Assembly Hall · 12:29am Aug 17th, 2021
Well, this was certainly fun. Let’s get started on the run-through; goodness knows there’s plenty to cover.
Friday
I would have preferred arriving the day before the convention, but there were no availabilities left at the hosting hotel, and I’ve schlepped to and from the Baltimore Convention Center enough times that I prefer arriving to the con floor via elevator. So, I flew in Friday. Which actually went quite well; the plane landed forty minutes early and I arrived and checked in in time to catch the back half of the opening ceremonies.
Aside from the special guest introductions for those who could actually make it and the grand unveiling of the EFNW flag—yes, there was a full-size flag—the host also commented on how these kinds of gatherings aren’t usually too good about wearing masks. And indeed, all throughout the convention, people were appropriately equipped. Some of the cosplayers even worked their masks into their costumes which was a very nice touch.
The first panel I wanted to look at was in Twilight’s Writing Room, which got a significant step up in the transfer from Seattle to Bellevue. Before, it was a small room that could squeeze in a few dozen people in hastily assembled rows of chairs. This year, we had a freaking auditorium with quartz-veined surfaces, laptop plugs, and a 4x4 display screen for the presenters.
The catch was getting there the first time. I, in my excessive cleverness, tried to take a stairwell that seemed to lead directly from the Mane Stage to the Twilitorium, and it did… but to the doors by the presenting stage. The ones that were locked from the outside and weren’t supposed to be opened by non-staff members. (I did accidentally discover the Renegade Stage as well which, according to Super Trampoline, was a delightful bacchanalia of an open secret. All I know is that some guy did a drum solo through the front half of one of my panels.)
I wasn’t alone in approaching the problem from the wrong angle. I ended up joining a group of explorers who’d made the same mistake as we tried to figure out how to fix the problem, including Flammenwerfer, EnigmaticOtaku, and a righteously indignant anonpencil cosplaying as Fluttershy, who gave the air of a yellow-winged valkyrie ready to escort some warriors off the battlefield whether they liked it or not.
So, as I didn’t notice until later, the hotel is built as two towers of rooms bridged by three floors of conference rooms and other such accoutrements. And the Twilitorium is the third-floor bridge. We worked our way around and made it in shortly once we found the problem, though the cosplayer made a point of letting the staff know about the confusion, especially the electronic sign that cheerfully said the panel was going on right behind the doors you couldn’t get through.
The panel itself was Staying on the Horse, a guide to maintaining motivation and seeing a given story through. Some very good advice there, which I’ll probably put into practice with some of my own stalled projects.
After that was a panel on unreliable narrators, but I wasn’t sure about it, so I had lunch instead. 
(This may be a pun, but it is also true, making it a very good pun.) I basically forced my stomach to eat on Pacific Time throughout the weekend whether it liked it or not, though it generally liked it. More on that later. I also ran into Corejo and Undome Tinwe while getting my sandwich, which was quite nice.
I also made a point of exploring the convention space, focusing on what I called “Sombra routing.” In other words, finding the staircases. We took two elevators to get to the other side of the same room, and I had no intention of repeating that.
From there, I wandered through the vendor hall, which had some very nice offerings on display. I picked up some buttons (and would pick up several more; Sunset kept running away and Ditzy kept getting lost,) the Love You All The Same mini-comic from Monochromatic’s booth, and two adorable Sunset and Sci-Twi plushies by Sophie Scruggs. I don’t normally go for plushies, but that hit me right in the OTP.
While at Mono’s booth, I also confirmed the Post-It billing The Enchanted Library as the scientifically determined best story on Fimfic. I helped head the panel, after all. And I was wearing a lab coat, so you know it was scientific.
Next was a very fun hybrid panel with Round Trip and Yeah But Then Dragons. They fielded questions about MLP in a Nutshell while also drawing volunteers’ OCs in the signature Nutshell stickpony style. Turns out the 2017 movie was what inspired Round Trip to make that first video, so don’t say it didn’t do anything for us. Also, we got deep Spiky Kitty lore from one of the volunteers. (She has two Horns of Stabbing.)
After that was Fiaura and Chocolate Pony’s panel on legally publishing your fanfic, which was part philosophical meditation on the nature of human storytelling, part explaining the ins and outs of Fair Use, and part Fiaura recounting her legal struggles against Hasbro. (The entire prosecution and defense had to not just read her fic, but also watch the first three seasons of FiM and playthroughs of the first three Fallouts. Also, given how Hasbro dismissed their IP manager afterwards, who was then picked up by Games Workshop… I don’t want to say Fiaura killed What if the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, but she may have played a part.)
Almost immediately after that was Brawny Buck overseeing Brony Debates Live, a literal Socratic seminar… or it would have been if he hadn’t spent half the time explaining logical fallacies and letting two guys in front sidetrack the discussion into arguments about arguments. The planned stuff was very good, especially the emphasis on trying to understand the other person’s point and not trying to “win” debates, but it was rushed by necessity. Plus, I got to present my views on the deeper symbolism of Nightmare Moon, which was fun.
After that was the ORC, or Open Read and Critique, in the Twilitorium… though I ran into Georg and Bad Good Horse (according to his con badge, anyway) as they were coming out of the previous panel and tagged along with them to get dinner. After getting some local maps from the front desk, we went a-wandering to a great nearby Thai place, Spice and Rice. We ran into equestrian.sen there and carried our haul back to the hotel. I, perhaps unwisely, asked for their second highest level of spice in my Ginger Delight. It was delicious, but my breath burned my lips behind my mask for the next hour or so. (Also, very glad I got rice with it…)
It was a good thing I met up with Georg and Bad Horse at dinner, since our panel together was next, along with Horizon and GaPJaxie. And That’s How Equestria Was Made is an incredibly fun improv game wherein the Bearers scramble to justify themselves after Celestia asks about something ludicrous, bouncing off of one another as they pass the buck. I got to be Pinkie Pie and admitted to things like forgetting the bungie cords for the bottomless pit attraction at the Tartarus Casino & Resort, bringing in an irradiated meteor to help the Appleoosa Equestria Games Bobsledding Team (which definitely contains no cannibals or sapient apples,) and helping Gummy get access to Star Swirl’s Unfinished Spell and become Sobek the Anointed, crocodile-headed god of wisdom.
You know, as you do.
Several people cycled in and out—we actually began with rolemaster both playing Applejack and cosplaying as Flim, which resulted in a few bits of product placement—though no one else wanted to brave the madness of Ponk. That back-and-forth how we got one of the highest compliments you can in improv. One girl who took over for Rarity halfway through was fantastic when it came to accent, diction, and mannerisms, but she stalled a few times when coming up with something new. Afterwards she told her friends, “They made it look so easy!” And I got a warm glow of satisfaction.
I also commended her for the portrayal. I pretty much had to. She even got the mane toss right.
Saturday
One of the options we rejected before Spice and Rice on Friday was the nearby Wendy’s due to overcrowding. On Saturday, I woke up and chose bacon.
Sadly, the Wendy’s wasn’t open yet, so bacon did not choose me. Fortunately, the cafe in the hotel has great breakfast burritos.
While doing some work on Space-Time Out, I encountered Undome and Corejo again, along with garatheauthor, Azure Notion, Oreodude, and Mono again. She and I confirmed our agreed-upon compromise: Allocating unicorn girlfriends to Twilight can be delineated by universe. Though I greeted her with this:
Me: “So, I read the comic and first of all, how dare you.”
Mono: “You’re welcome!”
Also, turns out she only commissioned Earthsong for six pages. The other ten came pro bono. Again, targeting someone’s OTP can work wonders.
My first attended panel of the day was After the Fact Live: Wonderbolts Academy. Doom flags were waved, Silver Quill hammed it up to the utmost in his gold lamé jacket, and he made an interesting point about Lightning Dust’s contrail that I hadn’t thought about until now:
In order to get that lightning bolt effect, she may be microzigging.
I ran into Admiral Biscuit during another vendor hall trawl, where we discussed possible rationales for a future development in Chicago Ted’s The Children of Planet Earth. Going by some of the looks we were getting, no one had expected to hear speculative xenobiochemistry at a pony convention. Clearly none of them are on Estee’s Discord server.
The actual writing period of Iron Author went very well for me, with a nice clean delineation of ideation, outlining, and dialogue skeleton in the first hour and fleshing out and editing in the second. I’m waiting to see my feedback from the judges, but the story will be up shortly thereafter.
As everyone filtered out, Georg passed out his pre-addressed postcards to Estee[. I got one and made use of the Arts & Crafts room later that day to… well, no doubt Estee will showcase them all in their horrific glory in time.
Then came what I can only describe as an on-brand moment of serendipity: I accidentally resurrected a Magic: the Gathering event in the gaming room. Apparently there had been drama between the organizers of the event, and one hadn’t even come to the convention. But it was still on the schedule, and I had brought a good dozen Commander decks. And so, explaining the ins and outs to bemused on lookers, I and four other people engaged in a truly ridiculous game that ended in an infinite combo hitting four of us with a million damage each.
Sadly, I was not the one doing the hitting, but it was perfectly timed for me to make it to the other panel I was on. Horizon’s One Simple Trick was an analysis of poetic techniques and their application in prose. This is when that drum solo came in. Not exactly the best accompaniment when I sang a few lines of Billy Joel’s Piano Man. Still, we had a decent audience with some good questions. All told, it was a lot of fun, and I hoped it helped folks see ways to make their prose flow better and more effectively evoke the story in their heads.
After the panel, Horizon, Winston, and I went out for a late lunch/early dinner, accruing several others along the way… which made actually finding a place that could accommodate us awkward. I split off from the others, wandered to a relatively nearby food court, and found what I can only describe as a permanently placed food truck. Very good quesadilla. The reaper salsa was a delicious mistake.
On my way back, I encountered Scampy and Gay for Gadot. Scampy was cosplaying, and if you know anything about her stories, you can guess who she was. Naturally, I greeted them as follows:
Me, to GfG: Huh, that’s weird. Why are you sitting alone?
Scampy: Oh my God! I should hit you with my rock! (brandishes light-up Memory Stone)
Once they found out who I was, she was incredibly excited and gave me cookies, as she planned to do with everyone she recognized. (And they were very good cookies.) From there, I found out the next panel I planned on, Sketches from a Hat, was at capacity, so that was when I composed my Estee card. Which was how I found out the Arts & Crafts room closed at 7 o’clock for some reason.
Mind you, I still finished it.
From there, my final activity for the night was Chocolate Pony’s Tarot panel. He had a projector, so after a brief overview of the history of the deck, he went through the symbolism of all the Major Arcana and his personal interpretations of the sequence. I don’t entirely agree with it—a genetics degree from Johns Hopkins is impressive, but it doesn’t make you an authority on history—but it’s still neat to see how people interpret the data presented to them. That’s half of why I enjoy reading pony fic, after all.
As I went to bed that night, sirens and chanting filled the air. There’d been a fire alarm in one of the other hotels. False alarm, thankfully, but it still helped Super Trampoline come up with a song.
Sunday
I did more writing in the morning, running into some delightfully novel character interactions. Admiral Biscuit, Gara, and I workshopped just how Trixie would interact with Shining Armor. Olden Bronie came by as well for what was a very flattering bit of conversation for me. A bit later, I also stumbled upon Littleshy and complimented his taste in Best Ponies. Plus, I got to take an unofficial staff photo as they gathered everyone on the main stairwell, along with the flag.
I also considered the breakfast buffet at the main hotel restaurant, but I opted for a vegetable hash for reasons that will become clear later.
The first panel of the day was Vivid Syntax on ending stories, and he had some very good advice there. I have been using some of it, but there was definitely a lot to learn. I took copious notes. (Well, I took notes of just about everything. That’s how I’m able to recount the con in such detail. As I told some folks, I went full Twilight on this con.)
After that, I took another look through the vendor hall… which was how I found out how my confirmation of Enchanted Library’s status had given rise to a Post-It comment chain that drooped to the floor and spread across the entire booth. Did not see that coming. 
I also picked up an adorable wood-cut Derpy from Baron Engel.
On my way back upstairs, I finally encountered Super Trampoline. I’d seen him in passing both days beforehand, but he’d preoccupied with staff duties. (He also hadn’t noticed me.) We caught up, I learned of the forbidden secrets of Renegade Stage, and he got me in touch with an MtG-playing friend of his, because he loves bringing together those he knows with common interests.
The Iron Author results came with that unique blend of gratification and disappointment that comes when you’re the first person mentioned by name. I was the first of the Honorable Mentions, you see. And the judges who’d decided that never actually made it to the panel, so I’ll have to wait for the feedback e-mail to find out why. Though, again, HM. I really can’t complain. One of the others was Starscribe, and that was the only way I found out he was even at EFNW. Never got to touch base with him, sadly.
The winners were, going from third to first, Tangerine Blast, GaPJaxie, and Aquaman. Each came up to read their entry, and frankly, Jaxie wrote a better version of my story. The judging was incredibly close, and looking at the entries, I can see why. All told, I certainly feel like a winner.
I stayed in the Twilitorium after that, since I wanted to see the next panel, chaired by Mono… GaPJaxie… and Aquaman. The Iron Author judges emphatically insisted that there was no collusion going on. I believe them. Mostly. 
That next panel was all about putting a script together using randomly generated prompts. Pipp Petals got cancelled and took G5 with her after some unwise tweets regarding earth ponies, so Hasbro dumped G6 in the fan authors’ laps (or so went the framing story.) The end result was a spontaneously alicornified Sunny Starscout joining the totally original Harmony Initiative and thwarting its villainous director, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. And that’s not getting into any of the character arcs, big twists, or the head of security voiced by Dave Bautista (who was immediately dubbed Pony-Draxx.) I’m not doing the exercise justice, but that’s a blog in its own right. Or possibly a story.
After the speed-script panel, I was able to find The Albinocorn, Amber Sparks, and Twi-Fi. (Blonde dreadlocks are very distinctive and, unlike my usual distinguishing feature, not covered by a mask.) That meant that I had the perfect audience for an opportune bit of comedy:
*Sunset button flies off of backpack*
Me: “No, Sunset! Why do you keep running away? It’s like this is a recurring theme in your character arc or something!”
From there, I did one last trawl of the vendor hall, where a bunch of authors gathered around what is apparently Neo-Quills and Sofas: Mono’s vendor booth. (Given how it kept shrinking over the course of successive Bronycons, this is the logical conclusion.) The trail of Post-Its had grown even longer.
I slipped into the closing ceremonies early, which meant I got to see the back half of the charity auction. I admit, there were a few items I genuinely wanted, especially the set of Ponies: the Galloping signed by the entire MtG dev team. (And apparently one member of the team was in the audience at the time to provide context, having personally gone around to gather the signatures. I hadn’t expected that.) But the bids always went way beyond what I was willing to spend. Yes, it was for charity, but still.
Among the lots were trios of books by Georg and Admiral Biscuit. (Biscuit, naturally, threw in a shirt.) The latter sold for $150. The former, for $300. Georg soundly refused to believe me when I told him later.
The auction ran long, and while I sat with Albinocorn, Amber, et al. to see the ceremonies, I had to bow out around 6:15 due to a prior engagement.
See, Wanderer D had invited several Fimfic authors to Fogo de Chão. Which is, for the uninitiated, a Brazilian steakhouse where the servers go around with massive skewers of steak, chicken, lamb, sausage, and other meats and carve you portions of them until you flip a coaster from green to red to say “Please stop, I am too full of meat.” It was amazing.
Mind you, we were a party of 16, so it took some time to get everything set up—we declared it the secret level of LineCon—but it was still amazing. Even the salad bar was outstanding. (Yes, I began with a plate from the salad bar. It comes with the meat parade.)
I also got to talk with D on the way there, mostly about how I read so much. In hindsight, I should’ve tried to sit closer to him since he’d been looking forward to talking to me, but things just kind of happened and I ended up in a corner with Biscuit, Aquaman, Rocket Lawn Chair, and Flashgen in my immediate area.
After getting back to the hotel, I had to get back to my room to pack and prep for an early morning flight.
Monday
Not much to add for today. Though my Uber driver was listening to a Sia mix the whole way, so Songbird Serenade offered a final bit of pony serendipity. (That’s also how I learned that fandom classic I Am Octavia is actually a parody. I am not up on pop music.) Beyond that, I am exhausted, but incredibly happy.
As I write this, I’m a little under three hours into the flight back home. (As I post it, I've been back home for a few hours.) I am so glad I went, and that the convention happened in the first place. I had wholly expected them to cancel it even up to the day before, or when a spreader event hit. But this has been a fantastic weekend, and I hope everyone else who went had a similarly great time. My apologies tothose I ran into and neglected to mention
And for those of you who didn’t, I hope this helped offer a sample of the fun.
Great convention, great to see you there, and great to be on a panel with you!
Let's do it again sometime. Y'know, if the world is still here in about a year or so.
In hindsight I probably could have gone, too, but at least I got to experience the highlights vicariously through you.
This is my favourite part of this write-up. GG FOME.
Now that I know you wrote that story, ping me once you get your story comments. I did not comment on them as I had SO many to read and was rushed. However I will be glad to give you some feedback in private.
I was the Flim cosplayer for the That's How Equestria Was Made panel. It was one of the more entertaining panels of the con.
It was great running into you :) also that Fluttershy cosplayer was anonpencil. hah!
After last year I confess I expected that pony cons were a thing of the past. I see now that I was wrong and I have the FOMO to prove it.
Sounds like you had a great con experience!
I admit, I'm really missing the usual three or so cons per year I've been volunteering as staff at...
Sounds like it was worth going just for the brazillian buffet. When they're good, they're really good.
It's always nice to read your con writeups. Really nice, honestly. I should make one myself if I do actually get to go to EponaFest next year. And hopefully horsecons will live on long enough for me to meet you at one of them on your side of the ocean one day.
Unless you come to EponaFest too I guess."GLOMP"
I'm so glad that you had fun and stayed safe
What exactly were you doing wearing a lab coat anyway?
Also, what's microzigging?
It was so lovely to meet you! Glad you liked the cookies 🙏🙏🙏
We didn't talk as much as I would have liked, but the little we did was nice! Thanks for being awesome and taking up my invite!
I'm glad you had such a good time, and thank you for the retrospective. :)
This hotel had bar-none the weirdest staircases/stairwells I have ever experienced in a con hotel. It seemed like every single one had some weird uniqueness, from one with a 50-foot high ceiling, to one that zig-zagged right-left-right-left-right, to one that had a pitch black hallway I slept in for 90 minutes Sunday morning coming down from acid.
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I'm glad I got to briefly say hi to you! I WILL finish that SunFlower shitfic!
It was nice getting to see you in person again, and for more than a few seconds in passing this time! Even if it turned out my in-person group-conversation skills had atrophied out of existence from over a year and a half of disuse and I mostly just lurked around the periphery while other people talked. Still managed to be something like thrice as much interaction as last time, so call it a step up anyway?
As far as I could tell, it certainly felt like literally everyone made that same mistake their first time around. I even managed it despite having checked my con map less than a minute before, which seemed like an impressive new low until I learned just how many other people also got tripped up the exact same way.
I'd be interested to hear some more about that. I didn't have any particularly noteworthy suggestions on-the-spot when Biscuit asked me, but I'm certainly up for looking into any ideas someone's come up with provided I know what they actually are.
Dang, I really wish I'd been able to make it that day. I haven't had the chance to play M:TG for years, and that would've been an amazing way to break the drought.
Gah, wish I'd known you were looking for him too. There was at least one point where you two were standing right next to each other for several minutes straight, and I could've easily shoved you together as either figuratively or literally as you preferred.
I'm honestly still a little bit surprised at just how outstanding the salad bar was. I knew going in that the meat was going to be great, but I initially grabbed stuff from the salad bar figuring that it was a necessary concession to give my diet that day some semblance of sanity and did not expect I'd end up liking half the vegetables more than the cheeses (which, as I believe you yourself said, were themselves quite worth trying). That's the sort of healthy-food wizardry that I dearly wish I could afford in my daily life.
Absolutely! Even though I was only able to show up one day, it was still totally worth it, and hopefully next year will work out even better!
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Fingers crossed!
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As I said several times over the con, Derpy is my spirit pony for a reason.
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Will do! Thanks in advance.
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It was! Again, brilliant work with the multilevel role-play.
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Credit properly given. I figured she was a Barcaster.
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Hey, if Star Trek conventions have gone for as long as they have I see no reason why MLP can't follow suit.
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Well, we're staggering toward something resembling pre-pandemic normalcy. Shouldn't be much longer... maybe. Hopefully.
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This one was really good.
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I'm going to wait until we're well into the post-mask era before considering international flights. Still, here's hoping you enjoy it if you do end up going, and that we get to meet in person.
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Oh, that was for a panel at the Last Bronycon, to add greater scientific legitimacy to determining the best story on Fimfic. (At EFNW, I brought in the plushies as scientific advisors.)
"Microzigging" would be Lightning Dust horizontally zigzagging her tail at an absurd rate to create that jagged streak in her contrail.
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Great to meet you as well! And those were very good cookies.
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Of course! Hopefully we'll get more time to connect next time, when and wherever that is.
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I think I missed the one with the pitch-black hallway. But yeah, I called it "Sombra routing" for a reason.
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Well, it's easy to trace a path from point A to point B without realizing that there's no door symbol where you need it to be for that path to actually work. (Also, due to the conbook shortage on Friday, I was only able to consult a map on the loop around to the other side of the Twilitorium.)
For the Biscuit discussion, we'd both settled on the idea of different base pairs for each planet's nucleic acids, thus making viruses a no-go. My proposal for bacteria et al. was that all Equestrian organisms made use of magic, so trying to infect something from another planet would result in a hostile environment and/or immune system with tricks the pathogen had never evolved to withstand. (The catch, of course, is justifying why that wouldn't cut the other way, which is where we stalled out.)
There were several MtG games in the gaming room (and outside of it) over the course of the weekend. Next time you're at a con, poke your head into the tabletop gaming room a few times.
And yes, there were some exquisite non-meat items at Fogo de Chão. (And at those prices, "exquisite" would be the minimum.)
Here's hoping you'll be able to spend more time at the con next time!
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I'm not entirely sure MLP can claim to have the cultural impact of Star Trek, but... I mean, both are long-running franchises with multigenerational fans, it's not the strangest comparison.
That... was a lovely description of me. Thank you for it :)
Video or some sort of sworn affidavit from a judge or it didn't happen. $3.00 maybe. $300.... Gotta be a typo.
The dinners were wonderful, I ate far too much for tourism on Monday and Tuesday (and oh God would it have been expensive), but I was sidelined by indigestion most of Monday. Deeply grateful for Super Trampoline keeping me company or I would have spent a whole day just loafing in front of the hotel window, playing Gameloft MLP on my iPad. Thankfully, pink bismuth and rest (and Super Trampoline company) made my Tuesday return uneventful, although I got in the house at 3AM and had scheduled a 7AM head-to-work alarm. (Yeah, that didn't.)
Great con and great write-up! Was good to see you again.
I spent a whole lot of time doing drunken pony tarot reading, so it’s also great to figure out what else was happening in the meantime.
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Still nine months to go now that the con was moved. I can hope things will be closer to solved by then. I finally started getting my vaccine yesterday for one, so at least there's that.
I am so good at remaining invisible, but I think we also talked for like 1 minute :P