Everfree Northwest Part 2—The con itself · 12:10am Oct 10th, 2022
Remember how I said at the top of the last EFNW blog that I was gonna be on top of things?
Well, I lied.
I guess 'lied' is too strong a word; they're all written, but I got busy with some other stuff and kinda forgot. Also I had to re-do the first half of this one, 'cause I'd intended to publish it first, so there were mentions of the blog posts about the train trip which you have of course already seen.
Enough of that; let's get on to the proper blog post!
We left off at me arriving at the hotel, and the fire alarm going off. I would imagine in any pony hotel, all the guests would evacuate in an orderly fashion and stand around outside, staying well clear of any paths fire trucks need to take. Pegasi might start marshalling clouds so there's a good supply of water available to fight the fire (if there is a fire). Of course, in an Earth hotel, nobody paid much attention to the alarm, we just kept on doing what we were doing.
One of the things I wasn't doing was going up to my room. Due to when the train arrived and when I arrived at the hotel, I couldn't check in yet. At a later con (minor spoiler) that would be annoying, but here there was a lobby full of bronies and old friends to catch up with—I ran into Olden Brony pretty early on in the con, as well as Rescue Sunstreak, and later on that night I ran into Grand Moff Pony and his wife, and I think also Xepher (but that might have been later).
When check-in time arrived, I got my room which had a nice view of Lake Washington and the towers being constructed all around us. I promptly arranged my small collection of ponies on the windowsill, where they could have a nice view of the scenery.
I had two solo panels at Everfree Northwest. I've never submitted a panel application before, and only ever been on informal chatty panels in the past. As it happened, I opened the writers panels with one of mine, which was both a blessing and a curse--in some ways, I'd set the tone of Twilight's Writing Room for everyone who presented after, but I'd also miss some of the crowd who wanted to buy merch before vendors sold out (and some of them did sell out very quickly, we'll get to that). A blessing because I wouldn't be setting up after anyone, I could do a dry run to an empty room, make sure I could get my laptop to play nice with the giant screens, figure out how to hide the search bar and the tool bar, etc. And as it happened, the writing room wasn't quite set up yet, so Rescue Sunstreak, Xepher, and the hotel staff all worked on that, accompanied by my laptop and my slideshow.
I've never done a PowerPoint before (or the non-trademarked Google version). Turns out they make it easy enough for a luddite like me to create slides, although I'll admit it took me a long time to figure out how to put the heading text in front of the picture. Or how to resize text boxes. Or how to put more than one text box on a slide.
Incidentally, I'll make those available once I re-tool them for non-presentation format. I personally hate presentations where the presenter just reads off the information that's already on the PowerPoint card, so most of mine don't contain much text. I'll do it as a link to Google Slides rather than a blog post, since people were complaining about problems with images loading in my last blog post. . . .
There was not an insignificant amount of time I spend in my hotel room working on Powerpoints, in fact. Especially after I learned a couple of lessons from the first one which I needed to then apply to the second one. I will say that one of my worries--tech failure--did not come to pass, so there's that at least.
One of my laptops did suffer a failure at the con, but I'd been wise enough to bring two just in case that happened. It'll still work but currently won't save to the local hard drive. Not sure if that's just a problem with FocusWriter or a more significant problem with the computer; I haven't had any time to look into it.
I got to the merch hall after my first panel was done, and immediately bought two new shoulder ponies from Hibiscus Stitch--Tempest Shadow and Minty. She also had a Derpy in a mailmare uniform that just called to me, but I didn't want to spend that much money right at the beginning of the con. I told myself if Derpy was still there the next time I went into the merch hall, I'd buy her.
Spoiler, she wasn't.
In fact, neither were the Tempests nor Mintys. There was a fair bit of merch which sold out pretty quickly at the vendor hall, sort of shades of the last Bronycon there. Especially with high-quality plushies—if you see one you really want and are hoping to wait until the last day and a possible price decrease, don't expect that!
I spent some time chatting with the OC Doctor--he was mad that I hadn't kept my "Senpai has blocked you" that he gave me at the last con in my hat, and made me pay him a dollar so he could insult me for a while. It's a great business model!
I also chatted with Rurik and Fiaura and Baron Engle. David Silver convinced me to buy another Ponyfinder rulebook, this one new and about seaponies and other aquatic ponies. An OC comic artist (their name completely slips my mind at the moment) informed me that my shirts were, in fact, comfortable and easy to wear--I gave them one at Ciderfest.
I bought something for my favorite FimFic moderator at My Little Ties, then didn't have a chance to give it to him at the con.
I didn't get a chance to talk to Andy Price and try and convince him to put a Silver Glow cameo into one of the comics. Maybe next time. . . .
I also spent late Friday night discussing a story I'm pre-reading with the author—it's always nice to be able to get more in-depth with stories than just comments on gDocs allows. Although I've been learning that Discord is nice for that, too; I recently did some pre-reading/editing for another author where we both opened up the document and Discord and discussed some of the sections that way.
Iron Writer was Saturday around high noon.
The prompts were gaffe, guerilla, and guru (not necessarily in that order), and you had to have them be a meaningful part of the story, not just mention them in passing to tick a box.
The first thing I thought of, being a theatre person, was gaff tape, and the second thing I thought of was the wordplay with 'giraffe,' and I had an idea that I knew wouldn't win, but would at least be entertaining.
Now's the point where I could tell you that it won, but it didn't. Mica got third, FOME got second, and MasterThief blew everyone out of the water with his masterpiece on the origin of Kirin, which is now posted on FimFic.
You can check out all the entries here, for a limited time.
I got an honorable mention and an alliteration award (probably for the title alone): Guru Gabby Griffon and the Guerrilla Giraffe Gaffe.
That afternoon, I gave my second panel which went pretty well, all things considered. WandererD said that I "was giving a lot of insight that I feel went over the heads of many panel-goers. It was extremely useful info, but you needed to know how to apply it " and FOME commented that my "worldbuilding panel is very much a 300 or 400-level course on the topic. It needs prerequisites to properly appreciate and apply," both of which are very fair points--I think it would have been more broadly useful if I'd focused on a couple of things and given examples both of how they're used in the show, and how an author can use them in a fic.
I was actually considering making it more of an audience participation panel, but I hate panels that force audience participation, and I thought of the idea after I'd already written the full script and done most of the PowerPoints for it.
That's an important life lesson, I think. Of course I spent a lot of time worrying about how my panels would be received, if there would be some technical error (which would have been really problematic, since I didn't have a printed-out copy of the script), and I got through it okay. Still crazy nervous during the whole presentation, and I would have done well to have actually done more practice read-throughs than I did.
I hope some people did get some useful information out of them.
My second round of the vendor hall (I don't remember exactly when), Derpy was gone.
I couldn't possibly list everyone I chatted with or at least saw in passing. I did miss the opportunity to give a potentially cursed item to Estee; maybe it's best for both of us that I didn't get my chance. Maybe Estee had a baseball bat or brass knuckles or something in case I not only figured out who they were, but was quick enough on the draw to get it out of my backpack.
Rescue Sunstreak and I had more than a few deep discussions about various IRL things, and while we have a lot of disagreements about them, both of us were willing to have a civil discussion about them. And there was stuff that we agreed upon, as well.
WanderD and I found ourselves together a lot; it's funny how we live kind of close and pre-pandemic used to hang out a lot, but our various work schedules and other things have made it happen a lot less.
I ran into Corejo down in the lobby once, and then I never saw him again.
Caliponia and I hung out a lot, discussing stories and both of us doing our best not to mention unfinished works that we had. I also ran into RocketLawnchair a couple of times, who I always mistake for someone else.
Olden Brony and I kept crossing paths and talking about stuff--he was the first person I ran into at the con, and about the last as well.
I saw Albinocorn in passing; he probably doesn't know who I am. 
And I ran into a lot of people in the writing room (unsurprisingly), including Scampy, GayforGodot, Batwing Candlewaxxe, Mica, Petrichord, Horizon, Dreadnaught, EileenSaysHi, some guy who had an adorable Cherry Berry plush--complete with her little aviator hat.
Also spent some time at the very beginning of the con talking with Grand Moff Pony and his wife--I don't think I saw either of them after that, either.
I think my first encounter with Xepher was as I was setting up for my first panel, and since he's the writing track head (I believe) we spent a fair bit of time together.
It's kind a of a joke that you'll see a Biscuit shirt or two at every MLP con. I feel the same way about Flim and Flam--we were chatting for a while and the subject of 'which cons have you been at' came up. I swear that I saw them at Trotcon this summer, but both of them said they hadn't been there.
I caught the guy who carries around railroad signaling equipment in the vendor hall. I should remember his name, but I don't.
There was an attempt to meet up with Twi Hard, but it was a failed attempt. I'll be honest, I could have worked harder to make it happen; we're friends on Discord.
Speaking of which, I legit met a new friend who's read some of my stuff and I have entirely forgotten his name.
Saw Heartshine in passing, talked to RBDash_47, Monochromatic ignored me as she usually does.
And there are almost certainly other people I met that I forgot to mention.
There's always something bittersweet about leaving a con. Sunday afternoons, people start to trickle away and the process continues on Monday. I think of the ones I currently attend, Everfree Northwest has the highest percentage of bronies still hanging out in the hotel lobby.
I didn't have to leave super early, but I did have a train to catch. The bus back towards the train station was even more convenient; the bus stop was literally at the hotel. Then a quick trip on the commuter train, and I was back at King's Station waiting for my Amtrak to arrive.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!
That Cowboy Applejack is really neat.
Excellent to hear and looking forward to the next installment. n_n
Trixie really doesn't want to be teaching kids. Or probably teaching in general.
It's always fun to hang out. Now that you're back we need to do it again!
Also I was there! I really should write my EFNW blog for this year, but, there's been, uh... complications*, let's say, to that.
Good seeing you there, as always.
*The complication is that I'm lazy and also some other actual complications that I should explain in my own blog
Always great seeing you in person.
I do plan on making use of that panel on how tack and wagon harnesses work. (Not sure how, but there was so much information there, it seems a shame to let my notes go to waste.)
5691274
Department of Sometimes Too Much Occurs To Me
Give it to a Fallout Equestria story.
Your comment on powerpoint is exactly the first instructions given to those who frequently present: Do not just read from the slides.
These days I get confused by a lot of computer programs, as they seem to just be ways to redo what the computer is doing, but in an ever more convoluted and expensive manner.
Simplest presentation, is that its a squence of images? Open file manager, or trigger with premade sstandard script and keybind, press a key to go forward, different key or shift first key to go back? You want hot points and actives on presentations, thats what macro recording of keys and mouse movements have been used in desktops for decades?
Then again, Im still waiting for that hardware accelerated pixel level extended ANSI terminal code support so that movies can be played at photographic quality in a pure text terminal.
5691274
She is.
I'm not normally into humanized ponies, but Applejack seems particularly well-suited for it. My phone background is actually a humanized Applejack.
5691275
Thank you!
Hopefully I'm more on the ball on that one and get it out before the next con!
5691279
Probably teaching in general. Poor Trixie.
Still, she gets to spend a lot of time with her marefriend, so that's a bonus.
5691284
It is, and we do.
Especially since I still need to help you fix the door handle on your car
5691295
You were there! And I forgot to include you in the blog post (in hindsight, I think I forgot to mention Petrichord, too).
Mine's a month late, so I totally get it. I was thinking of what I did on Sunday (you'll notice Sunday doesn't really come up), and I honestly couldn't remember.
Same! Same bat-place next year?
5691298
Same!
Well, I've gotten lots of use out of that information as background details or using pieces of harness as place names or pony names.
Knowing the formations is good, too.
Really, if you want a slice-of-life story out of it, write one about a livery pony (the original man-with-a-van). I've done one story with one and am slowly working on a second, but there's a lot of ground that can be covered.
Or . . . here's an idea I've thought about before but never used:
In the summertime, cultivating the fields (weeding, etc.) is important. There are pieces of farm equipment (cultivators) that help with this. Seems like the kind of thing where a few foals who want to earn some extra bits over the summer could get a small cultivator, a couple harnesses, and make some bits.
5691340
A couple of our mechanic trainers totally read from the slides. Also the class textbook is just a printed-out copy of the powerpoint.
I've written a couple of stories during those classes.
5691356
Google is "free" at least.
I do get what you're saying, though. I know some people who use professional word processors for writing, when really all it needs to do is put words on the page and some formatting.
I just did arrow keys when I needed to advance. There are probably some far more fancy ways to do it, but I don't know how.
I don't know if that's possible. Maybe . . .
That's a beautiful picture of the pegasus on the bridge! You bet I saved that!
5691554
It sure is!
I debated posting a pic of the ponies on my hotel room windowsill or finding a thematic pony picture, and I think I made the right choice.
5691915
Did you bring them with you to Holland? I wouldn't mind seeing pictures of them there.
5691941
I did bring some ponies with me to Holland (and I brought more back!)
I looked through my camera roll and there aren't any scenery pictures with them, but I do have this:
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/879533986303606834/1029939909496156160/20221003_080648.jpg