BronyCon was huge! I asked the reg staff how many people were attending. 8,400. That’s a few thousand more people than have ever attended any WorldCon (the big yearly science fiction convention). Still small compared to the 30,000 who attended the baseball game next door on Sunday, though.

I went toward the convention center, looking for ponies.

Me walking towards the convention center. Still no sign of these "cosplayers".

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The convention center was guarded by Equestria’s finest

There were parties, panels, & a giant dealer’s room filled with swag! So I’m told. I didn’t go to any of those things except a couple of panels. I missed most of the con thru stupidity. I got there after registration closed Friday (late finishing the hooves for a costume I didn’t wear), & they wouldn’t let me into anything. I spent most of Saturday hanging out in Quills & Sofas or going places with people I met in Quills & Sofas, a writers’ hangout that Applejinx organized (in addition to half the writers’ panels at the convention). I had a great time hanging out with Professor Plum, who is British and therefore suave and able to make the word “horsecock” sound sophisticated. I didn’t remember until that evening when I checked his user page that I hated him. Oh, well. Guess I’ll call off that drone strike.

Benman & bookplayer

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Wanderer D & Obselescence

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Applejinx making his move on some devilishly handsome stallion

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Sat. evening the hotel borked my reservation, so I drove home. I left my badge in the car overnight, not even taking it into my house, just to make sure it would be in the car on Sunday. Then I went to bed & crashed hard, sleeping until about 2 in the afternoon, leaving enough time to drive back & see Wanderer D’s panel at 4pm.

I got in the car and checked that my badge was on the seat beside me. Traffic was terrible. Why is traffic around DC terrible on a Sunday afternoon? It took me 2 hours to get to Baltimore. D’s panel was half-over by the time I got there. And when I did, the badge was NOT on the seat beside me.

I spent half an hour searching the car for the badge. No luck. Called JMac to see if I could use his badge—he’d already driven home. Hung out by the entrance & tried to buy a badge off bronies leaving for home—no one would sell. Some bronies. Where’s the friendship? Went inside & spoke to con ops, waited 10 minutes to hear that they couldn’t help me. By that time the con was over, so I just walked into the convention center. There were still people checking badges on the way in, but all I had to do was walk around the other side of the escalator, which wasn’t guarded, and sneaky-stylie on through back to Quills & Sofas.

(Next day, found my badge in the trunk of my car.)

But I had come back on Sunday mainly to attend the writer’s dinner that Sunchaser had organized. He’d made reservations at the Cheesecake Factory. They took the reservation instead of telling him that they don’t take reservations. When we got there, they said it would be a 2-and-a-half hour wait. So we went to an Irish pub on the waterfront, because it was the only place that had room for 30 people on no notice.

Professor Plum, in the pub, with the fork

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I recommended the crab cake to Prof. Plum. Sorry! It was not a devious scheme for me to get two crab cakes for the price of one. It just worked out that way.

Cap’n Chryssalid

Writers of horse words

Too many people to name (or get permission to name). Jake the Army Guy is holding the sign. I’m in the front row in a purple shirt.

Most Commanding Presence: The Descendant

Most Unlike their Avatar: Obselescence

Younger Than Expected: Pen Stroke

Nicer Than Expected: Professor Plum

Just as Nice as Expected: bookplayer

Most Work Making BronyCon Author-Friendly: Applejinx

Most Heroic Personal Life Story: also Applejinx

Authors I Recommend Against Picking a Fight With: Aquaman, Jake the Army Guy

I had another costume, but as I was getting it ready, I noticed these words in the con brochure:

Help keep BronyCon a family-friendly convention. BronyCon welcomes fans of all ages and we want to make this a fun weekend for everyone. If you wouldn’t see it on the show, please don’t bring it into the convention.

Now, I think the show’s had plenty scarier things than this on it. Nightmare Moon! Cerberus! Hydras!

What do you think? Yes or no?

[redacted]

If we ever do see something like that in an episode, I’m sure it will become one of my favorites.

The hoof boots don’t show up well in that photo, which is a shame, because they’re cool & were a pain to make and even more of a pain to learn to walk in. I bought these sexy high-heeled women’s shoes (size 13) with giant hoof-like toe pads, cut off the heels, then patched over the cut spot with clay & painted the clay black. I wasted one pair of boots because I couldn’t cut through the steel staples holding the sole onto the heel. Why couldn’t I saw through a staple with a hacksaw? I don’t know, but I spent half an hour trying to & failed. I had to switch to my backup boots & cut thru the heel lower down.

Also, I learned that women have huge ankles. I’ve paid plenty of attention to women’s ankles, but I’ve never measured them. My feet fit perfectly into size 13 women’s boots, but the legs of the boots were tight. I understand that women don’t have big muscular legs. But the ankles sagged like empty bags! What’s that about?

Making the hooves in that costume was a disaster. I was following the instructions on this web page. It said to make them out of epoxy. Michael’s Crafts didn’t have epoxy, so I got modeling clay. Same thing, right? Wrong.

I made one hoof out of air-dry clay and one out of polymer clay, just to make sure the project would still be a failure even if one of those actually worked. Polymer clay is difficult to spread & join, but it’s strong & light. Air-dry clay is real clay, so you can smooth it & blend it easily with water, but then it collapses in on itself in a mushy heap. You’d need a screen mesh, not just a few wires, to form it on with real clay. And the resulting hoof is heavy and weak. Air-dry clay makes a huge mess that’s easy to clean up with water. Polymer clay leaves a few small stains on your fingers and under your nails which are impossible to remove until you shed and regrow that skin. Neither lets you build & bake the hoof in stages as epoxy does--you’ve got to get the whole thing done in one go. Sort of. I managed to build the polymer hoof in two stages, by baking the first stage only halfway, then spreading clay across the floor of the hoof for the second stage and spreading it out and over everything built in the first stage.

Wire frame to attach clay to. I used duct tape instead of solder for the joints. Much stronger.

After applying polymer clay. The platform in the back is to grip the hoof so it doesn’t fall off.

After baking, I realized that shelf to hold onto wasn’t going to work, so I strung some wire from side to side across the inside, anchoring it to that V in the middle, and bent it so I could put my fingers under it & hold onto it. Much better than the original design!

Detail of wire for handhold. Sock with heel cut off glued to inside front.

Here’s what the bottoms look like. The handhold on the underside of the clay hoof is broken; it only lasted for a few minutes of wearing.

Instructions said to bake the polymer clay 15 minutes at 275 Fahrenheit for each quarter-inch of thickness. I baked it for 8 hours & it still wasn’t set. (It did dry out after a day.) It had a nice black finish, but I found when I tried to sand it down that it was white just below the surface!

The air-dry hoof needed a day to air-dry, and I didn’t have a day, so I baked it in the oven at 175, & it cracked all over. No worries: I’d patch the cracks with Bondo!

But my Bondo was about 5 years old & dried out. I mixed it & smeared it in the cracks. It smelled like a chemical warfare agent. The instructions said it would dry in 5 minutes. I set it in the August sun for 5 hours, & it didn’t dry one damn bit. It was still just a stinky, gooey mess. So I scraped & sanded away what I could, then sprayed the whole hoof with black paint in the hope that would seal in the stench.

It did not.

This was too much work. Better to make a 3D design on the computer, print a dozen of them with a 3D printer, & sell the extras on ebay. They’d be lighter, stronger, & faster to make.