#ballpitstuck

[atlasisreal]

YOU WERE AT *WHAT*????????????????????

yes it's true. the atlasisreal deep lore is that I attended dashcon in 2014.

that me 💕

anyways if you wanna hear my recollection of dashcon it's under the cut.

i was literally just a teenager at the time but seeing dashcon ads on Tumblr I was like. it's in Schaumburg??? like 30min from me??? I HAVE to go this is going to be the coolest thing ever. I love Tumblr all my mentally ill friends and supernatural gifs are on that website. I bet they're gonna have the coolest party ever.

LMAOOOOO

so i asked for the dashcon tix for my birthday! it was for me and my best friend (who attended and even cosplayed Homestuck with me despite not knowing anything about it) and my mom, who was mostly excited about staying in the nice hotel and swimming in the pool. I was so hype for this. anyways we get there and as people have previously talked about vis a vis dashcon, it was so hilariously underwhelming. the first thing you had to do was walk into the registration hall. I think most people have seen pics but they had written "Welcome DashCon" or something to that effect on the ground using blue painters tape, and the hall was empty asf which was really funny because they had set the table up aaaaaall the way at the back so you just got to walk across this big empty hall towards ONE PERSON sitting at a table (who in retrospect I'm pretty sure was the 19 year old they'd foisted this thing onto). she was super nice at the time though so shout out to that interaction.

we pretty much immediately headed for the only actual show floor area, which was the artists alley. if dashcon attendees are hard to find, I'm sure dashcon exhibitors are fucking unicorns bc there was... maybe 30 booths, if I'm being very generous. that being said, I got to meet nd Stevenson at dashcon! he was really nice, and complimented my cosplay. it's kind of fun to get to say I met the artist and author behind nimona and lumberjanes and she-ra at fucking DASHCON lol. hopefully next time I meet him it will be as a fellow professional comics artist huh who said that

gotta take a moment here to stress something. dashcon was very poorly planned and executed. this is true. BUT. the atmosphere, especially on the first day, was so joyful and connected. everyone was so stoked to be at THE Tumblr convention. all of us were weirdos who liked the weirdo website enough to show up in person for all our weirdo friends. We were all exchanging urls and taking big group photos and going to grab lunch together. people were very open and friendly. and I know that's my perspective as well, obviously there were plenty of things going horribly wrong behind the scenes, but having only been an attendee, it really wasn't the worst experience.

anyways so the day was fun and weird and a little boring because dashcon had fucking nothing going on but anyways so the scamming part. they called everyone into this main ballroom and stood on a little stage up front and were like "HEY IF WE DONT RAISE $200,000 THEYRE SHUTTING US DOWN" which definitely did NOT break my tiny little idiot baby heart. I definitely was super self aware and knew this was a dumb scam and I definitely DIDN'T cry and run to the hotel pool to tell my mom. she however immediately went "they're scammers and we paid for our hotel room so whatever lol". my bestie gave them $10 and after the fact was (rightfully) SUPER pissed about it because she WAS smarter than me and figured out the scam thing faster.

I think besides that scam thing the other thing I remember thinking was such fucking bullshit was that we would be walking past the ballroom where Welcome to Night Vale was supposed to perform and the line was insane. It was literally SOOOOO many people. I remember being a little bummed that I hadn't gotten tickets which was.... obviously a short lived regret. when they announced the night Vale cancellation I definitely realized shit was hinky.

a majority of the photos I have are from ballpitstuck! there was a Homestuck meetup at the ball pit, but a lot of us had found each other already and had been hanging out in little feral packs of homestucks, so we all meshed super well and basically immediately all became besties. we ended up kind of collectively agreeing to post stuff in the "ballpitstuck" tag, which is hilarious. I actually made fanart at the time! It's somewhere in the depths of my art blog. I've probably posted most of these before but for posterity:

we were cringe. but we were free. no but for real I did have so much fun hanging with the homestucks.

anyways the rest of the con was pretty much just hanging out and watching everything burn from the inside out. my favorite part was watching Tumblr react to dashcon in real-time, because everyone AT the convention was posting about it, and everyone who wasn't at the convention was actively following the updates. by the time we left I just remember being like "I think we've just experienced something very interesting". and now there's a Wikipedia page and a sarah z video about it so.

anyways shout out to my dashcon homies(tucks)

#dashcon #ballpitstuck

[autoresponderdaily]

Let me out. \></

ballpitstuck. you remain there forever

#ask

[therealraewest]

RAE I FORGOT THAT I MET YOU AT DASHCON.. ... I WAS THE BLUE GOD TIER ROXY, YOU CAN SEE ME JUST UNDER THE RED ARROW IN THAT PHOTO OF YOU? BRO WE SURVIVED #BALLPITSTUCK TOGETHER

OH MY GOD YES I REMEMBER!! HOW'VE YOU BEEN YOU CRAZY BASTARD WELCOME BACK TO 2012

[lgtbird]

Don't be alarmed if I just followed you

I probably met you in the pit.

#that meme was unintentional at first #but im keeping it #dashcon #ballpitstuck

[latinogengar]

I literally can't believe that this Ballpit thing is taking off. I'm so happy that I was there when it started.

#dashcon #ballpitstuck #dashcon2014

[atlasisreal]

hey out of curiosity, if ur a mutual or follower and u went to dashcon too, reply to this post! am thinking about all the folks I met there and how I've kept up with some and not others and I also saw that cursed dashcon badge post and I believe that was made by a mutual but they changed urls or deactivated and it made me wonder how many of u are still there, chanting hashtag ballpitstuck into the void. would love to trade stories or photos, too.

#dashcon

[lord-kitschener]

>fill an inflatable pool with plastic balls

>call it a ball pit

>$17000

>just-DashCon-things

#ballpitstuck #DashCon #$17000

[therealraewest]

Guys I'm literally getting anon hate over the ball pit this is hilarious

#ballpitstuck #ballpitstuck 2014

[residentrogers]

today would've been a normal day

but then i decided to educate myself about dashcon and lmao 

i mean on the one hand i see that the organizers were woefully underprepared and that somehow $17,000 just went missing and they weren't able to pay the creators of nightvale to come to the con when they took time out of their busy schedules to go only to be told they had to pay for everything themselves and the panels are laughable and they're a poor representation of a juvenile side of the internet

but on the other hand seeing the pictures of everyone who's there cosplaying and having fun makes me excited for the atl cons coming up and they've made their own great time out of the abominable train wreck that dashcon became so kudos to them for making dashcon an individual experience outside of what everyone already knows happened and just good job guys ^u^

#dashcon #the good and the bad #ballpitstuck #holler holler get a dollar

[komaedassnagihoe-blog]

#kanaya #homestuck #dashcon #ball pit #ballpitstuck #dashconstuck #oopstheregoesreality #brianna

[dunklesams]

Dashcon ball pit (God Tier dave is me)

#ballpitstuck #drumgod selfies