Yeah, that's a real statistic. Ten years ago I made this FA account. It's actually ten years plus two days, but I've been busy gearing up for BLFC and I only recently realized the significance of this date. I'd had furry interests a couple years before I signed on here, but that's really when I hit the point of no return. And of course that date is helpfully tracked here on my userpage, so that makes a good, easily observable landmark. Heh, so strange how it's not obvious that something is a landmark experience when we're actually experiencing it. It's been one hell of a ride. You'd think that for somebody who has spent so much time obsessively chronicling my furry experiences here I'd be a little better at taking a retrospective on them. It's not quite so easy as I thought it would be though. If furry stuff were just something that I did then it would be fairly easy to describe, but over the years... it's more like it's become a part of me. BLFC this weekend will be my thirtieth convention. I've thrown a TON of my time and resources at being a part of this weird, crazy community and really, I think it's been worth it. As I've said it before, everybody's gotta have a thing. Nobody's on this earth just to cash paychecks and die, everybody's got something that means something to them. It took me a long time to admit it, but being furry is my thing. I work hard to keep doing it because I find it enjoyable and fulfilling. It's brought me into the company of unique and wonderful people that have enriched my life in ways I never would've thought possible.

So I guess that's what I'll talk about. The first thing that people ask furries after "what" is "why?" People outside the fandom always want to know what motivates us to do these strange things. It's a tough one to answer, because there are as many answers to that as there are people in the fandom. I've been asked why I'm in the fandom by some close friends over the years and I did my best to give them thoughtful, reasoned responses. I really ought to be able to give my own answer to that question. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to explain my own journey. And what better time to do that than on a big anniversary? So here goes with that. I'll quit stalling now.

The furry fandom is tremendously interesting, and as so many lives have proven, "interesting" is a double-edged sword. Or really more like 13-edged sword where half the edges don't even obey basic Euclidean geometry. I lived a very subdued and dutiful life before I left home. It's where I picked up a lot of that pragmatism that has carried me so well. Going straight from high school into the navy helped too. That's a really strong motivation to figure shit out, and FAST. Back in those days though, I never for a second would've imagined that I'd find myself getting drunk and dancing at a rave all night, or cuddling with a giant badger I just met all throughout the run of Rocky Horror Picture Show, or smoking weed, or flying out to California to spend the night with someone who accosted me in an elevator to tell me how much he liked that story I wrote about a jackal getting some unexpected hypnotherapy at a nightclub one night. I just, never really did anything interesting. To be sure, I also didn't expect to have someone I just met trying to pin a baby on me after a night of admittedly rather subdued passion, or that I'd find myself breaking into someone's house at 2AM to drag a semiconscious girl in the middle of poisoning herself to the hospital. Apparently that's part of the package though. Almost makes me glad the fandom has so few women. Almost.

Hm, so I guess we're starting with the negative. Not structurally sensible, but I'm just kind of going where the wind takes me right now. I've wondered many times, aloud and privately, what exactly it is that attracts broken people to the furry fandom. I've started to think that it's the culture itself, at least partly. The reason that everyone thinks "wow, everyone in the fandom is gay or bi or some weird orientation that I didn't even know existed" isn't because those groups are massively overrepresented as compared to the general population. We've got statistics to back up that those demographics are only moderately overrepresented. Of course those are skewed a lot. The reason that there are so many conflicting numbers around about how many people are gay or trans or polyamorous (terrible word by the way. Greek prefix on a Latin root? Madness, I tell you. Madness!) or whatever other unconventional thing is that it's just plain not a good idea to go around advertising that you are one of those things. There are plenty of places in the world where it's illegal to be gay or transsexual, and plenty more where you'll be literally murdered or beaten bloody in the streets for it. (statistics again, America is still one of the latter places.)

Those peripheries are lit up like a neon sign in the fandom because it's a very accepting culture that I've seen take a rather aggressive hardline against intolerance. That is an objectively wonderful thing, and it's part of what cultivates such an uplifting atmosphere at conventions. I'm forced to admit though, that I think this is what helps to bring out the crazies. We're a friendly and supportive bunch, and that is a siren's song to people whose lives are in shambles. I know that atmosphere must SCREAM "tell me about your problems" because I've had randos who I just met lead off with "Yeah, it's been tough but these days I've gotten my stepdad to stop beating me." What? NO! Just no. That is NOT what you lead with when we've been talking for just minutes and I don't even know your name yet.

I think the furry fandom is supportive to the point of becoming an enabler for these people. When there are lots of helpful hands in the air, some people just see fit to crowd-surf their way across instead of supporting themselves. There are so many people like me who will be willing to stick their neck out pretty damn far for someone they don't know very well, and will only withdraw their aid once they've been quite thoroughly exploited. Honestly you could live pretty well just generosity-hopping from one person to the next, only moving on when your present well dries up. And some people do, I'm sure. I've been hanging out with people before whom I've had friends advise me away from. Things like "You might want to come up with an excuse to leave. Last time I had dinner with this guy he ended up sleeping on my couch for a week and I was very near calling the cops to get him to leave." Marius from AC 2015 was certainly such a person. Keen observers of that incident will notice that even after all I went through at his behest Marius felt not the barest need to compensate me, and was in fact quite assured that I would continue to provide for him in the future.

Honestly I think that the furry cons' welcoming siren song has affected me in certain unusual ways as well. In the arena of science fiction and other flavors of convention, I've been to Dragon Con, RunningGag and Genericon, and honestly I am rather disappoint. I wouldn't go so far as very disappoint, but I am at least moderately disappoint. It felt to me like they took only the barest staple elements of a furry convention and just threw them on the floor, with none of the really fun and exhilarating stuff in between. Because that's the thing, really. A furry convention has tabletop gaming, and artists, and an arcade, and writing, and stand-up comics, and discussions of speculative fiction, and cool nerd swag, and contests and themed games, and concerts and shows, and cosplay, and pretty much everything that any other convention boasts, but also fucking life-sized plushies that want to dance with you! The only thing anything else has over a furry con is that they have "real" celebrities and authors, because everything furry is pretty grass-roots. What am I really missing there though? The chance to pay $60 for fucking Scott Bacula's autograph? Yeah, I'm sure missing that opportunity will be a regret I'll be wheezing about on my deathbed.

Furry creators are great people, and even the most famous ones are really nice, down to earth folks. Rukis has been really great and infinitely forgiving as I fanboy over her from time to time. I had a few glasses of wine with Uncle Kage before, arguably the most famous furry out there. I have a standing invitation from 2 The Ranting Gryphon to come have dinner at his house. These are people with enough notoriety to make a living during furry stuff and they'd still not bat an eye at the idea of hanging out with me. That's WAY cooler than being shooed away by the security detail following Will Wheaton around. It's just so much of a dramatically different crowd, from top to bottom. Archai has been to a few sci-fi conventions and his description says it far better than I can. "I walked through the convention hall at like 10:00PM and it was just dead quiet. It was like there wasn't even an event going on that weekend. You never would've known. And I was just like 'Seriously you guys, what the FUCK? You people have no idea how to party'." That's a great way of saying it. I don't want to step on any toes, but I think that's largely because science fiction is OLD. Really out-there fantasy stuff really started with Tolkein. Nobody was mainstream fantasy before that. But Sci-Fi goes way back. I do like science fiction as a genre, but really the attitude surrounding the fandom is a bunch of stuffy philosophical bullshit, and not my scene at all.

I really like gaming, too, which also has conventions of its own, but they have huge pitfalls as well. Tabletop gaming is a MASSIVELY exclusive culture that prides itself on hating its own members. When I used to go into my local gaming shop, the guys behind the counter wasted no time informing me how incorrect all of my interests were. I'm not talking about friendly jests, either. If you go into a hardcore gaming boutique and ask for the wrong thing, the proprietor will tremulously stroke his Scott Ian wizard beard and tell you in no uncertain terms to never come back ever again as long as you live. You could be a golden avatar of disposable income who sweats cash and farts diamond dust, and it wouldn't matter. They don't want any of your dirty, wrong-game-playing money.

I had friends that I acquired through other vectors that also happened to play DnD, which you can make work. That initial contact is kind of a vetting process for compatible personalities so that you know gaming sessions will go relatively well. At a gaming con though? You're with people you've never met and are just in it for the game. And if you're with a group of people that are just assembling for the purpose of the game and nothing else, odds are you'll be inventing whole new shades of fucked at every turn. Your chances of being invited to join a play group are slim, and even if you get there, your chances of enjoying yourself are even slimmer. You see, every game, even cooperative ones like D&D, becomes a poisonous competition designed to ruin friendships before they even begin. It's the scorched earth method of social interaction, which is what happens when aggressively antisocial people are forced to be around each other for an entire evening. That's especially baffling because tabletop gaming is a community that literally depends on interacting with other people. It's way different from playing games on Xbox Live. Threats and insults take on a psychologically bitter reality when you're actually sitting in the same room with a person calling you a "faggot foot" in a scream-cloud of spittle-flecked fury. It makes no sense for people who hate other human beings so much to join a community that requires you to gather a group of them around a table for several hours a night.

Okay, that got long and needlessly passionate and it wasn't really my point. I was talking about something specific um, oh yeah. Other fandoms suck. I'm SUPER into My Little Pony, but I barely ever even considered going to a Brony convention. Once again there's the angle of "furry conventions have that and ALSO EVERYTHING. Why would I want to go to a furry convention that lacks everything except ponies?", and also I watched Unicon fall on its face and proceed immediately to viciously eat itself, so that was less than encouraging. That really is it though. That's what furry cons bring to the table. They have everything in the world that I love, and also some of the most amazing people I have ever met. People who are always happy to see me and always up for something fun. The ones who bring out the best in me and enrich my life by their presence. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

And you know, I think how goddamned amazing furry cons are could be part of the problem in the end. Now that I look back on it, I realize that the thing that attracts all these broken people might be all the same stuff that I love about it. They're still people after all. Stupid, emotionally crippled, broke-ass people. That's what creates that classic effect of "Oh shit I can't pay my rent! Can't wait to fly to FC and pick up my new fursuit!" that you hear all the time. People are just so desperately, passionately in love with the fandom that they put it before everything else in their life, which if it wasn't shit already, rapidly deteriorates when you spend years and years prioritizing your cartoon animal costume over your career, family and relationships. In my brief brushes with the social sciences in college, one interesting concept that I've come across is that the psychology of addiction is almost exactly the same no matter what the victim is actually addicted to. It's not about the addictive behavior itself. Or rather, it's not about what you're doing, it's about what you're not doing, in order to feed your addiction. If your obsession with tinkering with model trains is making you miss paying your bills, spend time away from your kids and take fake sick days from work then congratulations! You are addicted to it.

That's the only difference between a fun thing that you do in your spare time and a crippling psychological compulsion. It's how much you're willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of that activity. There are plenty of people who do cartoonish amounts of cocaine, meanwhile they are holding down a successful job, taking care of their good, well-adjusted children and saving up money to plan responsibly for their future. Those people may have developed a physical, chemical dependency and need drugs to get through the day, but they're not addicted because they didn't let the drug take over their life. That's why all of these anti-drug campaigns where someone who's got a stable social network and is loving life smokes weed one time and five minutes later he's blowing dudes in a truckstop parking lot for crack don't really reach anyone. People know that's not how it works. It's usually someone whose life is shit that turns to drugs as an escape. They wouldn't be on drugs if they didn't already have lots of other problems. That's why reform is so slow to happen in society. We're always so quick to blame the drugs because they're easy to blame. It's much harder to blame (then try to fix) the school system, or economy, or family structure, or society in general. Even thought it was those things that ultimately failed these addicts.

I think that's what I'm seeing when I find myself staggered by the amount of broken people I come across in the fandom. They're addicted to furry conventions and they've let their lives go to shit because of it. I mentioned how I rebuffed Marius' further requests for assistance and how he went to the Upstate NY furs Facebook page for help. Whereupon he was told what a fucking twit he is for prioritizing going to AC again over getting a job and a car. That conversation was deleted by the group admin because it quickly became obvious that it was about to boil over, but Marius' response on his own Facebook wall is still up. I didn't post it at the time because this was something that actually kind of scared me. I thought that I was helping him out, but I may have actually done irrevocable damage during my tenure with him. Take a look at this and try to tell me it doesn't sound like a raving crack addict furiously detoxing in a mental ward.

"hi all i have an anouncemet to say, ANTHROCON IS MY LIFE OK AND IF U DONT AGREE WITH ME DO AS U PLEASE BUT THAT'S THE ONLY GOOD THING I GOT IN MY I HAVE A FAMILY THAT DONT TALK TO ME AND I HAVE NO MATE SO ALL I HAVE IS ANTHROCON AND ANTROCON IS THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES ME HAPPY"

So, yeah. I know I rambled a lot and I may not have done much to address the spirit of this momentous occasion directly, but that's really the best retrospective I can give. The furry fandom is so great that there are people willing to sacrifice literally anything in their lives to get another taste of it. The reason that I can manage to go completely apeshit over it without bringing myself to ruin has more to do with the number on my bank statement than anything else. Far too many people think "con first and damn the consequences". Meanwhile I flip shit about an extra $220 expense being thrown at me when I could comfortably afford ten times that. I remember the time when the college accidentally drafted my account for $7,200 instead of $2,700 and I was just like "Oh, well that was dumb. Guess I'd better refill my checking account then." Yeah, I've got the money, and it's only through very careful policing of things like this that I continue to have it. I'm spending what I worked so hard to earn on something that I love, and in the right amount there's nothing wrong with that. I really do feel like I could shake the earth with the inhuman fury of my own self-control when I'm at conventions. You'll note that I spend tons of time in the den meeting people and socializing, but I buy next to nothing there. I that a T-shirt I was my biggest den purchase ever. I've never bought art there, even though I know dozens of artists with tables. That's partly because I know that I'm severely sleep-deprived, probably malnourished and high on con-juice all through the experience, so that's not the time to be making potentially expensive decisions.

Then of course there's the fact that I really want a fursuit, like a LOT. I've worn them dozens of times and I'm still discovering new and wonderful ways to enjoy doing it. I've never been able to justify the purchase to myself though. Especially having been without a job for four years, and moreover three summers in college, when I really SHOULD have had a job. Now that I've actually got a job I'm not certian if I can keep it, and then of course there are all those innumerable "what-ifs" that I have to be ready for. Going down for the count with my appendix has disavowed me of the notion of youthful invincibility that colored my decisions up until that point. Bad shit can and absolutely does happen, and I'm going to be goddamned ready for it. As such, the con decision is always "Can I spare the time? Can I spare the money?" and then I look over what cons I can make work. I've sent away three different, very disappointed friends who really wanted me to come to BLFC with them because was during the school year then. As soon as they told me when it was I said "No. Fuck that, it's during classes" and that decision was made. Furthe'More has become very important to me and I'm still on staff, but they moved it to April one year and got a "no, fuck that it's during classes" from me as well. I take a VERY hard line about what the fandom is and is not allowed to take from me. That's why I can be so heavily into it without it taking everything I have. Even though I definitely AM researching into getting a suit now, that's just because I've got money set aside specifically for that, money I know that I can comfortably do without.

I'm sure by now you know that when provoked, I belch dangerous quantities of words to startle attackers. So yeah, it seems I've hit upon a subject about which I'm rather passionate in my choice of thesis for this journal. I may not have meant to hurl a word-brick at this, but that's how it came out when I really looked deep down at why I do what I do. I think that I responded in such volume because a lot of that stuff really needed saying. So yeah, that felt good, and it was as fitting of a display as I could think of to commemorate this auspicious occasion.

I face a great deal of uncertainty in the months ahead, but I have come so much further than I ever thought I would. I'm such a dramatically different person now than I was ten years ago. I have you furries to thank for that. And with any luck, your guidance and companionship will see me through to the happy and stable future that I seek.