Dayton Meetup Summary

Mud.

We discovered that mud muds in muddy places outside in the mud. We tried to unmud the mud, but to our dismay, the mud continued to mud anyway. So, we dealt with it and let the mud mud all over our not-mud.

Sethisto is a squirrel. It's canon.

There were several "story planks" throughout Grant Park, telling the story of an owl on an "epic" adventure. One of them involved a squirrel named Seth assisting our owl friend – thus, Sethisto canonically becomes a squirrel as he helps CereOWL Velocity.

Once we got to the park, we discovered that the area where we'd planned to stay was sort of claimed by some sort of nature photographer with a green bag. We asserted our dominance by scaring him with pink ponies and he left, then we made ourselves comfortable in the not-warm weather, and attempted to light a fire. It took many ages to start (though, not due to mud (it was all the water's fault!!!)), but thanks to some ingenuity, cardboard (Kilt was totally right about the cardboard), and a magical log of fire-starting (Thanks Pandaman for going out and getting that stuff for us!), we were finally able to create a small blaze that several people almost fell into several times. Fire pit rocks are not safe to stand on.

Crazy Doodle Donkey,
the Brony Jackass

While we were meeting with each other and discussing ponies and musics and other things of meaning and non-meaning, Edinpony decided that wearing a tree was not enough for him. It was in his best interest to become the tree, and so, he climbed one. However, that was still not enough and eventually he climbed a broken tree where he then Lion King'd at the pinnacle of its brokenness. It was then that we all realized that Edinpony was in fact a tree wearing a tree on top of a tree. Others attempted to mimic it, although they got bored halfway up (some of us are afraid of heights :|) and just decided to jump off the tree instead.

Spike x Rarity

Several ponies randomly vanished from the festivities at random points in order to obtain snacks and other various munchies in order to satiate the rabid hunger of the others. We eventually had S'mores (chocolate-covered Rarity snacks, arranged just so), deliciously burnt Jiffy Pop, and hot dogs. Meanwhile, everypony huddled around the fire to try to be not cold, and talked to each other. Kilt molested most of them. [Kilt: Giggity]

After our time at the park discussing our ponies and other things, we decided to make our way to Archers, the designated place of eating for the evening. Upon arriving, we pushed through the front door (all 35 of us) and greeted the waitress that was waiting to seat us. It went a little something like this:

Waitress: "How many?"
Glyde: "35."
Waitress: "What, seriously?"

Much to her dismay (or maybe it was surprise), there really were that many of us there. We then marched single-file like towards the opposite end of the restaurant. Luckily, there were just enough open tables and seats to fit everyone in our group comfortably. (One waitress even commented on DashAttack's badass, not-even-close-to-Rarity helmet. :3)

During this time, we ordered our food and shared mare-iment amongst our varied tables. Plentiful discussions, engaging pony trivia, and coloring on children's menu placemats were some of the things that we took part in (you read that right). After the first table had asked for children's menus and crayons, the waitress asked every other table if anyone wanted them. Many people said yes. This kicked off a full night of derp drawing.

There was a strangely nice/forward lady who wanted to understand our little group more. She asked what we were all doing randomly together in Dayton and we explained the so many wonders of bronies, cosplay, and driving from all over the place in order to get together and hang out. She totally felt up Kilt's leg. We gave her one of our many business cards.

Once we got into the hotel room – which took a silly amount of time because most of us either got lost or followed other people so well that our cars tried to merge together [and this is how I learned that Starshine's car is my cutie mark - DA] – we set up the projector, watched the new episode, and listened to Smile Smile Smile again. We then decided that alcohol was needed and so Darkly Cute, DashAttack, and Kilt went on a road trip looking for booze. The actual trip entailed DashAttack continuously doing U-turns on the same road about ten times as we tried to find a liquor store that we didn't even know was closed. So we just went to a grocery store and bought a lot of cheap booze along with soda and juice to mix with it in order to not taste its horrible cheapness.

Discord donated $20 toward prizes for a speedfic contest. Starshine gave the prompt, how the other five ponies met before Twilight Sparkle came to Ponyville, and gave 30 minutes for writing. Pretty much everypony decided to write a trollfic. After time was up, we collected them and each author did a cold reading of a random submission. Hilarity ensued as none of us could read each other's spaghetti/wingdings handwriting. Buffershy made a random cameo, as did Peanut Bucker in her official first fanfiction, where she kicked Fluttershy in the face.

DashAttack clearly won the fanfic contest by inventing several new words ("poneticles" is canon terminology now), and then we kicked back and discussed many subjects such as toilet planking, Deimos took off his pants, and Kilt climbed into the closet AGAIN. This time it was literally OFF DA RAILZ, so much that others joined him.

After discussing for some time about where to go and what to do the next day, we began to watch a cinema classic: Blazing Saddles. (Everyone thought they wanted to watch Blues Brothers but Kilt went executive decision. This was a grand decision in retrospect.) About halfway through the movie Starshine decided that he needed to jump from one bed to another in order to make it to the bathroom. This caused his head to plow directly into the ceiling fan/light where surprisingly NOTHING BROKE. The only plausible explanation is that the glass was not actually glass, but was in fact the same material as the indestructible radios in Portal. (Kilt is also made of this material.)

Just to be clear,
she's sorry.

We got most of the way through the movie when suddenly Insane Butterfly leaped up, flew across the room because apparently she's a pegasus, and dive-bombed the mirrored closet door that had earlier gone off da railz, smashing it into bits and covering the floor with shards of glass. Starshine took action and immediately ran over to the glass in order to rub it all over his feet. Curiously, this did not help at all. After much debate, we decided it would be a great idea to wait until checkout time to notify the hotel and shoved the broken door in the bathtub.

"No one step on the floor over here."
"The floor is hot lava?"
"The floor is BROKEN GLASS."

New story idea: Daring Do and the Broken-Glass Bathroom [I'm on it - DA]

Unfortunately, this little event cut movie time short due to the fact that we spent the next 45 minutes or so cleaning up the glass spill in aisle bedroom sink. By the time we had finished, it was somewhere around 4 AM, which forced a unanimous decision that it was late and we needed sleep. [DashAttack: And, sadly, being my first time watching Blazing Saddles, I never did get to see the end. T-T]

The suite was split into two separate areas by a door. On one side, Darkly Cute, Starshine, Kilt, and DashAttack made their claim on the two beds. Others slept in various places on the floor. Lava, MKanke, Razor, Snails, Ziggy, and Gutter Bones slept in the other room with the fold-out couch, and cuddling and snuggling (and so much shipping) was taking place EVERYWHERE.

After a couple of very short hours of sleep, Razor Cloud woke everypony up at 7:30, because sleeping was evidently prohibited. Starshine fumbled into the other part of the room to turn his volume knob down a little, but that didn't really work so MKanke suggested going to Walmart or something. Not exactly the best plan or even well-executed, but it did make the hotel room a lot more quiet. After they got back, we cleaned up the room, moved out, and talked to the concierge about the broken mirror. She was really impressed that we had actually bothered to tell them, made a couple calls to maintenance staff and determined that it'd be a $90 charge to replace.

After leaving the hotel, we all went to Denny's, which was in hindsight a bad idea because they only had two waiters working there and it took us forever to get any service at all, and also because it was on the other side of town from Toys"R"Us where we had originally planned on going in the morning.

Parallel parking

Fortunately for us, it took so long at Denny's that we didn't have time to go to Toys"R"Us anyway, so we just went straight from there to the University of Dayton for the mini-convention that PaulB had suggested we invade. After yet more directional derping, we found the place we were supposed to be, crowded into the hallway, and scared everyone at the convention simply by being a rather large group of bronies. We all got cutie marks drawn on us, then explored for a little while until it was time for the pony panel. It was a pretty chill place, and the panel was more or less a bunch of us in a room watching episodes for a couple hours, singing at the top of our lungs, and scaring people elsewhere with our boundless volume and swag. There was a bit of a mix-up about when the panel room had to be closed up, so it got cut a little short, but it was great fun. This was how a pony panel is supposed to go.

Unfortunately for us, that was the high point of the day. After the panel, the caravan got separated multiple times, we were dismayed by the lack of pony in all the stores we tried to visit, and eventually the group got completely broken. Darkly Cute and Starshine got stuck in the Lost Mall on the way to Toys"R"Us because their GPS thought that would be funny. Meanwhile, the store got sucked into an extra-dimensional portal before they could get there, so after a couple of very confusing phone calls they gave up and went to eat instead.

Darkly Cute and Starshine decided that Rooster's sounded delicious (or rather, it was the first restaurant they could find) while the rest of the ponies decided pizza was a good idea. Andapanda suggested a quaint little restaurant called Marion's. The first one was completely packed full with every table either occupied or reserved for a party, so they went to another one that was roughly five miles away. Edinpony got lost by going to the next closest one and so we were separated for a while. (There are somewhere around four Marion's.) Then we all gathered back together as we "enjoyed" the rest of our evening. We were all a little more than frustrated at that point and just wanted to go home, so we all went our separate ways as Kilt de-kilted and changed into "normal civilian clothes" right in the middle of the parking lot. The pizza was quite delicious though.

In the end, we all learned a valuable lesson: figure out where you're going in advance, and print maps.