Dear Princess Sunbutt,

Hoo buddy…

I decided to sleep in this morning and take my time getting ready. The only panels I was interested in started in the afternoon, so I figured I’d go and meet with the agents in the autograph room. But first, I thought I’d go find Drawponies since I finally knew who he was.

*The con store was moved to reg and I noticed Snowflake suddenly had a security radio and a very serious expression.*

We had a short conversation, and I thought I’d swing by Mr Price’s table since it was empty, unfortunately he was in a bad mood, so I left him alone.

*I noted the new format for scheduling the panel rooms and a notice that autographs were going to be discounted and paid in cash, at this point I began to suspect something was wrong.*

I moved into the autograph room and noticed how empty the room was, someone made a joke about them having a Vegas night. Dietz was also wearing a security radio. I asked one of the agents I met yesterday if something had changed since yesterday. She said that it had, but didn’t elaborate. I tried to ask Dietz what had happened, but he also wouldn’t tell me. I decided at this point that it wasn’t my problem and went to the panel to catch the end of it.

At the end, Final Draft made a comment about helping out the convention, specifically mentioning #LasPegAssist. At this point I knew something was definitely very wrong since people were scrambling about throughout the panel. I left the room (passing in front of the live stream camera), then offered to help both Dietz and at the reg table, both told me they had things pretty much under control. *They didn’t.*

I decided to do my own research and Googled “LasPegAssist” and came across the EqD article. Around this time, Klisk texted me asking if I was okay. He’d seen my face on the stream. I realized that this was really bothering me and that I couldn’t just let it go. I decided to plunge myself down the rabbit hole by insisting that I shadow Dietz. Feulner told me that I could so long as I could keep up. I reminded him that I was on staff at BroNYCon Jan.

Having come in halfway, I’m not sure what had happened so far, but people were trying to figure out how to handle programming. A bunch of changes were made to the revised schedule to solve some issue but when they were communicated to others it created new issues. We ran back and forth talking to other paniced other con staffers, eventually it was decided that Deitz was going to assist the guests with their travel arrangements.

*From what I understand, the command structure of the whole event fell apart sometime the night before. I was never able to find out who was in charge of the reorganization effort. My best guess is that there was no real command structure and people were focusing on what they considered to be important problems needing immediate attention, with a few people in relatively higher positions. Also, whatever arrangements had been made regarding con comped services to anyone were no longer in effect.*

We spent some time talking to the guests one by one to figure out their flight time and whether they were checked out of their room. We then asked them when they wanted to be shuttled to the airport in 3 seperate time slots.

*I actually never found out what became of this, but I didn’t feel too good about it. We kind of jumped around based on who came to mind at the time. We also only spoke to one of the agents who talked of arranging a taxi for his represented talent. It wasn’t guaranteed at the time, but we immediately gave their slots to others. I believe eventually they were all taxied to the airport, at least I sure hope they all got there okay.*

Around 2 we started moving some of the VAs to the panel room as per the revised schedule. Ms Oliver requested water, and I was finally asked to help. I decided to take this time to find out who was running things. I went back to the reg table and found the shuttle driver to be. I asked him if he was in charge and he told me he hoped not. He pointed me to the head of security, after introducing myself I asked him what they had been doing about water for the VAs, he mentioned a couple of security guys I didn’t know. When I asked where they’d be he radioed for them with no response. Someone mentioned that they may be with Ms Strong who at the time was being driven to the airport. He told me that they were buying the water at the store in the hotel because of the reduced rates. I asked if they’d been paying for them out of pocket and he confirmed that they were. So much for lunch that day… I bought 8 liters of water and brought them to the panel room.

*My fears of no structure were confirmed. Also I never found out what became of the water either. Only 2 VAs accepted some at the table, I left 3 at the foot of it and 3 others were taken somewhere else.*

I eventually found Dietz again and we moved back to the panel room. Around this time, we heard that the hotel was planning to lock us out and confiscate anything left in the rooms at 5pm. We started looking for room staffers to let them know to start packing things up. The artists and musicians overheard as well, there was a concern about the instruments and we needed a non comped room to store them. I offered my room as a temporary solution since I was leaving at 10pm.

*To be continued, I’m now boarding my flight home.*

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

My lack of sleep is catching up to me… I was unable to get up from my alarm right away so I missed part of a VA panel ordering more cards, coincidentally there is now no way in the world that I’m going to run out.

Today’s the day that I planned to make use of my autograph vouchers from the day before. After spending a good (termed loosely) hour waiting to get inside I made my way to each of my selected VAs to sign my S1 DVD case. It was nice to finally get something signed that wasn’t for someone else, things could finally be made out to me. I also used the opportunity to hand out the last of my first batch of business cards to them to give to their agents. I wasn’t planning on being there that long, but I was still there when Daniel Ingram came in from his panel, so I thanked him for making the music from the show and mentioned my con, unfortunately he said he’s much too busy to go to any more cons this year. Hearing that, I bought one more voucher.

After that, I made my way to the food court again and ran into some musicians and Yoshi, who I’d met at Canterlot Gardens last year. We hung out for a little while until we got swept up into another group with Deitz, Bejoty, and Mic the Microphone. We hung out with Sibsy again for a big before going to buy some black socks for Mic who forgot his for his Slenderman outfit (he actually couldn’t wear it because hotel staff prevented the use of the mask). I decided to go back to the artist alley.

We all remember where we were when the first Burnycon took place, I was asleep in my hotel room. This time I was hanging out with Aviators and his mom when the fire nation allegedly attacked again. Nothing more came of it though except we went outside for a second, then came back in. I decided to visit some with Andy Price again. He was drawing some commissions and I shot some video while chatting with him (you’ll have to wait a bit for that though), he was doing so well with his sales that he asked his wife to overnight him more for today, but he lamented not being able to meet any of the other guests since he was restricted to his table. I told him that I would ask the writers to go find him since he needed to consult with them over something. I said I would when I saw them at the dinner thing.

I never did find out who’s table I was supposed to sit at, I didn’t find out until I went to the celebrity dinner that apparently everyone was going to the cocktail hour also, so when I arrived for the dinner they had already handed out meal tickets. I ended up sitting at Michelle Creber’s table and talked some about the fandom with Michelle’s family while periodically being interrupted by the awards ceremony. The drinks were overpriced, but Nicole Oliver’s birthday cake was really good at least.

After that, it was time for the acoustic night of the concert. The dinner ran long so I missed The Beatle Bronies’ set, but I caught the rest. Unfortunately, I found myself unable to get that energized… I don’t know why I’m getting so tired on Con Saturdays now. At least I’ll be able to sleep good tonight.

Your half asleep student,

Scootaleo

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

Did you know that Silva Hound’s phone makes strange noises in the middle of the night?

This morning started early for me when Silva had to meet with Mic the Microphone to get access to his own room, I had a short greeting with a number of pony musicians, but not having my badge yet, I couldn’t get their signatures yet. PHPony showed me to the reg line and I waited for my turn. The Snowflake cosplayer was there, and he led us all in Winter Wrap Up. The hotel staff shifted us around a bit but eventually I got my badge without a hitch… thus began the nightmare spending spree.

I started with the con store so I could knock out the things I knew I wanted to take care of here, a shirt from Unicon and some vouchers for the characters on the front cover… unfortunately that was $100 already. The next one was the Enterplay binder which I thought was lost to the ether, and finally all 3 of Aviators’ CDs (I regret nothing!), he even signed them.

Now that I’ve managed to spend myself into poverty within 1 hour of the convention, I started handing out my business cards (we are an announced con now after all), I hit up a number of the artists I’d seen at other cons as well as the big 3 licensees, Enterplay, We Love Fine, and IDW (I’d talk about how these things went, but that would be telling). I didn’t realize just how many others I’d be handing out cards to, I brought over half of the BronyCon cards I printed home, but here I’m about to run out on the first day, good thing I have my PDF file and the hotel has a UPS store… money…

I watched the musicians panels, then grabbed a bite with Loopy Logic before going to the writers panel. It’s funny, I think the cynicism I’ve developed over the course of S3 really prevented me from getting upset over anything I heard. I feel funny writing this now, more on that later.

After that, I had to track down Silva Hound who had borrowed my only room key to get his things from my room. Eventually, I learned from Omnivore that Silva was hanging out in the VIP only “Sweet and Elite” sky lofts. I explained my situation to the security staffer and they eventually escorted me to Silva so I could get my key back.

After that was Rina-chan’s sing-a-long panel. We didn’t have much of a sound system so it was a cappella for a while, eventually we found a brony with a speaker laden backpack who came in to assist us. I actually sang for Flam when we did Flim Flam Brothers. One of my favorite moments though was when we were singing Beyond Her Garden then one of them randomly started rapping the whole verse from Beyond Her Tomb. Another interesting note was how few of us knew the cutie mark song from the S3 Finale.

I took a break from the pay concert to go grab some food before the fan concert started, I ran into Loopy Logic again and we ran into Andy Price!!! We invited him along with us to the food court when he was lamenting the buffet being closed. He mentioned that John De Lancie had gone to the fancy restaurant to eat, but that was too rich for our blood. When we sat down, there was another group of bronies that was so jelly that Mr Price just sat at out table (sorry fellas, we had invited him to join us). We talked some about our con, but then we started talking about the comic and general production. I even gave him my theory of what might happen in issue 4, he laughed. I think this could easily become my favorite memory from this convention, I certainly couldn’t have picked a better dinner scenario, except…

I missed Aviators’ set!!! The whole schedule got moved up by an hour and despite showing up 30 min early for his set I only saw him perform his final song, Fear of Flight. I hated that I missed his set, but I did see Odyssey, Silva, and TAPS. Michelle Creber also performed after them, her flight arrived late.

I was able to talk to Sibsy some after the concert. I have to say, she’s even more awesome than I’d heard. I wanted her to come to our con before, but now I REALLY want her to come. And that’s all I’m going to say about that right now. How am I going to top today?

Your now destitute student,

Scootaleo

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

I’m totally caught up now.

My journey began picking up cards for myself to give out. A late shift the night before prevented a full night’s sleep. I worked something out with your very own most faithful Twilight Sparkle cosplayer to bring me to the airport and watch my cart over the weekend. Unfortunately my journey stopped for a while at the airport. The flight was delayed for 3 hours. I ended up not getting into Las Vegas until after 2am.

Unfortunately, what this meant was that the bus line I wanted to take had stopped for the night and I ended up walking about 2 miles from the nearest running stop. I actually got to the Riviera around 3:30.

I figured there wouldn’t be much to write but I ran into someone in the lobby: Silva Hound. He ended up crashing in my room until the next morning when he’d pick up his own room’s key. Will this become a con tradition? Silva staying in my room one night (this happened at EQLA also)?

Your sleep deprived student,
Scootaleo

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

One more… the time had finally come for the Season 3 Finale party in Houston. This was actually my Hell Week for 2013 (also in Feb). The week prior I had travelled to BR for Mardi Gras and the next day I learned that Troutzorz was planning to visit our now confirmed venue for DerpyCon South, which I just had to jump on board for. That was a late night trip to BR to stay with him. The next morning we both woke up early and drove to NOLA to talk contract with them (it went great). I signed the contract on Fri and tried to prepare an announcement presentation for the Houston Bronies (sadly that didn’t go over so well, I blame sleep deprivation).

I ended up leaving late for Houston, so I had to book to make up for lost time, but I still managed to get in before the organizers who had to go around picking people up. I just hung around with the artists and early arrivals (some of whom were spoiler happy) until they arrived.

With the bigger group there came more Finale talk… I began to wonder if it was even worth it to shoot a reaction video (could I even call it raw?). After polling, I found out a good 2/3 to 3/4 of them hadn’t seen the ep yet, so I set up my camera. Editing that one was fun by the way, the streaming laptop was right in the shot, and I found out (from you) that you cried during Celly’s song.

After the episode, Dietz announced the kickstarter for Fiesta Equestria!, an effort to bring Britt McKillip and Michelle Creber to Houston this summer. After that people played Rock Band while the rest of us just wandered around and chatted.

It was nice seeing you and the others from Blind Bag Brony Box day. I enjoyed the Pinkie cookie too, even if it was a little stale. Once it got to be around 5pm, we dispersed with some of us going to the Hearts and Hooves day meetup at the Galleria. The trafic was just awful downtown though, and I wasn’t able to meet anypony else. So I just went back to the LC, I hope to see you guys next time though.

Your easterly neighbor,
Scootaleo (I forgot about this last time)

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

I must apologize for being so late with these letters but if I want to have any hope of keeping up I better write these now before Unicon starts. 2 weeks ago, my group, the Louisiana Bronies, held our Mardi Gras meetup in Baton Rouge.

My trip started the night before though. The plan was to pick up with a brony in Lafayette and meet Raborn in BR around 11pm, unfortunately as a pizza pony, my scheduled time to leave work isn’t guaranteed. That night, I didn’t even get off work until 10:30. Raborn, who was travelling from Ruston, was already nearly there. I hauled flank to Lafayette and picked up the Lafayette brony around midnight, and we arrived at BR around 1. We met up with Raborn and Freelancer at the Waffle House and got into a conversation with the waitress about ponies (she’d never heard of the fandom and was intrigued by our shirts).

We all went back to my hotel room, at checkin the woman thought we were throwing a party bacause of Raborn’s cupcakes (did I mention Raborn had Derpy Cupcakes?). The room was much bigger than I thought it’d be. It easily held the 3 of us with no problem. The next morning we made our way to the Mall of Louisiana where we’d gather up. We had about 15 there when I realized that I’d forgotten the cupcakes in the room I’d just checked out of.

We waited for the rest of the group (there were about 30 of us total) then moved to the parade grounds (we opted for the Spanish Town Parade). The rules were every car for itself with regard to parking and our car ended up parking about 7 blocks from the meeting place. During the parade, Raborn was quite determined to catch a lot of beads, while Freelancer and Ganix enjoyed themselves behind the crowds. Some of us went to meet other bronies nearby watching the parade with their families.

After the parade, we went back to Frank’s place to watch the new episode at the time (S3 12). It was Frank’s last weekend before joining the military and he was being a great host for us.

After the episode those of us that were left just chilled and hung out until we all steadily made our way back to where we came from. We need to do stuff like that more often.

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

I know I said I probably wouldn’t have anything to write about until Unicon, and I didn’t exactly go anywhere, but this felt like a big deal to me so I’m going to write anyway.

Yesterday, I made the decision to auction off a signed promo poster for the Bronies documentary. The idea is to raise money for a Louisiana based convention that I’m helping to get off the ground. Unfortunately I’d never used eBay before…

I guess I better start at the beginning. Last summer, my friend Ganix decided to donate to the, at the time, BronyCon documentary and be invited to the meet and greet there. Part of the deal was to bring along a “+1” and I was lucky enough to be selected for that role. It really was a wonderful time, and I got to meet Lauren Faust and thank her for sharing her imagination with us. Well at the end of the meet and greet each producer and the director talked a bit about the project. They had everyone’s names in a drawing, and after talking, they started giving away the promo posters. Well I was lucky enough again to have won the print of Lauren Faust’s “Trifecta” work.

This is actually incredible, because I had made an 8x10 print with the intention of getting it signed (I knew that part of the meet and greet was free autographs). But winning that much larger poster seemed like a message that I was doing the right thing.

I asked a number of my friends in the community how I should offer the poster, and an overwhelming majority recommended a simple frame. So I went to an art store and looked at their frames (coincidentally I was able to use a coupon that expired today; they also had 2 for 1 deals, I kind of wish I had the extra money to frame some of my more prized possessions from the conventions, like Pustulio’s poster full of musician OCs and Tsitra’s Fighting is Magic poster <both signed by various musicians and Mane 6 members respectively>).

This morning I took some photos of the framed photo outside on a table clothed in some Satin bedsheets and posted it on eBay. I’d heard that starting with a low price can encourage more bidding and having a reserve protects me (despite the $2 cost). I also timed the post so that the auction ends at the same time as the new episode, on the same day the documentary becomes available to the supporters. I sure hope it does okay.

Here’s a link to the auction page: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221176590150. I know it doesn’t feature you, but I hope you still like it.

Respectfully yours,

Scootaleo

Dear Princess Sunbutt,

Today was the first day of the new year and keeping with my resolution to document my adventures, I decided to write about this first one.

Hard Wire invited some of the Louisiana Bronies over to pop fireworks at his place. NOLA’s pretty far from me, and it took a little over 4 hours to get there, and it’s been so long since visiting that I’d forgotten just how cool the city was. Surprisingly, Hard Wire lives right off the freeway (as soon as I got off I was dodging fireworks setup in the street). NOLA’s pretty lax about this it seems.

As I arrived, there was some popping of fireworks but we quickly went in for some food and Brawl before the big showcase at midnight (we also watched Magic Duel, since one of us hadn’t seen it yet, I felt kind of bad for him though since we were kind of loud during it and Solrac’d the intro).

Around 11, I decided to wish some friends in the Eastern timezone a Happy New Year, and even got a couple of responses telling me that we’d meet again in March.

It’s been years since my family popped fireworks, and since we live in a “quiet neighborhood” we were never able to get away with too much on those holidays without involving the police. So I’d never experienced so much extravagance at someone’s house. Fireworks these days are getting pretty complex. I must say, having all of us lighting something at once and running back was rather exciting. I realy wish I’d brould my camera… (maybe that should’ve also been part of the resolution). It may be just as well though since I got hit in the face with some of the debris. That would’ve certainly made me put the camera away.

After the cleanup, we chatted a bit more. I got to talk a bit about my head canon, which is always nice, heard about some fanfics, and planned our next get together (which I’ll unfortunately have to miss).

Around 2, I decided to send Happy New Year wishes to some of the show people via Twitter, I may have played favorites a bit though and I don’t expect them to respond.

Now I lie in Hardwire’s guest bed, tomorrow I’ll be making my journey back to the LC. Sadly the rest of the month is shot for me, so I likely won’t be writing again until Unicon. I was really looking forward to those desserts too…

Best wishes,
Scootaleo

P.S. What does everyone think of this format? In the future I should have the presense of mind to shoot some pics or video too. Of course, this all text thing may not be so bad either.

The submission form for performing at BronyCon is now available here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGEwMUlLTURmSDJuSmdqZVZBRjZkV0E6MQ#gid=0

All submissions have to be in by 11:59pm EDT on Fri April 20th (this coming Fri).

Reblog it so the other musicians can see it if you please.

Last Saturday was our meetup for the month of March. We initially planned to do a beach thing but had to push that back another month…

Instead we met at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. I was excited about this meetup in particular because it meant being able to finally meet some of the people I wasn’t able to last time I went, like Dimento and Megg Chan. Speaking of Megg, she baked a cake and brought it with her for all 15 or so of us to enjoy. Check it out:

Unfortunately there were still a number of us who couldn’t make it, including Tripwire who got sick earlier in the week. Since he really wanted to meet Megg, I asked her to draw a get well card for him and have everyone sign it. This is how that went:

After that, we all got together for a group pick by the fountain where we met. Unfortunately, security was getting a little antsy with a group our size so we broke off and some of us went to watch “Ponyville Confidential” at Troutzorz’.

After that, we returned to the mall, but the security were on high alert for some reason and gave us the business from all sides so we just went out for pizza and called it a night (it was this place called Schlitz & Giggles; great for decent pizza, big TVs, and attractive waitresses).

Next time, we’re really going to the beach and we’re going to watch the S2 finale as a big group.