and things went downhill from there

If I have learned one thing from being in different fandoms, it is that regardless of what you are fans of, people are still people.

The scourge of Mary Sue OCs seems to plague every one that I am in:

"Hi there, I'm Princess Neon Lightshow, and I'm your NEW BEST FRIEND, I'm the daughter of Queen Chrysalis and Lord Emberflame Darkwave, you probably haven't met him, but he's really powerful and evil but I'm nice and moving into Ponyville today, yeah I know I look awesome, but anyway I'm also Princess Luna's student and going to be the best spellcaster in the world someday and blah blah blah..."

NEW BEST FRIEND by ~Geomancing on deviantART
Noting, of course, that this one is obvious satire.

Our total driving distance from when we stopped for gas at the south end of town until we parked the car in our garage again was just over 3,000 miles. That's not a bad little road trip in my book. Naturally that included city driving, side-trips and the like, but that is still a lot of driving.

I did it regularly when atara and I were still dating.

Aside from the glitch with our hotel room on the way down, everything went smashingly. We saw almost everybody we were hoping to see.

Pinkie Pie was our little mascot for the trip, so if you happen to wander over to my Flickr page you will notice her cute little mug in quite a few of the pictures. This is one of my two favourite shots of her though, posing in front of the condiments at Denny's in Wisconsin Dells. This was the morning after our hotel adventure mentioned in my previous post. I don't know why (other than having Pinkie Pie in it), but I really like the colour and composition of this picture.

What you can't see in this shot is the frighteningly patriotic pictures and wallpaper behind atara just out of the right side of this shot.


During one of our off-days in Ohio, we were out cruising for electronics and ponies to take home when atara began shrieking and carrying on about the county fair. Apparently she noticed the signs for it, and suddenly it went from being a non-issue to being one of the top items on our itinerary. I don't know why she was so anxious to go there because the last time we went (when we were still dating), I stepped on her foot in the chicken shed and tore some of the skin off her toes. She married me anyway. Must be true love.

I wanted to move the rakes for this shot, but I was not sure if somebody had just left them there, or they were part of the exhibit. It would have been embarrassing to be accosted while moving them aside by somebody yelling about how I was messing up the feng shui of the display. Ohioans and their feng shui - oy.

( More pictures and text behind the cut )