Firefly

Meet Firefly.  Back in the 1980's when My Little Pony was first getting off the ground with the toys and cartoon, Firefly was the main pegasus pony.  Back in 1983, this was my first pegasus toy.  As you can tell, she was well loved.  Over the years her 'cutie mark' has disappeared to almost nothing.  Her tail was lost when I was a little girl.

It's a curious thing, but I remember very distinctly the day that I took her to school with me for show and tell.  I loved Firefly, and even though I had a handful of other ponies by that point, she was the only pegasus and she had her front legs molded in something of a pose which was completely different than the earlier ponies.  If you've ever looked at the original ponies you'll see they are very stiff legged.  Anyway, I took her on the school bus with me to Kindergarten to show her off.  I'd discovered sometime before that her tail would pull out since it was basically one large hank of artificial hair with a metal bracket wrapped around it.  I'd show it off to my friends how I could pull the tail out and then stick it back in her soft rump.

Unfortunately, that single simple thing backfired on me and on the school bus home from school the tail was lost forever.  For months...literally months, maybe even years, every time I was on a school bus I looked for that darn tail.  Even through High School I still looked on the floors of school buses thinking I'd find it, or one of the other handful of things I've lost on buses over the years.

So, maybe that's the reason that the incident sticks in my head so clearly.  Maybe the affection that I showed to Firefly is also the reason that most recently I decided that this favorite childhood toy of mine deserved some much needed attention.

It also helped that Folk Art paints came out with a product a couple of years ago called "Extreme Glitter" paint.  And as luck would have it, they had dark blue glitter just about the same color as Firefly's cutie mark. So, I just recently embarked on a process of restoring poor Firefly back to her former glory.  I guess the only thing I couldn't do is fix the discoloration between her head and and body since that was a problem in the actual vinyl mold color.

The thing about Extreme Glitter is it takes quite awhile to get the results you want if you want a LOT of glitter.  The picture to the right shows the first coat of glitter paint over the original cutie mark.  Luckily enough of the original glue from the factory still existed if held up in the light just right so I was able to reproduce it pretty closely.

Here is a closeup of that first layer of glitter as it's drying.  It starts out as a milky glue-like substance with just barely any glitter.  The reason for using a paint like this rather than using just glue and glitter is the obvious one, you don't have to worry about the glitter coming off over time.  Of course it can still rub off like the original paint did, but using glue and glitter would have produced a less accurate reproduction.

Now fast forward about three coats later and the cutie mark is pretty much where I want it.  There was still a problem though...her tail.  Now, there are plenty of places around that you can order fake hair, but since I wasn't really planning on doing more than one pony restoration at this time I started looking to find an alternative to ordering it online.

Over the years I have "saved" quite a few ponies.  There was a time where you couldn't buy new ponies at the store, and during those periods I would go to flea markets and garage sales trying to find ponies I could salvage from the brinks of children's hands.  I would also randomly find ponies in the woods across the street from my house and that's how I found two or three including an Apple Jack toy which was a joy for me since growing up I had never had her.  I also got about two or three ponies from friends who did not treat their toys like I did.  One I've always sort of called "Frankenpony" since she was one of those 'brush and grow' ponies which I later found out was named "Ringlets".  However, she'd long since lost most of her tail, cut by some unfortunate scissors and then hot glued into place, and her head was also hot glued into place since it had been removed at some time too.  Normally I'd hate to 'chop shop' one of my toys like that, but one stripe of her mane color is only a shade off in color so it went to restoring Firefly's tail today.

The final result is a much happier pony.  She still has a few chips in her hooves, a bit of dirt here and there, and as I mentioned before her discoloration from using different vinyls in the past when it was produced, but at least she is now restored to some of her previous glory.

It's fitting that this pony's character eventually turned into that of the current series' "Rainbow Dash".  I'm proud to be the owner of this toy on her 30 year anniversary.

My Little Pony Android Game Review

This is my short (ish) and silly review of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Android version game.  I'd heard about the game from a few websites like Equestria Daily, and when the Android version popped up I downloaded it to my Galaxy Tab 7.0.  I've pretty much been playing it since and have gotten up to level 32 at the time I'm writing this.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that they had gathered some of the original voice actors for some of the ponies, I'm assuming all of the mane six, although I haven't gotten Rarity, Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash yet, they even had Spike, Mrs. Cake, Celestia and Nightmare Moon, so I was impressed by that.  Of course, after the initial voices, the rest of the cast pretty much fall off.  However, all of the favorite ponies are there, Lyra, DJ Pon-3, "Time Turner", and Octavia.  Of course, that's only if you can afford them or happen to run into a glitch here or there when you can get them reasonably.

Playing the game is relatively simple, if you follow the missions you pretty much learn how to do everything that you need to play the game.  The rest is pretty much repetition, and as anyone who's played Farmville or Cityville or Cafeworld or any one of those games, it's all about setting things up and gaining money to buy more stuff and expand Ponyville.

What's different about this game from the others I mentioned is that there's a story line and goal to expanding your Ponyville, and also the fact that each pony levels up by playing Mini-games.

The downside to playing a game so early in development is the same as with others I've played in the past, there are glitches.  Sometimes the game will freeze up after a mini-game, sometimes crashing the program.  Other times the game won't refresh and I'll be grumbling that I'd unlocked Fluttershy but it's not actually unlocked until I turn it off and reset it.  Another glitch, which is a big one, is that the social side of things just doesn't work at all.  I've heard of a lot of others who have had this problem, so I know it's pretty extensive.

Then there are fun glitches.  My favorite glitch right now is that even though I don't have ponies in all of my shops, they're still producing stuff and I'm getting coins from them.  Two days ago they had an accidental "sale" for "two days" which turned out to be an hour or so, where a few of us were able to get ponies like Scootaloo for real cheap, so that turned out to be pretty nice.

I'm also enjoying the fact that you have to find Derpy hiding around Ponyville.  She's usually two eyeballs in a box.  When you click her she'll appear for a little while and do a little fluttering around and dancing.  She also has a very unusual expression where she looks all mad for a second...  Not sure what that's about.  Maybe because you aren't paying her enough attention?  ^_^  What's interesting is they always talk about "that pony".  So even in a game where they've got Time Turner (Dr. Whooves) and DJ Pon-3, they still can't acknowledge my favorite pony.

I also have another gripe, or maybe it's done on purpose, but here's a tip if you play the game.  The Flour Mill, Cherry stand and Lemon stand are your money earners.  The rest are HUGE ripoffs in your town.  For now, avoid putting ponies to work in anything else (except maybe the Bookstore and Apple stand as last resorts).  Pile your ponies into the Flour Mill first, especially at the beginning as you're playing because if you're sitting there for a half hour on the game you'll net about $1,500 or so of coins just by clicking on it once a minute.  The Flour Mill with three ponies will get you about 52 coins a minute.  The cherry stand and lemon stand are around 52 coins, then it drops off drastically to 9 or even 5 coins a minute.  The only time you should have ponies in those other businesses is when you'll be away for awhile and then you can collect one big lump sum after logging on a few hours later.  But if you're going to sit there playing, it'll do you a lot of good to avoid those businesses.

I'm kind of hoping they'll fix this flaw eventually (of course at the moment the buildings I have no ponies in are still producing, so I'm not overly worried about it.)  I'm also hoping they'll fix the social aspect so I can actually get some friends besides Celestia.

And...if you want to friend me I'm under "MillyT" on Gameloft....but don't cross your fingers for chests because I can't get to anyone yet.  >_<;

It's still fun, and I'm kind of looking at this game like I'm in Beta Test mode rather than in a finalized version of the game.  I guess if you look at it that way, even a buggy game like this one can be fun.

Twilight's Corner

I've come to realize lately that the kind of person I am is fairly unique to the new century.  Before the year 2000 rolled around, a person who liked to dress up when it wasn't Halloween was looked at as pretty eccentric.  Anime conventions were pretty small, and most people were college age, geeky, pretty lonely folks who were just looking for someone else who had similar interests.  When you went to the mall, or an ordinary store, you didn't see the geeks.  They were dressed like normal people, maybe a bit obvious with glasses or a bit chunky or maybe a bit too skinny...  But then something happened.  I'm not entirely sure what it was that triggered the whole thing, but maybe it was stores like Hot Topic that popped up suddenly.  Or maybe it was the influx of anime and manga into mainstream, but slowly there was this trickle effect.  There were cosplay coats at shopping malls.  You didn't have to buy a little kid's book bag or toys to show off the fact you liked Pokemon or Sailor Moon.

Maybe it was just that the generation I'm in now finally said "Enough!" and somehow we got into power.  Now you see anime, cartoon, video games, you name it, on t-shirts, belts, purses, toys, hats, jewelry...whatever.  They're like badges of honor.  I see them on tattoos and in people who wear cosplay outside of conventions.

Sure, some parents still think it's pretty weird.  But there are second/third generation geeks now that have no problem showing off their geekiness.  And I really don't think that before the year 2000 you'd have seen that.  Maybe it's also because of the internet.  Yes, I'm pretty positive that the internet played a huge part in it, and that's okay if you ask me.

Would I have imagined myself Cosplaying a unicorn when I first headed into college 15 years ago?  Well...maybe for Halloween.  I remember my first unicorn costume was ridiculed.  I found a horn at a costume shop and made up ears and the costume...  I don't have pictures, thank goodness.  ^_^;  But things have changed quite a bit and with the aid of a few purchased items, and a new wardrobe too...  There you go, Twilight Sparkle.  I think I look younger than I am when I'm wearing it, which is okay since I feel young.  Maybe everyone feels younger than they really are since they don't change too much once you get to a certain age.  Unless you want to.

I don't want to.  I just got promoted at work again (well, I will as of Sunday this weekend.)  And yet, here I'm looking forward to hanging out at conventions, cosplaying, and painting ponies.  Am I interested in a bunch of 'adult' things?  Nope.  I clean house, I cook, I do yard work, but they really don't feel "adult" to me.  Maybe I'm just strange.

Today's new project was painting Pumpkin Butt.  She's the pony that looks a lot like Golden Harvest, but I repainted a Pinkie Pie to make her.  I really probably should have repainted an Apple Jack, but I wanted her to look different.

So there's my handmade collection: Derpy, Mitsuki, Punkin' (for short) and Vinyl Scratch (I like that nickname better).

Recently my pony collection has been updated, I just picked up Lyra Heartstrings.  Also got more of the blind bags to include a few of the glow-in-the-dark versions, and a few of the others in Wave 3.  Have a few more to pick up, but it's not too important to me at the moment.  Right now I'm wishing I could win a limited edition pony from HotTopic...  You know the 'unnamed' derpy pony.  ^_^

Back to what I was saying earlier, just 15 years ago it probably would have been odd to see hundreds of people with huge pony collections.  There'd be a few odd older women, maybe a few girls, and that's about it.  Now these collections are actually owned by guys.  I'm very envious of the dozens of them who own Derpy ponies.  *sob*  I got sad this morning, yes, I'm eccentric, I just thought that maybe I could win one.  Actually, I know better, I don't win things.  The last thing I won?  Two tickets for Matchbox Twenty (in the rafters) and then my brother won tickets at the show to go backstage.  I think we used up our luck then.  ^_^

I may have some of my hand painted ponies with me at Tsubasacon in a few weeks.  I'll be there with my Twilight Sparkle on and planning on having a pretty good time.  ^_^

The Hunt Ends for Now

 If you were to ask my mother whether I was one of those kids that made her stand in line at Toys R Us on the first day of some new toy release, I'm pretty sure she'd give you an unusual look because I was never one on popular toys.  There may have been a few scrambles to get stuff last minute, but I think they were usually for toys for my brother rather than me.  Back in the 1980's when I was growing up, Barbie and other electronic devices were the popular thing - there was even a doll who could tell the temperature in a room, whether it was too hot or too cold (although, I have yet to find a mention of that doll again, I very distinctly remember her, probably late 80's, early 90's).

So, when it comes to these fads lately, I'm sort of surprised at myself, because I've been checking TRU every week since they announced the newest MLP:FIM toys were coming out in August.  Oh, there are the sets that first started showing up at Target too, like the Apple family pictured above, the set with Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, and then the Cloudsdale set.  I did a mad search for those, and now I have seen the sets at Target, TRU, and even Kohl's...

So...as I said, kind of surprised at myself that I went so far with searching for the Favorites collection this last month.  Seriously, I'm a 30-something with no kids and I'm searching, calling, and even going through unopened boxes in the back aisle at TRU in order to dig out that elusive pony.

I'm a stinkin' manager at a retail store for cryin' out loud, and here I'm getting flutters in my chest for a set of TOYS!

I digress...  I do so love these little buggers which is so odd because it's become a perfectly acceptable (if sometimes creepy) fandom that just a couple of years ago would have sent me into the 'creepy lady playing with kid's toys' category.

Just a few years back people used to roll their eyes at me when I said that I still had the ponies from the 80's when I was a kid, still have every single one of them, and I was pretty proud of that too.  And then all of a sudden it's cool to collect them again.  I've even considered trying to sell a couple of my old set just because I know some of them are pretty darn rare and I could get a nice amount of money off of them.

But... it's hard to do that, especially when the collection as been growing.

In a nutshell (I'm a nut, afterall) about two weeks ago I started my TRU hunt.  Nothing for a good week, then the very next week I happened into TRU right after they'd received a truck and all of the pallets were sitting in the back aisle.  With heart pounding, I happened to dig out a Zecora and took it home with me.  As you can see, she's still in the package, and a week later the rest of the box still happens to be at that TRU, still, amazingly, unsold.

When I returned, on a whim, just yesterday, I happened to find the Favorites collection (and there were three more left!) and whipped it into my arms and went home with it too.  ^_^

So, for now, except for the fact that I'd like to get my hands on some of the blind bags that are roaming around out there, my hunt has ended.  I still have a few ponies here and there I'd like to get my hands on in order to do some customizations, but otherwise I'm satisfied.  I'm also crazy, but I'm perfectly fine with that.

And it's funny because no one looks at me weird when I know about ponies.  In fact, today at work I was ringing up a customer who was buying some things for a costume for her daughter.  "What are you making?" I asked.  To which she replied, "I My Little Pony costume."  I looked at what she was buying and replied, "Rainbow Dash?"  She looked genuinely surprised and said, "Yes, she said she wanted to be the 'hero pony' and I said, Rainbow Dash you mean?  And she said yes and said I could be Pinkie Pie."  I smiled and told her that I was dressing up as Twilight Sparkle and she just nodded.  Never once did I say I had a kid telling me I had to dress up too...it was just accepted.  ^_^  I don't even think she was a brony, just a mother trying to go along with her young daughter's wishes.  It made me feel happy because I wasn't looked at like I was a crazy.

Speaking of which, this is the dress that I've put together for my Twilight Sparkle costume.  If you're into fashion at all you might wonder why someone would take a perfectly good Alfred Angelo bridesmaid dress and paint it for a costume...well, it's been sitting in the closet since my friend got married and it's a good color, so that's why.  ^_^

I also have a wig, horn and ears to wear, as well as some nice sparkly jewelry to round out the whole thing.  I'll be wearing this particular costume for the Masquerade ball that we're holding at Tsubasacon this year, so I'm looking forward to dressing up all pretty like in an actual dress.

And it's cosplay.

And it's My Little Pony...

And I'm kind of crazy.

Feelin' a Little Derpy

 Some days I think everyone feels a little "Derpy" - a little weird, a little crazy, a little "I just don't know what went wrong."    I can't say that today necessarily was a day like that, but I had one of those days last week when I was trying to explain something to someone at work.

In reality, what I had said was wrong, but for some reason I couldn't spit it out and said, "No, I'm right and you're wrong, I mean, you're wrong and I'm right...you're wrong...I'm right...no, no, I mean...ARGGGG!  You're right...ah, FINALLY!"  Heh heh heh.  The co-worker I said this to I think got a kick out of it, but I felt rather bad because I just couldn't say what I meant!

So, as I said, everyone has a "Derpy" day.

This morning I got up and it's a beautiful day.  I haven't had a day off in a week, so it's especially nice to open up the house and just enjoy the beautiful weather, the breeze, the birds singing...well, you get the point.  I spent a little time this morning forming "the plan" for today.

Then I thew that out the window and went over to Walmart to pick up a blind bag pony in which to paint as Derpy Hooves.  It used to be quite simple to pick up every single one of the ponies in the set (see one of my previous blogs for more info).  However, today when I went the numbering system had mysteriously disappeared and I had to resort to feeling the packaging until I got a pegasus.  Luckily they are the only really easy ones to feel because they have the extra appendages and somehow I ended up with Fluttershy.

After picking up a Venti mocha with a shot of coconut from Starbucks, I headed on home, did something on my original plan which was remove the rest of the caulk from around the tub in my second bathroom (just a small piece of advice from me to you, if you don't have someone to clean your bathrooms with you or for you and you're looking for a house, get 1 1/2 baths, NOT 2 1/2 baths... two tubs is one too many).

Then after a good clean down of the tub (gotta get all that nasty mold/mildew out from behind the old caulk you know) I started on my Derpy Repaint.  It was hard at first to paint over Fluttershy since she's tied for first as Best Pony...but I already have two Fluttershy minis, so I got over it pretty quick.

As I worked on painting Derpy today, I was thinking about the fact that there are so many people who do custom jobs of ponies.  They make characters from the series (like Derpy) and they also make lots of OCs (original characters).  They make fanfiction characters and self-portrait ponies.  As I was painting Derpy I realized I really don't have a self-portrait pony myself because I think I'd probably be cutie-mark-less.  And, quite frankly, that's kind of boring.

But another reason there are so many custom ponies I think, and I've seen table-top gaming figures turned into ponies (like Warhammer 40K figures) is that many of the fans of the series are gamers, otaku and sci-fi geeks who are all into being creative.  What little I know about painting in miniature, I learned from painting 40K figures back in the day myself.  Of course, I also know that how I've been doing them isn't nearly as high-quality as I used to do with my 40K figures because the paint was much higher quality and I think if I were to start doing custom paint jobs for anyone but myself (and I would consider it) I'd probably go buy model paint instead of craft paint.

Derpy took a couple hours to do, including dry-time.  Basically I covered her in a couple of layers of gray, then colored her mane and tail in quite a few layers of light yellow, then painted her eyes white (which were surprisingly easier to paint than I'd thought they'd be) and did the yellow, black and white outlines, then finished off with her bubble cutie mark.  Put on a clear varnish which, unfortunately, made her look more lumpy than I would have liked...guess I should have just put a spray varnish on her, but I was afraid she'd drip if I'd do that.  Overall though, seeing as though she's only around 2 inches tall, I think I did a pretty good job on this repaint.  I didn't even paint Celestia's eyes when I did her, so this is a step up.

And now...I guess I should go back and work on my list of things to do...which means getting back to caulking.  ^_^;  It's such a nice day though that I might just wait on that for awhile longer...

Derpy Hooves

I'm actually glad that there are plenty of copies out there of the 'original' Derpy voice and name on the episode of MLP:FIM.  In fact, I'm glad I still have a copy of the episode on my TiVo so I can watch it again myself.  It's kind of sad really that they changed the voice and completely dropped her name from the episode.  Actually, the voice matches more what I had in my mind anyway, so I'm not entirely sad about that.  In fact, if the voice actor hadn't been so rushed to fix it (IMO) she probably could have gotten more character into it yet than the quick rush job that it felt like.  But the fact that Rainbow Dash no longer said her name was Derpy more sad to me.

I haven't said anything really about this whole thing because, well, I know that no one reading this blog really cares since I'm not a huge Brony blogger or anything.  I have been blogging about ponies, but that's only because I enjoy the show and enjoy ponies that have more in common with anime characters than whatever it was they had become over the past few years.  I enjoyed the very first ponies but when they tried to go too overboard... ah well, I'm enjoying this new series for what it is because I enjoy the kind of humor and mostly the cartoon style of it over anything else.  It's very pretty, especially on HUB HD.  ^_^

Anyway, I too am one of the bronies created by watching the Derpy episode.  That's all it took, one episode waiting for Derpy to arrive for the first time and then ever after catching up on all of the episodes until they finally gave her a name and a voice.  And then there was something of a split.  True Bronies loved it.  People who liked ponies, but I wouldn't consider a Brony, hated it and parents were up in arms and they actually took the cartoon episode down to re-do it!  I don't think I've heard of anything quite like that but maybe when they stopped playing that Pokemon episode that caused seizures.  (Actually, it's not uncommon to take down episodes of anime because of content and parents not liking this kid showing a bit too much skin or some word they weren't happy with being muted)   I'm just surprised they did it with a character that was so loved, and I really doubt even one kid out there said to their mom, "Hey Mom, is that pony mentally disabled?"  Doubt it.

Apparently in the minds of the cartoonists, Derpy will always be Derpy and do 'derpy' things and maybe she won't have a name and her eyes won't roll around as much (which, actually, is kind of fine by me too) but in the back of our heads, all Bronies will probably mourn the loss of the original we all saw go way over the top and how much we cheered and smiled the first time we saw her in all her derpy glory.  It's fun to 'derp'.  In fact, probably half the photos my husband has of me on his cell phone are derped up photos.  ^_^

 I guess that's all I'll say about this subject for now.  It's just a shame they had to do such a drastic change because of a few people not knowing how to 'love and tolerate' as the show teaches us.

Favorite Somepony

Surprisingly, after I wrote what I did about Valentine's Day, I got a fire lit under me and sent out some valentines cards to various people in hopes they'd get them before the holiday.  As for my husband...he'll have to wait and see!

I ended up discovering that indeed, I DO have to work on the holiday so most likely we'll be doing our celebrating the day or so before, hopefully I'll get my Olive Garden gift cards in the mail so we can go there since I'm pretty much a crazy pasta lover at heart.  I know there are better Italian places around town than the OG, but you know what?  I've had their food since I was 12...maybe before, I don't know for sure when the first one opened in my town, but I do recall very clearly ordering off of the kid's menu when it did.  Part of that fat blog I did I believe mentioned how often I went out to eat as a kid.  We went to the OG at least once a week and quite a few of the waitstaff knew who we were, how we liked our salad, and that sort of thing.  Ah...I still like it even though I tend to get the runs after I eat there...

Anywho, today was catch up on life day.  What I mean by that is that during the winter I'm incredibly sluggish.  I'll spend the majority of my time watching TV and zoning out (when I'm not at work) and many days I'll look back on what I did and not even really recall what I was thinking about during that day.  I suppose most of the time I'm just looking forward to some other day.  So when I get out of this slump (I think perhaps it's a type of depression, although I've never been diagnosed since I'm usually so lazy I can't get myself to a doctor) I usually do a bunch of stuff I've been holding off on doing for months.

Today was go to the dentist day, which turns out to be almost exactly a year since the last time I went since I couldn't get myself to make an appointment until last week.  Then I also went to get an oil change for my car, which kind of needed it even though I hadn't gone 3,000 miles yet but it has been over 4 months...I don't drive much but my car's on it's 10th birthday this year.

Also thought I'd do that Valentine card thing as well as a bit of shopping where I scored all of the school pals for the new MLP:FIM set that just came out with Cheerilee - although I already had her, she's got her leg raised unlike my previous toy.  I'm quite excited to get them and here two days before Hearts & Hooves Day which will be airing on Saturday...I'll be working, I'm glad I have TiVo...

Anyway, I guess I'd better go make dinner for my 'special somepony' since he's on his way home from work. Oh, hey, I also made homemade brownies that rivaled Ghiradelli...buahaha...and tonight is also homemade ice cream night!


So much for my diet...  >_<;

Ponies and Ohayocon

 So, according to polls, I'm the minority when it comes to Bronies since I'm female, over 30, and also married.  Only 3% of Bronies aren't single, according to a poll I read online today.  Go fig.  Maybe it's because the majority of people who are my age, female, and married are probably too busy worrying about what their kids want to watch rather than what they do...

And yet, here I am, a grown woman, going out during one of my days off in order to search for these elusive blind bag sets of ponies.  My first round was actually pretty successful even though I didn't know there's a numbering system to the bags.  If you want to collect these ponies too, just know that on the back flap near the top there's going to be a little number which you can match up to the picture on the back to see which pony you are getting.  (I have them here in this picture in order, 1-24)

The first two trips, I didn't know that there was a numbering system, or at least, I hadn't figured it out yet, but I managed somehow not to get any duplicates.  Then I started my quest to find more this weekend once I'd discovered the secret and managed to get every single one, no duplicates, at the local Walmarts (and I can say Walmart-s because I went to four.)

I'm especially happy I was able to get the 'secret' ponies, which are numbered 22, 23, 24.  They are clear and glittery which brings out the 10 year old in me.  Hee hee.

Anyway, as this blog is also about Ohayocon, I'll put a note about that in here as well since there were dozens upon dozens of pony cosplayers, which I may have joined with provided the bad experience I had would have been avoided.  I'll explain that more later, plus I saw a dealer selling these blind-bag ponies for $4-$5 a pop when you can get them for less than $2 at Walmart.

Ohayocon started out really well, we had a table in the dealer room for Tsubasacon so we were able to do some advertising, but our guy with the flyers and the sign poles didn't get there until late so I spent most of my day trading off to wander through the dealers and buy stuff I probably shouldn't, have, and then later we did a bit of advertising before heading home for the evening.  I took pictures of pony cosplayers and found out that they were going to be at the various brony get-togethers through the weekend.

Saturday was a mixed bag.  It started out snowing outside, but I wore my Mitsuki outfit anyway, froze my butt off for awhile, but it was all good, because I had a lot more interest in our booth because of it.  Then a Staffer came by - biggest a$$ of all time because the bugger told me that we couldn't have some of the things we were selling out on our table!  For over 10 hours on Friday we had those same items out and I'd already sold some of them, no one had said a thing.  Then suddenly he's threatening to kick us out??!~  I took down my 'questionable' items - aka my foamie wings and earrings - all wing designs and all "official" Tsubasacon merchandise even though they didn't have the Tsubasacon logo on them (ahem, another table also had t-shirts on their table that didn't have their logo!!)  but I left my sign out talking about them and managed to sell one of the pairs of wings (helped I was actually wearing a pair myself - ha!) - thumbing my nose at the law, that's what I'll do!

But there were a whole heck of a lot of grouches at Ohayocon this year.  Mind you, not everyone, there were some really nice staffers I met and were really helpful, but then I even had an artist alley guy yell at me for being too close to the glass in the alley...I was THREE feet away, couldn't even touch the glass, and had my hands clasped in front of me and the guy yelled at me!  I'll tell you what, jerks like that don't deserve to sell artwork, little lone make any money for being an idiot.  Well, I'll show him, I bought a bunch of prints from another gal who actually designed the cover for a journal I'm writing in at the moment and I was so excited that I was able to meet her after looking at her artwork for over a year now.

Okay, so as I said, pretty mixed bag.  The first guy who yelled at us made me go into total breakdown mode and I decided not to go back on Sunday.  But Saturday when we had closed down for the night and had our dinner, I thought I'd see if the brony meetups were still going on, but the areas they were at were surprisingly empty...so I just started walking and somehow mysteriously stumbled onto a MLP showing.  My husband couldn't believe it, because he'd just asked me where we were going and I was like, "I dunno, I just want to go this way..."

We later found another friend we hadn't seen in awhile doing the same thing after I watched the newest episode of MLP...but that's another story.

At least all the money I made at the table before the idiot closed me down paid for my blind bag splurge!!  ^_^

Pinkie Pie

If you haven't watched MLP:FIM, then you probably won't get the pink pony drawing.  BUT, if you HAVE watched the show, you'll know who Pinkie Pie is.  She's not my favorite pony in the series, but for some reason I felt like doing a quick sketch that was kind of free-flowing and very different than the actual style of the series.  I have my own kind of drawing style normally, but I some of my style from the early anime styles I used to read like CLAMP and Trigun, and throw in perhaps a random shojo manga here and there too.  It's kind of fun putting a character into a different style all together.

So I was cruising the "Brony" meme site on the icanhascheezburger site (if you've been there, you'll know what I'm talking about) and saw a link to IMDB and the television series.  So I put my rating in for the show and there was a bunch of information.  So, it really is true that the majority of the (at least those who can access the internet) fans are males in their 20's or so.  Females in their 30's (like me of course) are actually a very low number.  Now, I kind of wonder whether that's because many women my age who might be fans are fans because of their children, and they don't have time to be going around online voting for cartoons.  It's a theory I have, but at least my name is in there somewhere so they know I'm a fan too.

The strange thing, and I know I've said this before, is that most women my age grew up with My Little Pony in its original incarnation.  I'm proud of that fact, but not in a creepy 'hoarder/white trash' kind of way.  If you've ever met someone like that, you know.


I just can't grow up.  Okay...WON'T might be a bit more accurate.  Sure, I work my 40 hours, I do my manager stuff, I try to be all professional from time to time.  I pay my bills, I take my cats to the vet, I clean the house...but my house is filled with posters of cats and anime and cartoons.  I have a shelf in my master bedroom of stuffed animals that both my husband and I have collected over the years.

But I don't like pink.

I'm not sure why Pinkie Pie was the first of the ponies I drew in this style, but I'm thinking of trying a few more soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

More weirdness to come.

Princess Celestia Repaint

Even though I've done model work over the years, I've never undertaken completely modifying or painting an existing toy/figure before.  Of course, never before has there been a toy that is just so different from what it's supposed to look like that I've felt the need to do so.  If you've ever watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, you'll know that Princess Celestia is most definitely NOT pink like this picture to the left.  Apparently, I'm told, the color pink sells girls' toys.  So, instead of making the toy accurate to the cartoon, they chose to make Celestia pink.

I've seen a few different repaints over the last few months, some making the figure look like Luna, some coloring Celestia properly, and after a good long look at my own figure for a month or so, I decided to give her a repaint myself.  Unlike most of those pictures online, I decided to give you something of a step-by-step guide to doing it yourself (if you're so inclined) with very little money, but a whole lot of patience - be warned, it took me over a week to get her looking like the final picture and I've had quite a bit of experience with model painting in the past.

First off - start with a reference drawing.  I like this one especially since she has an extra swoosh of mane around her horn, the little curl around her cheek, and you can see most of her colors pretty well.  Of course, her mane and tail are always changing color slightly, so you have some artistic licence there, and of course in my version she won't have her necklace/collar, so there's something else we won't have to worry about.

We're almost ready to paint!  With my model painting experience I could have done this one of two ways - one, go to the hobby store and buy model paints, and I'm talking about the acrylics that you can by from Games Workshop (Warhammer paint) because that stuff is made for plastic and it holds up really good once you give it a final coat of sealant.  BUT...with the primer running $8 a can, and each little color running about $3 a bottle, it would probably cost around $30 or so.  Of course, going this route would mean a complete repaint, even the eyes and cutie mark, spraying her with a primer coat of white paint would probably be the fastest route, plus model paint dries pretty quick and goes on smooth.

If you're cheap, or if you don't want to go that route, you can do what I did and go with Ceramcoat craft paint.  Mind you, this is very time consuming because you have to do build up quite a few layers in order to cover up the pink.  The picture to the left has about three-four coats of paint built up over the course of a few days.  I used Magnolia White.  Be careful because at this stage the paint can scratch off so use a flat 'wash' brush and be careful to smooth out your strokes so you don't get noticeable brush strokes.  You can use a little bit of water if they get too thick.  I went over the crown about three times as well, but since it's not meant to be white, you can stop with just the 'primer'.

Once Celestia is almost completely white (I needed to do at least one more coat of white on her wings at this point) I started putting the metallic kim gold on her hooves and crown.  The metallic paint I used here was actually a discontinued color a few years ago that I bought on clearance, but I'm sure any metallic gold would do, providing you get it plenty of dry time and make multiple coats.  I believe it took three to four to get the color just right.  Use a liner brush for the details next to the white areas, and a flat wash brush for the smooth large areas.  Don't forget to paint the bottom of her raised leg since it will show, although I did paint most of them, I didn't put on too many layers of paint there since she had to be upside down and it wasn't very ladylike.  ^_^

At this point in the painting I'd finished all of the layers of white, all of the layers of metallic and had painted the small purple jewel on the crown which you can't see here.  I also used a pearl finish to all of the white parts of Celestia's body, wings and horn.

Because I wasn't brave enough to paint her eyes from scratch, I used a fingernail to scratch the paint from her already pre-painted eyes (so yes, she has a derpy look if you look at her directly from the front!) but it was easier to fix up the white around her eye lashes and add a little black here and there to let them stand out a bit more, rather than doing it all from scratch.  If you're talented enough you could just paint around the eyes and not worry about it, but I had debated doing them by hand myself.

At this point you can also start doing the coats of paint for her mane and tail.  I chose four different colors, one I mixed myself.  Aqua, Orchid, Periwinkle and I lightened Ultra Blue with white for the fourth color.  The toy only had three colors to her mane but there's a not-so-obvious fourth color if you really look closely at the cartoon.  In the picture above you'll see I've started on the aquamarine stripes.

Finally Celestia is starting to look like herself!  The striping is the hardest part of painting her, so here's a tip on order of painting.  Before you use any pearl coats or finishes, paint the inside of her tail by her legs and her mane between her wings and up by her cheek on her right side.  These areas are the hardest to get to and since you'll be doing at least three coats on each stripe, you'll need the leeway to cover up your mistakes with white before you do any finishing coats.  Once you've done these inner layers of hair striping, the outside layers will be a breeze.  Choose your striping carefully as you'll want all four colors to be seen on both sides of the figure.

 Now for finishing touches!  Princess Celestia always has sparkly hair so I used a sparkle glaze to finish out her mane, tail, wings and horn.  Probably shouldn't have put it on the wings but it just looks pretty, and I've seen her horn sparkle a few times so I thought it was appropriate.  You also need to paint in the cutie mark at this point unless you used the scratch technique like with her eyes, or you were just careful to paint around it.  If you do paint it from scratch I used a yellow paint dot in the center and then surrounded it with the same gold paint as her hooves and crown.  Of course, she'll still need a cutie mark on the opposite side if you're up to the challenge.  After this photo was taken I put a pearl finish over the cutie marks (you can see a bit of white touch-up paint if you look closely) and it blends quite nicely with the rest of her.

In the closeup of her face I made a bit of a mistake with her eyelashes (covered them in pearl finish and glitter glaze) but otherwize her eyes were left intact through the whole process.  Below are a back view and a view of her left side as well.  I completely repainted both cutie marks to make them more even.  Also I didn't mention the  jewel on the crown was painted with a darker purple to a lighter purple on the front of the jewel with two white 'light glints' since I felt a bit artistically inspired.

I'm pretty happy with how she turned out overall.  For a short time I had regretted starting the process (especially through the coat after coat after coat process with the white) but I think the time and effort paid off.  Looking back at it, I'm pretty sure I would have at least smoothed her mold marks out a bit with a x-acto knife first and primed her with a good model primer just because of how easily the first coats would scratch off with the tip of a fingernail or a sharp brush binding.  I probably would have taped off the eyes and cutie mark and then went to town, then used a better white to do a nice top finish coat and then worked on the rest with craft paint.  But what's done is done, and I think the end project turned out nicely.

Oh...and so you know, she's not for sale.  ^_^;

Life 'n' Stuff

My husband had to go to work late...as in it's almost midnight late and I've been sitting here going through the random "icanhascheezburger" sites, mostly the original and then bronies and my food looks funny.  Just what is it about these sites that are so appealing that I can sit here for literally hours staring at it when I should be doing something creative?  I'm not entirely sure.  I've chalked it up to being similar to watching hours of home improvement shows on TV or maybe re-watching all of the episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or something of the sort.  A year ago I was playing inane Facebook games like Cafe World and Farmville, but I've since stopped playing any of them because even though they were fun up to a point, they really didn't get me anywhere.

I miss the days when there wasn't anything to do on the internet.  Or at least, there was very little, maybe some news to read, some chat rooms to lurk in or perhaps a friend or two to AIM.  But nowadays there's all of this mindless stuff that draws me in and suddenly I don't feel like working on anything really creative.  Well, I take that back a bit, I DID do a pony drawing of the friend who helped me with the brony panel, although I felt kind of out of sorts after doing it because of his initial response to the drawing.  And no one else really seemed to like it...so I wonder if I should have even spent the time to draw it?

His name's Greggo - he does game shows at conventions an on his YouTube channel - hence the microphone.  He'd mentioned that he'd just discovered recently that his cutie mark would probably be a microphone, and it inspired me to do a little bit of drawing.  This, by the way, is one of the very few completely cgi drawings I've ever done.  Usually I draw everything in pencil, ink it, scan it, clean it up and then color it, but I thought to myself 'you have a tablet, you should be able to do it all on the computer'.  So, I did, and overall, it didn't turn out too bad since I'm still new at drawing the FIM pony style.

But I felt a bit bad about it because when I was doing that, to very little results, I could have been working on story writing or drawing other original things, or perhaps even been writing letters to some important people that I should have written letters to.  Like my brother in California for instance whom I haven't even written since before his birthday in September.

Maybe it's not even the lack of creativity... maybe it's the lack of anyone enjoying the things I do.  I guess when I first started writing my novel with the Whatchers (again, where the namesake of this website comes from) I wrote it for myself.  It was a pretty crappy summer.  I'd just gotten out of my first year in Junior High, and if you've gone through it yourself, you know, it's pretty crappy to become a teenager because that's when you get crapped on from every angle.

Fortunately I was pretty naive about the whole thing, so even as I was being made fun of for being fat and being the tidy one, I was also the loner and even though I made a friend that year, I later found out she felt sorry for me.  Whether that was good or bad, I still haven't quite figured out, but we stayed friends for a long time, even through all of my other friends basically dumped me because I'd found a new best friend.  What is it exactly about jealousy anyway?  I thought I could have a bunch of friends, but new friends and old friends have a habit of not always working out together.  So that summer my old friends all hated me and my new friends were all in Girl Scouts and had camp to go to so I was pretty much alone that summer.

So I asked my aunt if I could borrow her typewriter and I learned to type that summer.  Then I asked for my own typewriter and I started to write my own novel.  It was mostly for me, and partially for my brother who was my only friend that summer.  He really was my best friend until things happened and he wound up in California without cellphone, job, etc... (long story for another time)  Anyway, I wrote it for us, or maybe just for me because I was lonely.  I came up with an imaginary friend and I was quite content to fall back on that novel all the way through school until I finished the novel upon graduating.

And then later I started writing stories for friends I met online.  "Mary Sue" stories were quite popular, although I didn't know it at the time, and I had three friends I wrote into stories for a good few years until we had a huge falling out and I lost all of them.  Those were my Highlander years.  Then I got into Trigun (anime) and started writing fanfiction with a friend for that series.  I still have to complete one of those stories, and it's partially that story that I keep moping about finishing while I'm busy reading about memes online.

But recently all of those fanfictions and fanarts that I used to do have fallen to the way side.  I wanted to do something original, but you have to be good for people to care about those.  Fan stuff is popular but when I pulled away from it I've found myself largely ignored by the online populace.  And now even when I do try to do some fan based stuff, I rarely get any comments on it.  Well, just the fact that I'm working on this blog and at this point I have a whole two followers and one is my husband, that kind of proves the point.  Of course the few of you who are actually reading this, thank you.  I'm trying to learn to write for myself again, but it's nice that you're here for the ride.

Tonight I was sitting reading Trigun Maximum and thought to myself, this is good stuff.  I remember how it made me feel when I was reading it for the first time.  And that's why I used to write fanfiction on it.  And maybe I'll do so again.  There's only just so much pony hairstyling one can do after all:

Rainbow Dash turned out pretty good, her hair looks a bit funny but I like it that way.  I even managed to get some of the orange into her bangs.

What's a bit funny for someone my age is the fact that I went into Hot Topic the other day and bought a "This shirt just got 20% cooler" and a Nyan cat shirt. I'm not quite sure what the gal at the counter thought of me, but then again she was pierced to the nines and still wearing flip flops when it was raining with a high of 50 degrees outside... but I don't care, I like the fact that I can wear a shirt about something I love.  


Then there's Pinkie Pie.  Her hair didn't turn out too badly either - her curl is a bit huge, but I like it that way.  It's starting to fall a bit since I didn't use any hair gel or other styling things, but the trick was definitely to cut her hair first before curling because otherwise the weight of all of that hair just pulls the curls into waves instead.

What in the world am I doing anyway?  I'm not sure why I'm this age and yet I still surround myself with toys and goofy things... they make me happy, mind you.  And maybe it's because when I work I get enough of the adult crap out of the way every single day, so the only way I can relax is to be goofy and young again.  Capture that childhood over again...who am I kidding, I've never stopped.

I can't have kids, I wouldn't be able to stand sharing my toys with them.  Heh heh heh.

Nights like this, staying up late and just wondering why the heck I should write stuff like this to post online... I guess once in awhile it's good to get it out and put it out there.  At least to do it for myself.  I need to be happy with myself first, right?

More on Ponies

I keep saying that I'm really not an expert on My Little Ponies.  In fact, I'm probably pretty far down on the totem pole when it comes to this series because I got into it kind of late in the game.  Actually, the first season was over and done, and THEN I got Hub and started watching it.  And then I started collecting the ponies as well because, well, they're cheap.  In comparison to how much I used to lay down on manga in one month, these are just a drop in the bucket.  I gave up five books and got this whole set.  Heh.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting this is just because even though I helped host a Brony meetup, I was kind of like the only one who didn't have a life altering experience from watching the show.  I'm too new at it.  I just happen to be older, with a good job and probably too much expendable income...not THAT much mind you, but you'd be surprised at how good of a saver I am.  (I even used coupons on the Celestia/Luna set and made sure I didn't buy one of these at more than $5 a piece, for example).  I felt really out of it during the whole thing, and far too embarrassed with the whole thing ever to watch the video of it, just knowing what I was thinking as I was speaking makes it unbearable.

Surprisingly though, I've met a few other people who are just as new to it as I am, or maybe newer.  That's what's weird about this show, that it's still collecting fans even though it's in the second season.  People are realizing that it's a pretty cool thing.  And they're buying the toys and styling the hair.  I got an message tonight asking about tips for making them 'show accurate' which is something I myself have been fiddling with this last week.  Take Fluttershy for instance:

I can't bear yet to trim her hair to the correct length of the show, but I did flatten it out quite a bit to get it to lay better.  She's so adorable.  I'd love for Fluttershy to be my favorite pony, but it's really Twilight Sparkle.  I'm most like her - in fact, when taking a "which pony are you like?" quiz I turned out to be Twilight Sparkle.  And why?  I have organization and leadership qualities.  If you've seen Winter Wrap Up, then you'll know a little of how I worked my magic to sit 300+ people at Tsubasacon's cosplay.  And really I could have done a lot more with a notepad and a quill!

But the real reason that I'm doing a blog on ponies today is that I started liking MLP since I was a little girl.  And when I say little, I mean LITTLE - 5 years old or maybe younger.  I have quite a few of the original mail order ponies and quite a few first generation ponies.  I later got a second generation (it's soooo ugly) and apparently I found one third generation and bought a second one about the time I moved in with my future husband.  I just remember a time when there weren't ponies, and also a time when they were everywhere.  I have dreams about finding that elusive pony in some shop that no one knows about.  MANY dreams of just that, you have no idea.  When ponies weren't being released there for a time I scoured flea markets and second hand shops so I could 'save' them.  My collection isn't huge, it's far from ever being complete, but it makes me happy.

What didn't make me happy, however, is finding out during the Brony meetup that there was a third generation and a "3.5" or what they call "Core 7" that I didn't have even one example of in my collection.  It was merely a fluke that I stumbled into a Rite Aid pharmacy on the Thursday before Tsubasacon and I found, of all things, a Gen3 Rainbow Dash.  I could NOT believe my eyes!  I picked it up and bought it. It had probably been in that store since 2007 like the copyright stated.  But alas, those ugly 3.5 ponies with the giant heads still alluded me.

It was last Friday I ran into my CVS just to pick up a prescription and in the back of my head I thought, 'You should just check the toy aisle,' and of course I'd already struck out at other pharmacies I'd been looking at in the area just because those are the hidden gems recently... and there was Pinkie Pie, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash, all in their big-headed glory.

Mind you, I only bought Rainbow Dash, as both Pinkie Pie and Scootaloo actually had their names printed as part of their cutie marks and that was LAME.  But Rainbow Dash was cute even though it boggles my mind that Rainbow Dash went from being the stylish girly prissy one of the ponies to the boyish one of the group!  Of course she got wings and her cutie mark changed slightly, but the body color and hair remained pretty much the same (with the exception of making them all rainbow colors versus pastels).  I'm glad they made the change of course, but it's amazing to think that this particular character pretty much turned into Rarity (who has a very familiar looking shop if you look at the old pics of that cartoon) and now has a 20% cooler attitude (actually, make that 120%)  ^_^

So, that's what I wanted to share.  That I found all of these Rainbow Dashs by almost accident but isn't it cool ?  I think so anyway.... now off to style her hair!

Hidden Messages

To those of you who have never heard of an anime convention, let me sum it up as briefly as I can.  Anime is "Japanese animation", and it's a bit different than American cartoons because it's prettier, for one thing, usually has a well-rounded story-line, is usually made for adults, though there are many made for children as well, and except for a few of the better known series, usually consist of about 12-26 episodes.  If you've heard of Pokemon, Sailormoon, Naruto, One Piece or Bleach, you've heard of an anime.  An anime convention, therefore, is for fans of this genre.  They can come together to meet for a day or a weekend, buy things that have something to do with anime or Japan, watch anime, talk about it, and also play games and dress up like their favorite characters.  Anime conventions are a lot like Star Trek conventions, but they tend to cover a whole lot more than one or two series, and each year people will concentrate on a new series rather than the same one year after year.

Okay, at least I tried to make that short!  I'm sure many of you who are reading this, knowing who I am, also know about anime and all things goofy and childish.  Okay, maybe not.  Maybe you just know that I'm pretty goofy and childish when I'm not being all managerial at work.  During this time of year, especially, I'm working on all different parts of an anime convention that my husband runs.  Not two months after he was given the reins of Tsubasacon, he met me at Ohayocon (Columbus, OH) and before I knew it I was going to all sorts of conventions with him, giving him ideas of what conventions were like and how things ran and what to concentrate on to make it 'just right'.

A short history of Tsubasacon - started, I believe in 2004 by someone else, it started to a tiny little crowd, didn't even have an artist alley (although the one artist who randomly showed up made a killing I'm told) and the next year the con-chair basically screwed up big time, they got kicked out of the Charleston, WV civic center and the name was given to my husband to dig out of the ashes.  He even had to salvage website rights and I'm told had to put a lot of bandages on different things in order to get it to run again.  Plus he had to borrow money from his parents and grandparents to even start the thing.  He went on and began again in 2006, this time in Huntington, WV, with a handful of friends who basically knew very little about anime or conventions.

Shortly after his first successful convention that I was unable to attend since they had it the weekend after Thanksgiving (and if you know how retail works, no one gets those days off!), we moved in together the very next year and I've been helping ever since.  It's only been getting bigger and bigger ever since.

I'm not saying I had anything directly to do with that, but I will say that I've been that little shadow in behind everyone since 2006 when I was suggesting ideas to the guy who ran main events (who introduced me to my future husband) some of the stuff that we still run today.  

"So," you might be wondering, "What does any of this have to do with the picture at the top of your blog and with your title 'Hidden Messages'?"

Namely this - since 2007 I've been doing the programs for our convention.  It's pretty cool.  I like having control over this publication once a year, and even though it is a huge pain in the butt... I still get some satisfaction with saying "I did this."  This year the cover art was mine, since I had such a hard time getting people to give me artwork to do the cover.  AND...maybe just a bit because I've been putting my own artwork on the cover for a few years now and it's kind of a special thing for me.

The character you see above is named "Mitsuki."  She got her name...two years ago I believe, probably 2008.  She first appeared on the 2006 cover, drawn by Tiffany Grant (different last name now, maybe, she just got married).  I think her very first sketch was very rough, but shortly thereafter appeared a logo that we only later discovered had an uncanny resemblance to a Japanese drawing.  That character appeared on both 2006 and 2007, then by 2008 I put my own artwork on the cover.  Only 2010 had Jen Lee Quick's artwork.  "My" Mitsuki has purple eyes rather than the original Mitsuki which was more maroon.  If you ever search up information about the character or you ever look at various drawings of her, you can see the difference.

Again you ask "so what about the title?"

This year, our game show host Greggo announced that there will be hints of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in his game shows.  Apparently, we found out just about a month ago, he's a Brony.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically what male fans of the series call themselves.  I didn't know what the whole hoopla was about, quite frankly - I'd seen little clips of MLP:FIM and thought it really silly (that was when you could watch it any time you wanted on YouTube, but they've since locked much of it down) and suddenly my husband said, "I think one of my co-workers is a Brony."  

I blame my husband, and also Time Warner cable for giving us the Hub - because of those two things I have the entire cast of My Little Pony on my desk at present.

Finally I've come to the reason for this huge blog today.  Number one - the theme of this year's Tsubasacon is balloons.... if you've seen any of this My Little Pony series you'll know the bounciest, funniest, off-the-wallest pony is named Pinkie Pie, and her 'cutie mark' (the mark on her flank) are balloons.  Pinkie Pie is my husband's favorite pony (if he has one, he's not a real fan of the series, but has been forced to watch a few with me.)  There is also another pony named Rainbow Dash - and if you notice behind Mitsuki at the top, the rainbow behind her is in honor of her.  The stars in the background are for Twilight Sparkle (also Mitsuki's dress which is purple and pink).  Two orange balloons are in honor of AppleJack.  The glittery dress is in for Rarity and her glittering outfits.  And the gentle sweeping wings are for Fluttershy.

Also hidden within the pages of the program is the "Mitsuki Pony" I posted last month.

So...if you've a pony fan, or a Brony - we're also having a Brony meetup on Saturday at the convention.  And there will be buttons with the Mitsuki pony on them.

Now you know what the "Hidden Messages" title means.

And now you're either that little bit smarter for it...or you think I'm really insane.  And that's okay, I like it that way.

On Cats and Ponies

Ever get that feeling that a cat might be judging you?

This is my cat Olivia.  She's not quite 8 months old, but as cats go, she's already taken over the house.  Cats have quirks you know.  People say cats have staff, dogs have owners (actually I've heard the opposite saying once after watching a rather old program, but that's for a different discussion) and I do agree that sometimes when a cat looks at you, you just know they're judging you.

Maybe they aren't judging your character, but rather, judging what you're going to do next, if you're going to get up, go out, feed them, play with them, do something that would be of interest or maybe there isn't a thing in the world that you could do that they'd care about.  Whatever it is, they're constantly weighing options and calculating.

Unless, of course, you have a dumb cat.  There are those too.  Not to say my cat is dumb, but I have met a share of them with those glassed over looks that you can tell they're never quite in this dimension.

Olivia is a calculating cat.  She figured out that if the toy goes behind you on one side, it might come out on the other.  She knows that if she scratches at the litter long enough, someone will wake up to play with her first thing in the morning.  She knows that the shower means fresh water.  She knows that climbing the back of the couch will prompt someone to get up and if she hides at the end of her tunnel then maybe someone might play with her.  She also knows that if she jumps up on my computer desk and meows around a lot that eventually I'll grab her, unless of course I'm blogging, and then the picture above happens where she sits there, looking pretty smug about the fact that at any moment she could start chewing on one of my ponies and I'll have to pay attention to her because I don't want them gnawed on.

She hasn't, for her own health, destroyed anything by chewing, scratching, or otherwise killing it.  If she did, I think she knows that there would be certain penalties.  She does things for attention, and that's it.  As for the ponies...I'm not quite sure why I had to run out to the store to pick them up, but I did.  And I have to TiVo the show too, and I blame my husband for getting me into it after the curiosity of "Bro-nies" and wondering if he too could become one (nope).

I've loved ponies since I was...five?  I've got quite the collection you see...

Over 60.... hrm...yeah...I'm not quite sure if I should be proud of that number or not.  I've only bought four recently...one more I bought a year or two ago before the new cartoon came out and the style changed.  I'm rather surprised how much smaller the new ponies are in comparison to the old ones.  The original style are in the bottom center, and to the bottom right are the brand new ones.  They look more like baby ponies by their size.  But I guess they have to shrink in order to keep them the same price after all of these years.

I'm not going to rant and rave over the pony thing, but to say that I'm a fan of collecting a lot of things, and ponies are one, cat things are another, Trigun things another...and all of which makes me feel a LOT younger than I really am.  Or maybe that means I'm a lot older because I am certainly not acting my age.  Is that so wrong?

Stop judging me!  LOL