Well, given that it's been more than a month and IFC is coming up... next weekend, (holy donkeyballs when did THAT happen?) I guess I should finally knuckle down and actually write this thing.

Looking back, I find Kathy Nightstar's summary of my convention reports to be fairly accurate much of the time. "I arrived after a hellacious journey to get there, met some old friends, met some new friends, got hammered, had fun, and helped out with the con staff, not necessarily in that order." I'm actually missing almost everything out of that summary this time around except for the friends and the fun, which really is the core of the con! So I guess this one gets points for efficiency. In any case, my journey there was actually fairly uneventful, my relocation to Ohio having put me actually quite close to the target zone for this particular gathering. Wednesday is a pretty early arrival, but Anthrocon seems to expand temporally every year, so I could be fairly assured of at least some amount of goings-on that would be going on. Plus that day was a holiday so I didn't have to work. I ran out of reasons not to be there pretty quick! Which, if my approach in writing this con report is any indication, running out of reasons not to do it is apparently the only factor that ever leads to me doing anything. I say, shamefully closing 6 other tabs that held things I was using to avoid writing this up even though I do claim to enjoy making these things.

In any case, my preliminary examinations of the hotel lobby were about as one might expect a mid-week survey of a not-yet-a-con to be, but I soon turned up an old acquaintance, Moth Monarch. In the course of things she introduced me to a charming insect compatriot Hakul Bee who was fairly new to the Anthrocon circuit but seemed ready to tackle it with a truly intimidating ravenous enthusiasm, and someone named Erik Sheep who defied expectations beautifully by actually being a snow leopard. MothMonarch seemed bowed by her lot a bit, having suffered appreciably under the yoke of becoming Anthrocon's de-facto promotional art producer. She'd apparently been subject to one of those devastatingly common furry miscommunications and received only days' notice of a big chunk of the required iconography for this year. Somehow she'd nonetheless made the magic happen and her palpable joy at seeing her work literally cover the walls and line the streets of the city cut through all that justly earned exhaustion. Naturally I was loath to speak with her about work, but I was still eagerly anticipating the commission that I'd contracted her for. Here's hoping she recovers soon and I'll have something cool to show off once that happens. Of course she's gotta move to Canada first. Hmm, good thing her art is worth waiting for!

I'd just wanted to stop a bit for a chat, but staff members do seem to aggregate somewhat where a few of them can be found stationary, so a handful did indeed deposit there over the course of my conversation with the exhausted bug that I'd settled there with. AV, events, programming, a few department heads, and in the end a large segment of the Conway family either came by to visit or outright joined us in our pre-con loitering. Watching the dynamics of Uncle Kage's Kagekin is an entertaining and superlatively engaging insight into the kind of crucible that can produce such a unique personality as our indomitable convention chairman. Hearing from his mother of the time she was asked "How are you going to get into the back of the car with a drink in each hand?" and the response that came so easily was "You lack ambition." gives one an excellent window as to the tenor of that environment. I've had multiple people remark on the fact that my personality makes a lot more sense to them after they meet my father, and it seems I'm not alone in taking on such an impression from my forebearers. Seeing a little slice of the day-to-day that he came from makes it much clearer where Kage got his crisis management skills and resilience in the face of insanity.

It was also a fun window into convention operations to see the way people would pop up with reports to deliver to the Big Cheese. Some of which were quite informative as to the state of things, some of which far less so. I won't speak of the specifics of the former category as I gained the impression that many of those delivering such briefings assumed that only staff members were present at our illustrious little corner cluster. At any given time they were between 70 and 90% correct so as such they might be forgiven that mistaken assertion. In any case I'll keep such things close to my chest for the moment as failing to do so might constitute either a significant breach of trust, OR a reason to retroactively correctify that assertion by making me staff as well. Both outcomes that truly chill the soul. I do feel comfortable in addressing the second category though, as that one has far more entertainment potential and a demonstrably lesser operational security risk. Several times, the news of the hour arrived in a way that approximated the format "Hey, remember that thing we talked about? It's fixed now." Even as I moved to compliment them on actually making certain to maintain decorum around unprivileged ears, on the third such occasion the target of these missives admitted "I actually don't remember what they're talking about. I usually just nod and send them on their way assuming everything's fine now." Perhaps not the most engaged command and control one might have, but I suppose such reports are far better than "Hey, that problem we were having is still totally fucked and we don't know what to do." which demonstrably, is also a thing that happens. There was also a brief flash of panic as several lawmen came into the lobby all at once, moving with purpose into the attached restaurant. Fortunately that purpose was to eat lunch and not deal with some awful thing that had happened outside our notice.

In the course of all this someone asked me if they'd moved the zoo to the "prison cafeteria" again this year and I was overcome with righteous indignation that someone had came up with that metaphor to describe the austere, distantly-located basement that had passed for a lounge in previous years, and that someone was not me. It seems my prejudice against that person was such that I've forgotten their name, so that will have to be vengeance enough. Regardless, the zoo was disappointingly still not in the Westin, but was in a somewhat more respectable neighborhood of the convention center this time around, so I suppose that's all well and good. The traffic in and out of our little lobby sewing circle was a little disorienting, but in a way it was part of the charm. It was all so fresh and engaging. The way these people that I'd never met would strike up with me without provocation and share so much about themselves was a perfect distillation of the furry pathos that I've come to enjoy so much over the years. None of the inefficient niceties and banal pageantries that normally accompany human interaction. We're all here to hang out and have fun but there's just too much fun to have and not enough time for it! So let's skip all the fluff and just pretend like we've known each other for years even though we're both completely new to each other and our paths may never cross again, shall we? We shall, furries. We shall.

This is the part of the journal where I mention Kiba Youkai's name really early to confuse her when she's looking for it later. Hi Kiba! Bet you wish you didn't admit the way that you Ctrl-F my journals now! I really should stop doing that. There's precious few eyes on these things as it is I really can't risk alienating more readers with my shenanigans. Then again, if people didn't want shenanigans they wouldn't be here. Anyways, I got a summons to the airport because Archai and his girl Metric Fox had rolled into town and they were in a market to get to where the party was at. They were very grateful for my assistance, until I mentioned the surge pricing to them at least. I bounced around a bit with Exavier Wolfhymn and Vincent Vontrap, two old favorites who were touring the grounds, as the latter was new to Anthrocon. We actually did that cool waterfall walkway thing under the convention center. Something I'd never actually done before despite the numerous notches on my Anthrocon belt. Heh, if that belt gets too many more notches it won't even be able to hold up a tail anymore. That water-causeway is a fun time, really. It's kind of surreal to be surrounded by waterfall. You see water, you hear water, you feel it in the air. Like the whole of your sensory landscape is occupied by the same stimulus. It's a really useful bit of white noise to cleanse one's palate after indulging in the Technicolor whirlwind of intense sensory bombardment that is a furry con.

After Metric and Arc got all situated, I'd mentioned that it was a little quiet and I was up for whatever they were up for, and apparently that was the dialogue option that I needed to pick to go from a support NPC to a full party member. The adventure that we set off upon was going down to the riverfront to watch the fireworks, this being America's annual declaration of war against the sky and all. It was quite a show, and we'd found our way quite close to the launching zone actually. I was chagrined by the fact that I'd not yet started carrying my anti-rave earplugs on my person, as I now always do at furry cons. I really could've used them so close to the action. Ah well, I got to live a little I suppose. Living it up out there with us were a clowder of Califurries, to include Kaysho, Spottacus and Zarafa. The newly-expanded troupe made our way through the rain back towards the venue. I got to talk to Kaysho a fair bit then as he was the only one who well matched the urgency of my walking pace given the steadily climbing saturation of all our exteriors. We settled on a pattern of hopping from save point to save point, waiting wherever structures appeared overhead, such as not to leave behind the other party members entirely.

The Cali-crew had our final powwow back at the venue any broke up for the next thing. There were actually several proposed next things, but I went with Arc and his contingent up to their room for a room-party-ish gathering. Wasn't too high energy this being so early, but that's the kind of gathering I like to be honest. Featured players were Boof Caribou the caribou whom I'd seen fursuiting on uncountable occasions but never truly been acquainted with Teebone from Sydney who had a nice new set of pup gear that I thought actually looked pretty nice, a first for me in appraising such apparel, and Erro who I got to swap stories with, as he was the only other one there that I had gotten particularly far in the initial recruitment dialogue trees with. I guess I'm just doing all ham-fisted video game metaphors now so stand by for more of those! I did a controlled and reasoned amount of drinking, this being so very early on and all, and had a good time interacting with those assembled. Archai drew some fun parallels between the way that I reacted when he told me that he now had a boyfriend (My response was "Wow, that's pretty gay.") and the way I responded when Metric told me that she was transitioning (Which was: "You know if you eat all that estrogen it's just gonna go straight to your hips"). So yeah I guess the lesson there is that if you really need someone to take your major life announcement not seriously in any way at all, let me have a crack at it! I came to learn that such irreverence was actually rather appreciated because both announcees were fairly anxious about how such news would be received, so having it be massively a non thing was most certainly the right response. Damn, I did a dialogue tree joke already. Gonna have to mine a little deeper from here on. Remind me to never choose journal themes ever again.

Anyways, the con was still young, or hadn't started yet, whatever your opinion on the nature of prepatch content releases is, but there was still a bit of a groundswell of furriness overtaking the land. Just a sampling of my travels contained: a bobble-headed Pikachu that was carrying around one of those golden play button Youtube awards, a blue husky that was scooting about on a motorized unicycle (that was Avwuff, he's one of the recurring characters from the Western zone), I also saw what I tentatively believe to be a Stephen Universe gem repairing another critter's space helmet. Yeah, the place was furrying up alright. I also came across Flacier Fox just by chance. I forget what exact set of circumstances led me to interact so much with that particular random encounter, but I had a good time chatting with him. He's got the unfortunate handicap of being a blue and white canine, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just such a popular design choice that being able to pick him out of the dozen or so other blue and white canine fursuits is a challenge at times. (Av is also an aficionado of that apparently not-terribly-exclusive prestige class.) This came up a fair bit because Flacier remarked on how we were all just ships passing in the night and we'd never encounter each other again through all the crowds and whatnot. So of course I was always looking out for him and I went straight up to him and said 'hey' like nine more times over the course of the weekend. Partly just to cheekily prove him wrong because "Fuck you, you don't know the future!" and partly because I'll have none of this depressing existential shit here, Flacier! This is a furry con, it's the one place where I DON'T do that!

There was an apparently-traditional hangout on the street near where they were projecting a game of Asteroids onto the convention center. Big blend of a crowd there, lots of California, but also some locals, and fellow RPI alum Nunavut, too many to name, but all definitely worth hanging out with. There was talk of a trip to Primanti Brothers, but I turned that side quest down. Seeing the critical mass worth of furry that was preparing to explode all over the town, I knew that I'd need my strength for the next day. So I returned to the inn to recover my HP. (Oh dear I don't think I can stop myself from doing this now.) Several repeat-offenders in my encounters Thursday morning, but the one who had the quest I needed (eat breakfast) happened be Kaysho, so we set about doing that. He said that he knew a really great breakfast place, so I took him at his word. I was a little confused when he took me to TenPenny, which is by a fair margin not a breakfast place at all. I assumed he knew something that I didn't and rolled with it. What I did not know that he knew was that they do indeed serve some pretty good breakfast there. What he did not know that he didn't know, was that they only served breakfast on weekends, and despite the party having gotten rolling by then, this was, prescriptively, not yet a weekend. Small letdown there followed by a big letdown in that they were out of the local cider they have that I like. Ah well. If lobster bisque and barbeque pork flatbread isn't considered a breakfast then are we really even in America?

After what was technically a break of my fast so I'm counting it, Kaysho and I met up with Zarafa and Scotty Minotaur to go wait in the registration line. Ordinarily I'd wait for the mid-day dip for that sort of thing. The pattern that I've observed for first-day registration tends to be that a whole bunch of try-hards crash the gate right at the beginning and then a whole bunch of the-opposite-of-try-hards stumble in there in a panic right before it closes. As such this was a sub-optimal time for this particular mission, but having the right characters in the party makes all the difference. Having people to talk to in line turns drudgery into just another great con socializing minigame where you try like hell to maintain a coherent exchange when you're surrounded by, and indeed speaking to a whole bunch of easily-distracted animal folk. Kaysho had downloaded the Sponsor DLC, but he stuck out the base-tier line with us just to be nice. I'm glad they let him cut when he got to the front because it was really sweet of him to not abandon his drooling proletariat friends even when it would've been most advantageous for him to do so. Quite a length to go to for the privilege of listening to us jaw-jack about cheeseburgers for an hour or so. It sounds like I'm exaggerating but that actually was a substantial portion of our conversation.

The open mic was after that. I went again because those tend to be fun. Last time I went I spent a TON of time preparing a set and then didn't get picked because 2 Gryphon didn't follow the signup list and just picked people at random from the audience. Naturally I did the mature thing and resented it for years, then showed up completely unprepared out of spite. I ended up not getting picked again, but it wasn't as offensive this time around as they've just done away with the signup list entirely. Lots of great acts up there, including some pretty crazy like, high-concept performance art pieces that I'm at a loss to properly explain, and that's really saying something! The definite pull quote there is "The good spot. It's where the dick is." I'd explain, but I think it's even better without context. The only way that could be improved would be by putting it on a business card. Next up there was a writers' meet and greet. I was kind of on the fence about it because those tend to be a little unreliable. A lot of the time those common-interest meetups don't have much content or drive besides "Well, we're all here, everybody hang out I guess?" which can work, but certainly doesn't always. It was really the only game in town though, and I do enjoy talking to other writers. So I went for it. I'm certainly glad that I did, as it was a great time! There was a bit of a starting lull as we all wondered just what we were meant to be doing there, but we got it sorted eventually and started being fairly social and such.

I talked a fair bit with the person who sat down next to me, which I really think was Silver Cheetah. I have trouble because I find myself conflating cheetahs now a month later. Suffice it to say that I encountered Silver, Spruce Cheetah, and Seon Cheetah at different times in the con. This was at least one of those cheetahs at one of those times. Speaking of species conflation, I had a big moment of that when I saw a writer that I recognized with an otter tail. I had to flip through "Well, it's not Alfor Alto, it's not Friday Donnely, it's not Summercat... fuck, why are there so many author otters?" The authotter this time wasSignificant Otter, whom I remembered from Furthemore and I had a good time chatting with. It's a clever name. Clever enough that dozens of people are using it and I have no way of telling which one this was, so no link for this one. Man, I'm really slipping on my bibliographies here. Skunkbomb had some interesting things to share, and I was keen to listen in on them as I believe he's appeared in both FANG and CLAW, as well as presumably other very sharp writing anthologies. There were also Laika and Safler who I jawed with a bit. Sorry to say that apart from one sharing the name of a Russian space dog and the other being a tiger I don't remember much. I always hate when I hit that saturation point and lose people. Hopefully my brain will be taking better notes next time, guys! Joe Strike came by and was so flattered to hear that I'm a fan that he gave me a copy of one of his comics! I'd feel guilty if I wasn't also doing the fan-exchange in the other direction. This was my first time seeing Serathin in his human form, as he fursuits near-constantly at conventions. He's a big inspiration to me, to the point that I wrote fanfiction of one of his characters once. When we talked, he happened to mention "Oh yeah, I've read just about all your stories. You've done some really good work." I could've left right then, before the con had even barely started, and it still would've been one of the best cons of all time. Not only does he remember me, he really likes my work! aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAUGHH that so fucking AMAZING! Having gotten my heart started again after that I found McClaw and spent most of the rest of the time catching up with him, after of course dragging him over to another old friend Kamau and hoping they'd get along instead of reacting the way cats typically do when presented with an unfamiliar cat. I think that went pretty well, as they were still talking when I had to duck out for the next event.

The next thing was very much not fun. I knew it wasn't going to be, but it was the most important event of the whole con for me. It was a gathering called 'To Absent Friends', which as far as I know is unique to Anthrocon. As the name implies, it's a chance for us to tell the stories of people who aren't around anymore. I knew that I wanted to be there, because I felt the need to tell the story of my experiences with J Badger, or as I nearly always encountered him, his fursona Nom Crunch. I've spoken here before about my time with him, mostly in my Furthemore journals. The most recent one especially. When his passing really hit me, I was quite struck with regret that I'd never told him what an impact he'd left on me. What our time together had meant to me and how I'd been changed by it. I couldn't abide having never properly told that story. He was a big part of my process of opening up and becoming more social, so much so that now that I've got a huge bank of names to try and recall every convention. Even if it was just in front of a handful of other people who came there to grieve, I feel some sense of peace having acknowledged what his life meant to me in this way. What really brought that event all together, was the fact that Archai came along to support me. I was so glad for his support to lean on, but I also really wanted him there because he deserved to hear the epilogue to that story. The first two people outside my family that I ever really showed any emotional vulnerability towards both died tragically not long after I forged that connection. J Badger was the second. It left me, for a long time, afraid to form such bonds. That's the reason that opening up is scary, because of what you stand to lose. It took a long time, but Archai became the sort of friend that I'd want to be there to listen to me mourn. I am grateful beyond all measure for his phenomenal compassion, and for his tireless efforts to help me open up that door that I'd thought was barred forever.

Heh, so yeah. That gut-wrenching sudden tonal shift that you got just from reading this was hellacious to experience in person. Yet it was cleansing in a way. I got all of that out and could proceed to resume having fun. Of course that transition takes a bit, so I just wandered around some and encountered more wild pokemon as I wandered about. One of the many iterations of Syber was encountered this way, as was the similarly ubiquitous Klovix. I see him a million times all over the place when I'm on the far side of the continent, but this was my first time seeing him come by this way. I chatted him up for a bit because he looked a little out of place with his not knowing quite so many people out here. He's a good dude, I'm sure he'll figure it out. Someone called Spearmintz was also in attendance at some point but I haven't been able to look up their info. I'll have to unlock that mystery another day. I also caught up with Zantal, another west coast people that I've spent a fair amount of time with. He actually grew up right near where I just moved to in Ohio, so that actually left us with quite a bit to talk about in addition to just catching up. I've been short on local contacts, so hopefully he'll come by some time and he can show me around the area. We went to the dance together and Zan introduced me to Loco. When asked if we'd had any prior contact, I came back with the completely normal response of "Oh yeah! One time he taught me how to make spaghetti on Twitter." I really wish I was exaggerating because that would mean I could actually conceive of something stranger than reality but that apparently-nonsensical sentence is exactly what I said and exactly what had happened. Loco is a professional chef and I happened to catch some key bits of advice from his Twitter account once upon a time. Truly these are the final moments of coherence from a man who has utterly lost control of his life. After socializing a bit more, I figured that since I was there, I ought to bust at least one move real quick before turning in. And by that I apparently mean that I tore up the dance floor until just before the place closed down. So a decent start there I guess. I woke up at like 5 AM with debilitating cramps in my calves, so I guess I really gave it my all. A good feeling to be sure. Well, the cramps aren't a good feeling, but knowing that it came from numerous moves well-busted is a good feeling.

I figured I'd head out a little early to get some rest, but there were friend folk in the lobby on my way out so I couldn't just cruise right by them. I hadn't seen nearly enough of Zarafa yet, so it was nice to get a chance to snuggle is purple squishy softness for... okay far longer than I planned, but if I die from getting trapped in a giraffe hug then that must've been in the cards somewhere. Who am I to defy the ordained way of things? Anyways, Zarafa headed off to bed. Naturally he mentioned that if I hadn't yet seen enough of him I was free to accompany him on his way such that I might... see a little more of him. Big furry milestone in that hearing things like that doesn't weird me out anymore. It feels good to be able to handle that calmly and decline in a way that doesn't make people feel like a jerk for bringing it up. Back in the day when I'd get flustered about it I could see the way it made people feel so bad that they'd made me uncomfortable. It was a difficult time. One of many things that fur-immersion therapy has helped me with. Naturally I'd gotten to catching up with Erro and Sparf by then, the latter of which was kind enough to provide even more such furmersion treatments in his deliriously overexerted state. 2AM is about the time that everyone starts asking me if I'm drunk even if I haven't had a lick of alcohol all day, and if I act anything like this when I'm tired I can kind of understand why. We were on the near side of 4:00 by then so I was probably right there along with him. Sparf isn't normally a stone serious sort, but apparently he was letting out all his innermost thoughts this night. Some of which I honestly feel it would be a breach of confidence to print in a public spot.

One graciously shared brain dropping of Sparf's that simply begs to be shared though, was his booming proclamation as he wrapped his arm around me and yanked me tight to him, petting my head affectionately. "Ah, I love this one! I can flirt with him all day long and he never even notices! It's fan-tas-tic." I was, and stoutly remain, profoundly uncertain in regards to how to feel about that assertion. In point of fact, he was quite correct. Thinking back on it, there's nothing in our fairly storied history together that I would unironically describe as "flirting", and I do believe I said something to that effect in the moment. Sparf seemed vindicated, in an odd way. "See, I knew it! I never learned how to flirt, it's such a disaster. I'm truly flirtless!" By then we'd both said "flirt" enough times that it sounded like a silly Dr Seuss nonsense word and we were giggling about it. In the end I thought it was kind of sweet. I can empathize a fair bit with Sparf's position, as I've not really any useful experience in making any kind of subtle overture towards someone, so I'd probably be just as ham-fisted in my attempts were I to even summon the temerity to try. It seems that the strangest and most interesting revelations never appear in the form you'd expect. And as I bid goodnight to those assembled, I felt as though "Having middle-aged men hitting on me to practice their hitting-on-dudes skills isn't so bad." was definitely one such revelation. Though for the record, Zarafa does not need to practice. I actually had to weigh on his offer for a bit, and with me that's really saying something.

That late night freed me from the curse of waking up way early before anybody else was up, so that was kind of nice. As it was I arrived on scene about lunch time and got hooked up with a crew that was in fact, headed to lunch. I found Kirisha in the lobby and he said that he had designs on food, so I sat and chatted with him while we waited for his designs to come to fruition. Conveniently enough, he planned to invite Nimbus Kaden, a mutual acquaintance that I was also hoping to see on this adventure. Naturally Nimbus flaked on it, but we still managed a good group. I thought it was really funny when Kirisha tried to sell me on the outing saying "there will be girls there". I expressed my cynicism about that assertion as only I can, and just as he was making some snappy retort, a group arrived to join us. One consisting of, naturally, three men. I knew he was lying! Hah! The group did grow to eventually include two ladies by the time we headed out, so he was, by the strictest technical definition, not lying. There were, technically, eventually, multiple ladies present. Such a strange inversion this occasion was. Typically the whole herding cats paradigm of coordinating furries makes groups very mercurial and prone to spontaneously fissioning when any concerted attempt to move is made. We finally rolled out for Sushi Kim's and somehow gained people. The final loadout roster included Draco 18s, Restrained Raptor, Shade Raptor, Toozday, Mattias, Campion, and Axel the Cat, the one person I'd had contact with before through the hypnofurs chat, and all the names too generic for me to ever feasibly find links for: Zane, Snow, Matt and Mike. Matt and Mike were father and son, making their environs extremely awkward for them I'm sure, but they were good sports about it. And also we came to find that the group was roughly 33% people named Matt. So yeah, we accidentally like a dozen people for lunch. Sometimes you roll the dice and find that when they finally settle the table is entirely covered with a multitude of dice and you have no idea where they all came from. Yahtzee!

The kimchi, vegetables and little side-dish things came out with the drink that I ordered, so everybody just kind of assumed they were mine. I was pretty sure that they were supposed to be for the table, but I didn't fight them on it. Speaking of my drink, I had gotten a bottle of Soju because I'd never heard of it and cons are a great time for adventures. Turns out it's a leveled-up version of sake that hits a little harder. I found it surprisingly palatable though, despite its increased octane compared to the more traditional rice spirit. Trouble was nobody else really wanted any and they serve it in a 400 mL bottle. I was kind of glad for having the crowd to slow the meal down a little bit so I could make it through that thing. I still ended up being the last one finished by a fair bit. Now of course I drank the whole damn thing because my mom didn't raise no quitter but damn, that was a bit of a journey. It made me feel really bad about all those years that I gave Archai shit for eating so slowly. It actually is a pretty bad feeling knowing that you're the one holding everyone up. I'd say I ought to just drink heavily whenever I'm eating out with him, but that might send the wrong message, and would be terribly expensive besides. In any case, the whole platoon survived the meal. I talked a bit with Toozday on the way back about the lovely suit she was wearing. I believe the account I linked for her above is the maker and not the pilot, because she said that she bought the suit recently, so I'm actually in the dark about who exactly was inside the mask. In any case, I really admired the fur shaping and the paw design of the suit. Her paws were basically a real-life version of the Rick Griffin cankles where the leg just kind of flares out evenly into a paw, like whoever was designing this animal in Unigraphics went a little too crazy with the mesh surface tool. It's a really cool look, very natural and fluid. So I'll definitely be adding Kandori Creations to my research list as I continue tentatively eyeing prospective suitcrafters to select one to make my dreams come true. Hopefully I'll really get on that soon. This has been a much more difficult and complicated process than I expected, but there's no denying that Blackjack is showing his age by now. Ah well, a matter for another day.

After the breakup of the 103rd Sushi Brigade I met up with Nameless Imp and Lord Grey to engage in the venerated tradition of Uncle Kage's story hour. That's an event that holds the unique distinction of being very difficult for me to put into words. That's quite something given that most other occasions I spit out enough words about a given event that someone could do a passable dramatization of it in a courtroom if necessary. If I had to choose though, I'd say the best encapsulation of the tone of the evening was that Kage repeatedly referred to breasts as "Jibbly-Jobblies". Despite all my love of detail, I think that phrase really says it all.

My next encounter was with the indomitable Ace Fox and his new betrothed Kitsune Clover. (Yeah, he's gonna marry a girl. I know, I was shocked too.) We caught up on new developments in each others' lives, and even hatched a plan to help me actually fursuit this con. The Omni is a great hotel, and I do like staying there with Lanhao, as he has a long track record of being an excellent roommate, but this con we were at full "The sun is a deadly lazer" conditions, and the walk all the way down William Penn Place is an impassable deathmarch when you're covered in a cubic yard of adorable cloth dog. I'd yet to unload my fursuit from my car, as I was basically counting on a staging area to open up. Since Ace said that he was interested in the chance to get both gen 1 and gen 2 of his suit out there at the same time, I asked if he could provide such a staging area from his vantage at the Drury. He agreed, and I retrieved the old Ace to deliver it there. Ace fanboyed a bit over Mori as we hung out there in front of the Westin, but eventually everybody had places to be. We came to find that Mori was in a tough spot being unable to locate his place to be, so another plan came together. I had Ace just take the suit to his place. That freed me up to guide Mori to the Omni, a route I knew fairly well for obvious reasons. Apparently he'd been invited to a party there and was guiding an already suitably-partied friend along with him. Playing drunk babysitter for a fursuiter is a formidable task even dressed as a human. I've no idea how he manages. Must be something to do with canine herding instincts. Of course Mori is one of those suiters that's dressed up like 27 hours a day at cons and is probably a highlander or something. He must just have it figured out by now. Anyways, having gotten him into the right building I of course gave him that most uncomfortable Johnny on the Spot experience of asking if he remembered me. Naturally he did not, but I can't take that too hard. He's super popular and kinda all over the place a lot of the time. Plus when he asked me to clarify I said that we'd roomed together at FAU and not Furthemore by mistake so apparently I also suck at this. I guess there's a reason I have to write all this shit down. Better luck next time I guess!

Alright, to explain what happened next I'm going to have to back up a bit to flesh out a thread that wound through this entire day thus far. Yes, I know, these things are plenty complicated enough when they have a straightforward chronology without me having to jump around, but for this one I've gotta go all Chrono Trigger on this to uncover the deep mystical lore of my own goddamn life and by virtue of having not lost interest yet you're along for the ride so let's do this! So this will be another one of those stories where I don't use somebody's name because they were enough of a pain that I'd feel bad connecting him publicly to this story. I'm gonna call him Resasuke for reasons that people who have seen Aggretsuko will understand. And people who haven't watched Aggretsuko can go fucking watch it right now because it will be the greatest goddamn thing that has happened to your eyeballs this entire year. Seriously, it's on Netflix right now. This journal will be here when you get back. Go watch adorable panda office adventures for like a couple hours, you'll thank me for prompting you to do it. Anyways, the Cliff's Notes there is (I know, I'm summarizing? Better strap the fuck in for this one.) that Resasuke in the show is this fairly inoffensive guy who's just like... really spaced out. He operates on a different frequency than everyone else in the world and this often causes friction between him and the other characters, friction that he is unable to even perceive, let alone do anything about.

Resasuke's namesake in the story of my life is a contact that I know through college, and he's fairly new to the IRL participation side of the furry fandom. Given that I was a part of influencing him to put himself out there and really dive into this strange and colorful world, I felt as though it were a bit incumbent upon me to help him navigate the seething hordes of strange creatures that descended upon this locale at about this time every year. I certainly wish I had someone to walk me through things when I stumbled into Anthrocon as my first convention. It was slow going though. I could answer his questions and point out a few things, but this was leading the proverbial horse to water. The rest of the time it was teeth-pulling to get him to do... anything. Like, I understand that the social environment can be pretty intense and not everybody wants to leap straight into that, but you've got options, man! Go to one of the gaming rooms, go to the zoo to hang out, pet fursuiters in the corridors, do literally anything other than run off extremely far down a disused segment of the convention hall and sit there on your phone. Ugh. I felt a little bad giving up on my immovable object after a few hours, but I like to think that it was more a case of admitting that maybe I couldn't be of any help to him. Some things are best experienced at one's own pace, and after a certain point, pushing doesn't really help anymore.

Semi-happy ending, though. He apparently got it figured out in the most inconvenient way possible. So, partial-yay, I guess. What had happened was that he'd messaged me in the morning saying that he'd gotten a new badge and he needed help getting it fitted for a clip so he could wear it. I had a badge puncher so I said that I'd help him out. I brought it with me and I told him to let me know where to meet him. We agreed on that, and what could have been a simple, straightforward interchange that would have taken literally seconds to accomplish turned into an all-day catastrofuck that failed in the most baffling and creative ways possible. Honestly that's a pretty good description of the way logistics work when furries are involved just in general, so I can't say I was terribly surprised. Whenever I went to a spot where we said we could meet I arrived to find that he had fucked as completely off as one is capable of fucking in all directions simultaneously, as though he had broken the normal causality that governs precisely how off one is able to fuck at any given instant in time. So I failed that particular mission, despite numerous attempts and having the required quest item on me for the entire day. A word to people with the social sense of a boiled cabbage, and to all in general: If someone is trying to do a favor for you, make sure that you make it easy for them to do that. Dicking around someone that's trying to do something nice for you is the surest way to trash that goodwill straight off the block and make absolutely certain that they never try to help you again. Resasuke is lucky in that I won't hold it against him because I'm near-certain that none of this was purposeful, and my first Anthrocon journal attests that I was in his shoes not long ago. I guess the silver lining there is that flitting about like a coke-addled hummingbird all day long is exactly how one behaves when they are properly engaged with the goings-on of a furry convention. So it looks like Resasuke might get the hang of this furry thing yet. I mean, if the first thing that came to my mind for something to call him was based on a socially inept red panda from a cartoon designed to sell plush toys then he's probably got a fair shot of fitting in within this fandom. Only time will tell!

Anyways, the relevance of that long diversion was that after I'd seen off Mori at the Omni I was anxious to get back to my room to divest myself of the heavy, clunky-ass metal device that had been weighing me down all day. Unfortunately my eagerness to toss the thing and my frustration with the whole situation made me take a hit on my normally fastidious inventory management and I left the key to the room inside it, then saved my game before I realized that error. That left me stuck outside the room for the foreseeable future. I realized it seconds after shutting the door, but that's a bit like being six inches away from a space station without a tether. The fact that you're so close and you know exactly what is the problem is of no use to you in that scenario. When I texted Lanhao he said that he would let me in if we could meet up sometime, and in true furry con fashion, I fucked off elsewhere for like four hours. At least I let him know that was the plan though. See? A little consideration is all it takes to be a good spastic hummingbird and have everyone leave the interaction happy. Anyways, I just went for it because I was already late for the Hypnofurs party and that particular shindig was on the way back, so repairing the soft-lock I'd accidentally put into my current save file could wait.

I arrived to the party to find that it had been far more of a success than anyone had anticipated, to the point that the room was pretty stuffy and shoulder-to-shoulder packed in many places. It was great to get to meet so many folks that I'd only ever chatted with online, but dumping them into a tightly packed pile is not the ideal way to experience said people in the same way that watching all the Star Wars films simultaneously is not the best way to experience them. That being said, I'm gonna just leave a bigass pile of their names here so you have some idea what kind of octane that mix of people had. Vek Skunk, Crocodoc, Kyred, Aristoth, Devin Neko, Bark Dango, Blyss Otter, and Kiba. That last one isn't even me trying to screw with Kiba Youkai's search algorithm. There just happened to be pink-wolf-husky Kiba-kun there, so the needle-stacking of name results is just an ancillary benefit. So yeah, I talked to all those people for at least some period of time before I got sat down next to the suitably unpronounceable dragon Xaldun Rahk'shzir and I found his big fluffy suit to be a fair bit too cuddleable for me to like... move anywhere else for the next two hours. He was extremely cuddleable is what I'm saying. I may have fallen asleep for a bit. Who's to say? What even is consciousness anyhow?

So yeah, the party broke up and I went to get another room key from Lanhao. In the course of that mission I got to see Dark Nekogami whom I suitably fanboyed over because he's an amazing and prolific artist and all of the usual fanboy things. This confluence of events had me ultimately returning to the convention hall and just going to the dance at bullshit o'clock in the morning again. And so the cycle repeats. This time the snare that had me losing even more hours to the void was the fact that I'd gotten caught up with the AV folk in the interim through mutuals Archai and Metric, they got me back into the company of Erro, Nightclaw, Fizz Otter and their whole contingent. The plan was for that small army to march to Primanti Brothers again, and having refused that call to action once already I figured I would go for it. I had some lovely if-now-hazy conversation with Photonz and Kbooki. Once we'd eaten our fill, the approach of daybreak signaled that we really ought to be getting to bed. I was more motivated than the others to get there as I am unused to their west-coast dance-till-you're-dead lifestyle, and I did not have the benefit of their 3-hour west-coast time-displacement field. They used their Silicon Valley superpowers to Uber me back to the Omni though, so I'll call it a wash.

So yeah, due to my spending the night fighting FAR outside my weight class in the sleep-deprivation elimination gauntlet that is hanging out with people from California, Saturday got a pretty late start and my acutely-suffering hippocampus neglected to record the exact nature of my interactions with Orrery, Aelius, Antifreeze, and Jake Bunny that afternoon. I'm sure you were a great bunch of folks and that I had a good time meeting you all, my brain was just still fumbling blearily for the "record" button at that point. Anyways, I had lunch with Impy and Grey because they are some cool dudes and I need food to live. Tough stumbling block though, Impy said that a few places I'd mentioned were too expensive, and that she didn't want to eat fast food. The ones I'd suggested were about $15 a plate, so these two restrictions jammed my search algorithm right the fuck up. I guess that highlights the divergence in my thought process. I rarely give much thought to what things cost at a furry con because I think about what things cost constantly in every other aspect of my life so that I can go totally nuts at a furry con. As such I don't really have the data collected necessary to find this mythical like $10 a plate actual sit-down restaurant, as that seems to me like an unreasonable thing to expect to find downtown in a major city. Really the only thing that I could come up with which would fit the bill, thanks to the inherently scalable nature of its menu, was Sushi Kim's! So we ate there again. Much faster service when you reduce your party size by a factor of four, I found. Kinda sucked going to the same place twice, but it's not like I had to order the same thing or whatever. I still had a good time eating with them. The budget-conscious Impy naturally took advantage of the fine control over portion sizes in order to order way too much food so I got to split it with her. Not the best penny-pinching strategy but I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. Apparently I was fairly entertaining company, as I was at one point elected "The new Shugwar." And later on, even Shugwar's boyfriend. Shugwar is a mutual friend of theirs whom I hear about constantly but have never encountered in the wild. As such I was dubious about the council appointing me as his boyfriend, but I came to learn that he's straight also. So no pressure I guess? I dunno, it might work out. Apparently when they called ol' Shuggy-wuggy to let him know of the arrangement, his response was "You set me up with another straight guy? Oh cool! That'll be great, we can hang out, drink beer and talk about tits!" Which, for what it's worth is almost exactly what I would respond with were our roles reversed. So maybe we really are perfect for each other, who's to say?

After parting with... my new extended family? Not sure how it works. Anyways, next up I ran into Kiba in the lobby. Yes, this time it's actually you this time, kitty Kiba. Congrats on finding the needle in this needlestack! The two of us caught up for a bit in the lobby. I found that at the time she was playing host to Quotation Marks and the three badgerlings, who happen to be the significant otter and offspring, respectively, of the legendary Boozy Badger. I hung out with them for a fair bit of time in the lobby. A few times Kiba asked if I was bored just kinda babysitting with her, but it was fine by me. Spending time in the common areas is how you happen upon people, and I had my head on a swivel enough to make that happen a few times. I got a chance to chat with those assembled for a bit, and that was a nice change of pace. Not the anarchic thrill-ride that cons usually are, but it was hardly sunk time. It's always very interesting to get the perspectives of human-folk who were semi-unwittingly dragged into this whirlwind of brightly-colored wildlife. I was also on hand to help them puzzle through the conundrum of finding their own food. QM stipulated a menu both vegan AND gluten free. I guess this was just a day for requests that bricked my search algorithms because I didn't have anything nearby that would fit in that razor-thin scope. Eventually I did recall that there was a Jimmy John's right across the street. Being a sandwich place, they'd have all the non-meat-or-grain sandwich accoutrements and could likely be put upon to furnish them upon request. Their website indicated that they did indeed have a lettuce wrap that suited the needed parameters, so all was well.

From there uh, random encounters and stuff probably? I only did one actual convention event all of Saturday, so my memory record from then is sorely lacking in useful navigational waypoints. I did come across Manchas, a college alum who it's always fun to see. And of course Fuego, also an RPI grad. She was with the usual crew Ang, Terry, and Taki. Naturally while I was catching up with them Fuego heard about my current Schrodinger's job situation and said that she'd be happy to hook me up with another engineering gig. Long-time viewers will recall that when I first met Fuego way back at my first furry con ever she wrote me a recommendation letter that helped me get into RPI, the place where I ended up getting by BS in nuclear engineering from. I feel as though I've done nothing to merit this level of generosity, but I can't really afford to turn it down. So I guess my new contingency plan for if the reactor that I'm at closes down is call up that one girl I know who pretends to be a cow on weekends, because she's apparently got all the answers! After... a surprise session of career planning, I headed out to the zoo to see what do. What, at the moment, was doing, was Nimbus hanging out with a few of his friends. At least one of which was Shogun Vex. We had a great time chatting and I simply can't help sharing the fact that Nimbus' last name, "Kaden" is a draconic word that means "cloud". Nimbus, also being a type of cloud, means I got to exclaim "Oh my God your name is Cloud-Cloud!" Adding to the stupendous amazingness of this revelation was the fact that Nimbus had actually never heard of the Moon-Moon meme, so I got to be the one to break the news of the proud legacy that he had inherited with his namesake. That's actually pretty amazing because Moon-Moon is one of the O-est of the OG memes. It was a joy to share his story with someone.

Aaaanyways, that night was the moment we've all been waiting for, Ang and co's late night sexy transformation panel! It was their first time doing this thing, and it came on the heels of literally four other transformation-themed panels that day, so nobody was sure how it was going to turn out. How it ended up turning out was that it was a good thing we got there early because the place was booked solid to the point that the fun-police kicked some people out. Our indomitable hosts stood to speak so that they could give their chairs to audience members because standing crowds weren't allowed. So yeah, clearly the interest is there. And the engagement too! We talked non-stop about everything under the sun until they kicked us out. A lot of my hypnosis furs buddies were there also, and so of course we were all pretty jazzed when someone mentioned hypnosis and more than half the room simultaneously went "Awww yeah, that's my jam!" Naturally there were more fun meetups at the end as we did a bit of farewell handshaking. Big fanboy moment for someone that sheepishly mentioned "I mean, I dunno if you've seen my stuff but my other username is Poweron." And I of course lost my shit because he has a TON of awesome content whose business I am all up in on a fairly frequent basis. It seemed to be a night for fanboying, as the core TF crew all retired to the zoo together to chat some more. I got to see TGwonder and Watsup who are both such huge-goddamn-deal artists that I could barely work up the nerve to actually talk to them. I mean, I still did because I don't think I ever stop talking at this point, but like, there was some resistance there for a bit. We all had a great time and kept the ball rolling late into the morning when several of the assembled content creators all realized that they have a ton of work to do and they need to sleep or they'll completely whiff on all their important art things so most folk ran off. I was in the middle of something with Canis Sapiens and he actually seemed interested in listening to me talk (fancy that!) so we kept chatting away. He'd originally wanted to hear about hypnosis and so of course I talked for like an hour about that and-also-everything-in-addition-to-that because he was too polite to stop me. I guess I was on a roll by then. Being excited about stuff is exciting! But we got kicked out of that place too, so it was off to bed. Great night though, if you couldn't tell.

Sunday started with the dance competition. Which is an unconventional way to start a day, but if I could do it seven days a week I would. Those guys were exactly the bolt of energy I needed to start the day. The first thing I wanted to do with all that energy was find Ace and choke him until he stopped enjoying it, and then a little bit more. You see, the temporal thread running throughout yesterday (yup, it's another one of those. Put on your fourth-dimension seat belt folks! It should be located to your right and 15 minutes behind you.) was that I'd given my suit to Ace so that I could change in his room, and then completely lost contact with him. So my increasingly desperate attempts to contact him had gone unheeded, and at this point he was basically holding my fursuit hostage. I had missed the parade and fursuit games by that point, AND my chance to get both Ace suits out at once. I mean, it's a furry con so I just went and did other amazing fun things, but like... there's the principle though! In any case, it turned out that Ace's phone had just bricked for most of the weekend, so taking the time to reach out in person and squeeze all the air out of him was actually the proper corrective action, as it so often is. He got me a key to his room such that I could finally unlock the fursuit perk and make use of that on the last day.

And make use of it I did! From that moment until, and slightly beyond, nightfall, I did many amazing fox things, even though the con was winding down. I actually did manage to find lots of people still around, some of whom I hadn't even seen yet. I guess it's more of that "nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask" kind of effect. There were still a few people I know that didn't even realize I had a suit. I guess that means I'm not wearing it enough. Hah! I'll put a stop to that, certainly. I ran into roughly 70% of Clementine at one point and I got to catch up with her. With the substantial change in her physical profile my blurry-ass fursuit vision would've never picked her out of the crowd had someone not mentioned to me that she was there. She had decreased in mass appreciably during the intervening years is what I'm saying. It was great to see her still doing her thing and having fun. She was in kind of a bad way when our paths last crossed, so it was very comforting to see that she was in a good place again. I managed to sneak into a really Cool Photo that GrumpyPuppy had set up for a friend of his. It was for a police officer who had been patrolling and protecting Anthrocon for many years. He wanted a picture with a bunch of fursuiters, and of course a suitable bunch happily obliged.

My adventures also brought me into the company of a charming vixen called Dolby. She didn't talk, so it was a bit tough to ascertain exactly what the dynamic was with her. She seemed fairly interested in me, so of course I stopped to engage for a bit with a cute fellow fox. We danced and hugged and... conversed in a fashion. There always is something surreal about trying to talk with just your big, goofy, furry body. There's so much information that you're missing, but so much understanding to be had if you're really looking for it. The way she acted so familiar with me, I just assumed that she was one of Ace Fox's friends recognizing the old suit. I actually checked with Ace later though, and he said that he didn't know any such person. So... maybe she just like... actually liked me? There's a crazy thought for ya. Hm, whatever the case, gonna have to happen across her again sometime.

The final temporal thread that I have to address that was going through my fursuiting capers is a hilarious and adorable one. In the morning, Lanhao had gotten in late and asked if he'd disturbed my sleep, also mentioning that he had gotten a late checkout if I needed it. Before suiting up, I messaged back that I'd slept just fine, and that I wouldn't need another night because I was leaving Sunday night. Turns out he'd been freaking out and blowing up my phone because he thought that it was good that I'd slept well but didn't read the whole message. So when he looked at it a bit later the exchange read:
"I'm leaving early."
"Good."
So he spent that whole evening thinking that I was super pissed off at him because he'd said that and because I didn't respond all day he thought that now I wasn't talking to him. Fortunately I did see him while suiting at the end of the night and we got that whole adorable mess cleared up.

I ran out of con, and subsequently out of daylight, and the responsible adult that I sometimes act like reminded me that another party-till-near-daybreak rager wasn't a possibility because I had work the next day. After I got changed I got to chat with Ace and Clover for a bit. Nice way to wind down, even if we did mostly talk about cars. Ace even found a way to make some parts of it interesting, so I've gotta give him props on that. The thing I thought stood out among all the typical car-talk noise was the story of Group B and how they basically just created an unlimited division of rally racing with no restrictions on specs or power. That created a huge challenge for engineers designing and building the cars, and the resulting arms race catapulted us a couple decades into the future in terms of automotive performance. I've never been into high-end racing stuff, but as an engineer I still have a bit of reverence for the ways that those advancements filter through to the cars that us regular people drive. Crazy gearheads pushing the limits is quite literally an engine of progress.

Towards the close of our mechanical reverie, Clover had an odd proposal for me.
"Hey, since you're driving, do you want to take all this booze?"
"Uhh, that sounds like kind of a bad idea, actually."
"No I mean, we're flying so we can't take it with us, but you can."
"Oh! Yes. That is a much better thing."

So yeah, I got to clean out the liquor cabinet for my troubles. Pretty good deal all things considered. I had to laugh when I saw the special tag on the bottle of Tito's talking about their support of animal rescue. Naturally it was touted as "The Vodka for Dog People". You have no idea, Titos Handmade Vodka. You have no idea!

So yeah. I got all my shit together and saw everyone off. I stopped by the grand piano upstairs because they were playing Piano Man, which is how any great night of fun ends. Cosmik was doing some great work out there, so I simply had to stay for another song. In the end I said my final farewells and I was on my way whilst it was only slightly tomorrow. The following bleary and exhausted workday wasn't much fun, but I earned every millimeter of those hanging bags under my eyes. Even with all the shit I've had to go through lately, and all the work I had to do to make the trip happen, Anthrocon is still there, and it's still exactly what I need it to be.