Awright, so the TL;DR version is that Anthrocon was amazing and I met a ton of cool people and also things happened. Also I’m going to Rocky Mountain Fur Con. Yeah, I was surprised when I found that out, too.

In theory, tacking travel and a few visits with friends onto the end of a furry con trip is a great idea. In the practical sense though, particularly the necessity of writing a con report afterwards, it leaves me woefully behind schedule, gormlessly squinting at a calendar wondering what in the name of unholy fuck happened to the last two weeks of my life. In order to forcibly extricate some sense of order out of what, up until this point, was a mostly functional memory system, I’m going to forego my traditional narrative structure and try to break things down day-by-day, at least for the con, as those days tend to have an alarmingly high event density per unit time. The divisions will coincide with where I actually managed to get sleep, as that frequently happened after midnight, making the divisions of actual calendar days far less meaningful. So here we go then. Now, what day was July second?

Wednesday:

I woke up a fair bit earlier than I expected to, must’ve been all that nothing I’ve been doing lately leaving me so well rested all the time. So I got a plenty early start around 10:00. The drive itself was pretty uneventful. I did hit a bird, which was something I’d never done before. It would be a stretch to call that an achievement though. The early start meant that I beat most everyone I knew there by a sizable margin. That meant that there wasn’t a whole lot to do for the day. I did explore Pittsburgh a bit on foot and got a reminder of why I don’t explore Pittsburgh on foot very much. The machine shop that caught on fire a few decades ago and no one has bothered to either fix or destroy since that time very nicely encapsulates the general mood of the place. I think that sort of thing might be a part of why Pittsburgh puts up with us with a smile on their face. I do believe that they rather welcome all the money we spend here.

I ran into Garcanno in the lobby. He’s an old friend from back in Virginia. It’s been awhile, so it was nice to see him again and catch up a bit. Of course right then my phone battery decided to die and I didn’t yet have a room to go to in order to charge it. I had to run off to solve that as this was probably the most critical juncture for me to actually have it working, what with trying to coordinate the meeting up of multiple people. The whole thing made me feel pretty stupid, as this sort of thing is usually not a problem, but certain inevitabilities are reached when you don’t charge your phone for like a week and then use it a whole bunch.

In any case, I did eventually meet up with LanHao, who was graciously hosting me at his room. I’d eaten on the way because I’ve learned that arriving hungry is a pretty unpleasant experience. Still, I had a drink with him while he fueled up at the Sharper Edge. The cool thing about restaurants with an expansive menu of fancy beers is that they usually have a good cider selection also. Now, there will be 2 ciders compared to 200 beers, but at this point I consider “a good cider selection” to be “anything above zero varieties and actually having them in stock” so they get a pretty solid approval with five different flavors. Four of which I tried over the course of the weekend.

I checked on Lucius for a status report and found out that he was in Cleveland for some reason. Firstly, ew. Secondly, that is not how you get from Texas to Pittsburgh at all. Not even a little bit. It got a little clearer after he’d mentioned that he was in Minnesota for some other unknown, presumably sinister reason. He said that he’d come across Sweet Apple Acres on his journey and bought some cider for me. I would never have pegged the Ohio River Valley as the location of Equestria, but I guess that works.

My first adventure with Lucius started before he even got there, as my next report from him brought a fresh round of confusion about his location. He professed to be taking Rt. 76 East towards Pittsburgh, while the exit numbers he was giving me showed him on 76E moving away from Pittsburgh. He had gotten from the west side of Pittsburgh to the east side whilst having skipped that all-important step of actually going to Pittsburgh. Important life lesson, kids: a road with signs listing the distance to a given city may not necessarily lead to that city; as we both learned. I the easy way, and Lucius the hard way.

“You went past it.”

“I went past an entire city?”

“Yeah. It’s a pretty big city too. I’d say ‘you can’t miss it’ but that assertion has just been empirically disproven.”

So yeah, that was a thing. I managed to direct him in using some of the selection of roads that actually do enter Pittsburgh. Thanks to my skilled ground-traffic-controller skills he managed to actually find us and I was able to head down and lead him up to the room. With that and the latent addition of carandaenor the gang was all there. It was a first Anthrocon for both Lucius and Fox (the incomparably creative nickname of my other roommate. Turns out his legal last name actually is “Fox” so that saves time I guess). Fox’s parents were wary of us furry sorts, and seemed to be petrified that their son would end up in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. LanHao was quick to point out that all the room’s other occupants were prior military, and all of us had security clearance of Secret or higher. Since we’d all undergone extensive background checks, that meant that fox was technically the most dangerous person in the room. I guess that helped him sleep at night, as the rest of us were forever waking him up in the morning so that he could get down to the Dealer’s Den early enough. We each took a turn playing alarm clock for him, actually.

Thursday:

Badge pickup went well. I had the rare luxury of pre-registering, conferring the indescribably valuable benefit of truncating the line by about 1000-fold. I waited behind precisely one person and then I was on my way. And really that was the only con-related thing I did the whole time. This was another very quiet day. I’ve always heard people talk up how great it was to arrive stupid early to the con, but I’d never really seen the appeal. I walked through the Zoo a few times, but found very little of interest. I guess I just don’t have enough friends for this sort of pre-con hanging out to really be worth anything. Without ever really deciding or intending to, I set about rectifying that.

I never would’ve guessed what a valuable connection LanHao would be, though I had previously noted that he casts a pretty wide net in terms of social circles. The other four people that he’d helped secure a room for were introduced to me presently. To my delight that crowd included CatMonkShiro and Lunarkeys, an artist and prolific commissioner, respectively, both of whom I’ve been a huge fan of for quite some time. I’d unknowingly been placed right next to a great big pow-wow of very enthusiastic Transformation fans, all of whom I got along with famously. Rounding out the assortment were Rekzar and Cobalt_K, a writer/commissioner and comic artist, in that order, whom I’d never met or heard of before, but they were every bit as awesome as the former pair. Yes, I’m convinced that everyone in that room was of equal awesomeness, each more equal than the last.

In any case, we somehow managed to collect together this whole two-room assortment and head down to the Sharper Edge for dinner. The indomitable collection of archery-related terms Arrowquivershaft also made his way down to join us and round out the group. He seemed interesting and was one of those rare few whose existence had not escaped my notice until right then. Quiet though, I do wish I’d had a chance to get to know him a little better. A good time was had by all and the periods that weren’t spent in frantic, disorganized efforts to get everyone’s name straight were filled with very lively and entertaining conversation. I’m given to understand that at various points throughout the con my words ended up being twiddled on the Twitters, so I guess I said a few things of merit.

We got back to our collective rooms and partook of a cake that I forget the reasoning behind. Someone’s birthday, most likely, given the My Little Pony candles that were scattered across it. I cared not for its origins though. It was delicious and moist and most assuredly not a lie, so I excused its dark past. We quickly arrived at the conclusion, though, that our present procedure of tearing the cake apart by hand and shoving it in the general vector of our faces was not what one would call sustainable, particularly given that we were trying not to make a catastrophic mess of the very nice hotel rooms we were in. I believe that I’ve made prior mention of the Omni’s palatial awesomeness the other times I’ve stayed there, and this trip was no exception. Granted it meant that there was rather a necessity to stack the rooms pretty heavily to make it affordable, but we do that anyway. May as well quad-up in a really nice hotel room rather than being stacked like cordwood in the Westin.

Regardless, we decided that some cutlery was in order, so a handful of us piled into the little rental car that had ferried Lucius here. I had shotgun due to what I presume was some skillful manipulation of the arcane rules that govern such things, and lined up across the back were Rekzar, LunarKeys and Cobalt. Why exactly we needed five people to go to Wal Mart and buy forks is unclear, but it was certainly a trip worth going on. It was easily the most awesome disaster I’ve ever been a part of.

Now then, this is a scene that deserves to be set. At the helm, we have Lucius, an operator only just now becoming familiar with the car he’s driving and who managed to miss the entire city of Pittsburgh on the way in. In the back is our navigator, Cobalt, who has a similarly tentative grasp of the smartphone he was meant to be directing us with. I didn’t have much interest in the actual destination and was directing my efforts more towards reminding Lucius that traffic laws exist. Rekzar, like the rest of us, had no idea what the fuck with regards to the layout of the city of Pittsburgh, but he often chimed in with helpful observations like the number of times we’d crossed the same river on the way (three. The final count was three). Lunarkeys was relatively quiet and appeared to be pretending that either he or all of us did not exist. I would’ve much preferred his fantasy to the cruel reality that was this expedition that the Donner Party would’ve called ‘poorly planned’ and probably also ‘well marbled, if a bit stringy’.

I kid though, in all reality this was, like many furry events, a very entertaining disaster. I could give a point-by-point account, but that would take several thousand more words and probably still not properly do the event justice. I will instead present a couple key snippets that typify the experience and let you extrapolate that to the 45 minutes that it took to traverse the 11 miles to the store. These are all actual quotes from that harrowing journey.

Lucius:

Woah look, it’s the firehouse from Ghostbusters!

Check out this drunk guy dancing across the crosswalk in front of us. I’m gonna honk at ‘em.

This is way more fun than I ever thought that being hopelessly lost could be.

Bucephalus:

Yeah I’m pretty sure that ‘mugging’ is this town’s number one industry.

I don’t know how to more clearly convey to you what ‘No Turn On Red’ means!

No keep going. That exit is clearly a trap.

I don’t think this area has paper plates. Though if you want to score some heroin I think I saw a guy that could help you out.

How did you make it so convincingly sound like you knew what you were supposed to do right before you tried to go in the wrong direction down that divided highway?

Cobalt: (our illustrious navigator if you’ll recall)

According to my map we are… drifting slowly sideways across the median.

(When asked “Where are we?”) I don’t know. And I actually haven’t known for awhile now.

Sorry, sorry! I tried to tell you but I forgot the word for left!

Wait, give me a minute. It looks like the Wal Mart moved.

Yeah. Whatever you’re filling in the blanks with there, it was crazier than that. It is a truly incomparable experience to see the road in front of you drop off entirely and then find that you’re headed down the steepest grade you’ve ever seen along a one way road. And of course right about the time that you realize stopping or turning around are laughable impossibilities, you see headlights coming towards you. Now, we’d gone backwards on a one way street at another point in the trip, and so all of us were pretty sure that we were going to die, or at the very least be held criminally liable for the large amount of damage that was about to happen, but that was somehow not the case and the approaching truck actually fit past us when there was clearly no room for that to happen by some form of strange demon magic. And then of course this sheer cliff face dumped us straight into a highway where we were once again reminded of our mortality but still somehow not introduced to it.

Against all odds, we arrived at the Wal Mart that we sought. Cobalt apologizing profusely, Rekzar suffering from oxygen deprivation due to uncontrollable nervous laughter, me mocking Lucius relentlessly (so essentially no change from normal), Lucius somehow having the time of his life, and LunarKeys looking like he severely regretted deciding to come with us, and also every decision he’s made in his life up until that point. One thing that all of us had failed to consider was our location. I don’t know what to call this particular region. It’s pretty much everything east of the Mississippi River not including the Ohio River Valley and New England, that part of the country. The characteristic that typifies this region is what has led me to refer to it as the “everything is closed all the time so fuck you” region. You know, the type of areas that are wallpapered with blue laws of seemingly random nature and indeterminate purpose where entire towns shut down when the hot-sky-ball stops showing its face. The idea of Wal Marts having hours was completely foreign to me until I visited this awful fetid crater that convenience forgot. Where I come from, Wal Mart is open Christmas Day, and during power outages, and during any natural disaster less severe than a hail of flaming meteors.

The reason that this particular inconvenience suddenly became relevant is that our travel delays put us beyond the draconian restrictions placed on this store’s operating times, meaning that we made our harrowing sojourn for no reason. After convincing LunarKeys not to kill himself/all of us, we set to thinking of an alternate solution. We settled on a gas station. It only had an outside chance of containing paper plates and such, but it was the only thing that might actually be open, so it beat out literally every public institution within reach. The nearby gas station did indeed have paper plates. No forks, but we were willing to take any victory we could get at that point. It was about half-past tomorrow by the time we got back to our rooms, and we all hit the sack with a comforting sense that the next day would be the start of the con and couldn’t possibly be a bigger fiasco than this short trip to the store had been. So you know, progress!

Friday:

The first day of the actual con started with a writing panel because of course it did, and also because the first writing panel actually started before the con did, because that’s how writing track rolls. Calm, thoughtful, slow paced, just what I want first thing in the morning. I was surprised to see sponsors with us in the drooling proletariat line trying to get into the Opening Ceremonies, but I guess them’s the breaks sometimes. I think that Anthrocon is becoming a victim of its own success in that respect. Sponsors are starting to lose privileges because there’s just so darn many of them. The line isn’t a big deal, though. The Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom can fit the entirety of the convention, so it’s not like you won’t get a seat if you show up late. The ceremony was quite reliably entertaining as usual. It featured a flock of penguins, which in this venue isn’t really a surprise, actually. After that I retreated back into the writing room because nothing was open yet at that point anyway.

It was a worthwhile trip though, as the extra time at the end gave me a chance to chat with Ianus Wolf a bit. It was nice to catch up with him some as I don’t often get a chance to, despite the unreasonable amount of time I spend at the panels he hosts. The content of that little chat was actually quite noteworthy. I’d asked him to look over my in-progress novel a while ago and he had in fact taken a look. He really did seem to like it even though he’d only had the chance to give it a cursory glance. What was much more interesting was the remarks that this led to. He told me that he saw me often at these panels and heard from me quite frequently at them. It was nice to hear that my input was appreciated, and I thought that would be the end of it, but then he alluded to the fact that they’re always looking for extra hands to help out and it would be nice if they had some fresh blood in the writing track. Wait, do what? Like… I could be up there talking to people about writing, with people there to listen to me talk about writing? Well hot damn, that would be awesome! I wouldn’t have to raise my hand to talk anymore!

I guess he must’ve really liked my novel because he got through just a few pages of it and then asked me if I’d like to host a writing panel. I think I’ll call that my first professional endorsement. Unlike everyone else who lines the table up there in front of the panel I have no publishing credits, but this sounds like a really exciting opportunity and I’m most certainly going to take him up on it. I just hope they don’t put me up there next to Kyell Gold. Not only is he a prolific and famous author but he’s also pretty awesome at every other aspect of humanity and I would feel like such a piece of shit if I were up there sitting next to him as if to imply that I had any business at all being up there on his level. Still, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. So, I guess that’s another con that I’m potentially a part of. This is happening with alarming frequency these days. Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep being awesome everywhere, despite the risks.

After my apparent recruitment came a panel that was named some obfuscating German word, the actual purpose of which I couldn’t fathom nor figure out by attending it. I’m just calling it the “Make MCA Hogarth laugh” panel, because I spent the entire time doing exactly that. A good time was had by all, really, lack of structure or direction be damned! After that it was back to writing panels. I had to prepare to be at the helm of one soon, after all.

I’d made contact with Namelessimp earlier. She said that she and Lord Grey were planning on going to Uncle Kage’s Story Hour. They wanted to get there unreasonably early, which normally I’d be against, but I got to hang out with them for a while, which I was all for. Even though sitting on the floor quickly got old, I’m glad that I went for it. I love having the chance to meet someone that I’m a fan of, and Impy was very friendly. I’d gotten the impression that we’d probably get along well in person and it was lovely to be proven right. Impy looked to be handling her first con pretty well. She was quite a bit more collected that I was in her position, and she even sketched a quick mugshot of me just because and that’s awesome. I really wish I could do things like that for people because it always feels like I don’t have much to offer anyone, particularly when I have such generous friends.

In any case, Kage did not disappoint. His unique perspectives and prose are always a joy to behold. He’s everything that I could ever hope to be as a storyteller, and obviously quite a personality. Lucius told me about this really cool guy in a labcoat that he talked to earlier, and you’ll never guess who it was. Nor did he, actually. Kage is just that sort of person, really. You’d never guess that he’s someone important just talking to him out of context. It kinda makes me feel bad, because I tend to act like I’m someone important when I most certainly have no reason to.

After that I wedged in some time to meet up with Nevir and Ryoken, two of the rare sort of friends that I’d actually met in person before this con. I had no idea how good of a friend I had in them until I met up with them in the lobby and they came bearing gifts. Ryoken has a printing and laminating operation going now, and so they decided to surprise me by making a very stylish screen-printed version of my badge. A fantastic idea, really. I’d been wearing my janky old computer printout badge for a very long time, so I know that I’ll get a lot of use out of this fancy new one. The second thing that I suddenly found in my hands was even more astonishing. It was a laminate sheet, Lucite or Plexiglas maybe, on which was printed an artwork that was itself a gift from Ryoken some time ago. I was truly blown away by this. It’s quite rare that I am speechless, and this case was no exception, but that’s just because it’s a con so nothing ever slows down for a second. So though I kept talking and greeting and catching up, I knew that I wasn’t ever going to come up with any appropriate expression of gratitude for this.

I’ve always been amazed by the generosity and selflessness of the furry fandom. Yeah sure there’s plenty of moaning in FA journals and “emergency commissions” but that’s online shenanigans. In person, even the people I’ve known who have next to nothing have often been eager to share and support each other. I lost track of how many drinks were bought for me. I even got a whole meal covered by someone who I just met who had no guarantee that we’d ever meet again. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything like that anywhere else and I doubt that I ever will.

I’m not exactly sure how to roll from sentimentality like that straight into the late night sexy writing panel, but I’m keeping to the actual course of events and that’s how cons go. That roller coaster is half the fun of a con though, so you’ll just have to deal with my lack of proper segues as time goes on. I’d heard that the late, late panel last year was a blast, so I was really excited to be attending this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. There’s a lot of effort put into maintaining the content restrictions of the daytime panels. I mean, it’s a group of furries. Conversation is pretty much guaranteed to head in certain directions after a while. Having to work to keep our thoughts and words on the straight and narrow all day makes the “anything goes” panels very cathartic. And of course the crazier and more offensive a subject is, the more fun it is to talk about.

The panelists included both Rukis and Kyell Gold, making for a heck of an atmosphere with their collected wit and charm. It was good to see Rukis again. We chatted a lot last time and it’s always nice to keep up with someone, especially when that someone is a luminary of sorts. Rukis is a published author and extremely prolific artist, so she can speak intelligently on a tremendous wealth of subjects. Despite the severe strain and sleep-depravation that she operates under at cons, she remains quite cheerful and personable, always a joy to be around. We talked long into the night, and the next morning, which just so happens to be when the next event was. I’m sure I got some sleep in there though, probably.

Saturday:

In the morning I asked LanHao if we could switch beds for the next night because Lucius responds to all stimuli capable of waking him up as if he were being repeatedly tazed. While his spirited collisions with the opposite wall were quite reliably entertaining, I was rather concerned that he’d catch the edge of the windowsill and leave some teeth there one of these times. In any case, we did manage to get up in time for the obnoxiously early MilFur breakfast. Apparently we weren’t quite as early as our contemporaries though, and all the big tables had been filled, leaving us to sit just vaguely near all the other attendees, rather defeating the purpose of eating with them, I suppose, but we were there, we may as well eat.

The strain was showing from having the large volume of people come there all at once. The wait was pretty long and it was quite rare to hear from our waitress at all. A waiter who was serving a table near ours checked in on us a few times because he’d seen how long we’d been sitting there before we even got silverware. He couldn’t really take our order or anything rash like that though, because we weren’t in his zone or whatever. Waitstaff are such strangely territorial creatures. Patience did eventually see us to some food. Not overly appetizing, but it probably was the healthiest thing that I ate all week. Their menu was absolutely smothered in health buzzwords, so apparently at some point someone put a certain amount of thought into making this cuisine a little less toxic than average. When I noted that the people at the nearby table under the purview of the friendly-and-attentive-but-not-ours waiter had paid their check and cashed out already, and even had their dishes cleared away by the time our food arrived, I was officially rather impressed. He appeared to be under no less stress, and yet he was kicking all kinds of ass at his job. It was quite reassuring to see that there was some work getting done around here.

I actually gave him a tip because I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen such enthusiasm and dedication in a server. If I wanted to be really vindictive about it I would’ve pointed out to our waitress that I gave half her tip to someone else, but I didn’t see any need. I was trying to be nice. (For once). He was taken aback and grateful in the same breath, as one might expect. What wasn’t so easy to predict was that he, like so many in the crowd at the con, was an artist. Apparently he’s just as skilled and enthusiastic with paint as he is his day job. Since he was so gracious and friendly to us, I guess I’ll take a second to link his website, http://www.randylandpittsburgh.com/. It’s the least I can do. I guess sometimes you meet really great people at cons even when you’re not trying or expecting to. Such a wonderful way to start the day. At some point I found a chance to have a quick drink with Lion King and Mooncat before my next event. I really would’ve liked to stay longer, but I had other events to be at. Never a dull moment as they say.

I saw a familiar name on the staff listing in the con book, so my next stop was to check that out. Archai had gotten himself drafted into the photography shop this year. The con provides free fursuit photos to all attendees, so business was quite heavy at their little operation. I’m glad that I got there early in the morning when the vast majority of potential customers had yet to even begin to blearily stumble out of bed. I’ve not the best sense for photography, but a big chunk of the job was animal control, and that part of it I tend to be pretty good at. Shepherding people where they needed to be, making sure they looked good for the picture and getting them the information that they would need to find their photos online, it all seemed pretty straightforward to me. While I was visiting I thought I’d help out a bit once I got the hang of it, since I do hate being in the way. After a few minutes Archai noticed with some mild surprise that I was pretty much doing his job for him.

“Wow, you train up fast.”

He was right, of course, but that hadn’t really occurred to me before. I suppose I will reluctantly credit the Navy with that particular adaptation. There were a lot of sink-or-swim acquisitions of new skills during my tour. You get thrown unexpectedly into a lot of new situations and just expected to figure shit out on your own. I guess I still have some of that mentality with me. Perhaps that was a part of what made me so attractive to the Furthemore staff. It’s nice to know that I can still be productive once in a while. I’d better keep that stuff under wraps though. The last thing that I need is to get staff-kidnapped by Anthrocon. Much as I love the con, I run myself into the ground just attending it. I likely wouldn’t survive trying to staff it.

So, while I was working at this little photography operation I got a chance to catch up with Archai a little bit. If you don’t remember him from my last adventure, he was the guy from RainFurrest who recognized me by my badge and told me what a big fan of my writing he was. That is literally the only time that has ever happened, so he still holds a special place in my heart. I believe he was working to cement that location, as I won’t soon forget what we talked about. I’d asked him to look over my novel and give a few remarks on it. I’d let the matter drop when I didn’t hear back from him, but apparently it had been weighing on his mind. I was vexed and more than a little bit flattered by his reasoning. Apparently he’d been trying to write some feedback, but felt that his opinions of my work wouldn’t do justice to it. Anything he could say would be an insult. I insisted that this wasn’t the case, but he seemed quite convinced of it. So I suppose I’m just going to have to take it as a hefty compliment that the quality of my writing just intimidated someone out of critiquing it.

From there it was onto the always-entertaining fursuit parade, some more writing panels, and then back to the Westin for the Brony panel. It was quite well attended and looked to be a somewhat happening place. Hasbro’s ever-expanding contingent of lawyer-droids have placed some rather befuddling restrictions on what the content of the panel could be though. Video clips, even of entirely fan-made works, were on the verboten list. That greatly concerned me, as that sort of thing is usually a sizable portion, if not a majority of an average Brony panel. Right then though, I got a ping from Azure letting me know his location. I was anxious to see him again, and when he said that Zsisron was with him, that sealed the deal. Those two guys are the unstoppable juggernauts of the hypnosis community, so I really was anxious to see Bluedude, and meet Zsisron. I ducked out of the panel reluctantly, but Lucius assured me that it was pretty disappointing, so I’m glad I went with the option to go hang out with some really cool artists at the zoo.

After hanging out with artists at the zoo came… hanging out with a whole crapton more artists at the zoo, actually. I’d been there just in time for the transformation art jam. A big gathering of folks who are all about things turning into other things. I’ve been a little uneasy about art jams in the past. I feel like I don’t really have a place in one, what with my complete inability to art at things. I still stopped by though, because I saw someone I wanted to talk to. I met Angrboda at Anthrocon two years ago, and in a story far too insane for it to be made up, she introduced me to Zenzi, an RPI alumni, who subsequently wrote one of the recommendation letters that got me into college. I wanted to let her know that this strange sequence of events had worked out very much to my favor and that the girl dressed as a cow that I met at a furry convention had indeed helped to secure my higher education.

I had meant to drop in really quickly and leave this talented group to their business, but I sat down at their table and got to talking and… never stopped, really. More people crowded around as the art jam got into full swing, so many that at one point I was too crowded in to leave even if I wanted to. I got to sit and chat with Nyomi, Therian, Gilpanda, Taki, the whole crew from our room, and dozens of others. Later on Abe E Seedy came by and I checked another important luminary off my list. Also it took me years but I figured out that his username is just the alphabet. That tricky bastard. In any case, I’m a big fan of his and I’d actually been trying to find him for some time. Little did I know that I just had to find a place to strategically plop myself down and he’d come to me! I had a marvelous time watching all these great people do their work, and they put up with me admirably well. A big group wanted to go out for drinks afterwards, and how could I say no?

Hanging out at the bar was a somewhat less crowded and more easygoing way to get to know all these people that I’d been admiring from a distance. It’s always fun to chat with people you share interests with, and even more so with furries, as certain entirely unique things come up quite regularly that you’d never find anywhere else. The bar we were at had some Anthrocon themed specialty drinks, and the simple act of two of us ordering the same one led to this exchange.

“And what can I do for you?”

“Yiff me berry hard.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Yep, that happened. It was actually a pretty good drink. I didn’t order it just for the comedic value. It was hard cider with a shot or raspberry vodka. Sounded like something right up my alley. So much so that I had two of them. I was really relaxed by the end of that, probably because I’d had the equivalent of four drinks in a rather short span, but I handled myself pretty well. I saw Anyare on the way out and let her know how amazing her art is in what I’m really hoping was an articulate and non-creepy way. After that it was back to the zoo to check out a card game that Angrboda has been developing. It’s pretty much Card’s Against Humanity except a thousand times more awful because furries. It’s called “I Can’t Fap to This”. It follows the format of ‘Whoonu’ just with sexual kinks instead of innocuous subjects. Basically the cards all have things that you’d find in an FA keyword search and when it’s your turn everyone picks the one that they think you’re into. You rank them by how hot they make you and everyone learns way more about you than they ever probably wanted to know. It’s a very interesting experience to get all that stuff out in the open. Naturally Angrboda had something of an advantage because a lot of us were there because we were into what she’s into, but that just adds to the fun, really. As she puts it “If you like what I draw then that means that we’re into the same shit and we should totally hang out.”

We finally wound down and went our separate ways, mainly due to just outright exhaustion all across the board. As I walked back to the room I was starting to feel guilty about how I was about to wake everyone up at 1AM when I got back to head to bed. And of course when I got there the room was empty. I guess that means that everyone was having plenty of fun. The whole crew was there next door though, with the last-minute addition of Daom. So I went and hung out with them for a while, playing some Betrayal at the House on the Hill, a very interesting horror-themed strategy game. It’s one of those tabletop games that seems overcomplicated and takes some time to get into but is absolutely worth playing. The complexity means that you’re playing a radically different game every time. Very interesting.

What I was oblivious to for far too long was a very real suspenseful crisis happening a bit closer to home. Lucius called and asked if I’d like to join him down at the Sharper Edge for a drink. I hated to refuse, but I was in the middle of a great game and was pretty set on staying in by then. I didn’t want to get too far from a bed if at all possible. The message that I didn’t get was that this was some kind of coded distress signal. Went right over my head of course, since we hadn’t decided on a secret “I’m being mugged but can’t tell you that over the phone” code. I suppose we should have, given that I consistently fail to understand Lucius when he’s actually trying to say the thing that he’s trying to say.

Apparently Lucius had been out drinking and someone came up and got real friendly with him, buying him lots of drinks and such. Fortunately he wasn’t too drunk to recognize his new buddy’s efforts to lead him away from populated areas as a trap. When covert signaling failed, he went with the less elegant but much more effective “get outside and run away really fast” technique. It did indeed work, but left me playing Siri again to get Lucius back to the room from who-knows-where. Still, it ended well. An encounter you can run away from might not be as good as one you can walk away from, but it’s a lot better than one you can’t. I’m glad he was okay.

For those keeping score at home, Saturday at 01:30 I went to bed, at 07:00 I got up and my next encounter with a bed was at 03:30 on Sunday. And this is what I do to relax, apparently.

Sunday:

After a mercifully late morning I got down to the convention center to try my hand at Charades Impossible, wherein they torture fursuiters by giving them inhumanely difficult things to pantomime. It would appear that my level of exertion was actually rather subdued in comparison to the general populous, as very few people could manage to turn out at the crack of 10:30. Still, it was a really fun show. The small crowd made it a pretty relaxed atmosphere and it meant that I actually got a chance to go up on stage and cluelessly belt out a slurry of random words while some poor tiger tried to silently prompt me to say “The Battle of Trafalgar”.

Sunday was much less densely packed in terms of events (again, mercifully), so I headed back to see if there was anything going on at the room. I got back just in time for a spirited round of Munchkin. Great game. It mercilessly lampoons all the different tropes and clichés from Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and most every other nerd game. This is another one where the out of context quotes actually describe the event better than a full account.

*rolls dice* “Four! I’ve successfully evaded the chicken.”

“I’ve changed race a dozen times and become an elf more times than there are elf cards in the deck. What the hell is going on?”

“Broad Sword: Can only be equipped by women. … Pfffff-”

“ALL rules end with ‘Unless you don’t get caught doing it’.”

*flips card revealing a monster* “I got crabs.” “Oh yeah? Well I use this to steal your crabs!”

“There’s only one ability actually called ‘backstab’ but really just about every card that’s not armor or a monster is also backstab.”

So yeah, it’s certainly a uniquely absurd experience. Right at home in a furry con, really. After that it was another trip to the zoo to hang out with Angrboda and her crew from last night some more. Bluedude said that he was in the neighborhood so I invited him over to our table. Apparently he rolls deep because he brought like four other people over with him. I felt like the middle of a Venn diagram because none of these two groups knew each other and I’d just sort of unintentionally mashed them together. Still, it was nice that I could get people to come to me. I had a brief little “dance puppets, dance!” moment as we mingled a bit.

Time moved pretty quickly in that span, apparently. Soon Ang had to leave, and the end of the con had crept up on me before I knew it. I said my farewells to Bluedude and snuck off to one more panel. This was one that I felt I really had to check out, as it was something new and innovative. They pretty much did a writing version of Whose Line is it Anyway? They got a bunch of authors together and asked for suggestions from the audience. “Give me a genre, a species, a profession and a major life event!” and then they’d come up with a story on the spot that was “A crime drama about a ferret nurse who wins the lottery”. What really cinched it was the fact that they brought in a sketch artist to draw up the stories on a big easel as they were being composed. As you might’ve guessed, the results were pretty entertaining. A porcupine dangling on a rope from a flying houseboat, a high-stakes darts tournament to uncover the secret of the sidewinder snakes, all very good stuff. I suppose the only thing that I could say against it was that a scheduling problem led it to overlap with the closing ceremonies, which of course I then missed.

And then, just like that, the con was over. I’ve actually never had the privilege of witnessing the proper end of a con. I’ve always been under some manner of time pressure. Now being well and truly on my own schedule was something of a novel experience. A little bit of a letdown, wandering about and trying to figure out who hadn’t left yet. Worth doing though, certainly. Leaving pre-emptively was always kind of a void wherein I wondered what I was missing. At least with a chance to let the con wind down, I could actually get to the point where I felt like leaving before I had to leave.

I managed to get together with my neighbors from the Omni for dinner. We all had a good laugh about the custom boxes of goldfish crackers that showed up for LunarKeys in the interim. Apparently you can get Goldfish crackers with a personal photo and message on the box. So what were they to use but a picture of LunarKeys trapped in a box of Goldfish? In any case, we made it back down to the Sharper Edge for some food. It was a quiet meal, as a lot of the crowd had dissipated by then. A welcome relief to be sure. Rekzar couldn’t hide his indignation as we compared notes about our respective con experiences. He noticed the conspicuous wealth of name-dropping present in the summary of my weekend and felt compelled to comment rather candidly on it.

“What the hell man? How do you know everyone? It doesn’t make any sense.”

It hadn’t really occurred to me as being unusual. I’ve never really thought of myself as being popular or well-connected, but I guess in certain circles I know some people. I don’t really try to network or anything like that. I guess it’s just because I’m not shy about approaching people whose work I’m a fan of or who I recognize from the internet. I think it was explained to me best by one of the targets of my fan worship last year.

“You don’t want anything from me. Yeah sure, you’re here because you like my art, but never once have you asked for any, in fact it hardly even comes up in conversation. Yeah, lots of people know me and recognize me, but you wanted to spend some time here and get to know me. That’s not the kind of attention that I get very often.”

I think that attitude is common among artists, and that might be what makes my encounters so favorable with them even though I have hardly any sort of a following to speak of and could hardly call myself one of their peers. That’s not a bad spot to be in, really. I’d be glad to be just a friendly guy that lots of interesting people know and hang out with. This con was another very social one, probably even more so than last year. I don’t even want to go through the list of events that I missed in favor of spending time with people, but I think that it was time well spent.

I dropped by the zoo a couple more times, at first finding nothing of interest, but I’m glad that I kept at it because later on a few blips on the radar appeared. I got to see Clementine, who I’d somehow managed to miss throughout the rest of the con, and also to sit and chat some more with Wolflynx at a table that conveniently also contained Yawg, so I gave a quick shout out to him as well. My phrasing was “Hey, you’re Yawg, right? The founder of International Renamon Appreciation Day?” He said that he really appreciated that particular call-out. He said that he thought “Yes, now I have truly made my mark on the world.” Astonishingly enough it was actually still Sunday by the time I went back to the Omni to play some more games and decompress. Lucius came back from his visit to the Kellogg Ranch just in time to crash with us. I’m told that he had a simply magical time, as any visitor there does.

Monday:

Some running out of steam was evident all across the board, but fortunately there was nothing that required our attention urgently thanks to the Omni’s mercifully late check-out time. Those of us who remained went out for lunch before we had to head out. I came to realize that I was the one in the group with the most intact higher brain functions and soon became de-facto decision maker for when such scenarios called for it. Everyone else was pretty out of it. Once again, a sampling:

“Oh shit, this is alcoholic.” “Yeah, when I ordered a ‘Hard Root Beer’ and you said that you’d like one too, what did you think that meant?” So I got two root beers. ^_^

“Alright, let me review real quick. What did you order?” “I don’t remember.” That was Lucius, who had given the waiter his order last, literally seconds before that question was asked, and had not the vaguest idea what he himself had just said.

Fox was quiet and a little disengaged and LunarKeys was dazed and looking like he was cursing everything that’s ever happened to him ever, but I think that those states are just the respective default settings of those two; as ‘quiet bewilderment’ is for Lucius and ‘worldly cynicism’ is for LanHao. If my records here are anything to go by, my default state is ‘judgmental observation’. Oh well, they’re all entertaining and useful in their own ways. In any case, we survived that meal and were on our way. Goodbyes were short and simple. Once again I was reminded of what a gift it is to get to the point of actually wanting to leave before heading out. Lucius made a similar observation regarding our departure. He made numerous mentions of what a novelty it was that he wasn’t dreading the trip home for once. Instead of a return to drudgery, he had his own house with a friendly dog and adorable baby goats to return to. I think that’s a big part of what makes parting a little easier.

Once again the length of my prose broke FA, so click here for the thrilling conclusion if you'd like to hear about my adventures after the con.