rating (as the contest rules required) without lots of implication and innuendo :facehoof:

So yeah, it's about a bad thing, you're completely right to hate it, and I agree with the Not Recommended verdict.

Wanderer D
Moderator

I remember seeing you in your Spitfire costume and commenting on it at Pen Stroke's panel, I still think you did a pretty awesome job of it!

5111474

:twilightblush:
:heart:

:heart: I'm now picturing you in a bunker somewhere, with a world map covering one wall, and half the territory coloured Naiad, plotting with steepled fingers, like, "He said he had a friend in Singapore; I'll push up from Australia and invade by that route..."

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were a thing at the con at all, especially having seen a handful of people here and there saying that, like, pony conventions are the place they feel comfortable presenting as their actual gender. Not sure they made much a difference (I can think of, like... five occasions, maybe, across the whole con, where someone used a pronoun for me where I could hear them), but I'm glad they were there.

I agree, a really good thing to include, but I can't think of any examples either of when they would have been used for me. I guess it meant less correcting people when the person being talked about wasn't there? And that one is being thought of correctly, however little pronouns are said out loud. Maybe if I'd worn my tag my tits would have been less bewildering :twilightoops:

I... think I was vaguely aware you'd heard it mentioned in South Park, but I hadn't quite grasped the sort of reputation it had been said to have :rainbowderp:

:twilightsheepish: I had a chipotle-flavoured thing in a UK Mexican restaurant last week and it was terrible, so, worth the need for Chipotlaway I guess?

I love how much effort you put into making that picture with all the Rarity faces! :raritystarry:

5111865 Thanks! :pinkiehappy: I think I remember that, now you mention it :twilightsheepish:

I'm gonna blame lack of sleep at the time for some of the memories there being blurry now :facehoof: I think your name should come up three or four more times over the weekend, though, and I remember those ones much better!

5112470 :pinkiehappy:

Great to have you here - I think it's the entry in a couple of blogs time you get more of a mention in :twilightsheepish:

5111602 Sorry, I don't remember seeing the bit in your comment about the video before, so I missed that when I first replied.

...But I'm scratching my head over which video it was? :rainbowhuh::twilightsheepish:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

5122091
Search me, this was ages ago. :B

5122141 I'm glad it wasn't too scarring then, if it's been forgotten!

...Really curious to know what it was though :rainbowhuh:

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

5122143
I'd have to imagine it was in the comments of the story? Or maybe another blog?

...Or just literally anywhere a comment can be posted on this site, who knows >.<

5122149 Yeah, I looked through all the comments on my stories on blogs, couldn't come up with anything that one might not like :twilightoops: So I guess just anywhere else.

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