Well, I’m leaving for Furthe’More tomorrow, so I’d better jam this report in fast. The short of it is that Furry Con is totally awesome and you should not only go to it in the future but also buy a time machine so that you can have already gone to it before.

Alright, as I may or may not have mentioned, the very creatively-named FurryCon happened right about the time school ended and it was conveniently just across the way in Rochester, so I made the convention part of my trip home. It was a tight fit in terms of schedule, but I couldn't very well pass up a con this close to home. I got a somewhat late start but it remained technically morning when I left campus. I expected that the con would've gained some momentum by the time I got there around 4 PM. Turns out I wasn't quite right about that. There was unquestionably a con going on at the time but the place remained eerily quiet. It was straight-up awkward being in the dealers' den because I was the only customer there. I'm pretty good about unusual social scenarios, but that vacuum of silence while a couple of the vendors try to plead to me with their eyes to buy some of their silicone horse penises was a little too much to bear. The first panel I went to ended up as a failure to launch without any word, but I just assumed I missed something with my being late to the party. The pattern became pretty clear though when I went to the next one and was the only audience member. There was just no one at the con even all the way at the end of the first day. It felt tragic to me, as this was a very nice venue and everything seemed to be in order with the setup and all. It felt kind of like a zombie movie, with that unnerving sense that this place should really have a whole hell of a lot more people in it.

Anyways, there was a late arrival who doubled the size of the viewing audience midway through the panel. I got to see some of the other side of my usual social shenanigans at cons when he decided that we were friends after chatting with me for a couple minutes. Hixbi Fox was a really lucky find, as day one was shaping up to be a real downer at first. With little else demanding my attention, I tailed Hixbi around as he attended to various things around the place. He seemed extraordinarily busy for someone operating out of a post-apocalyptic desolate afterscape. Apparently he was a big player in the Game of Con Chairs, an integral part of the convention's theme. When I heard about it I thought that having a whole con themed around Game of Thrones was uncannily specific, perhaps even unreasonably so, especially because that theme persists from year to year. I got to learn a lot about the mechanism of the game as I watched Hix do his thing. It's actually pretty interesting. Just about everything people usually do at a con (other than you know, room parties, drinking, and/or making out) is worth points towards the victory of your house. So you track panel attendance, spending at the Dealers' Den, participation in contests and games, and tally it all up. The victorious house has the chance to elevate one of their members to be the honorary con chair. I thought it was pretty cool now that I knew what it was all about. Hix seemed to be focused on one particular aspect of the competition, the War Room. There was a big map of Westeros splayed out on the table and the different factions were engaged in a turf war using a sort of 'Risk' mixed with 'Settlers of Cataan' resource management and combat game. Apparently there was a lot to it, as it was running the houses' leadership ragged.

After all the battle lines were properly drawn, we went back to Hixbi's room where he had still more work to do. I came to learn that he was a DJ, a real one though, not in the "I have a really killer setlist on my iPod so I'm totally a DJ" kind of way that you hear from everyone all the time. He had a pretty high-end setup, and I came to learn that he was good enough at using it to become musical guest of honor. That made it a little more clear as to why he seemed to have quite a lot on his plate. It was actually pretty cool watching him work. The mark of a real DJ is that they actually do mix their own music together instead of just playing recordings the whole time, and that's a pretty interesting process. The rotating phasors that he'd use to make sure that the beats of two tracks lined up properly were actually quite similar to the synchroscope that I'd previously used to parallel two AC sources onto the same distribution bus. I guess it's a pretty similar concept when you think about it. Also up in the room watching the magic happen were his friends, Tatu and Swiss Cheese, whom I also got to hang out with quite a bit. I tailed them all for a bit and later on things wound down, if you could ever say they'd been wound up in the first place, and I called it an early night.

Since I'd gotten a quick indoctrination to 'the Game' I figured I'd take the chance to learn it properly. Fortunately there was a panel for just such a thing on Saturday morning. Unfortunately it was also one of those panels that fell over and exploded on the launchpad, so I had to just wander around for a bit more. I checked in at the gaming room, something I don't usually do but I figured I might as well. I got to join in on Chrononauts, a very clever time-travel themed card game that I got into rather quickly. It's kind of fun to be planning things out and saying "Okay, I can fix this, all I need to do is assassinate Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, then un-assassinate JFK, and make sure that the Hindenburg doesn't launch due to a forecast of bad weather." As you might expect, crippling temporal paradoxes are quite common in that game. The fursuit parade that afternoon was far better populated than I thought it would be. Apparently we've tapped a small but rather high-enthusiasm demographic with this one. What crowd had gathered that day all vanished right before the parade, making me worry that it was going to be nothing but a token attendance as well. It turned out that everyone disappeared before the parade to be in the parade, so that was pretty much the best way that could’ve gone. I saw more people in the parade than I think I saw at any other location at any time during the con. And so of course that made for quite a good time.

After that I got into the Super Smash Bros tournament and won second somehow, which was a pleasant surprise to say the least. Up next was a delightful romp called “Why I Hate the Fandom”. I was on the fence about it because listening to one person complain gets old really fast. I was so glad to find out that that wasn’t the format. It was actually a round-table sort of discussion wherein each person gets their chance to take the floor and answer the titular question. It was a lot of fun hearing all those different voices and getting to connect with people, very cathartic and engaging. It’s really great to know that there are people who feel the same way you do. It’s very isolating when there’s something that really pisses you off and you think that it’s just you that it really bothers.

They definitely picked the right panel to host next to the free booze though. Group complaining is a great activity for when you’re hammered. Oh also there was totally free booze. I was skeptical when I’d heard that was an offering. I didn’t know that furries could survive in an environment where free liquor was being offered. I always thought that if that were the case they’d drink enough to reach their flashpoint and blow the whole place up. In my conception of the world, the fact that all furries are broke as hell was the only thing that kept them from amassing enough alcohol to reach critical mass. Apparently they made it work here though. I noted that the free drinks were limited to frozen drinks only, which I thought was clever. There are a couple noteworthy hard caps on how fast you can pound down a slush drink. Ice cream headaches will cut through even the strongest buzz and let you know to take it easy. They’d probably just mix them light, I thought, and give people a way to have fun without destroying themselves. Yes, I had a number of misconceptions about how this was handled before I tried one of these drinks. Turns out they had so much rum in them that they wouldn’t even freeze properly. I don’t know the exact proportions, but you’ve gotta hit it pretty hard before the freezing point of the water drops below the capabilities of the slushie machine. They were fucking delicious too, it was a match made in heaven. Naturally I made it through about 1.7 of those things before I had to go lie down. I wasn’t really all that drunk, but I’d put them down fast enough that I got very close to throwing up. So yeah, the slushies were very clearly not to be trifled with. And also free. I don’t think I can stress enough how buckfuck insane it was that free drinks were a thing. Not only that it happened, but that it happened without punching a hole in spacetime.

There were a few more panels later that night, but by then I’d gotten together with Tatu’s crew, namely Smidget and Battsaults. We’d had an extremely unlikely encounter with the Blue Angels, who were actually really excited to hang out with us. For those of you who are wondering, yes, it was the real Blue Angels, the professional performance fighter pilots. They were in town for an airshow and thought that the crazy animal people looked like the most fun they’d seen all week. We took tons of photos and showed them around the place. A few of them even got day-passes so that they could see all of the convention spaces, as if we’d really turn away such honored guests.

The wedding that was there got some damned interesting photos for their cherished memories box. Very few others can boast cartoon animal people AND fighter pilots in the same photoshoot. We got a very drunk game of Cards Against Humanity going eventually. It was a lot of fun despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that most of us had only half a heartbeat’s worth of attention span and were physically incapable of lowering our voices by then. I forget what it was exactly, but one of the cards that I played made the captain who was in our game just throw up his hands and run off. I’m not sure if that’s an achievement necessarily, because their willingness to put up with all our weird bullshit was what made hanging out with them so fun. Still a fun night though. I didn’t feel like I drank a lot, but I woke up with a phone in my pocket that didn’t belong to me, so I guess what I did drink got the job done. I don’t know if you’ve ever started the day bewildered by an unfamiliar ringtone coming from your pants and stumbling over to them to figure out what the hell is going on, but it’s really not a bad way to be.

First up on Sunday was the Dominion tournament. That’s a really cool deck-building, territory-gathering game that I’ve been a fan of for a really long time. I don’t see it too often, so I was really excited to see a tournament for it. We had a lot of fun playing, even though I kind of dicked up the last round with a really exploitative combo with one of the new cards from the expansion. Ah well, you do what you’ve gotta do though. It netted me first place. I actually stuck around and did a bunch more tabletop games to make up for the misery I put them through. Pretty good times all around. There was an Atari tournament that I knew I’d have pretty much no skill at, but it’s hilarious to watch games be played on a 30 year old console. The struggle is a lot of fun, even though of course most the games are objectively crap. It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for games. I got booted out of that competition in the first round, but still had lots of fun.

They had a talent/variety show thing that brought a lot of interesting stuff to the stage. Fun fursuit shenanigans I had expected, but I had no idea that the fandom had ties to so many talented animators. In all I got quite a lot done for an event that got off to such a slow start. I like to think that all the winnings I contributed at the end of the day helped the cause of my house’s bid for the throne, but I didn’t get to stick around for the results of the game. Still, I’ll call it time well spent. I actually was disappointed to say goodbye to everyone and leave as early as I did, and I think that’s a good sign. I hadn’t planned to leave until Monday, but my mom had called and told me that they’d like to have me for ceremonies and the parade on Memorial Day. That’s an early morning engagement, so I had to cut a fair amount of time from the end. I’ve been a part of the ceremonial firing squad with my American Legion post for a little while now, and I think that’s been a very worthy use of my time. I had a fair deal of contempt for all of my time that had been wasted by military nonsense, but this the kind of ceremonial stuff that I can really get behind.

So, final thoughts on FurryCon then. I know that I complained a lot, and yeah, there were a lot of things about this experience that gave me an objectively negative impression. There was a general lack of enthusiasm and motivation that I picked up on. Half a dozen panels that I’d meant to go to never materialized, and it was really tough to find people to hang out with and fill in the time. Realistically though, absolutely none of those are the fault of the convention itself. The tragedy that I found here was that FurryCon has everything that a great convention needs, with the exception of an audience. All throughout it I saw a very hardworking and attentive staff, all of whom clearly wanted very badly for this to work and for us to have fun. The Con Game itself was basically a plea saying “Please! Come out and do all these fun things we set up for you! Help us make this con come alive!” You got nice, tangible rewards for just showing up and being a part of the con. Those tournaments that I won? I actually got medals for those. Honest to God medals hanging from ribbons around my neck. I had to put them away after awhile because the jingling was driving me insane. They had free booze at the dance and a full service bar if you didn’t like the slushies. The movie lounge was right next to a dazzling array of free snacks and drinks. They even made hot dogs, chili and nachos and real, substantial food, also for free! There was a pool party with a barbeque outside that was totally great AND ALSO FREE. I don’t think I paid for any food the whole time I was there. It was glorious how accommodating these people were. Any one of these things would’ve been a laughable impossibility at any other convention, and yet they had it all. There’s nothing you could’ve asked of these poor, hard-working people that they hadn’t already provided. It is just heartwrenching to me to see an event that’s so good be so poorly attended.

I’m having to grasp at straws to explain the as-always-unnerving and baffling lack of people. Could be the area. Lots of cons are either the only game in town or are in a location where there are literally ten million people within an hour’s drive. I don’t think that Rochester is that desolate though. The ease with which I came across the ‘Upstate New York Furries’ group suggests that there’s a market there. Maybe it’s the advertising. It’s a relatively new con, tracing its roots all the way back to 2012. I’ve observed cold-start problems like that working with Furthe’More. People who lived in Baltimore had no idea that it was going on the first year. Now that FTM has gotten itself established and the name is out there that convention is spreading like kudzu. We were worried that moving the con would stifle our audience, but the numbers that we’re seeing just in preregistration are so much larger than we anticipated it’s starting to create cramps in our budget. So yeah, notoriety could be the problem, I guess. I’ve lived a stone’s throw away from Furry Con and I only heard about it recently.

It seems like a catch-22 of the world we live in, really. The con’s size is what keeps it from growing. No one comes and does all the fun stuff they have, so no one hears about it. Attendance is low so they can’t leverage for better rates on the rooms to attract more attendance. I don’t think that a convention can endure very long with this kind of half-assed constituency, even if the staff is out there moving heaven and earth to make it happen. So if you want my ultimate takeaway from the con, I don’t want you to go to it. I NEED you to go to it. I need you to come and just validate all the earnest, thankless work these people are doing just to see someone come and have some fun. I need you to stop this wonderful little place where they’re doing absolutely everything right from going all to pieces just because of some stupid market forces bullshit. I need you to prove that something like this really can exist, and by extension, validate that we might just live in some kind of a just and righteous world.

I liked it, is what I’m saying.