Ah yes. Time once again to regale my adoring public with tales of my blind and ill-advised stumblings through the weird and wild world of the furry subculture. I'm not certain why these remain so popular. It's not often fun to listen to someone who clearly has no idea what they're doing broadcast all their mistakes, but I've carved out my niche so I guess I'd best sit in it. The process is a lot simpler these days what with my rich Uncle Sam still paying my bills, but no longer holding my leash. I finished the day's classes and exerted myself mightily pushing the thought of the upcoming Statistics exam the following week out of my head. From there I just had to throw my duffel bag into the car, lie to everyone about where I was going and drive off into the sunset. Of course thanks to my foolish and anachronistic commitment to actually attending all of my classes here the sun had already vacated its position by the time I was off on my incredible journey, but that's neither here nor there.

My departure time did concern me somewhat though. I've learned from experience that late on a Friday afternoon ("prevening" I believe is the more accurate term) is the point at which the roads surrounding the capital district are overrun by slavering hordes of road warriors who fear neither God nor man, nor the concrete walls on either side of them that they seem intent on intimidating with the sheer ferocity of their navigational tactics. Fortunately though, no portion of this particular swarm of angry hornets is intent on traveling to Connecticut, so I went largely unmolested on my drive and arrived at ground zero of the Furpocalypse relatively unmolested. Whether I'd stay unmolested once there was another matter entirely, but that's par for the course in this environment.

The convention hotel had sold out long before I thought to dig up a place to lay my head for this. So my first stop was to check in at a nearby Super 8 that was doing its damndest to imitate the dormitory environment that I had become recently accustomed to. Archaic heating system, comically small floorplan, shower that alternates between "deathray" and "liquid nitrogen", thin walls with the other rooms filled with kids in their early 20s doing everything but sleep in their rooms... yeah, if they'd had some pest control problems they would've had the whole package. Very homely. Anyways, I headed out to the actual con without delay. Too bad I'd already missed the bulk of Friday's events. Still, it was where I came here to be, so I'd best be there, for better or for worse. I got in just under the wire for registration, which was a great convenience. The guy issuing my badge said that he recognized me. I was intrigued since that's not an accusation that I get terribly often. Apparently he's going to be my boss when Furthe'More next comes around. I don't envy him that. Many great men have cringed at the idea of being made responsible for me. Of course the average con staff is made up almost entirely of maverick renegades with naught but scorn for any sort of structure or authority. Perhaps I'd fit right in. Only time will tell.

I managed to catch the tail end of a fursuit wedding between Halla and Logarth after I made it into the con proper. Quite a whimsical and uplifting occasion, to be sure. I'm glad that I took the time to stop by. Shocker was that it was a woman and a man marrying each other, as the ancient legends speak of. Nice to get a little reminder that I'm not the only one, no matter the statistics and assumptions at play. The only remaining event that held any interest for me that day was the trivia competition. I'd never been to anything like that at a con, so I figured I'd have a go at it. I signed on with the first team that said they were taking newcomers, as is the way with all prudent and responsible decisions. We took on the challenge with great enthusiasm. It was pretty competitive for awhile. I was on top of a lot of the questions due to my skills with the science and some niche interests. They got a bit too much into dated pop culture references though and we started flagging. Still, furries make pretty much anything fun, and I had a great time the whole way through. After that I was turned loose to wander this level of the maze without an objective or any form of structure. It often doesn't feel productive, but it's worth doing, I've found. I did my standard thing of hitting up a few artists that I recognized by their FA names. Some like that and some don't, but I still feel I ought to give out the requisite props when I find someone that does some good work. Mostly indeterminate reactions, really, but it was far too early to call it a night.

I astonish myself quite regularly with how gregarious I become when I'm at a con, but I still feel like I need a starting point. That was the problem here. Furpocalypse is a small and pseudo-new convention, so I knew essentially no one that was there. Even in a social pinball machine environment like a convention, I still tend to feel like I need an in with people in order to really make a proper connection without it being awkward or disruptive. It doesn't have to be much of one though. I grabbed onto K2 with basically the premise of "Hey, person I've met once ever who barely remembers me! We should hang out!" Astonishingly enough that actually worked and I soon had someone to talk to, a number of someones, actually. K2 was in full suit still, and so eventually she struck out into the world to do whatever popular people who actually have friends do when they're off being well-known and... happy or whatever. She did drop a couple nice people in my lap on her way out though. I got to talking with Sparky and Donovan and that actually went on for quite awhile. Charming folks, really. We got to sit and have it out about anything under the sun. NomCrunch came by and I invited him over to join in as well. It was nice to have a chance to slow down a bit and get things straightened out as we chatted. I hit them up for a bit of witty banter a number of times throughout the con and had quite a good time doing so. It's really easy to get along with people in a high-energy environment like that where everyone's having so much fun, and I'm quite grateful for that.

I knew that weekend cons tend to load up Saturday quite heavily, so I turned in early that night. I've learned many times that being the man in the room with the most working higher brain functions is often quite a lot of fun, so Friday night was a good opportunity for me to pull ahead early in that department. Plus I still haven't broken my habit of waking up rather early. At this rate I may never do so. Next semester's class schedule is pretty heavily front-loaded as well. In any case, I was awake the next morning in plenty of good time for Saturday Morning Cartoons, an event that seems to pop up at every con these days. Not that I mind. There usually isn't a damn thing happening from 8 to 10 in the morning, and you often find a lot of like-minded people there, since getting up early is a litmus test for a lot of different personality traits. Then of course there are the people who hadn't been to bed yet from the previous day, which as I mentioned before, are an entirely different kind of fun. So, once the nostalgia breakfast was over I thought I'd try out the hookah panel. I've known a lot of people who are into that, so I figured I'd get the lowdown on the tech since there was still not much else going on. That one was going pretty smoothly and seemed interesting enough, but then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Yes, in what has apparently become something of a tradition, there was a fire alarm. So, surprise trip outside for everyone! It’s quite a sight to see several dozen cosplayers and suiters being shuffled off the premises just ahead of a haggard mob who were obviously just awakened by this event. It was about 10:30 by then, so I had a rapidly dwindling measure of sympathy for those who were still cringing at the stark and merciless light of day. I felt like I was being overly pessimistic when I threw my heavy coat in the car before leaving, but soon had it, and my smug sense of superiority, to keep me warm as we all waited around in the parking lot for the all-clear to come through. It was an astonishingly well-organized affair, with the crowd being easily nudged about and directed away from whatever emergency operations were going on. "Responsible" and "cooperative" are not often words that furries find themselves exemplifying. In fact some of the charm of the movement lies in a general lack of those things.

This particular evacuation was smooth as butter, though. The fire department was baffled when they got the report of a fire at a hotel filled with furries and arrived to find the place looking like anything other than a warzone. I mean, we did call the event "Furpocalypse". That would seem to be a pretty clear statement of intent when looked at objectively. They arrived though, to find the hotel in perfect order, and in fact, not on fire. Not even a little. There was a sensor in a little-used staff bathroom that was either faulty or responding to someone's nicotine habit in that area, and so none of this particular adventure was even our fault. Pleasant surprises all around that morning. Clearly the hands of fate wanted me out of the hookah panel, so I elected to forage for food in lieu of returning to it. I knew that I'd have to make a point of it, as I often stop feeling hungry for days at a time when I go to a con. There's just too much going on to worry about petty trivialities like the basic necessities of life. I probably ate maybe three actual meals that whole weekend, and that was the result of some not-insignificant application of willpower. I'd really hate to be one of those guys that just runs on fumes until they crash out, but I understand their predicament a little better with every con I attend.

Next up was an interesting event put on by Joe Strike, an alligator who has taken it upon himself to chronicle the furry experience from an insider’s perspective, sort of like a certain amateur writer that we all know and love. I really liked the premise of this panel and I knew that I had to attend. It was called "I'm not the only one!" and really the title says it all. It's about that one story that every furry has when they discovered the maelstrom of cartoon animals and dangerously stifling costumes that they are presently swept up in. Joe did the panel as research for a book that he's writing called Furry Nation. It's about the furry fandom's origins and development through the past couple decades. His publisher said that there ought to be more testimonials and personal stories from the furries themselves in the book, so he set out to collect some. Clever framing device that he used to gather all these data points, too. That "I'm not the only one" story is a very seminal and defining moment for one's personal experience with the fandom, and judging by the attendance at the panel, it's a tail (HAH!) that plenty of people were willing to tell; myself included, of course. I was trying to collect a few remarks together that I thought might be useful, but then the phrasing of Joe's question threw me off a little.

"What was the gateway drug that first got you into the fandom?"

And then of course, with the tape rolling and everything, I bowed to a very destructive instinct of mine that I doubt I'll ever break myself of. I said exactly what I was thinking.

"What got me hooked on this? Oh, porn! No doubt."

I thought an opener like that would place me in something of an awkward position whilst delivering the amplifying details of my response, but my candor actually earned applause from those assembled. Quite an encouraging response from something that I went a bit out on a limb to say. Joe seemed very interested in my response and he made certain to get my name and my blessing to use the content of my response, so I guess we'd better look out for the release of that book. The occasion of my words first appearing in print for real may happen a lot sooner than I thought it would.

After the panel, chaos theory managed to bring me into the company of Baron Von Jackal just in time for us to get some good seats for the fursuit parade. He's someone who was recommended to me by a friend, and for obvious reasons we have a couple things in common, so I pinged him on FA when I found out that he was there at the con. Good thing I have the blue labcoat to make me stand out in the crowd a little or that probably wouldn't have gone so smoothly. For once it fit the theme, even. "Department of Research and Advancement" definitely sounds like something that ought to just be bursting with labcoats, so that was nice. In any case, I sat with the Baron and his girl JulySporkyFox, and anyone else who happened to come by. In the course of the fursuit parade we managed to give out over six pounds of candy to the people coming by us. Quite an impressive feat given that our customers prevailingly lacked either thumbs or pockets, occasionally both, resulting in a rather suspect capacity to hold candy.

There was a lull before the dance competition, and I was having fun with the crew that had amassed at our table in the zoo, so I hung around there for quite some time. I guess my inactivity had angered some of the vengeful spirits that Hallow's Day (Well it's after Hallow's Eve. That makes sense, right?) had stirred up. As I sat at the table and mound my own business, I found a ceiling tile in my lap all of a sudden. A rather startling change given that the atrium where the zoo is has ceilings that are about 30 feet up. Had the table I was sitting at not bravely interceded into the missile's trajectory I might have had a very different take on the experience. As it was I just had a handful of ancient drop ceiling detritus and hopefully-not-asbestos to clean off me and all was well. Once again, wearing a labcoat proved exceedingly practical in this scenario. I think it freaked out the other people at the table a lot more than it did me. They ran off to get maintenance and kept asking if I was going to be okay, to which I could only respond "Uh, yeah. It missed. Had it not missed, you would know."

The staff that came by knocked down a couple other loose tiles with disturbing ease to try and stop this sort of thing from happening again. That ceiling did look to be in a state of noteworthy disrepair. I’m forced to wonder if they let us have the con here because they’re in a particularly desperate financial state. There was even the shift manager was there on damage control duty. I could tell that she was worried about me making this a big problem for them, but I had no intention of making a big fuss over it. If I'd actually been staying at the hotel I might've weaseled my way through that process to get comp'd a night or two, but as it was I didn't see any need to press the issue. I'm not the kind of jackass that demands a cash settlement for my "suffering and emotional duress" if any little thing goes wrong. Now granted, I would've been all up in their business if the metal brackets on that thing had lacerated my wrist, as they came within inches of doing. That didn't happen though, so it's all good. Still, it motivated me to seek shelter in the main ballroom where, conveniently enough, the dance competition was being held. It was a blast, as always. I can't even name names as there were just so many amazing performers. I'm always awed by the talent and dedication that's on display there. I've never been much a fan of dancing in most any theater, but I'm tremendously grateful that someone prompted me to check out a dance competition once. These days I never miss them! Like I said, furries make everything fun.

Next up was a character development panel hosted by IronGut. Characterizations and dialogue have always been some of my strong points, so it’s not like that aspect of my writing really needs work. Astute observers will note that much of my work is character-driven. Sometimes even just taking the form of simply reviewing the events that occur in the course of a trip taken by a certain particularly dashing and gregarious leading role. Still, the panel was about developing OC's and fursonas as well, which I thought to be plenty interesting enough to merit my attention. I got there about halfway through, but I got involved in the discussion there quite easily. Everyone had a story to tell, obviously, because we gathered a bunch of storytellers together in the same room, but it all went very smoothly and made for an energetic and supportive atmosphere as we all exchanged ideas and advice. The co-host there was Lurdanjo, the former half of a dynamic duo that includes Libra, an artist I've held in high esteem for some time. They appeared to be on a tight schedule, but I made time to do the fanboy thing before they ran off and made sure to keep an eye out for them as I went about my business during the rest of the con.

We ended up running way long in time, always a good sign. Fortunately the thing that we ran into next was another writing panel, so there wasn't really any need for either party to chase the other off with sticks. Lago, the new helmsman, took over without a hitch, and we started to share the different projects that we were working on. Most of them took the form of "I've got this silly thing I'm working on that's not really worth much" followed immediately by everyone loving it. Very nice atmosphere to work in. My turn to talk about my work wasn't quite like that. Oh, it wasn't that people weren't supportive, it was that I knew that what I had was good and I couldn't wait to tell them all about it. Not as much of a Cinderella story, really. More like: "I'm awesome. What I write is awesome. Here, let me tell you about it." Which is just as good at getting the point across, and it showcases my well-known senese of humility.

The night ended, as it often does, with some improv comedy. Xiris was kinda drunk and really looked like she didn't want to be there, but she loosened up a but as the night went on. The energy for that event really comes from the room anyways, so it went pretty well. I came up with some good stuff and had a ton of fun like usual. Nothing quite like making an ass of yourself in front of a crowd. Hell, that could be a summary of a whole lot of furry activities. Once I had finally run out of events, and out of Saturday, I wandered the convention floor some more. I ran into Diezel and caught up with him a bit. He'd hit the 'Diezel fuel' pretty hard by then, so he was quite fun for awhile, but soon the cold forced me back inside, where I found my dear friends that I'd just met for the first time the day prior. We talked for a long time, the conversation gathering and losing participants at intervals as public gatherings are wont to do. Among those to pass within my purview, Balloonpup and Tanek made enough of an impression on me that their names stuck with me, so congrats guys! You're memorable! The general tone of the night (morning) is best summarized by a certain particular exchange on the occasion of Daylight Savings:

"Hey, the clocks just reset back to 1AM!"
"Does that mean the bar is open again?"
"Dunno. We should check."

In any case, I survived that somehow and got to bed at some unholy hour that I don't recall. (un)fortunately the worst/best of it was over by then. I still managed to get it together at 10 on Sunday for Joe Strike's next panel wherein he presented some of his other findings about the history of anthropomorphism and furry culture. Fascinating stuff, really. Lots of highly sexualized ads from Europe feature furry characters. I guess it's no wonder that furry is big over there too. The wealth of information that he had really made me want to buy his book when it comes out, which I suppose was the point. Well played, reptile.

The fursuit games were a lot of fun, though in some ways they were victims of their own popularity. There were a lot of fursuiters in a relatively confined space, which complicated the already rather precarious business of conducting sports with teams composed entirely of mascots. Musical chairs was really more of a conga line with how tightly packed everyone was. Though I was really impressed with how they managed to make that loop into a figure-eight criss-crossing in middle without sparking a potentially lethal calamity. Against all odds everyone was fine at the end of the game, and even allegedly had quite a bit of fun.

After that, straight back to writing because that's what I do. Kjorteo had a lot of useful advice to share, useful enough that it attracted Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the previous day and I got to chat with them some more. There was some very interesting content both in the panel and in the interactions that followed. Apparently Libra's meteoric rise to his present state of internet celebrity and ability to monetize furry art was due in large part to the managerial skill and devious, cutthroat business acumen of his new master/talent promoter, Lurdanjo. I could see why that synergy made such a big difference when I talked to them. I know that Libra has talent just leaking out of his ears, that's the whole reason that I wanted to meet him, but he's a much more subdued personality than his popularity demands. Enter the new cornerman, Lurdanjo, a writer with all the passion, drive and cunning that I've come to associate with the craft. They make a hell of a pair together. They're going places, I know it.

Soon enough, we moved our conversation to the next writing panel. It was about worldbuilding, but with an interesting twist. It went beyond even just the setting, and actually started with the design of the planet itself. We could've kept Randall Munroe busy for a year and a half with all the What If scenarios we were trying out in there. It was fascinating stuff, and there were quite a few of us that brought some real-science muscle to the table to fill out the discussion. I'd been complemented a few times on my technical acumen at various points during the con, and all I could say was "Well of course I do lots of science. Do you think that they let just anybody have a labcoat?" I and the Wondertwins with me were engaged enough that we even sat down with Kyroraz and Tsune Shikoi afterwords to have at that subject a bit more. Kyro actually said that he'd meant to get into settings and more small-scale stuff as the panel progressed, but there was such enthusiasm for all the early planetary design stuff that before he could broach the next subject he'd already used up 150% of his time and people were there to kick us out. Too much enthusiasm for the topic? Unacceptable. Kyro, get on that!

That really was a fun crew to chat with though. There's just so much to talk about that you can't help but follow up on such things. Lurdanjo is a big fan of Artificial Intelligence. Really big. It's practically the first thing that you'll learn about him when you meet him. So that drove the conversation in some really interesting directions. To call him a lover of AIs is an understatement. He actually seems pretty sore at the lack of friendly, helpful AIs in science fiction. Someone at the panel heard that and did exactly what I was going to do and recommended Freefall to him. Such a shame I didn't have a chance to follow up with that guy after the panel. Meeting another Freefall fan just by providence is an astronomically rare event. I ought not let it slip through my fingers again. In any case, Lurdanjo had trouble getting past how stupid Helix is, which I suppose I understand. He's almost unsettlingly serious about AI, so I can see how the opening tone of the comic would push him away from it. I'm probably going to keep pushing it on him though. Anyone who's this passionate about building brains needs to read Freefall. He's a pretty sharp writer too, so maybe some of that desire on my part is just my wanting to see what he'd think of Donna. I think he'd be really impressed. That's my legendary humility talking again, I suppose.

After that there was a gap in the schedule, which was fortunate as that was about the time I realized that I had lost my notes. My labcoat earned itself a lot of points this con, and then lost nearly all of them with its unreliable pockets. That little memo pad that I had in there contained a lot of the collected knowledge I'd gained from all these writing panels I keep finding myself in, as well as just about anything else I thought was worthy of remembering. Quite a distressing loss to be sure. Retracing one's steps at a furry con is a tall order, but I really needed my notes. How in the hell am I supposed to do science without notes? No luck. I didn't have much hope for it regardless. If it had gone missing in the maelstrom that was the con hotel, there probably wasn't much hope for it. I did have the sense to check back at the Super 8 though, where it actually had turned up in the lobby and they had it at the front desk. And as I savored my tiny but insurmountably meaningful victory, I realized that it was time for closing ceremonies.

Judging by the stats I heard them throw around, I'd say that Furpocalypse is here to stay. They seem to be really on top of their game, and even with the burden of a somewhat messy reboot hanging over the con they put on a really great show. They saved their best innovation for last though. For their Dead Dog, they just buy a bunch of pizza and drinks and have a social in the ballroom. That's a fantastic idea! One of the problems with a weekend con is that they tend to burn out really fast at the end. Even with by apparent superpower for acquiring new contacts in a place where I know absolutely no one, I tend to run out of familiar faces very quickly at the end of the weekend. Having a place for people to meet one last time before everyone takes off is very useful. I managed to follow up with just about everyone before everyone had to run. I managed to find plenty enough people to keep me going late into the night before I made my own escape. There's a whole bunch of work that didn't get done in my absence, but I had a TON of fun. Five stars. Would buy again. That being said, I find a lot of my work still strangely not getting done still, even though I’ve been at my computer for hours. I suppose I should get on that instead of talking in fine detail about all the not-work I've been doing.