Highlights from BronyCon 2019: Firebrand and Zacherle

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Highlights from BronyCon 2019: Firebrand and Zacherle

In which son_of_heaven176 gets another autograph from his favorite brony YouTuber, overhears an interesting aeronautical conversation, and finds out that he didn’t need to spend as much money has he did.

Friday, August 2, 2019: The Second Day of the Final BronyCon

As mentioned at the end of the last blog post, the line for Lauren Faust had reached its cap. Furthermore, Zacherle wasn’t scheduled to be at the autograph room for quite some time yet. However, I had heard from Dark Wind that Firebrand was having an informal meet-and-greet on the second floor, near the model boats. Of course, I had stuff for him to autograph as well, so off I went.

Once there, I got Firebrand to autograph his Prance card (again, I point you to my tweet of the completed collection), and as the fans all asked the Fiery Joker all sorts of questions, GoldenFox passed by.

(To his chagrin, someone mistook him for Thespio. Josh said that he’d never let poor Goldie live that down.) After GoldenFox went some distance from the group, I intercepted him and asked him to sign Firebrand’s wedding present.

Master Code also passed by. I knew at the time that he was also a brony analyst and that he had some connection to Firebrand, but at the time, the precise connection did not click. Nonetheless “brony analyst” and “connection to Firebrand” were all that I needed to ask someone to sign Firebrand’s wedding present, so off I went again. IIRC, MasterCode must have been quite the fast walker, as he had made it up a flight of stairs before I could get him to stop and ask him to sign Firebrand’s wedding present.

During the meet-and-greet, I asked Firebrand a question about reading, and after answering my question, he mentioned that he had a plan for a new project, where he, Ari, and Midnight Sonata (in their pony OCs, of course) would go into various books and experience different types of stories. (Think Kingdom Hearts, but with literature instead of Disney shows.) Ari would introduce classic books, Midnight would introduce horror shows, and Firebrand, of course, would introduce mythology.

And I still remember this scene that he had in mind: he, Ari, and Midnight were in some scenario that Firebrand quickly realized as a Greek myth. He asked Ari and Midnight to put on cloaks:

One of the girls (I forget which): Why?
Cmdr. Firebrand: Because you’re female, and Zeus is real here!
Aramau: But we’re not human!
Cmdr. Firebrand: You think that matters?

But as time ticked away, I needed to head back to the Autograph Hall, as it was almost time for Bonne Zacherle to start signing autographs. Nicole Oliver was just about to finish her set, and Zacherle would then take the table that Oliver was on. Consequently, Zacherle’s line started RIGHT where Oliver’s ended. Memory serving, the last person for Oliver had a sign stating in effect that Oliver’s line ended with him.

Now you might recall that I have a Bronze sponsor badge. What I did not have, though, was a line-skip ticket. So sponsor or not, I had to wait for a LONG time just like everyone else.

As the line proceeded to snake its way through ever so slowly, I overheard a conversation between two bronies in the aeronautics business. One of them was a pilot, who had an OC by the name of Captain Aileron. The other was an aerospace engineer, his OC going by the name Vectored Thrust. I recall that part of their conversation was that Captain Aileron mentioned certain airports where a pilot would have to come in at a steeper angle than usual. I believe that it was London Heathrow?

When I neared the end of the line, I figured that they were giving out postcards—and they were the very postcards I was looking for! You see, during my trip in the Vendor Hall, I was looking for a postcard of the BronyCon art of Zacherle. However, not even the BronyCon merch table had it, hence I bought the poster. Yet lo and behold, they were giving away those postcards for free! (Of course, it was $20 to actually get Zacherle to sign the postcard.)

Well, I had already bought the poster, so I decided to make the most of it: spend $40 to get Zacherle to sign the postcard and the poster, and spend another $40 later to have Faust sign the Fausticorn postcard and the poster. That way, the Mane Six poster would have both Zacherle’s and Faust’s signatures on it! Brilliant!

When I got to the front of the line, I took the postcard and asked for Zacherle to sign it. Of course, she did:

Since the postcard was so dark-colored, they had a silver marker for her to autograph the pictures with.

Then I brought out the postcard. The staffer who was with her pointed out that the postcard was actually the cover art to an MLP comic. Since I’ve never read the comics, I had no idea; I had just wanted to get a picture of the Mane Six, and I did. Zacherle gave her autograph:

Best $20 ever spent.

From there, I left the Autograph Hall, having done everything that I had intended to do there. My feet were RIDICULOUSLY achy after having stood up for all that time, and the next item on my agenda wasn’t for a while yet, so it was off to the hotel room for a nap.

A/N: During Firebrand’s stream of his Ravnica D&D campaign The Living Maze, he announced that he was making a video of his wedding presents. (You can find the announcement here.) Needless to say, I can’t wait to finally hear what he and Ari think of the present!

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