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Anthrocon 2025 + Room Party
2 months ago
This post is also on my site.
The thing I most remember from Anthrocon 2025 is dicking around at Chakat Windshear's booth, asking if there were any Brian O'Connell (
neuromanson ) originals. An older guy next to me asked if I knew he died a few days before while flipping through Genus, and one of the unpaid laborers at Chakat Windshear's booth responded, "They're dropping like flies." We're at the point where we're actively witnessing the deaths of many of the artists that shaped the visual language, and proclivities, of the furry fandom.
In a macabre way it ended up being funny that my other time-sink was attending Room Party at Bunker Projects, which played with the form of Confurence-esque room-parties-turned-art-galleries. The curatorial direction seemed to come from BFA-type frustration with received art education and its incongruity with apparent reality. This was covered more in an associated panel at the convention, where Lane Lincecum explained how the team's curatorial direction felt divorced from their academic training and was more in line with the fandom "galleries" of the past. Going to the Room Party gallery, itself in an intimate, poorly-ventilated space, felt generational, with Gen-Z artists coming of age in the 2010s/2020s creating art reminiscent of their childhoods in the early 2000s but in the form of media, zines, imagined to dominate the 1980s/1990s. These zines were the highlight of the event, intentionally indulgent and self-referential, closer in content to contemporary punk zine-making than fandom zines/APAs like Rowrbrazzle or the Ever-Changing Palace. At the Anthrocon panel, many of the artists were able to speak about their pieces—gender and sexuality were the dominant themes, with a big emphasis on "keeping furry weird." It definitely felt like a contemporary-art event, distinct from the "fandom-artness" of the fandom 30 years ago, where artists were either more "academic" in the often-used pejorative sense or entirely self-taught.
Room Party had zines, it had Mark Merlino (who passed away last year) art on the walls, but I don't know what all of that means when furry as a subculture has moved beyond MUCKs and has now become everything to everyone. The furry fandom of the past has been ossified into a series of objects that are purchased as relics—con programs, prints, old photographs of weird suits—while the actual artists "drop like flies" and remain unhosted. Room Party felt indicative of the looking-glass furries seem to peer through when trying to understand the past, and this looking glass can create a lot of myopia about how the fandom is understood. One artist at Room Party offhandedly mentioned that being a furry means you have a fursona. I could have just been interpreting that uncharitably, but it felt like the biggest example of showing your disconnect from how people were actually engaging with the fandom back then. Of course Room Party can't reconstruct the fandom of the 90s, nor was it trying to do that, but it felt in the air after all these deaths.
Other reflections:
Chilemeister
pieball
SaltedGaytor
vinegardrinker
olivedestruction
The thing I most remember from Anthrocon 2025 is dicking around at Chakat Windshear's booth, asking if there were any Brian O'Connell (
neuromanson ) originals. An older guy next to me asked if I knew he died a few days before while flipping through Genus, and one of the unpaid laborers at Chakat Windshear's booth responded, "They're dropping like flies." We're at the point where we're actively witnessing the deaths of many of the artists that shaped the visual language, and proclivities, of the furry fandom.In a macabre way it ended up being funny that my other time-sink was attending Room Party at Bunker Projects, which played with the form of Confurence-esque room-parties-turned-art-galleries. The curatorial direction seemed to come from BFA-type frustration with received art education and its incongruity with apparent reality. This was covered more in an associated panel at the convention, where Lane Lincecum explained how the team's curatorial direction felt divorced from their academic training and was more in line with the fandom "galleries" of the past. Going to the Room Party gallery, itself in an intimate, poorly-ventilated space, felt generational, with Gen-Z artists coming of age in the 2010s/2020s creating art reminiscent of their childhoods in the early 2000s but in the form of media, zines, imagined to dominate the 1980s/1990s. These zines were the highlight of the event, intentionally indulgent and self-referential, closer in content to contemporary punk zine-making than fandom zines/APAs like Rowrbrazzle or the Ever-Changing Palace. At the Anthrocon panel, many of the artists were able to speak about their pieces—gender and sexuality were the dominant themes, with a big emphasis on "keeping furry weird." It definitely felt like a contemporary-art event, distinct from the "fandom-artness" of the fandom 30 years ago, where artists were either more "academic" in the often-used pejorative sense or entirely self-taught.
Room Party had zines, it had Mark Merlino (who passed away last year) art on the walls, but I don't know what all of that means when furry as a subculture has moved beyond MUCKs and has now become everything to everyone. The furry fandom of the past has been ossified into a series of objects that are purchased as relics—con programs, prints, old photographs of weird suits—while the actual artists "drop like flies" and remain unhosted. Room Party felt indicative of the looking-glass furries seem to peer through when trying to understand the past, and this looking glass can create a lot of myopia about how the fandom is understood. One artist at Room Party offhandedly mentioned that being a furry means you have a fursona. I could have just been interpreting that uncharitably, but it felt like the biggest example of showing your disconnect from how people were actually engaging with the fandom back then. Of course Room Party can't reconstruct the fandom of the 90s, nor was it trying to do that, but it felt in the air after all these deaths.
Other reflections:
Chilemeister
pieball
SaltedGaytor
vinegardrinker
olivedestruction
anyways, really insightful stuff. thanks for this write-up!
I agree that furry fandom definitely seems to have evolved into a more contemporary form. And I don't think that's bad, but definitely a sign of the homogenization of fandom experience. Partly due to people who had other fandom experiences then moving into furry fandom, which was mentioned by some of the artists at the Q&A panel. And that's more of the category I think I'd fall under if anything. But also just because that form of experience and self-expression in fandom is just what this generation does.
And I think you can see how this mindset has changed more clearly through how SF/FA has changed between then and now. How it's almost changed from this sort of hopeful escapism/a better future is possible idea to a grittier imagining of, realistically, where do we go from here. Which isn't to throw all SF/FA under the same category, but these are just overall trends I've kinda seen and heard people discuss. The world is just different and the escape that people wish to create through art has changed.
I'll say also that I like that furry as a definition is becoming more broad but I do agree that I feel that, for me, it felt like i needed some extra steps than just having a fursona before calling myself a furry. I only really thought it might be more important to me than most other fandoms i've been in when i watched the fandom documentary and felt the same level of emotion that i felt watching paris is burning. Just from that sense of like, I'm so grateful to my predecessors for doing the damn thing/we've always been here. Which honestly caught me off guard for someone who didn't consider myself a furry at the time, but I think that's around the time i really put thought into how I wanted my fursona to represent myself. It was really realizing that I did feel as if I was a part of this community and wanting to foster those kinds of connections, and being able to foster those at AC, that's really made me feel more like a furry.
sorry for the long comment but it's something that's been on my mind even going into AC this year LOL