Midair Pony Fair begins tomorrow!

It's amazing to think that, up until a few weeks ago, HAHCon was the only contact most of us had had with an online My Little Pony convention. I'm not even sure there were any others worthy of the name. But needs must when the devil drives, and there are quite a few more coming down the tracks. I'll try to get a summary post up at some point next week, but no promises.

The first of those is Midair Pony Fair, which has a couple of striking features. Most notably, as you'll see if you look at the schedule, this is a 24-hour con. It starts at 9:45 pm (UK time) today and ends at 10:15 pm on Saturday, running through the night. That means people all over the world will get the same chances, as opposed to the US-targeted schedules of online cons so far.

This convention has only one track, with events being shown sequentially on the con's Twitch channel. On the plus side, that means you won't have any schedule clash. On the minus side, it means there's no choice at any given moment. I'm also a bit disappointed there's no public Discord server. The PonyFest Discord was a big part of giving it a social dimension; Twitch chat just isn't as good.

MPF has garnered two official guests of honour: Elley-Ray Hennessy and Big Jim Miller. Solid choices and convention veterans both. Some familiar names among the community guests and performers, too: Silver Quill, Somber, 4EverfreeBrony, Minty Root, DustyKatt etc – though there are also quite a few on the guest list whose names don't register with me at all. We'll see how they do.

As for what interests me the most... the panels on the Chinese and Russian fandoms look potentially fascinating, though sadly the one on China goes out at 3:30 am my time. I really hope these are going to be recorded and uploaded! Monochromatic features on a panel about writing Rarity (breakfast time for me) and that's probably the pick of the fanfic events.

I'll be honest here: I will be surprised if Midair Pony Fair reaches the heights attained by PonyFest last week. That set a very high bar that even BABSConline in a week's time is going to have to go some to clear. However, there's enough about the MPF offering to encourage me to spend at least some time partaking of its delights. I do so wish they'd set up a Discord chat, though...