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My First Con: What I Learned From The Experience
9 years ago
General
So now that I'm flown back home, settled, got IRL business out of the way and all that I'm finally going to post how my first con went. I learned a LOT of small lessons for next time I go to a convention, and I'm going to write about those. I was originally going to do a "what I did at Furlandia 2017" type post, but all things considered this is probably better.
The first things I learned were before the con even started: book everything as early as possible, especially the flights and hotel. Don't buy ANYTHING from an airport. In relation to that, don't misbudget; otherwise you won't be able to afford whatever dealer's den and artist's alley wares you want to buy.
Moving to the con itself, we begin with "Striking up conversations with interesting folks is always a good idea." I managed to make a few friends this way, and at the core that's what conventions are all about, I think. Course, at a con like this, interesting folks include artists and suitmakers - I missed out on meeting Kacey and I didn't really get a chance to actually talk to Temperance when I ran into her suiting beyond telling her I was a big fan of her work. That said I did get to talk at length to raptorarts who I've followed off and on since my late 00s deviantART days. He even let me try on that latex and buckram raptor head he had at his booth, which I was hyped to see way back in the day, and I even have the picture he sent me of me wearing it! I should probably make an Imgur account for furry stuff and cram it in there or something. Best of all, based Matrices - the fursuit maker whose tutorials I made good use of especially for my hands - was there in the dealer's den. I paid her a visit while I was suiting on Sunday and thanked her for being generous enough to provide us newbies with her tutorials. I also asked her if there was anything I could have done better, but while I thought I saw quite a few issues she said I did quite well on my suit hands! Mind, I'm not sure if she was just trying to be encouraging or not - I've never been good at discerning that kind of thing - but it's still a very uplifting thing to hear, and it means I'll just do my best to improve my stitchwork in future projects!
Speaking of fursuiting, next lesson: "Everyone's here for the same reason as you, so don't be shy!" I've been... well, the phrase I like to use is 'hiding my power level'... for over a decade. I've opened up slowly to people online about it - hell, not even Laiminar and LightningSilver-Mana knew I was furry as fuck when they first met me online on dA and they were openly furries themselves (well, he is. Long story with her, but oldschool ponies are more her thing). My local social circle knows I'm furry and doesn't make bones about it (three of them being furry themselves and my oldest friend here in town probably being some level of closet furry as well) but doing weird things around normal folks has always kind of been scary. Which leads to the next lesson: "It's easier to do weird things in a group than alone". Now, I already knew this one from my experiences in LARPing. But this con really drove it home - it just took one conversation with a headless fursuiter (a fellow named DingoFox who I'm keeping in touch with via Telegram) to get me from "too bashful to suit" to "BRB, gotta suit up NOW"... and I more or less stayed in some level of suit the entirety of the con... even when I wasn't wearing head and hands, I still had a fancy suit on, you know? By the way, another useful lesson: no matter how expensive your partial's outfit may be given your budget, have spares with you and don't leave them at home accidentally. Seriously. Thank fuck I had the presence of mind to take extra pairs of dress socks. -_-
Oh, and as an aside: the ThumbsUp and Elope heads are... surprisingly common. I counted two other folks with the same head I was using - or the Elope version perhaps, including one child fursuiter, and one chill guy wearing the Elope brown bear head.
Moving back to matters of money and paraphenalia: don't pay the hotel's outrageous prices for food. Even if your waitress is very nice and very interested in how the whole 'fursuiting' thing works, your money is still a precious hoard to be well-guarded. So is whatever you're keeping swag in - don't be like me and leave your bag unattended for even a second, otherwise someone might make off with something (I lost a small print that way), and don't be like me also and leave items on top of the bag or leave the bag open. Items should enter the bag and stay firmly closed inside until you get back to your room at the very least.
As far as fursuiting goes, it's true: water, lots of water, all day erry day. But it turns out that you also need to build endurance for the temperature. Suiting at home might be a thing I need to start doing, at least to build up my tolerance for it. Greanted, Furlandia is a laid-back con - from what I read removing a fursuit head outside of your room, the bathroom, or a headless lounge was some kind of mortal sin, but not at Furlandia. Still, it's a matter of principle - they can wear full suits as long as they do, why can't I wear my partial just as long? (Plus there was a point when someone's child was interacting with me a bit - as hot as I was there was no way I was ruining the magic for the kid.) Also, no matter how snazzy your suit or clothes are, a fursuiter needs to be doing interesting things and/or interacting with people a lot more than just greeting folks as they pass by if they want attention in a sea of other fursuiters. Course, you could be like me and just enjoy the experience of being in suit in and of itself. To each their own, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I did learn a bit about fursuit maintenance from a panel I attended as well.
Time is a resource. Budget it as carefully as your money, and don't make plans if you're going to break them. I missed the chance to hang out on Sunday with a guy I met the previous day because I was too busy looking to make a quick buck (I'd had success selling Magic cards the night before and wanted to repeat that success - spoiler warning, I didn't) to remember to go out and meet him where he said he'd be. Between that and hanging out in the Dealer's Den that morning I also missed the chance to participate in the Fursuit Games, but to be honest from the looks of things I'm not sure I missed out on much. Feel free to tell me otherwise though, I'm genuinely curious how those usually go. Also, in hindsight perhaps I should have taken in some fursuit dancing, because I kind of have the itch to try that next year. Weird/scary thing is, I don't fucking dance.
Finally? Cons are fucking addictive. I want my next fix. I'm lucky so far in avoiding post-con depression, and that's through the lucky confluence of DingoFox's encouragement to start a local furry group, liberal application of a certain YFM song to my brain, and possible prospects in getting a local furmeet group set up already opening up before me. The only thing I really regret about this con is that I wasn't as diligent in taking the vitamin C pills I had with me as I should've been. This cough I have now proves that the dreaded Con Crud is real.
And that is more or less what I took away from this con. I'm sure there was other stuff IO forgot to mention, but as fragmented as my mind can be sometimes I'm sure it's floating around in my subconscious somewhere. I'm hoping I can attend Furlandia 2018 next year, and maybe MFF and Gateway FurMeet before then as well, but we'll see how my finances hold up. Final lesson: bills come first, furry comes last. A regrettable fact I was already fully aware of, but it's still true. A roof over your head and food on the table is more important in the end. Sure, I may have misbudgeted for the con itself, but I'm still ahead in the game of life at least for now. But when you do save up and get the chance to go to a good con? Seize it, and never let go. Life is too damn short to spend all your time working, eating, and sleeping.
The first things I learned were before the con even started: book everything as early as possible, especially the flights and hotel. Don't buy ANYTHING from an airport. In relation to that, don't misbudget; otherwise you won't be able to afford whatever dealer's den and artist's alley wares you want to buy.
Moving to the con itself, we begin with "Striking up conversations with interesting folks is always a good idea." I managed to make a few friends this way, and at the core that's what conventions are all about, I think. Course, at a con like this, interesting folks include artists and suitmakers - I missed out on meeting Kacey and I didn't really get a chance to actually talk to Temperance when I ran into her suiting beyond telling her I was a big fan of her work. That said I did get to talk at length to raptorarts who I've followed off and on since my late 00s deviantART days. He even let me try on that latex and buckram raptor head he had at his booth, which I was hyped to see way back in the day, and I even have the picture he sent me of me wearing it! I should probably make an Imgur account for furry stuff and cram it in there or something. Best of all, based Matrices - the fursuit maker whose tutorials I made good use of especially for my hands - was there in the dealer's den. I paid her a visit while I was suiting on Sunday and thanked her for being generous enough to provide us newbies with her tutorials. I also asked her if there was anything I could have done better, but while I thought I saw quite a few issues she said I did quite well on my suit hands! Mind, I'm not sure if she was just trying to be encouraging or not - I've never been good at discerning that kind of thing - but it's still a very uplifting thing to hear, and it means I'll just do my best to improve my stitchwork in future projects!
Speaking of fursuiting, next lesson: "Everyone's here for the same reason as you, so don't be shy!" I've been... well, the phrase I like to use is 'hiding my power level'... for over a decade. I've opened up slowly to people online about it - hell, not even Laiminar and LightningSilver-Mana knew I was furry as fuck when they first met me online on dA and they were openly furries themselves (well, he is. Long story with her, but oldschool ponies are more her thing). My local social circle knows I'm furry and doesn't make bones about it (three of them being furry themselves and my oldest friend here in town probably being some level of closet furry as well) but doing weird things around normal folks has always kind of been scary. Which leads to the next lesson: "It's easier to do weird things in a group than alone". Now, I already knew this one from my experiences in LARPing. But this con really drove it home - it just took one conversation with a headless fursuiter (a fellow named DingoFox who I'm keeping in touch with via Telegram) to get me from "too bashful to suit" to "BRB, gotta suit up NOW"... and I more or less stayed in some level of suit the entirety of the con... even when I wasn't wearing head and hands, I still had a fancy suit on, you know? By the way, another useful lesson: no matter how expensive your partial's outfit may be given your budget, have spares with you and don't leave them at home accidentally. Seriously. Thank fuck I had the presence of mind to take extra pairs of dress socks. -_-
Oh, and as an aside: the ThumbsUp and Elope heads are... surprisingly common. I counted two other folks with the same head I was using - or the Elope version perhaps, including one child fursuiter, and one chill guy wearing the Elope brown bear head.
Moving back to matters of money and paraphenalia: don't pay the hotel's outrageous prices for food. Even if your waitress is very nice and very interested in how the whole 'fursuiting' thing works, your money is still a precious hoard to be well-guarded. So is whatever you're keeping swag in - don't be like me and leave your bag unattended for even a second, otherwise someone might make off with something (I lost a small print that way), and don't be like me also and leave items on top of the bag or leave the bag open. Items should enter the bag and stay firmly closed inside until you get back to your room at the very least.
As far as fursuiting goes, it's true: water, lots of water, all day erry day. But it turns out that you also need to build endurance for the temperature. Suiting at home might be a thing I need to start doing, at least to build up my tolerance for it. Greanted, Furlandia is a laid-back con - from what I read removing a fursuit head outside of your room, the bathroom, or a headless lounge was some kind of mortal sin, but not at Furlandia. Still, it's a matter of principle - they can wear full suits as long as they do, why can't I wear my partial just as long? (Plus there was a point when someone's child was interacting with me a bit - as hot as I was there was no way I was ruining the magic for the kid.) Also, no matter how snazzy your suit or clothes are, a fursuiter needs to be doing interesting things and/or interacting with people a lot more than just greeting folks as they pass by if they want attention in a sea of other fursuiters. Course, you could be like me and just enjoy the experience of being in suit in and of itself. To each their own, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I did learn a bit about fursuit maintenance from a panel I attended as well.
Time is a resource. Budget it as carefully as your money, and don't make plans if you're going to break them. I missed the chance to hang out on Sunday with a guy I met the previous day because I was too busy looking to make a quick buck (I'd had success selling Magic cards the night before and wanted to repeat that success - spoiler warning, I didn't) to remember to go out and meet him where he said he'd be. Between that and hanging out in the Dealer's Den that morning I also missed the chance to participate in the Fursuit Games, but to be honest from the looks of things I'm not sure I missed out on much. Feel free to tell me otherwise though, I'm genuinely curious how those usually go. Also, in hindsight perhaps I should have taken in some fursuit dancing, because I kind of have the itch to try that next year. Weird/scary thing is, I don't fucking dance.
Finally? Cons are fucking addictive. I want my next fix. I'm lucky so far in avoiding post-con depression, and that's through the lucky confluence of DingoFox's encouragement to start a local furry group, liberal application of a certain YFM song to my brain, and possible prospects in getting a local furmeet group set up already opening up before me. The only thing I really regret about this con is that I wasn't as diligent in taking the vitamin C pills I had with me as I should've been. This cough I have now proves that the dreaded Con Crud is real.
And that is more or less what I took away from this con. I'm sure there was other stuff IO forgot to mention, but as fragmented as my mind can be sometimes I'm sure it's floating around in my subconscious somewhere. I'm hoping I can attend Furlandia 2018 next year, and maybe MFF and Gateway FurMeet before then as well, but we'll see how my finances hold up. Final lesson: bills come first, furry comes last. A regrettable fact I was already fully aware of, but it's still true. A roof over your head and food on the table is more important in the end. Sure, I may have misbudgeted for the con itself, but I'm still ahead in the game of life at least for now. But when you do save up and get the chance to go to a good con? Seize it, and never let go. Life is too damn short to spend all your time working, eating, and sleeping.
