BronyCon 2019 Log

The event was written days or weeks after the events, so it might not be in strictly chronological order.

Day negative Infinity:

Fold my Luna daki pillows carefully placing it into the suitcase, I tried to place it diagonally, but I still doesn't fit. It's not a standard sized one, it's smaller and should be more portable.

I am very certain of coming to the con after the spring break, it's the last one, and I happened to stay in US during summer. This is going to be once in a life time opportunity, I must attend.

The hotel and the flights are simple. Originally I planned to arrived at the con in midnight on last day of July and leave the con in the afternoon on 5th. But I change it to leaving Seattle in the morning and then go back to Seattle in the morning, this is necessary because I want to arrive at Baltimore during day, and I need to come back to school for lectures if it's possible. It actually turns out to be the right choice after because one of my family members is arriving at Seatac and I need to pick her up in the morning.

Hotel is harder to handle. I posted a message in BC discord channel, trying to get someone to share the room with. Well I think this is where the magic of friendship came in, 2 people DM me and I got a room several days after I assembled the group. Apparently one of the person in the group paid for the hotel for all 5 days, for the closest one, Marriot Inner Harbour, right next to the convention center, He is "Wilson" on discord, the other person is "Kiwi5slayer". I still payed 200 to Wilson after arriving at the hotel, I think this is necessary because I want to encourage actions like of being generous. And it's about the same amount of money I spent on daki.

After I assembled the group, I kinda forgot about it and just continue on with my daily life. I got up 5 am for my flight. It was too early for me to do anything. Leave my home 3 hours before the flight, so that even if something went wrong, I should have enough time to deal with it. It's my first domestic flight in the US. Interesting thou, I spotted a lot of people with backpack that has pony plushys popping their heads out and T shirt with ponies on it, while I was dressed in complete normal attires as usual. (I kinda want to buy the pony ahegao hoodie before the con but didn't mange to find it by myself). Wilson looks like a nice guys, but he doesn't say much, which is true for all 4 people who are in the hotel. And of course, we are all males.

Let's talk about the trip to BC. Alaska airline doesn't display the boarding pass on my phone properly so I have to go the airport and spend 10 mins fiddling with the machine and get checked in. The machine dispensed the boarding pass and luggage tag and I don't know hot to stick it on, but luckily the employees there helped with that. After the arrival, used uber. I was at the wrong floor for the uber driver to pick me up, the traffic was really bad and I arrived at the hotel a quarter to six.

There are 4.75 people in the hotel, how is this calculated? Well, there suppose to be 4 people in the room, and one additional person who is Wilson's friend. He wasn't in the hotel for the first day but he was for the rest of the days (Look at the date at the top, that is the day I wrote this blog). Yeah, if you are paying attention, there is one last person who hasn't be mentioned yet. He is Kiwi's friend. Also happened to be the oldest member, 37 to be precise.

Day 0:

On my first day, I went to the Korean BBQ with Peach Cabbler and Kiwi5slayer. We drove there at 10 pm at night, apparently, they drove to Baltimore, and their trip was around 11 hours. To be honest, it's very nice of them to take me there and have dinner with me. For me, I only had one meal that day, because of the time change of time zone and tiredness, I didn't have the chance to find food.

The food at BBQ is amazing, and TBH, it's cheap. The only thing I don't like is the environment, it's loud and dark; they also play k pop in the background; and it's not something I am a fan of. Most interestingly, all the employees of the restaurant celebrate customer's birth day spontaneously. If I remembered correctly, they celebrated for 5 different customers that night. So, you may infer how may people are approximately there assuming the likelihood for such an event is not ridiculous. I believe is something doable.

Wilson didn't come with us, Kiwi wants to get us all together to the restaurant, but Wilson was hanging out with his friends and he said there is a party, which apparently, there wasn't.

So there is another person I know in the con, he is NostalgiaHurts, we attend the same school, he joined the fandom a bit later than the time I joined it. This is the thing, about 2 months ago during the spring break, which was the time I was planning for BronCon, I asked him if we can get a hotel together, however, he already had a group to go with; which was exactly his suggestion that I should ask in the BC server to get roommates for the hotel. If not for him, the outcome of the event will be very different.

He told me that his group will be in for Marriot Inner Harbour too, however when I messaged him after his arrival to the hotel, he told me he was at room 603, so I can down the elevator and knocked on the door. No Repose, I tried several times and felt the silence of suspense. I message him that I have knocked on the door and he told me I didn't. Then I realized, we were at different hotel. Apparently the name of the hotel is similar, he was at Residence Inn by Marriot Inner Harbour, and that is totally different hotel which is several blocks away from where I was at.

What A bummer, but meanwhile I am not so sure of hanging out with a group will be a better idea or not, since following a group really limit the choose I can make and compromises will have to be made; however I also got to listen more and see how others choose their activities, which might actually turn out to be a better choice.

In addition, there is one person in their group, called Persona has a sponsor's badge, and he got all the plushy for others people in that group, which is something that I am totally jealous of.

Here is some additional things I need to add.

When I got in the hotel room from the first time, Wilson had only got 2 keys for the room, which is not what we need cause there will be 4 people in the room. So I went down the lobby and told the employee at front desk that I need the cards, which I didn't specify how many of them I need, so they just give me 2 more, which ended up to be 4 cards in total. huh... I guess silence and ambiguity can be really useful. In fact, the card of the Marriot hotel was BronyCon themed, with one of the mascots on the card doing lock picking. Which I later realized that the direction of the key tells how we should insert the hotel card. It was a sweet design.

There was an awkward meeting with one of the fandom's musician after I got back to the hotel lobby with Kiwi. The guy I met was an absolute creative genious, and he is Loophoof. Loophoof is asian, and his voice is very soft when I shook hand and talked to him. I tell him I met him in EFNW and I love his music. Yeah we greeted each other awkwardly and shook hands, and he asked me if I was that Japanese person on twitter, which I am obviously not.

Day 1:
Because Peach Cabbler and Kiwi arrived too late, we have to pick up the badge tomorrow morning. Interestingly, Nost already got his badge in the evening.

On the first day, we start early by going to the convection center. Kiwi led me there, we found the wrong place at the first time where we were in the complete opposite side of the Baltimore Convention center. I looked up on my phone and told him the location is's Hall B on 1 st floor. When we were going there, I had the chance to see how huge the place is and how smaller the actual con takes place.

There were a lot of people, waiting in a block of queue, which I prefer to call it space filling curve, like the famous Hilbert Curve. Why? cause it will be refer frequently in the future. At the moment, I didn't view it as a bad thing, but it will be proven wrong.

Guess who were in front of me waiting in the queue? Neverlaststanding, yes, the fandom's famous musician, and he loves working with loophoof. He looks ordinary, can't say where he come from but I feels like that he could be south Asia, but I could be wrong. One Interesting thing about him is that he is always with 2 of his friends who looks really like brothers to each other, by which I mean that they have similar appearance. They wear a pony themed hoodie too, and actually approached and asked them where did they get the hoodie.

So the registration didn't take too long, it was one of the thing that BC this year mange to do really well. The lady there saw my EFNW T shirt and immediately recognized it. I told her that this is my first BronyCon. She gave me the badge, this year they use this color badges called communication badge. 3 colors of red, green and yellow representing whether the person wearing it wants to talk to everyone, people who know him, or no one at all. I think it's a neat design.

The rest of the day is actually really eventful, I went to IHOP with peach cabbler and Kiwi to have breakfast. Because of the fandom is so huge, I have no idea who each other's friends were, so when someone greets Kiwi, I don't know who they are. I just smile and wave I guess? TBH, the breakfast was delicious.... When looking for food, group has a better idea than individual.

Ok, so here is the thing about this con in general. Because there are a lot of panels, I have a really bad idea about which one to attend, so when I am in doubt, I just ask nost and his friends and see where they, and then attend whatever panel they are attending.

The first panel for that day was <Don't Forget the Lyrics>. What happened in was people singing mlp songs coming from different sources, from the show, both MLP FIM, Equestria girl and the fandom. As a great fan, I am remember a lot of songs. I sing along with the gang, sitting among nost friends from 4chan. TBH, I can confirm they are hardcore fans. However, there was one guy in in the back of the row speaking perfect Chinese,which is very distinct. I talked to him and we added wechat, yes, he is from Tianjin. In fact, this was not my last meeting with him.

There is a lot of fan songs I don't know, partially due to I listened to too many EDMs (Especially Dubstep), and the recommendation algorithm doesn't like to recommend me all the top brony songs.

Ok here is the shit, in the afternoon, the vender hall opened, and at that time, I was optimistic that I can get a cute and adorable plushy to fit in my suitcase and take back to my sweet sweet home. Probably a Luna, Dashie, or Twi, if Sunset is not an option. Sunset will be my favorite.

When the vendor hall opened and people started queuing up for it, I have witness one of the most insane views. That kind of enthusiasm is like magic. We have a space filling curve that fills up the whole convention hall, 3 full level of people. While we were standing in the space filling curve, we were tossing balloons around. Childish but who cares I am at BronyCon, I gladly joined them. They also manage to sign their names on the balloon too.

Something I should have known is that sponsor has priority, or privileges. They... can ... line... Skip. It's not like I should buy it, it's that knowing any person who is a sponsor attending the con, I can ask them for a favor, the favor of buying my favorite Sunny plushy.

Yes, Persona, one of the member from the group, mange to get into the like and bought a Pinkie plushy for himself, a Glimmy plushy for Meta, and a Autumn Blaze for... (I forgot his name...). Well, I remember him as the layback person and he feels really chill, I will call him "The Chill Tall Guy" for now. Yes, I didn't have the chance to look at his tag and remember his name. What a bummer.

I am totally jealous. Again, I have nothing to blame but insufficient reaearch and planning, for a strategic plan. It would take a lot of times to make a perfect plan for the con, juding by how much time I need to invest in it, it might not be the optimal but it will improve my experience of the con. All in all, not being able to buy a plushy is not the end con, as I will prove it in this log, there are a lot of things happened in the con.

At that time, I thought there might be some plushy left in the vendor hall, but I was wrong. Me and the gang had Jesus's Chicken down the revenue. Several blocks from the convention center. Becasuse there were about 14 - 10 people when most of the people in the gorup were there, we have to make our own table in the small fast food resturant. The waiter at the front desk did asked my what my favorite pony is several times, 3 times if I remembered correctly, I told her it was Twilight Sparkle. I don't know what she is trying or what she is expecting, but she was indeed very friendly.

After the food, we are planning to attend panel, and we didn't make it, which will be a frequent occurrence in the future. The panel we wanted to attend was <Physicists Invade>. Yes, there were videos talking about black holes in Youtube using ponies. There were also people using ponies to discuss special relativity. In fact, according to nost, someone actually calculated the sound of speed using info from the show. I also know someone did some calculation on the density of the atmosphere. That one was a memorable one, but to be honest, there are so many ridiculous assumptions we have to make to start the calculations, which is good practice for me, but I will have to remain doubtful for the result. I appreciate logical deductions using the least amount of assumptions, but when physics meets ponies, that doesn't happen.

The queue was long, and it was filled before we had the chance to get in. BonyPalooza, let's skip to that. In fact, my memory of it was a blur of lights and dancing in crowd. I invested most of my energy in the bronypalooza of the first day, which turns out to be the smartest choice ever made in the con. The performance was amazing. This year, scratch attack was unable to make it to the con, and crews of Ponies at Dawn will were arranged. According to faulty who I days later in the con, he prepared the performance 3 hours in advance, and oh god it was such a hit.

7Th element's performance was amazing. I love his music, he is one of the unconventional music producer, both in terms of the genre he produced and the style of his music. His music can be dark from time to time, and his music can also be extremely sophisticated sounding in terms of melodic and rhythm. However, he wasn't careful about the bass of his sound, for most of performers, except Vynltastic and Vylet, their music was too loud and certain frequency is resonating within the hall, making the sounds very muddy.

P@D were performing next, I was ecstatic. I think I danced to hard. let's talked about loophoof, who I think was the spotlight of the first day. His music features heavy use of pony vocal samples, making its tune way more enjoyable than just growls or wubbles. In fact, it's really cute. I forgot who was doing the talking when when loophoof was setting up, but we were prompted with the question of who is the best princess. Yes, I know, it's Luna, it will also be her, at least for me. Loophoof performance had some of his tracks, like Fusia Dream, Would Stay, and the last one, which was the most outstanding, was Shining Forth.

I scream and jumped, like a maniac. That is the best summarization I can think for what happened on the day. When I woke up the next day, every fiber of my muscles are hurting and they feel sore. Yes, it was that bad....

Actually, I slept really well in the hotel. it is the case for the coming days too, but not for the last day.

day 2

Time flies by it's always the days no matter now small of an interval of time you are looking at. Being aware of time is passing drives me crazy sometimes.

I attended the panel creating equestria, the man event featuring Laurent Faust. Seriously she looks old. And her red hair gives me a familiar vibe... reminds me of one of my middle school teachers. I admire her very much, not only because of the idea of equestria, but the improvement made by her from previous generations and her persistency of pushing the idea to people around her.

Animating Live:
This is one of the panels that has many famous fandom's guests. Guess what, animation pie was there! I am not a big fan of him really; cause he stops making MLP related contents, and the last one was one year ago, call the element of cringe.
There are may other guests but I really only remember Alux and Minty, and the person who makes a lot of 3d MLP content, which I forgot his name. We spent about an hour to see all their works in progress. They are beyond me, I haver no idea how those beautifully smooth animations are made, neither how all the models of characters are created. It's still amazing to think that we all use computer but yet animators manage to create totally different things.
Their art style are all vastly different too, could be just different way of animating and different way of drawing the ponies. Alumx has the best style I think, it might not be popular opinions but I think it's very expressive and it gets the job done. And it's unique, definitely the most unique among all the animators.
Oh yeah, have I mentioned that someone in the panel with a long hair! The same person who was in Brony's reaction youtube vidoes manage to bring back animatedjames. Yes, the early animators who existed making pony conternts and animations.

28/08/2019
Ok, here is the thing, I have forgotten a lot about the con, and I am just going to summarize some of the highlights that stuck into my memory.

There was this Dinner party hosted by Nost Discord group. We ate Chicken tendies with ketchup and watch episode 15 or something, where cheese sandwich cannot smile because he changed his job. I am under 21, but I drank the beer. Yeah, it's bad, I had once drank so much that was close pretty close to end up in emergency room. Yeah, and yet I still want to drink alcohol, dangerous stuff.....
The episode was perfect, but when watching with others, it's kinda distracting, and I also cannot pause and play and search for meme faces, or anything like that.

After the Fact Live:
Woah, isn't the fandom's famous analyzer, Silver. Seriously, I cannot miss his panel, in fact, I never missed any, out of all the cons I have attend, 4 in total, I attended his panel for all of them. He is smart, and I love the connections he made and the philosophy he revealed.
This time, he indeed has a new topic to talk about. It's a episode review on the episode from season 2, <Pinkie's Sense>. He used the show materials to reflect on 4 stages of acceptance and delve into the character of Unicorn Sparkle in the earlier seasons.
Here are the 4 stages of acceptance according to my memory:
"This is bullshit"
"Ok, it is, but still, unimportant"
"Ok, this is interesting. "
"I told you so. "
While something to keep in mind is that Twilight at the earlier season is kinda obsessive with the idea of making sense of something. According Silver, she somehow right her ego to understanding something instead of just taking it as facts.
And we also review the old episode, as it's also the episode where we meet Derpy in the show from the first time. In addition, the hydra which chased them at the end is metaphorically speaking: "A problems". Because according to the legend, hydra only grows a head when on of the head is chopped off. As twi try to solve er problems, it creates more and more problems.
When I was outside waiting in the line, I was originally thinking that Silver is going to analyze some of the characteristics of a psychic character such as pinkie and how she play a role in storying telling. Apparently I was wrong.

Programmer's Panel:
I was the third day. Not many people were in the panel, and messages were sent in discord servers. Yeah, this event is not on the Con Book too. It looks more like a small gathering of discord people.
The panelists were exactly the same for the last EverFreeNorthWest I attended. I am not sure about the C# Program and the shipping game project. Yeah, Pixely was there too, her has the special presentation. Not about programming, it was really about her how he came across with BC 2013 and how he entered the fandom. I have to say, really nice presentation and the PPT she made was more interesting than the other programmers.
Seriously, I started to find out that programmers are people really lack of humours, the presentation about how clients asking for ridiculous features and funny was of using the computers are sure funny, but for me, it has the intention of mocking, whereas the Physicists in the physics panels has some of the really original jokes. Yeah, you heard me right. Go and search on youtube for their panels. I enjoy their jokes more than the programmer's ones.
The Pony Anthology:
It's as long video of all the skits about pop cultures but in the format of ponies. Yeah, that dude from Tianjing was sitting next to me.
Seriously, let me address the elephant in the room. LineCon. What I attended is LineCon. I am not going to complain too much, because I had fun regardless there were so many people.
I am not a great fan of too many people. But due to the fact that I was born in an overpopulated country and lived in a extremely overpopulated city, I just deal with people. What I have to say it, thanks for all the works done by the staff members in the con and security, it is slow, but very organized. It like all bronies were having a hive mind or something. It worked really well.
It is disappointing that I cannot attended some of the panels that I want, but I got to hang out with the groups of friends. Yeah, they are 4chan people, kinda unreliable but still pretty friendly.

Meal At Rusty Cupper:
Saturdays party was not the only time I've spent with the group, we also went to a really fancy restaurant besides the river. It's a crap restaurant. Seriously, I am not a person who is interested food. I skip meals regularly.... I also eat whatever is eatable. Partially due to my own cooking is so bad, which makes any food cook by other people a delicacy for me.

But that restaurant was expensive. I've spent 50 bucks on grilled Salmon and regular salad. I was also unable to finish it. People sit there and chat. I just sitting there. Looking for the artists who draw the daki I just bought from the vendor hall.

Meta's phone battery dead and I lend him my power bank. Yeah, I also cannot undersand the menu. Some of the ingredients for meals has a lot of things in it. Which again proved how food are uninterested for me. Oh yeah, there were 4 asians in the group, one of them is obvious north asians, I can sense that we have the same gene. But I am way way too slender compare to average north asian. Oh, his parents were from Beijing. Yes, I forgot his name too.

Vylet:
I met Vylet when I was in the vendor hall. I always thought she uses "he/him" as her pronounce, but apparently I got it wrong....

Sum things up:
There are many many other things I still want to say, like Loophoof's performance, and Vylet too. But as time pass by, all details about them faded. I just cannot remember clearly what happened exactly.

Good memories. I will miss it one day. My life is terrible in general. But this is something special. I don't get to hand out with a large group of people in a large con about a really special cartoon show. It makes my life better. Just knowing the fact that it can happen makes me feel complete.
I never contribute enough things into the fandom, as I stated before in my blogs, I've gotten into some deep complicated shit in my life right now. I need to stay on top of everything to maintain my life in where I am right now.
I am convinced that it's an illegal question to ask what I want from life. It's more appropriate to ask what life want from me. Yeah, it somehow gives me this. Amazing.