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FWA 2012 Recap - Bittersweet Memories
14 years ago
General
First, this con could not have come at both a worse or better time. Something that coloured the entire event for me was the unbelievably untimely deaths of both 
PonyBird and 
Loki_Blackfang which I heard about moments after it happened despite being on the road because I had my car configured in solo-road-trip layout.
Specifically, I have a police/taxi-style laptop mount in my passenger-seat area that I set up my laptop w/ internet access via my cellphone, and use to have the full Google Maps interface running on a nice, large 15" laptop screen while driving so I can see a lot more details without being distracted by a tiny GPS screen. Since I have a widescreen laptop, I have Twitter bubbling along on the side of the screen as well w/ the Windows 7 screen-reader enabled, with an audiobook (Game of Thrones) going as background audio during the long drive.
Something terrible happened.
That cut right through the book, as that was NOT the book saying that... pause for a "WTF? What happened?" reply... then heard the next message SillySerpentine posted... and ended up on the rumble-strip for a couple seconds as I felt like I had... something, pulled out from under me.
Needless to say, my drive down to FWA proper on Thursday was wildly delayed between tears, talking via twitter, etc. About 3 hours later I got back on the road (I was 6 hours into a 12-hour drive) and when I got there most everyone was already passed out. So... it took a bit to find my roomies (Ifus, xandermoraine, and ArcanaSigal), but as a result I found most of my friends that I spent so much time with whenever we'd run into each other.
A giant shout-out to everyone that I spent time chatting with, it helped my sanity so much and I consider you all friends. Some of you I only finally had a chance to meet in person this con, some I've seen at half a dozen or more before. This brought us all closer in bits and pieces, for the worst of reasons but the best of timings.
Yeah, there's a lot of you there. You all, in your own ways, helped make this the best con I've been to ever, regardless of such a giant weight so many of our shoulders.
So... Friday: After I woke up semi-late, I had a very small bit of shopping I had to get out of the way, so I put on my 'game face' of sorts and did a bunch of wandering around the dealers den. I patched up a couple rough spots I had with some folks directly, was happy to see various other artists I knew and bought a bit more from, and did all that this first day since looking at the schedule there was nothing at all I really needed to do. I just wrote off Friday entirely to try to unwind and relax, and leave it alone in case I needed another long cry. Every single muscle in my body north of my waist was sore as well after the drive down since I had been dealing with racking sobs the previous day.
I ended up going out to Vortex for a bison burger, which was delicious, and came back to peek at the dances... but ended up just talking w/ friends and playing board games that day/night when not in the Dealers Den.
Saturday was a LOT different. I woke up, felt good and limber, had a good (if late) breakfast, was doing some last-minute edits and choosing between songs... then I was a dumbass and had someone ask me for one of "my" hugs. Well... downside I found out my arms were *NOT* recovered yet, as both of my biceps started screaming after that. >_< It literally hurt like hell to try to pull handpaws on, etc. So... change-up, glad I brought WolfWings instead of only Lumi... slammed him on instead and went downstairs. I did that because he fits snug enough it's like a full-body light compression bandage.
And chickened out and walked out of the auditions. The burst of stress from my arms, the pain, and trying to 'let myself go' so I could dance... I just froze up, panicked when I saw how many of the top-tier dancers were trying out at that one. Someone was very nice and pointed out, "If you don't try now, you might never." And I admitted he was right... and left. I'd say I resigned myself to just being a friend to the dancers, but later in the con let me define it better. I ended up in my room, sobbing... feeling like I'd failed PonyBird, a million nasty thoughts running through my head as I vented for a few manic moments on Twitter... and woke up hours later head-first in a still-wet pillow and my face a red-eyed puffy shambled.
That night I forget what I did for dinner, but I made it to the Dance Competition proper to cheer the FUCK out of all those amazing dancers this year. Even the least of them were still entertaining, and got people moving. The best of them brought power to the whole room, and doubled the energy for the next dancer. It was the single best event I went to of the whole con, bar none. Especially finally getting to see Vegaguy perform to that song he'd shared with me almost a year ago now I think, and made me promise not to talk about. GAH! That was a hard secret to keep, the song is just so awesome. =^.^=
So, after that I ran to relax in my room, and suit up for Recca's set. I missed it, and for that I'm incredibly sorry. But this was the night I needed, because PonyBird I think nudged me to step outside my room... I didn't even have a destination in mind, I just walked down towards the far elevators with some vague thought of getting a soda or stopping by onai's room maybe.
I ended up running into someone that was so drunk they couldn't walk, being helped along by a friend they'd called in a panic with more-or-less the message "Help! I'm wasted..."
What started as me trying to help them to a room went up to hotel security finding us, me explaining the situation as the other two were either occupied handling the potato sack, or being said potato sack, and I was articulate enough and experienced enough to talk them into letting us take her to their room to sleep it off.
Thus began the expedition across the hotel down to the 3rd floor, across to the OTHER elevator bank that went to the right tower, and scooping up the potato-sack's ride home along the way. On the final floor the potato-sack lost the last of it's limbs, so... crouch, hips... up... firemans-carry which is a helluva good workout I realize now.
The single biggest compliment I got that night I think is that their ride was recently discharged and immediately made a comment that I think was, "It's a bitch in full armor when the plates keep knocking the back of your head, isn't it?" which led to discussion of me never serving due to epilepsy while we treated the potato-sack, etc; wonderful icebreaker to get such a compliment that I was Doing It Right from someone trained to know.
That... took about 2-3 hours to finish, so I wasn't loosed on the world until well after Recca's set started. And I ended up mostly chatting with that ex-armed-forces-medic (I forget the branch, sorry!) and the con-staffer we'd interacted w/ w.r.t. the potato-sack, etc, for most of that evening, chatting with other friends for a few more hours, etc, not sleeping until nearly 5am. XD
Sunday I'll cover later, I need to run AFK for a bit, so here's most of FWA... I know I missed pointing out when the fursuiters flash-mobbed MoMoCon, that was epic to participate in, but I'll get to the rest later tonight.
PonyBird and 
Loki_Blackfang which I heard about moments after it happened despite being on the road because I had my car configured in solo-road-trip layout.Specifically, I have a police/taxi-style laptop mount in my passenger-seat area that I set up my laptop w/ internet access via my cellphone, and use to have the full Google Maps interface running on a nice, large 15" laptop screen while driving so I can see a lot more details without being distracted by a tiny GPS screen. Since I have a widescreen laptop, I have Twitter bubbling along on the side of the screen as well w/ the Windows 7 screen-reader enabled, with an audiobook (Game of Thrones) going as background audio during the long drive.
Something terrible happened.
That cut right through the book, as that was NOT the book saying that... pause for a "WTF? What happened?" reply... then heard the next message SillySerpentine posted... and ended up on the rumble-strip for a couple seconds as I felt like I had... something, pulled out from under me.
Needless to say, my drive down to FWA proper on Thursday was wildly delayed between tears, talking via twitter, etc. About 3 hours later I got back on the road (I was 6 hours into a 12-hour drive) and when I got there most everyone was already passed out. So... it took a bit to find my roomies (Ifus, xandermoraine, and ArcanaSigal), but as a result I found most of my friends that I spent so much time with whenever we'd run into each other.
A giant shout-out to everyone that I spent time chatting with, it helped my sanity so much and I consider you all friends. Some of you I only finally had a chance to meet in person this con, some I've seen at half a dozen or more before. This brought us all closer in bits and pieces, for the worst of reasons but the best of timings.
Yeah, there's a lot of you there. You all, in your own ways, helped make this the best con I've been to ever, regardless of such a giant weight so many of our shoulders.
So... Friday: After I woke up semi-late, I had a very small bit of shopping I had to get out of the way, so I put on my 'game face' of sorts and did a bunch of wandering around the dealers den. I patched up a couple rough spots I had with some folks directly, was happy to see various other artists I knew and bought a bit more from, and did all that this first day since looking at the schedule there was nothing at all I really needed to do. I just wrote off Friday entirely to try to unwind and relax, and leave it alone in case I needed another long cry. Every single muscle in my body north of my waist was sore as well after the drive down since I had been dealing with racking sobs the previous day.
I ended up going out to Vortex for a bison burger, which was delicious, and came back to peek at the dances... but ended up just talking w/ friends and playing board games that day/night when not in the Dealers Den.
Saturday was a LOT different. I woke up, felt good and limber, had a good (if late) breakfast, was doing some last-minute edits and choosing between songs... then I was a dumbass and had someone ask me for one of "my" hugs. Well... downside I found out my arms were *NOT* recovered yet, as both of my biceps started screaming after that. >_< It literally hurt like hell to try to pull handpaws on, etc. So... change-up, glad I brought WolfWings instead of only Lumi... slammed him on instead and went downstairs. I did that because he fits snug enough it's like a full-body light compression bandage.
And chickened out and walked out of the auditions. The burst of stress from my arms, the pain, and trying to 'let myself go' so I could dance... I just froze up, panicked when I saw how many of the top-tier dancers were trying out at that one. Someone was very nice and pointed out, "If you don't try now, you might never." And I admitted he was right... and left. I'd say I resigned myself to just being a friend to the dancers, but later in the con let me define it better. I ended up in my room, sobbing... feeling like I'd failed PonyBird, a million nasty thoughts running through my head as I vented for a few manic moments on Twitter... and woke up hours later head-first in a still-wet pillow and my face a red-eyed puffy shambled.
That night I forget what I did for dinner, but I made it to the Dance Competition proper to cheer the FUCK out of all those amazing dancers this year. Even the least of them were still entertaining, and got people moving. The best of them brought power to the whole room, and doubled the energy for the next dancer. It was the single best event I went to of the whole con, bar none. Especially finally getting to see Vegaguy perform to that song he'd shared with me almost a year ago now I think, and made me promise not to talk about. GAH! That was a hard secret to keep, the song is just so awesome. =^.^=
So, after that I ran to relax in my room, and suit up for Recca's set. I missed it, and for that I'm incredibly sorry. But this was the night I needed, because PonyBird I think nudged me to step outside my room... I didn't even have a destination in mind, I just walked down towards the far elevators with some vague thought of getting a soda or stopping by onai's room maybe.
I ended up running into someone that was so drunk they couldn't walk, being helped along by a friend they'd called in a panic with more-or-less the message "Help! I'm wasted..."
What started as me trying to help them to a room went up to hotel security finding us, me explaining the situation as the other two were either occupied handling the potato sack, or being said potato sack, and I was articulate enough and experienced enough to talk them into letting us take her to their room to sleep it off.
Thus began the expedition across the hotel down to the 3rd floor, across to the OTHER elevator bank that went to the right tower, and scooping up the potato-sack's ride home along the way. On the final floor the potato-sack lost the last of it's limbs, so... crouch, hips... up... firemans-carry which is a helluva good workout I realize now.
The single biggest compliment I got that night I think is that their ride was recently discharged and immediately made a comment that I think was, "It's a bitch in full armor when the plates keep knocking the back of your head, isn't it?" which led to discussion of me never serving due to epilepsy while we treated the potato-sack, etc; wonderful icebreaker to get such a compliment that I was Doing It Right from someone trained to know.
That... took about 2-3 hours to finish, so I wasn't loosed on the world until well after Recca's set started. And I ended up mostly chatting with that ex-armed-forces-medic (I forget the branch, sorry!) and the con-staffer we'd interacted w/ w.r.t. the potato-sack, etc, for most of that evening, chatting with other friends for a few more hours, etc, not sleeping until nearly 5am. XD
Sunday I'll cover later, I need to run AFK for a bit, so here's most of FWA... I know I missed pointing out when the fursuiters flash-mobbed MoMoCon, that was epic to participate in, but I'll get to the rest later tonight.
That he touched so many lives so deeply, is incredibly telling of how full a life he lived in his too-short time here. The words are so often said about those that die young, and so utterly true in this case.
It was nice meeting you though despite the crappiness that happened ): <3 *hug*
Dude xanders snoring is the loudest thing ever. I can sleep through anything. I also fall asleep with loud music in my headphones sometimes. Lol! Nothing ever stops me from sleeping... Unless... Im all Christmas morning excited about something.