PonyFest 2.0: This Is The First Convention I Have Ever Been To · 12:51am Apr 27th, 2020
Blog Number 75: What I Did At My First Convention Edition
Admittedly, it's a peculiar claim to make, since there wasn't a physical space to go to in any case, so it's clearly not the same. Yet simply put: that's why it proved to be so convenient. For me, personally, I mean.
Let me tell you a tale...
This is kind of a big deal for me, because there are three major reasons why I haven't attended a convention - or anything convention-like - already.
The first reason is not complicated: it's easier to be inconspicuous behind a screen than out and about, facing other people. Ever since I started my online forays, anonymity has been the default, because as paranoid as I can be at times, it seems overall less risky than just blabbing personal details left and right or showing my ugly mug in a photograph-able crime scene (and, in a strange way, makes it much easier to talk about things that cut a little deeper sometimes: possibly a result of some counterintuitive psychological effect?).
By and large, I try and take great care to keep most of my identity a mystery, even down to basics like gender and geographical location (beyond "I'm British", because that should be obvious from my spelling and general language use anyway). It boils down to the fact that I like my privacy, and when I'm just another fan first and foremost, why go any deeper than that?
The second reason is more personal: I am not and have never really been the "big social" type, because large crowds make me nervous. Which isn't the same as saying I'm not social: dealing with one or two people at a time is manageable for me, and even enjoyable if we find the right things to talk about. Goodness knows I can write the hind legs off a donkey if I think I've got something worth saying.
But moving through a crowd, and trying to keep afloat in a sea of public emotions and attention - that's a different matter. It's too big. That sort of experience quickly overwhelms me, and often not in a way I find comfortable or pleasant. Even the large quantity of people attending the online convention could get a bit much at times, and they weren't even physically there. I am not exaggerating when I say the physical isolation measures under the COVID-19 pandemic have had little to no impact on my day-to-day life, apart from keeping me away from work.
The third reason is sheer scroogery: getting to cons involves travel and expenses, and when it comes to doing new things, I'm a tight-fisted little shit.
All the same, from a distance, I must confess to being a tad fascinated by all the conventions - specifically these pony ones. I mean, obviously, I knew conventions were happening all the time, even before I started watching the show, but they showed up on my radar more often the more I involved myself with the pony fandom.
Boy oh boy, they were interesting to read about, and I had fun watching a few vids of them here and there; sometimes, conventions were so ubiquitous in site blogs and so on that even as a non-attendee, I felt the shifting winds in the air as though I was going through the rise and fall of a seasonal Christmas-like event. Back in the heyday of the brony phenomenon, they must have been quite an impressive sight, and even years later are still hot topics even!
But the three reasons worked against me, so I kept silent, and out of the way.
At least, until well after the Corona Nation attacked!
Suddenly, with all the social gatherings vanishing practically overnight, it was only a matter of time before an online convention came to my attention; in this case, I found out about PonyFest 2.0 while browsing Loganberry's Louder Yay blog, and then upon seeing it mentioned a couple of times here.
At first, I ignored it. It'd probably involve expenses, I told myself, or some sort of admission requirement that I didn't have. Curiosity tugged at the corner of my mind, though. After all, an online convention dismantled a couple of my reasons for not going. And it'd be an interesting experience to see what all the fuss was about.
I didn't even weigh in favour of going until the day itself, Saturday 25th April 2020, when announcement posts popped up on Louder Yay and Equestria Daily, complete with links.
So... I could simply click on one and take a peek, maybe? And leap back out if it looked a bit off-putting, or if I ran into a paywall. Just in case.
Better.
Escape route thus planned, I went onto the Discord channel and, after a bit of browsing and fiddling to get the audio right, found the PonyFest site itself, ready for all the scheduling and streaming. Curiosity and a growing sense of commitment - to see this thing through now I'd started it - kept me hanging around, to see what else was coming. Never happy without a schedule for long, I browsed the one for the con and jotted down a few panels that caught my interest.
Thus armed and prepared, I settled in for my first ever pony convention.
It didn't start well.
The first and worst problem was my laptop, which apparently is reaching retirement age because it slowed down and overheated so, so very much. That was an arthritic problem that popped up throughout, but it was especially galling for the first couple of panels, because if there's one sitch which you don't need a slow and unreliable laptop for, it's when you're trying to figure out how the hell this streaming thing works.
My first panel was the Open Read and Critique in the Writing Room, 5:00pm to 6:00pm. It took me a while to get the audio right so I could hear the extracts and the criticism, and I'm sorry to say I was so underconfident at this point that I just sat there like a lemon, not typing anything except for basic questions like "Excuse me, is this such-and-such panel, please?"
Huh. Intrepid Explorer, I ain't.
The second problem was that I'd plunged in without figuring everything out first, which meant that it took me way too long to realize that the next panel, the 06:00pm to 07:00pm History of MLP on the Neural Net's Stage, was actually being streamed on the PonyFest website and was not, unlike the previous event, on the Discord channel itself.
Worse, the stuttery stream - a technical problem I adapted to over time, but which threw me at the beginning - meant I kept missing chunks of the talk and slideshow, made worse by my incredibly ill-judged attempt to type in a few jokes for the bits I did get.
Whether the occasional bouts of silly humour outweighed the aggravation of realizing I'd missed a good bit whilst typing and editing, the result was that I only managed to give something resembling an intelligent attempt at engagement near the end; asking which generation had the Rockin Beat line of toys. Man, I sure hope it's still possible to get the talks on some public online format or something...
Afterwards, I decided to step out of my room and get dinner and a walk. (Another benefit to an online event: being able to step away and enjoy some more familiar, homey surroundings and activities. I am a creature who likes creature comforts, after all!).
But... yeah. Not a great way to start my first ever convention. 
When I came back around 9:00pm, however, things really started to improve. Well, mostly. My computer was still an annoying heap of sputtering scrap metal, but I'd made Zen peace with that inevitable fact and by now was just soldiering on with it as best I could.
And there was much worth soldiering on for!
The majority of the panels I looked into were in the Writing Room, obviously. I'm a writer. Writer's gonna write, and all that.
Two exceptions, though. Apart from the one already mentioned above, the other exception to this otherwise stereotypical rule was at 10:30pm, when I visited Bit Rate's Stage to attend a special event, Moment with Lena Hall.
This was an amazing precedent for me. Fans stand their best chance of meeting - or at least of oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-GOSH-realizing they're in the same room as - voice actors and actresses for shows they know and love. This has never happened to me. Well, technically, it still hasn't because rooms don't exist online, but pwease throw me a treat here.
The point is: for all of my three reasons why I don't appear at any cons, this is one of those things I kind of wanted to do.
Plus, "The Mane Attraction" holds a special place in my fondest memories for being the last episode before a major controversial game-changer, of being the last episode of a particular writer whose episodes I generally enjoyed, and for, well, being an episode I absolutely love. Not least of which is because of Lena Hall's take on COUNTESS COLORATURA! (I swear it is one of my bucket list priorities to get a Coloratura fic of my own onto Equestria Daily one day).
And here I was, watching a livestream of an interview between FoalPapers and Lena Hall.
It was pretty fascinating, especially the part where she described - a tale that's familiar to many fans of the show - how she stumbled across it during a relatively depressing time and found new life. This bit stuck with me, not because it's a novel tale exactly, but because it's one of those moments when I realized I had a bit of a prejudice about, say, guest voice actors, that they don't have the same experiences with the shows as "regular" fans do. So it was a delight to listen to Lena talk about the show exactly as any other cheerful, enthusiastic fan would.
It was a bit of a surprising eye-opener for me, to be honest, and her enthusiasm - god, she had a laugh that burst through the screen (and my eardrums)! - totally made the event for me.
Even if my shoddy memory can't remember the specifics, I recall the sheer pleasure of just listening to Lena cheerfully talk about sneaking a "Friendship is Magic!" into an official public speech, or sharing a list of favourite episodes that overlapped with mine (so she has good taste, at least! 
).
And realizing it was live. Not a years-old recording: it was happening as I watched, and for a moment I could imagine what it must be like to share the same four walls with someone who, for all you'd otherwise know, was the audio recording of a 2D equine strutting across your TV screen.
Better yet, I managed to throw a couple of questions into the Discord chat in the hopes that the thrown message in a bottle might cross this otherwise fathomless sea to wash up on a mythical shore and be read by - or at least, read out to - a person who might as well be a figure from fantasy, for all the experience I'd had.
One of the questions was, of course: Who's your favourite pony? Did I mention I felt like I was stunned into complete and inadequate unoriginality at this point?
And the question was read out. It was answered, and by sheer happy coincidence the favourite pony was also a favourite of mine: Rarity.
I mean, sure, someone else probably asked the same question and it was just a happy coincidence, but to recap: when it happened, and I thought that it was my question, I realized I might have just had, in some small way, a cause-and-effect connection here. A cause-and-effect with someone who in my entire life I never imagined would even briefly cross paths with me, or even come close to it in any way, shape, or form. In all my life of consuming media, I've no prior experience to compare this with.
In a nutshell: Boy oh boy, did it felt unreal. And I LOVED it!
My god, was that fun!
It was the other three panels where I felt less like a dim-witted bystander just pleased to be there, and more like someone who could at least make intelligent noises once in a while. Those three panels were all in the Writing Room: Favorite Fanfictions, Why Ponyfic Matters, and Character Creation.
Favorite Fanfictions, from 9:00pm to 10:30pm, was largely an exercise in not drowning under all the recommended fics, and that did kind of put me off a bit at first. After a while, though, it became addictively fascinating, seeing all these titles - some familiar, some completely new - scrolling past and trying to guess what the next surprise would be. We even had a good time joking about it in the chat, largely along the lines of "I hope you weren't planning to sleep for the next year."
After that and the Lena Hall panel, I hopped to and fro in time to catch the next interesting writing panel, Why Ponyfic Matters, from 11:30pm to 12:30am. I have Views about the transformative potential of art in general - and lately of ponyfic in particular - and waggish joking aside, I found myself delving deeply into this one, or at least as deeply as one can when there's only an hour to summarize the massive, sweeping weight of Literature And Its Impact. But in brief: call me a flag-waver for the idea that fanfiction can rise above its popular public stereotypes and become a mighty force to be reckoned with. In emotion, in belief, in direction, in its effects on those who don't just consume it but live it.
You can tell I was settling in comfortably now. I actually tried - gasp! - to make actual thinky points in the chat, as I took in and occasionally tried to figure out the topics touched upon by Nyronus and Wanderer D in the stream talk. And for a wish-I-was-a-brainiac like me, firing up the creaky old neocortex to run a program is a sign I'm doing something, and probably doing it right. I relaxed a lot more then.
Lastly, for the grand finale, I looked into Character Creation, from 12:30am to 1:30am. Somber started this one off not in the most confident of spirits, but AH! I think it was just for show, because it went off splendidly. Characterization holds a special place in my heart because I always strongly latch on to whomever's in the driving seat during the course of a story I'm experiencing, or at least to whomever hogs the wheel long enough to go some interesting places. I remember particularly some points made about how character description should not be treated like some kind of compulsory laundry list, but as a way to make a character stand out or to support a plot point. Keep it short, sharp, and relevant: that was the theme.
In short, I finally got a lot out of this convention thing, and I think if another online one were to come around again, I would definitely... cautiously poke around and maybe stick my nose in, because old habits die hard. But this time I'd do it with some memories for how well it went last time.
Alas, I'd wanted to stick around longer for the next two Writing Room panels (Head to Headcanon, and Clever Writing Clever Characters), but by then I was getting tired, starting to feel a tad overwhelmed, and in any case seriously needed to get my sleeping schedule back on track.
So I wrote a hasty farewell and switched everything off, thereby granting myself the opportunity to waste time trying to get to bloody sleep for at least the next hour.
And now?
I just don't know. I remember the pleasure, and the general genial gist of it, but memory's a fog when it comes to most of the specifics. It was still a mite overwhelming, even though I had as good a time as I think I could expect. Does everyone get a buzz when they go to a real live con? I wonder how it'd compare to the real deal...
But still! Long story short: I had a great time. Thanks to all the amazing people who made it happen - the panellists, the organizers, and the people cracking jokes in the Discord chat. After I put up with a pretty mixed week, this was a cheerful way to end it.
Thanks again! Impossible Numbers, out!
I'm glad to hear you had a great time! Yeah, the endorphin buzz after a con is always something that happens...and I've been to several MLP cons and it's always the same!
Friendship is Magic!
5250886
Wow. I mean, even now, my own limited try seems strangely unreal to me. My mind's all like, "Did I just do that? Did I see what some FIMF people look like without a profile picture? Oh my gosh, did Lena Hall just swear!?"
5250895
Yep, sometimes the real things is pretty amazing, and a bit scary! But it's the heart and the honesty that just follows through everyone that makes it so wonderful.
5250895
Yea, that experience is true to real life cons as well, so glad to see you got the authentic thing :)
You folks and your unlimited streaming.data.
But more on point, glad you had fun! Enough fun to try the physical version? (Probably not, I realize; the first three reasons still stand.)
5251129
Even if I were to say "yes" without hesitation, then - given the lockdown - it wouldn't be happening anytime soon.
This week on It's Logan's fault...
I recall that her enthusiasm was noted when the episode first went out. We're very lucky in this fandom in that so many of the show staffers and guests throw themselves into fandom interaction, but even allowing for that Hall has always been very popular considering her single appearance.
One of the quintessential con experiences right there! The main reason I've gone to cons is to see friends I don't meet for the rest of the year -- but the second main reason is to get experiences like those.
Oh, they're coming all right. So far I know of Midair Pony Fair this coming Saturday, BABSConline the following Friday and Saturday, PoniesOnline on 23 May and PonyFest 3.0 on 30 May. I suspect BABSConline and PonyFest will be the two slickest, simply because they've got top-line staffers with top-line con experience on their teams.
The biggest problem with US-based online cons is exactly that! I'd have loved to have stuck around for Forest Rain's musical performance, but it was at five in the morning UK time.
Yes! At least, they do if the con is any good. Inevitably some things only really work in person, but PonyFest came remarkably close to replicating the authentic pony convention experience.
5251312
Yeah, I noticed the lists going around shortly after I posted this blog entry. There's no way I'm trying them all, not even allowing for my new enthusiasm, and the time difference complicates matters (I mean, I'm still trying to get lights out before 2am, my sleeping habits have become that bad). But I've at least got my eye on PonyFest 3.0. Maybe BABSConline... I do like slickness...
That early and that popular, huh? I did not know that. Then again, I'm usually the last to know these things.
I at least was aware of how unusual it is for the show staff to interact this much (so I'm not completely out of the loop). Sounds promising! I wonder who else will be making appearances. Should be a sweet experience!
Hahaa, you've caught the con bug.
Yes, the real thing is fantastic. It's strange, special, and overwhelming to get to meet people who've worked on the show or made an impact in the fandom. It can be fulfilling without being fun, or so fun you can barely hold yourself together. Go to enough of them, and perhaps some of the raw specialness fades a little, but the experience becomes more like an otherworldly family reunion.
Lena Hall is a delight, and the fandom is lucky to have her.
I wish you much enjoyment of future online cons!
5252329
Currently experiencing mild symptoms and a quick recovery time, but patient may be susceptible to a future relapse.
Aha! There, I might have a dispositional advantage; I can do favourite things over and over again without getting tired of them (though that makes me bad company when it comes to e.g. picking a film to watch).
I've already put PonyFest 3.0 on my To Do List, as it happens. Not sure about others. Baby steps, baby steps...