Oh my God. I don't even know where to start with this. But I've gotta say, RF 2013 might very well be the best con I've ever been to. Possibly. So many wonderful things happened, again, I just don't know where to start. Rainfurrest also finally hit over 2000 attendees this year, as well. 2202, I believe.

First, it was wonderful to finally go to another furry con after FWA all the way back in March. That felt like forever ago, and I didn't necessarily have the best time there, so Rainfurrest was just what I needed. It was wonderful to finally reconnect and hang out with SO MANY people that I've come to call my friends in this crazy furry community. And a great majority of them go to west coast cons like RF and FC. In addition to that, I also feel like I've further solidified a lot of my friendships with people, having spent so much time with them at this con. And that always feels good.

I also fursuited like crazy. I was running around and dancing in Valentine around 8-10 hours each day. No joke, I actually do that. :P And I'm EXTREMELY happy about that, because I didn't get to fursuit anywhere near as much at RF 2012 due to Valentine's vision problem last year. But Fluke fixed it, I haven't had any problems, and I was determined to have as much fun in fursuit as I could to make up for last year. And I made up for that in spades. And being able to hit up certain parties was also preeeeetty fucking cool. :3

And speaking of that...the dances. The dances. Were. Fucking. Amazing. Unbelievable. Best con dances I've ever seen, hands down. I went to almost every dance the con had put on, and I danced harder than I'd ever had in my life, hitting up that stage over and over again. I swear, whoever handles the lighting for the dances needs to be commended, because it was crazy. One of the biggest highlights had to be Saturday night when my two favorite DJs,  akonite and  thumper put on the best tag set I've ever heard from them. I absolutely love hearing these guys play together, as well as hearing them individually, but they seriously blew me away this time around. I was almost in tears when Akonite dropped one of my favorite songs. Made me dance so hard, I could've broken that stage, haha.

Check out the live video of their set from Saturday night:



Also notable was the fact that I DJed my first live set on Sunday night. And this...this was one of my happiest moments at the con. I got there,  thumper helped me set up my gear, as soon as I started playing, the room filled up almost immediately. I was shocked, but happy, yet nervous. But the crowd absolutely loved my songs; I fed off their energy, and they fed off of mine, it was wonderful. And a slew of fellow DJs, including Thumper, Akonite, Nikolai, Recca, Shimi, Tigon, and Rod were there to support me; I was incredibly happy about that. Had a really fun moment when Thumper and Akonite ran on stage and did their crazy DJ antics with me behind the booth, haha.

The only thing that went wrong was that I blew the circuit breakers midway through my set. I was really distraught, cause I didn't expect this kinda thing to happen during my first set, especially when it was going so well. But after a ten minute delay, in which the floor was almost empty again, we got the music back on, and as soon as I jumped into my next song, the floor filled RIGHT up again. I can't tell you how happy I was that people came running back to hear me play. I actually didn't think I'd get to play every song in my set, but the DJ after me was totally cool with it, so I fucking rocked the crowd with the last few songs I had. And after my set was over, I was just floating on air. I had the biggest smile on my face. And since then, I've heard a lot of people say I played one of the best sets at Rainfurrest, which is just...so incredible to hear, especially considering I haven't even been DJing for a full year. I'm absolutely flattered that so many people enjoyed my set. This had to be one of the best times I've ever had at a furry convention, period.

Moving on, I also did the fursuit dance competition again (actually competed this time). There was an unprecedented number of entrees this year. 30 people, I believe. Due to the fact that we didn't have prelims. As for my dance, it was fun, and people seemed to love what I did. Check it out:




And that's about it! Aside from having some of the best roommates ever, hitting up some woooonderful parties, hanging out and spending time with so many friends, dancing my ass off, and fursuting a ton, this was exactly the convention I needed. :D

I really can't say this enough: hanging out with all those people that I've come to call my friends...it was really something special to me. RF is the con where I MET a lot of these people, so to see them again, right there, it meant so much to me. You all know who you are, and I absolutely love seeing you guys whenever we're at cons together. All of you. There's waaaaay too many names to list, so I'm not even gonna try. But you guys know who you are.

However, despite all the praise, it wasn't all perfect. I actually do have a few complaints:

The biggest thing is that it felt like some of the staff, as well as the security, were on some sort of power trip. Like the Dorsai suddenly showed up and took over. Several incidents happened during the con, but I'm really annoyed with two.

There was only one Headless Lounge this year, as opposed to the two we had last year. I found that...interesting. But the thing that ACTUALLY pissed me off was that some of the staff were being really shitty about the door(s) from the main ballroom that leads directly into the Headless Lounge. Last year, the door was wide open, and you could walk between the lounge and the ballroom easily. This year, the door was closed. I opened it myself and told staff what a necessity it was to have that door open.

There was one point during the dance on Saturday where they wanted to keep the door closed, to keep minors out (cause no security was around to monitor the door), and honestly...I think that's bullshit. When you have fursuiters like me who dance as HARD as I fucking dance, the absolute last thing I wanna do is walk outside the main ballroom and take the LONG way around to get to the Headless Lounge. As opposed to just going backstage and coming in through the door. That is fucking bullshit. In the times I had to do this, I almost fucking fainted. So fine, get someone to monitor that door if you have to, but DO NOT FUCKING CLOSE IT. That really, really pissed me off.

Furthermore, the staff/security continuously shut down many attempts to have a dance cypher outside the main ballroom. And I really don't know why. We had one going on in the con space; it was fun, no one was disturbing us, then staff just comes and shuts it down. This is AFTER the staff crashed the goddamn dance panel just so they could shove a wedding into an ALREADY OCCUPIED room. Fuck that bullshit. I see that there actually were a couple cyphers that I missed, but the ones I was actually at were shut down.

So yeah, stuff like that, really. And this is coming from someone who absolutely had no complaints about the staff at RF last year. Fortunately, no one of this took away from the amazing time I still had, but makes it difficult to compare it to FC earlier this year, where I had absolutely no complaints about anything, the con I'd previously said was my best con, because it literally was perfect this year. But, overall, RF still gave me some of the best times I've ever experienced at a furry convention. So I'm pretty happy. Looking forward to going back next year.