TrotCon :: Columbus Confirmed Contested Convention Center

Nothing says "Welcome to Trotcon" like a balloon rainbow and a crippled Sonata plush.


It was far too early on a Thursday morning to try writing this article at the airport, on a shitty Proscan 10.1" Tablet, that seemed to have problems with everything from the USB keyboard no longer functioning, to having the German language auto correct try to change English words to German. After taking the 4 hour flight from my hometown in Vegas to Columbus, OH, and bumming a ride from some of the Trotcon Staff due to lack of shuttles, I finally managed to make it to the Crowne Plaza Columbus North Hotel, where the convention was held.


Thursday night went by pretty smoothly, finding Wootmaster amongst the crowd, along with SuperKamiGuru and Balla Ken, going to some place that served every combo of chili and cheese you could think of, including spaghetti + chili. So we started the convention off right, having spaghetti before it even started.



Including also, chatting with M.A. Larson and the others, them gawking over Brian Drummond's fart gun, which was just a plastic POS that made fart noises. Advanced humor for mature people. Not too long afterward of just shooting the shit with M.A Larson, Brian Drummond and G.M. Berrow, and Larson tweeting Capper to get both Karl and myself fired, we wound up turning in for the night.

Pls no. ;_;



Friday was pretty uneventful, with most of the time spent getting preloaded with alcohol and wandering around the vendors hall, and all the various panels.  Though we did notice a bit too late that the whole convention had a Harry Potter theme going through, with one of the questions at pre-registration being who your favorite horse princess was. I honestly don't remember answering that question, but then again I registered for it months in advance and my memory can be poor at times. In any case, I wound up in the Solaris or whatever the class name was associated with Sunbutt.

The irony is not lost on me, that there were two mini-conventions held at the venue simultaneously. One for Shrek 4, the other for a Christian group.


For the weekend that the convention was running, we found out that there was also two small mini-conventions going on simultaneously. One of which was apparently one dedicated to Shrek 4, specifically. The other was for a Baptist Church. There's no way that could go wrong, right?



And as if that weren't enough, the hotel the convention was held at was right next to this place. Not too far down the road was a brewing tower for Budweiser. Top location choices.
As for the writers panel, we went but didn't sit through the entire thing. Though, we did manage to catch a few tidbits here and there from the writers panel.

>Larson answering that Winona is a better choice compared to Applebloom, in who he wants to "princessify" next.
>Buy my book.
>Do it, now.


Opening ceremonies.


The rest of the main panels, I don't quite remember much but at least someone was recording the whole thing, so it should be uploaded in the next few weeks, if it wasn't already livestreamed. Here's a small pic dump.


3 delicious Tendies on sale for only 6 Good-Boy-Points.
Don't let your dreams be dreams. Just... DO IT!!
Daily Reminder.


Some of the stuff I found in the vendor's hall was pretty interesting to say the least, including a bunch of body-pillows and other various things.

>anthro, ever.
That guy has his eyes on that Derpy.
I swear this isn't jailbait. Hang on, someone's at the door...
Pretty much sums up the above.
>Stop staring at my butt, Anon.
Along with the usual fare of overpriced plushies, at around anywhere from $80 up to $400 a pop, I didn't see myself dropping a decent chunk of what would be rent money on those, despite some of them being pretty decent quality.

That hat was tempting though.
That night was spent wandering around through various panels, drinking and just doing anything else that could catch my attention, like a kid with ADD wandering around with no Ritalin. One of those things was joining a Halo: CE 1v1 tourney that the con had set up on an old Xbox, which I won most of my matches pretty easily, due to HCE being a game I played almost religiously 8 years ago on PC. Lost the last one against some guy who called himself Scorched or something.

Saturday morning, I wound up not waking up till about 10AM, so wound up missing whatever early morning stuff happened, if any did. Karl and I decided to go to get some food elsewhere, and walked by the one place where, at any convention, you won't find any bronies.

No seriously, you won't find any there. Even at Nightmare Nights 2014, there was no one.
We also happened to find the convention's hidden ball-pit, conveniently located in a store a few blocks away from the hotel.
Now without the extra piss.
Some of the other stuff we saw was pretty interesting, to say the least.
But does she do cowgirl? We have to ask the important questions here.
Dreaming. Dreaming of waifu.
Karl also found the remnants of the Shrek 4 mini-convention. Or what was left of it.
RIP in Onions.

What else did we do? Oh yeah, we caught the last bit of Kelly Sheridan's panel, as she was busy doing pony mad-libs and telling everyone to be QUIET! The rest of the day was pretty much spent wandering around, finding whatever interesting things we could.

The only concert we stuck around for was Wootmaster's "Wonderbolts" band, which was overall pretty good. Then, like any good convention ever, the fire alarm was pulled during the middle of their set. I swear this stuff only happens at conventions I go to...


Karl Pilkington and Wootmaster.
Remember kids, Duck and Cover.

 After their set was done, we wound up heading back over to the game room to find M.A Larson, GM Berrow and Brian playing through various games. Goldeneye, DDR and Fighting is Magic.
"You, Horse News guy, hold my drink. I got this." - G.M Berrow's words of wisdom.

Please don't make me play Freebird.
"Why is Angel doing all the fighting for Fluttershy?"
There's other stuff that happened as well, but for their sake all I'll say is that someone may or may not have received a present. All in all, it was a pretty fun night, crashing some of the late night panels, one of which was the Thread Simulator one, where it was a bunch of people in one room listening to greentext stories from /mlp/, and all your shitposts. The other being Ponytoast's radio show, whatever it was called. I wound up staying up till around 6 in one of the panel rooms, playing Kung Fury for those still awake.




Sunday was pretty uneventful, having woke up around noon and barely making the last few panels before the charity auction, where PonyToast was busy sliding his banana down others throats, for the cost of $75 dollars.

You want it? Give me shekels first.
L-Lewd.

After all that was said and done, we made our way to the closing ceremonies, where the con-head was crying her eyes out for some reason, though I was told she does this at every Trotcon, and that they were announcing one last year of Trotcon in 2017, before it transforms into another convention... the name fails me. In any case, they're going to be doing more than just pony for their 2018 convention.
Obligatory SSF6 picture.

All in all, it was a pretty fun albeit small convention. Next stop will be EQLA on the first week of September.

Comments (20)

  1. Where's the cringe?
    There's supposed to be an exorbitant amount of spilled spaghetti and cringe!

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  2. As always, alliteration allows assholes an asspained audience

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  3. This article is garbage. It contains no drama what so ever. What kind of site are you guys running? There needs to be drama at MLP conventions assholes. You should have got some bronies together and went to the baptist church and pissed on a cross.

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    1. Yeah, no mention of that ghetti fest that was the panel with M.A. Larson being asked if there were any Harry Potter references in MLP? When there wasn't any (I think maybe one?) the panelist went on and on about his own head cannon - reaaaaaaaaaly reaching for it. Even Larson couldn't save the panel. Me and my buddy left halfway though to go to the (rather decent) bar because we simply couldn't handle it anymore.

      I'm not even kidding. I don't know if Larson even knew what the panel was about before signing up to it. It was only him and the other guy on stage. For like an hour. The best part was the beginning, when the other dude was late, Larson put Friday on the PA.

      Other than that though, the con was awesome. There were two 21+ panels, an 18+ vendor hall, good drinks, and overall excellent atmosphere. My favorite part has to be playing Sweetie Belle on a live, terrible clopfic reading while everyone in the audience (and in front) were getting shitfaced.

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    2. Also no mention of needing a map just to get to the vendor's room at a small convention. Oh, and the vendor's room was in a tent this year while it was down pouring. Fun times for them. While a lot of vendors won't talk numbers, since there were so many of them crammed into that tent this year (about double the amount of vendors this year without doubling the attendees), a lot of them just broke even... and that was it.

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    3. >It contains no drama what so ever.
      At a small convention like that, there's not much room for drama when everyone gets to know each other pretty closely, even for a first timer like myself. Hell, half the stuff that went down I either missed because I was wandering the place, never staying in one area for too long; or never heard about until others commented on it; such as the Anon talking about Ren Haru vs Trotcon from previous years. Having said that though, I'm pretty sure that by Bronycon, there's going to be something going down. The question is: what food items is to be spilled this time? 2013 we had spaghetti, 2014 saw mayonnaise + that crazy fucker with the supposedly stolen plushie. It's going to be glorious, I hope. I wish I could be there.

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  4. Sadly we've been banned from mayonnaise globally

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  5. Is Horse News no longer covering drama in the Bronie fandom because there is no more drama to be had?

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    1. I can assure you there is, it just appears as though the two that went are being giant pussies after what happened the previous year. Last year Ren Haru did the Trotcon write-up, (that plastic bead thingie vendor), and she mentioned that the con head got drunk off her ass. While this would have been an insult over at EFN, this is HN and it's pretty widely known that they love their alcoholism. But the stupid newly wed took it as a slap in the face and not only disallowed Ren from vending the next year, (and thus from reporting on the con again), but also refused to give her boy toy Calpain a panelist pass. The excuse used for him is that they never got his registration info... despite him sending it directly to the con head over a month before the con. Did I mention that this guy is still one of the main EQD writers and also just made a Steven Universe fan site, not to mention was a previous panelist at Trotcon over the last few years? Dick move Darkly, but your con will crumble as soon as it moves away from just pony (say goodbye to all the out-of-state attendees that can just go to anime cons in their own state).

      So yes, there is drama, but these two knuckleheads are too afraid to report on a con that's going to fail in about 2 years anyways. Also, there are rumors that M.A. Larson bought a bunch of dakimakuras so that he could gift them to the other guests, but I can't confirm that. However that was probably the "gifting" mentioned in this article.

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    2. I was present during his purchases. The gifts weren't for guests, but show staff who weren't present. Yes the least offensive gift was a discord dakimakura for john de lancie. There were a couple others we were sure were going to get him fired. Yes, all of these from the 18 plus vendor hall. Also going on during his purchases, someone drinking alcohol out of a horse cock on the other side of the table.

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  6. Last two Year dates (2017 and 2018) are messed up. Should be 2016 and 2017 respectively.

    Sad but glad my own antics weren't reported on.

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  7. You didn't say anything about the Swaglicorn panel. Lots of alcohol was had. The panelists sawed a Rarity plushie filled with blood in half. Rainbow Dash and Applejack plushies were chained up, and drowned in a fish tank. Three pony brushables were in jars, and drowned in (hopefully fake) semen. Fake blood was accidentally sprayed on the ceiling and lights. They tried to wipe it off with a mop, and made it look even more like a murder scene. They seemed to have cleaned it all up before the next panel.
    10/10 Will go to next year.
    http://imgur.com/a/Ac4vG

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    1. I'll get it right eventually. Goddamn.
      The right one, I swear

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    2. I must have missed that one. A shame too, had I known... Though I do remember Saturday night there were a bunch of people making a HUGE paper dick. One that spanned half the room, and they brought it to the other panel room once they were done making it.

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    3. No, they did not have the panel room cleaned up >.>
      We had to finish the job before we could do the fan built panel the next morning. They did leave cookies as an apology though.

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  8. It wasn't cleaned up at all, an also interesting tidbit they didn't mention was the sweaty spaghetti line to the afterdark room

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  9. Kinda curious how that con sanctioned after hours vendor hall thing worked out, since that one piece of shit (what's his name...Flameheart? Some shit like that?) was making such a big stink about it.

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    1. Small room. Only 5-6 vendors for three hours, and it was busy the whole time. They let in only 15 or so people at a time, and security checked ID at the door. There was a curtain, so you couldn't peek in when the door opened. Security was inside just in case something went wrong. They took it very seriously and professionally. We're hoping other cons take notice, and try doing it. It was far more effective than allowing a "black folder" or "under the table" sales during normal vendor hours. The only thing I didn't like is that they didn't prohibit taking pictures inside without permission. You never know if a photo of someone visiting the 18+ room would be harmful.

      I was in there the whole time, vending, so I don't know what the line looked like, but I kept hearing that the line never dwindled or slowed down.

      An added note, one guy was sucking fruity vodka through a horse cock dildo with a cumtube. That was a highlight of my evening.

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  10. This article is shit. If you're gonna not report on any of the drama that occurred, at least do a decent job of covering the convention itself.

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  11. Wow, this all is looking interesting. What can be better than attending similar events? Anyway, I am planning for couple of corporate events to advertise and expand my business. Can you suggest me something please?

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