A year on from the return to conventions, are we back to normal now?

This one gets the "musing" tag as I'm not making any attempt to write a serious piece full of references and evidence. It's just a case of a few thoughts. Anyway: UK PonyCon 2021 was the first in-person Pony convention in this country for two years, and I think (I stand to be corrected!) the first in Europe as a whole since Hearth's Warming Con in the Netherlands closed on 1st March 2020. Certainly we weren't at all sure what it was going to be like. Fortunately the answer was: really very good indeed!

However, it still wasn't like UKPC had been up until 2019. There were vaccine status checks at the door, for a start. Masks, while not required, were fairly common on the first day especially. There was no music concert. Some stuff was rearranged to allow for social distancing. And so on and so forth. I remember wondering whether mass singing would be allowed – fortunately it was, since that allowed us a memorable singalong of "Danger, Danger". (It was also the first European con of the G5 era!)

For UK PonyCon 2022, much of the extra stuff wasn't there. Masks weren't absent entirely, but at a guess I'd say use was down below 5% of attendees. There were no vaccine or test mandates, merely a note on the con's website telling people not to attend if they had Covid, and a reminder in the con book to "wash your hooves with water and soap". (Good advice anyway!) Live music was back on Saturday evening, as was the bar selling pony-themed cocktails. Attendance was back to not that far off 2019 levels.

Did people still do a test before attending? Yeah, at least some of us did. But I think we've largely reached the point at which Covid has become just another one of the lovely collection of grottiness that goes into the bucket marked "con crud". (In any case, there's some reason to believe it'll be good bad old flu that's the bigger deal in Europe this winter.) When I attended UKPC in 2021 there was still quite a discernible jumpiness about Covid specifically. At UKPC 2022 that feeling was pretty much absent.

It's interesting that this change doesn't seem to have taken place in North America. Looking up a few of the major US MLP cons' websites recently, they showed various combinations of masks, vaccines and testing still mandated. One convention's Covid policy (for 2022) ran to more than 3,000 words. That would be unheard of in Europe now. I'm not here to be judgemental on this. But it's maybe worth noting that anyone crossing the Atlantic (in either direction) for a Pony con may find the attitude and setup regarding Covid quite different from what they're used to at home.

So... I supposethe answer to my subject line question is probably: in Europe, yes, or pretty close to. In America, not just yet.

UK PonyCon tickets now on sale! Prices and thoughts (updated)

It's been almost two years since an in-person MLP convention was held in the UK, but we might be about to end that drought. An official UK PonyCon blog yesterday announced that tickets for this year's convention in Nottingham on 9th and 10th October are now on sale, this having gone live at 2pm BST. Exciting stuff! Some of my trademark rambly thoughts in a moment, but first the price list:

Weekend Adult/Child/Family: £46 / £24 / £92

Saturday Adult/Child/Family: £30 / £13 / £60

Sunday Adult/Child/Family: £24 / £13 / £48

VIP Upgrade (in addition to a ticket from above) : £72

Anyone who's familiar with UKPC will note that these are substantial jumps from 2019, an increase of around 20% on the whole. The UKPC blog is commendably open about the reasons for this, which are pretty much what you'd expect: that given the changed environment since 2019, running a convention is now costlier and riskier than it used to be. Given that, I think the con has done quite well to (for example) keep the Adult Weekend ticket below £50.

There doesn't seem to be a mid-level tier this time around. There is a "Supporter" option, which is what that used to be called, but this year that term is a rough equivalent of the "Spirit Badge" some other cons have. In other words, a way of supporting UKPC's running costs that doesn't actually gain you access to the event. (It will, however, give you a special role on Discord and a place on the list of contributors.) This costs £5, but you can buy more than one I believe.

Some fairly rambly thoughts (as ever!) past the jump break.

UK PonyCon rescheduled for October

UK PonyCon put out this press release yesterday. It says that, owing to a clash with university needs (the venue is owned by a uni), the convention has been moved to 9th/10th October. We must all hope that circumstances by then are good enough that these dates can actually happen! If UKPC can go ahead, it will be almost exactly two years since the last one, which was in October 2019.

That's the informative part of this post. But to the question "Will you be attending, Logan?" I still can't give a definite answer. In all honesty, I think the odds remain against it, perhaps fairly heavily. I'm not especially worried about my personal safety, since I'm now double-dosed with vaccine and so about as safe as I'm going to be. As such, I doubt that would be a particularly large consideration of mine.

No, for me a larger problem is uncertainty. For example, UKPC say they will "publish details of the measures [they're] taking nearer the time of the event." The snag there is that I'd want to know what those measures were before I committed one way or the other. As a simple example, if singing were significantly restricted that would be quite a big minus point for me. Not for everyone, but for me singing is a big part of conventions.

If the measures are not announced until after tickets have been on sale for a while, there's a chance they may have sold out before I feel I have enough information to commit. If that happens, so be it. That may be more likely if capacity has to be reduced and so fewer tickets are on sale – though who knows what demand will actually be? Old assumptions may no longer hold.

Another factor: over the past year we've seen massive advances in online MLP events. There is now far more knowledge and experience about what works and how to make it work than there was in the old days when Horses At Home was the only online con. Attending events online can mean huge financial savings, balanced against the loss of the personal touch and the physical experience.

Indeed, it will be interesting to see whether UK PonyCon itself runs any online stuff during the in-person con. Clearly there won't be a parallel online convention: the level of work required would be impossible. But perhaps there could be a bit of streaming, and something like a Pony Town server might allow people who couldn't attend the con to experience a bit of the community interaction.

Although I do expect significant demand for returning in-person cons like UKPC, I wouldn't be at all surprised if online events continued on at least some scale. After all, not everyone is lucky enough to live in a country which ever has in-person events. Others may not feel ready to return to large crowded events this year even if they're okay with small meets. And so on and so forth.

I'm not ruling out going to UKPC in October. As everyone who's read this blog for a while will know, I have a great deal of time for that convention, and certainly attending would have its attractions. However, as things stand, I think it's quite unlikely that I'll be attending another con before 2022. I suspect I'm going to need to wait for the day when I can plan with some certainty several months out – and we're not quite at that point yet.

I'm close to deciding against cons this year, even if they happen

In-person cons, that is – I'll certainly be attending the odd online one! But I look at things like TrotCon's recent announcement and it gets me thinking. They're now hoping for some kind of in-person shindig in December – but even then, at the very end of the year, the event is "likely to include a mask requirement when not socially distanced" and may have various other restrictions or requirements that wouldn't have applied pre-Covid.

Not that I have anything against masks or social distancing in general as necessary evils in these dark times... but I don't really want to go to a convention, specifically, if those things are needed. In fact, I'm not at all sure that social distancing is really compatible with conventions; it goes against so much of what the con experience is about, for me, at least. Cons are such a big undertaking for me at the best of times that I don't really find a "halfway house" very appealing.

I'm well aware that there are no guarantees for the future either. But then I think to myself: I've been to nine Pony conventions, which makes me much luckier than many fans. Here in England at least, it's now possible once again to have small in-person meets when the weather's good enough. (Groups are currently only allowed outdoors.) And we've learnt to get around some of the limitations of online chat and even use a few of them to our advantage.

So... for 2021, at least, I think it's quite likely that small, informally organised meets will be my focus. They're just less pressure all round, and their smallness means organising (and when necessary rescheduling) can be done much more nimbly and straightforwardly than it can for conventions. You don't need to plan (and save large sums) months in advance for something that may never happen.

I'm not saying there's no chance of my going to a larger in-person event this year. It is still just about possible if everything goes really well and stays that way, and so I don't want to completely close the door at this point. I am saying that the odds are fairly substantially against my attending anything bigger than meets. And you know what? Right now, I find myself surprisingly okay with that.

GalaCon postponed to 2022

GalaCon 2021 will not happen. The plan is to hold the event in June 2022 instead. As is common, people are being given the option to hold on to their tickets or to get a refund. I can't say this is likely to be a surprise to anyone. While things are not as bad now as they were last year, the threshold needed to be confident of hosting a large, organised convention is pretty high. I would dearly like to be proved wrong on this, but I'm personally not convinced there will be any full-scale cons in Europe this year.

Another con postponement: PonyCon Holland this time

NB: PonyCon Holland has no connection with UK PonyCon.

Some not unexpected news from Dutch convention PonyCon Holland yesterday: it's been postponed from its existing May weekend until 16/17 October. Whether the event will be able to go ahead then is anybody's guess, of course, but I wouldn't put a great deal of money on any full cons happening this year. I suppose that, like many people, I have a bit of a "once bitten, twice shy" mindset after the false dawn of last summer. We'll see how things go, I suppose.

One of the major problems that comes to mind is that if a convention needs a whole bunch of restrictions that basically say "Don't do anything loud or get close to others", then in my book it's not really a convention at all. It might still be an enjoyable event, but if you can't hug anybody, do silly things in the queue, burst into spontaneous song or nip down the pub for lunch with your friends, it's hard to call it a con in the true sense of the word. In short, I don't think social distancing and conventions are compatible. For as long as we need the first, I doubt we can truly have the second.

UK PonyCon postponed again

I doubt this will have come as a surprise to anyone, but UK PonyCon has announced that its scheduled in-person convention on 8th/9th May 2021 has been postponed. The new dates are 4th/5th September. At least in theory – bluntly, I think it's a very long shot that even that will go ahead; I'd love to be proved totally wrong, but I would be really surprised. My money would be on no conventions at all in the UK this year.

Which is all a bit depressing, so I'll add here that I'm restarting my rewatch series tomorrow with the first Equestria Girls film. Hope to see you there!

A straw in the wind?

I notice that NordicFuzzCon 2021, a Swedish furry convention scheduled for next February, will not take place as planned. Although this isn't a Pony convention, it is the first one I've personally noticed in a reasonably similar fandom to be called off that was scheduled for next year. The organisers say in the linked announcement that they are keeping their options open as to what to do, since "[t]he world is too unpredictable for us to be able to make any promises or to give any dates at this time".

This suggests to me that right now, in August, time is already running short for cons in the early months of next year. I suspect some organisers are already deep into negotiations with venues about postponements. I wish I could be more optimistic about this, but I suspect that the resumption of large fandom gatherings may well be further off than any of us would like to think. (I think some kind of MLP con did happen in China recently, but I'm essentially talking about Europe and North America here.)

Pandemics are generally long hauls. This one doesn't look like it's going to be very different in that regard, and I would not be especially surprised if there were no more than a handful of full-scale Pony conventions in 2021. I would absolutely love to be proved wrong on this one. As ever, we'll see.

What future for MLP's social fandom?

As the months of the pandemic drag on and on, many of us are missing our in-person social interactions with other fans more and more. In my case, the last time I met any other ponyfan in person was when I attended our final Worcester ponymeet, five months ago today. I suspect that at the time many of us quietly hoped it would only be a few months before the meets could restart. Sadly, it now looks like being a good deal longer than that. I don't think there's any realistic chance at all of restarting in September, a hope some of us perhaps entertained in early summer.

It's a lonely time for many of us. So how long will it be before we can all meet up again in something like the old way? Well, who knows? That depends on all kinds of things, and since discussion of those can stray into the realms of politics I'll try to avoid some aspects here. But the fact remains that for a lot of people – by no means all, but a lot – being with friends who share our love for and enjoyment of MLP has been a highlight of our time in the fandom, and something we're missing very badly. What happens next?

Lots of musing on this after the page break.