Big summary of FE 2025 droppin' in!

Had a blast seeing everybody who was there! Got to go have some food with a few peeps, and attend some panels/stuff. Kinda wish I could go back in time and re-experience more of the panels and game stuff that we missed at the con while catching the Looney Tunes movie and doing general walking/subway/mall stuff around Toronto. But there's always next year.

After the initial afternoon train ride, I met up with the boyf  darcin7 at union station, and we had a walk over to the hotel and checked in, registered for the con (we both went sponsor this year to skip the big lines and make it easier) and got settled into the hotel, before going to the room I grabbed sponsor stuff early to avoid the large lines while Darsen waited in elevator con, and then I was left in elevator con line alone panicked because I did not know our floor or room number yet and the WIFI was spotty and I wasn't getting Darsen's messages. As I inched closer to the elevator, just in the nick of time the internet reconnected and I got the info as I sweated cartoonish bullets. After that we smoothly unpacked, set up the switch dock stuff and had some chill time.
We then headed out to union to scout out some quick dinner. Eventually we grabbed a bite from a Shake Shack and hung out at the union food court for a bit of that Thursday evening as we met with  hardhatninja,  alphazeron and  i8cherrypie. As we all headed back to the hotel, we grabbed some food supplies for the con at a nearby Longo's and parted ways. Dem (hardhatninja) popped by our room later that night to do some rounds of Smash Ultimate, and I got in a little bit of ipad work.

On Friday morning Darsen met up with  cappuccino at reg as they got ready to do artist alley and got unpacked in the hotel. We then went to catch the tail end of the opening ceremonies, grabbed some Tim's, and had a walk around the con while waiting for sponsor early access dealer den to open. Things were still getting sorted out at a few booths, so Darsen waited in line for his stuff while I did a walk around and browsed the already prepared booths a bit. After which we walked around together and grabbed some swag, then departed to check out the panel rooms a bit. We caught a little of the tail end of the Corgicam's vtuber panel while I made plans to meet up with Tiggs and Diz for lunch.
Later we hung out at Swiss Chalet with  lonetiggs,  dizfoley, and  bcbreakaway where Diz proceeded to chug gallons Swiss Chalet sauce from a tube connected to their main supply while the staff all screamed in horror. We had a pleasant meal otherwise.
We split up with them as they went to get some Beavertails (the pastry), as we had to run up to the room to prepare to head downtown for the movie. We ended up taking a Lyft that narrowly got us to the theatre around 6:55pm, hurrying up escalators just in time for the 6:50pm showing while the preview trailers still rolled. On the way back from the movie, the food places at the mall were already closed but we spotted an Arcanine plush in the closing Treehouse Toys store. We planned to return there the next day and took the subway back, but we'd unfortunately missed most panels like cutthroat artist, the 3ds streetpass meet and monster hunter boardgame being preoccupied by the movie adventure. We had gone to the hotel bar to sit down and grab a bite, but at that point I was falling asleep and was just too tired to eat and headed back up to the room early. Darsen finished up his food and joined me later, and we ended up spending the rest of the evening resting/relaxing.

On Saturday, me and Darsen went to pick up Pokemon plushies and check out the mall a bit to browse, the ice cream place we'd went to in September had sadly closed and been replaced so we headed back on the subway and on the way back sat down for a meal at Kinton Ramen with Ron -  cappuccino, Priscilla -  priscillasheep, Selis -  selissculpts, Tolerain -  misstakemushroom, and  fouzoul, afterwards we headed back to the con and went with Ron to attend the Inflatable Monster Beasts panel where we bumped into Dem again and took a bunch of pictures with all the various puffed up beasts. Afterwards, me and Darsen went to check if anyone was in the Richmond Sketch Hall (barely anyone was in here all con every time we checked) and after finding it mostly quiet we went back to the two dealer dens for a moment and split up while did another coffee run for Ron. I went and said hellos to  teaselbone and grab some prints, as we spoke a wild large green  duncan loomed behind me poking a bit at my badge and I snagged a pic of the Roo. Also went and poked  catmonkshiro and also said hi to a gooey  aver-art for  derricksoderberg. Leaving shortly thereafter to meet up again with Darsen as we went downstairs and quietly sat down a bit late at the TF Tuesday Podcast hosted by  Zilepo and  K-Libra, bumping into Tiggs there coming in late after us. Unfortunately we had to dip out for the rest of it because we had to put away some stuff in the room and figure out dinner plans. We caught a bit of the tail end of Teaselbone's Freelance panel and got to see some shading tips and Q/A on his art process which was fun, I wanted to catch the start of it but we had ended up being asked to watch someone's stuff when we sat down in the mostly empty Sketch Hall at Dockside 4 and they didn't return for at least 15-20 minutes as the room filled up with other artists. Drew a small godzilla style kaiju in a random person's sketchbook that was left out on the table with a note and I also doodled a quick hypno sketch for Darsen, we then said hello to  fireboy224 who came by to see me and then we spent the rest of the evening climbing stairs up to the 15th floor because the elevator line was packed and we were so tired from the climb that we napped a bit early, got hotel room service pizza. My legs were to jello to go back down and do any of the night panels so we just stayed in bed and played small board games we packed with our stuff (one of which was missing a piece weirdly despite being freshly opened and unused.)

It was finally Sunday and our final day of con together, and the three of us went down after packing our stuff up for noon checkout and grabbed morning cafe drinks, before me and Darsen took one last look at the Dealer Dens to get any last minute stuff. We ran into the StarFox cosplayer there and got a pictures with them, as well as Tiggs and Dem again shortly after. I decided the rest of that day would be spent drawing in the Dockside 4 Sketch Room all Sunday until the TF Meet/Greet,  foxlightning came by in suit around noon with their mate  xx2tailsxx dm'ing me that they there, we waved them both over and took some pics and chatted for a bit. Slowly more artists/friends trickled into the room to draw. But it was close to Darsen's departure time so I went up with him to stay our bittersweet goodbyes with lots of blown kisses and hand heart gestures and sad puppies being crushed into tear dust and scattered into the wind. I then headed back down to the sketch room full of artists where a suspicious blue dog named "Barkley" came by and sat down to say hello again while heavily complimenting the inks I was working on for Tiggs. (Totally not a tiger in disguise.)

At the TF Meet and Greet I initially sat down at a table with a few others, including  gabrielmoon (in full horse suit) and everyone got shuffled around to various tables to chat about various TF topics. At the feral table I don't recall everyone who was there but I saw FoxLightning, Diz, Tiggs, and a few others were there as we went around the table and introduced ourselves figuring out what kind of species TFs each of us prefer. I shared a bit of my art and after a bit of chat moved over to the Pokemon TF table to meet some fresh faces, I got to say hello and chat a bit with  sagimewtwo, StormyFennec, happyshiba and a few others. Near the end of the meet I moved back over to the centre table again to say hi again to  forepawz, Diz & Zilepo and Taya(Fireboy224). (If you were there at the meet or anywhere else at the con and said hello and I missed your handle here let me know and I'll edit you in!)

Returning to the sketch room, I bumped into TowerHyena ( verace) who I'd seen previously at FE2019 who doodled away in my sketchbook once again.  i8cherrypie sat next to me to work in their own sketchbook while more artists shuffled in and filled the room. I got up a bit to walk around and see some of the other artists work, said hellos to  curious~red~fox &  theother-side, GnastyStuff and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head, before I sat back down and got my sketchbook doodled in by critterdome shortly before my ride arrived to pick me up from the hotel. I got very lucky and got to say goodbye in person and give a hug to Ron(cappuccino) before heading out and loading my stuff to finally head home. And thus FE2025 came to a close.

All in all it was a very wonderful con experience, and I didn't even get super con sick this time, or have IBD issues the whole weekend, and my only regret is that I didn't get to draw more for people because the sketch room situation was so weird this year. (I swear just pick a double panel sized room and let everybody use that instead. Having two different rooms at two different ends of the con was confusing and felt like a huge afterthought. My other criticism is that the 18+ dealer den had no adult artist alley set up despite having ample space for one which was just weird.) It was very lovely meeting everyone and getting to put faces to some of your names, even if I never saw some of you out of suit. Hoping I can manage to get a room for next year and spend more time actually doing game activities and artist alley stuff next time. (I gotta get some stickers and business cards designed and printed for it though.

P.S: I posted picks of dealer den stuff and links to artists from the con I also ran into there on bsky here if you're curious of what we picked up: https://bsky.app/profile/stickmanww...../3ll7rsm3clc2x