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Fur Xoticon 2016: Oh Brave New World...
General | Posted 9 years agoAnd so it came to be that I struck out once more into the wilderness in search of adventure. Actually I just drove to Massachusetts but I’m trying to make this more cinematic. This just wouldn’t be a furry con without a massive catastrofuck of terrible planning from beginning to end, so I made sure to get a head start on that. I’d only found out that Fur Xoticon existed very recently, and I’d been on the fence about attending for some time. They’re a new con, so it’s tough to get a read on what they’ll be like. It certainly wasn’t encouraging when their website had no events listed, or that it breaks often and seems hastily designed. Convenience of location ultimately won out, as it often does, despite how hard I worked to make this difficult. The con is actually quite close to where I go to school. The problem being that the school seems to think that I ought to leave when the semester ends. It would’ve been very easy to stay an extra week and just hit the con from there directly, and I got some entirely-too-late advice from my friends on how to do that. Apparently if you say you’re attending commencement they let you stay, no questions asked. Given the way they run late checkouts out of town on a rail I would’ve thought there would be more to it than that. Maybe it’s not super surprising. I stuck around an extra three days by lying about what finals I had, so they seem pretty chill about it. Alas, it was too late for such a plan and I was forced to head home. Perhaps that was for the best though. I really hate having everything I own in my car, especially if I’m going to be in a strange place for a couple days. That’s pretty much begging for it to be stolen. Nothing I own is really all that expensive, but some of it looks expensive enough to motivate someone to break my windows in order to later be disappointed when they try to sell my five year old computer only to be met with a counter-offer of being charged to dispose of it.
In any case, I dropped off all my stuff at home, including some stuff that I actually needed to bring with me but didn’t because moving is fucking horrendous and you can’t rationally think about anything other than how badly you want it to be over. Particularly when you will be presently driving right back to the place you came from. A plan like that seems defeatist, but heading back to school gave me a place in the middle to stop and sleep. That’s what made the timing work out. I spent a lot of that break time working on plans for RMFC, actually. Very new, hastily drawn plans at that. Awhile back the FurtheMore guys asked if I'd like to run their table at FA:U. I couldn't think of a reason not to, so I said I'd go for it. In a shocking turn of events, I recently learned of a reason not to do it. That con happens to be the same weekend as RMFC. It seems like I've made a habit of attending RMFC, and I might even have been said have some fun there on occasion. I asked about it and the staff said it's cool if I can't make it to FAU. So I checked in with my spirit animal high in the mountains of Colorado to see if he's still in a good position to have me loiter around his place for a bit in support of actually doing this thing. Ryoken seemed willing to put up with me again, so I had a bunch more stuff to worry about on that end now that I had new plans. So yeah, I spent much of the trip to this con worrying about scheduling things for my trip two cons from now. Ever get the impression that I’m too into this sort of thing? Me neither.
From there it was on to Springfield, which was relatively easy to find. The hotel however seemed to have a stake in remaining hidden. They had giant signs that said Clarion in all manner of locations, except for nearby or affixed to the actual building that WAS the hotel or convention hall, making one’s approach a bewildering and unnerving experience. I went with my best guess at the correct building and checked in there. They had my name at the front desk, so either I guessed correctly or stumbled into a very clever kidnapping plot. I had trouble getting to my room as it was somehow not in the same building as the front desk. They also gave me a room number with three digits in it and directed me to a place that had only four digit room numbers. I was struck with the impression that they’d just hastily given me a fake number just to get rid of me, which is kind of a rude way to handle a hotel check-in. When I asked about it I came to find out that I had to walk through the pool to get to my room. I pointed out that that was really dumb and they told me I could also go outside and walk through the parking lot to get there. That’s less dumb but not really better. They actually seemed quite concerned about that and were looking into what they could do about it. For the most part I was exaggerating, so before they could lose their shit too much I told them that they could just find whoever designed this floorplan and tell him that it’s stupid. They seemed fine with that plan.
I apparently presented a supreme challenge to the assembled convention staff as I poked around trying to find my room, or indeed any rooms, the vast majority of the accommodations being hidden behind the secret pool corridor for reasons known only to the demon cult that laid out the design of this compound. The insurmountable task that I presented the staff with was registering on-site. Something that I was assured was for some reason much easier than picking up a pre-reg badge at the time by the person working in registration. What was a little disconcerting was the fact that he had to enlist four other people to assist him in this endeavor before they managed to complete it. I’d hate to think of what lengths they would’ve had to go to if I’d found out about this con earlier and convinced myself to come to it in time to preregister.
Thinking back on Furthe’More, whose success was one of the things that convinced me to take a chance on this new con, I recall that one of the things that impressed me about it so much was that I never would’ve guessed that it was their first year. Well this year was absolutely Fur Xoticon’s first year. Perhaps even their zeroth year. I go to registration:
“I’d like to register.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who does registration.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who can get this tablet to turn on.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who can work the credit card terminal.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who has the wifi password.”
“Okay, let me find this one dude who’s dressed as a Charizard right now but he’s probably actually the best guy for this job.”
They eventually did get it, but that process was worthy of a little concern. They had like six people on staff, so I was forced to wonder how they could afford to have everyone only know how to do one thing. I should really check and see if that payment went through correctly. At this point, not paying for registration feels like stealing from a doddering old lady.
Against all odds I did eventually make it to my room and used my disquietingly featureless key card to enter it. I’m not sure why that bothered me. I guess there’s not a huge amount of practical reason to have a lot printed on a room key, but having an entirely white and smooth chunk of plastic just seems wrong, like they’re trying to hide something. Maybe they were trying to make me feel like a secret agent to fit with the 007 theme. I guess I’ll think that from now on. It’ll hardly be the first time I’ve lied to myself to make the pain and confusion go away. I noticed there was a bottle opener attached to the wall in the bathroom, so this place is pretty old school. That or they just really know their audience. I certainly can’t fault them on the water pressure, the lack of which is usually a good cheap hotel marker. I was trying to fill a glass and the stream knocked it right out of my hand. Must be they need some pretty stout pumps to maintain an onsite waterpark. Oh yeah also they have an onsite waterpark for reasons apparent to precisely nobody. I noted that I was in time for a panel, ‘Creating a Fursona’. Seeing as I’ve made it this far without ever properly crafting a fursona for myself and there was only the barest handful of panels to be had, I went for it. Spitfire and Con Chair Krank put on a fairly entertaining shell-shocked ramble. Not really structured or on topic, but still somewhat interesting to see. I believe I caught them at peak “oh fuck what the hell are we doing?” An understandable sentiment to have when running a first-year con.
After that was the timeslot that the opening ceremonies were hastily moved to right after the dozen people in attendance realized that Friday morning was not the ideal time to host such a ceremony for the benefit of essentially no one. There was slightly more than no one at the ceremony, and our hosts kept up the “Oh God are we seriously actually doing this thing right now?” theme. I noted that the evening had a headliner of Niic the Singing Dog. Apparently he’s quite the public figure in the fandom. Fans, merchandise, the works. I’d only recently learned that his name is pronounced “nice”, so I can’t say that I was quite on board that hype train. However, there was very much nothing opposite his show’s timeslot, so I went for it. In technical or musicality terms I can’t say I was blown away, but I think that’s entirely a function of the reputation preceding him. Had I not been primed with this apparently vast media empire that underwrites this particular green akita (had to look that one up. Breeds are hard to parse out when they’re dayglow green.) I probably would’ve thought that he was pretty good. I’m sure a lot of what I was hearing was an effect of “I’m dancing around in a fursuit and am at a dangerous shortage of oxygen”, which I identify with greatly these days. He certainly has a thunderous stage presence and a ton of energy. It’s unquestionably obvious that he’s been doing this for a while with the way he conducts himself. If I had to name the show I’d probably go with ‘Niic: Guts and Enthusiasm’, as that’s what really comes through when he’s out there. It’s certainly better than the equally applicable ‘Niic: Transistor Amplifier Clipping: The Musical’. Their sound system was kind of rough is what I’m saying. Their AV setup looked pretty professional and the lights were dynamic, but it really sounded like they were overdriving it when they didn’t need to. It was a small room with most of the audience within 30 feet of the performer. They could’ve easily gotten away with very little or no amplification. In the end, it was still a really fun show. The canine personality suits him well. Whenever he’s not singing he has that unrelenting optimism that all dog lovers will recognize. “Ohmygosh I’m so happy right now are you happy too? I want you to be happy so BAD pleasepleaseplease come be happy with me BEING HAPPY IS THE BEST AWMUHGAWD!” You could see plenty of fluff that had been shaken into the air in the course of the show, so it’s plain to see that he’s really giving it his all out there.
It was pretty quiet on Friday. Most everyone was planning to make a day-trip of it, so there weren’t too many attendees there that early. I was glad for Moosefet bouncing about in the lobby energetically. At the time he was one of very few things making the place actually feel like a furry convention. I saw him giving out MOSFET ribbons, which made me curious enough to investigate. Turns out that they mean exactly what I thought they mean. His name is based on Mixed-Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors, because he’s an electrical tweaker and I guess his passion is showing through there. I never managed to catch up with him out of suit, which is a shame. He seemed like an interesting character. I poked about a bit at the Dealer’s Den, mostly just chatting with folks who were happy to see someone willing to engage with them a bit. I talked awhile with Cadmium Tea at his booth and he said that he recognized my username from FA. Always a flattering thing to hear from someone new. I may actually achieve a notable presence in the fandom one of these days.
I also came across Seth Drake, someone who I’d met not long before the con in a rather amusing coincidence. It actually is a pretty surreal feeling to run into someone from the fandom just by chance in your everyday life. A few weeks ago the choir had brought him on as a hired gun to sing the solo in Bach's Chirst Lag in Todes Banden. During one of our breaks he recognized Heather Bruton's art on my shirt, meaning that each of us instantly knew the other was a furry. He asked if I’d like a cup of tea sometime and I took him up on it eventually. It took a long time just to arrange that one short meeting. Would’ve been nice if our paths hadn't happened to cross at such a busy time of year. He’s working on a PhD at RPI though, so he’ll be around for a bit. He’s an interesting sort, weighed in on a wide variety of things. I came to find at the con that he was actually a guest of honor, so I suppose I could say that I was honored to have made his acquaintance. I came to find that he was hosting a panel about writing and cartooning with Gray Muzzle, who was handling the latter subject. It was an enjoyable time. Certainly fulfilled my desire to have at least one writing panel per con. It was amusing that they occasionally stopped to ask us if we’d like them to stop just rambling on and on, but really listening to that was all I was there for.
The Late Night with Zen variety show sounded pretty interesting, too bad it didn’t happen. Which of course left us with no more events for the day. I heard Seth discussing food, so I jumped in on that. Gray Muzzle rambled a bit in his description of a potential eatery for us. After he was done running through the whole sales pitch I sought to summarize a bit in order to make a better-informed decision.
“So what you’re saying is, quality: average, selection: average, cost: average?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I’m in.”
So I joined our two panelists along with Dyxxander and Palanth for a quiet late-evening dinner. I was glad that I took them up on it, as this was the only occasion during the whole con wherein I went out to eat with someone. I was at quite a severe shortage of people I knew at this con, and the con being in quite a severe shortage of people in general meant that I couldn’t do my usual thing of just quietly glomming on with a huge group of people who were unaware that none of them know me. For the record that dinner was only 3 out of 4 people who didn’t know me. When we got back to the venue pretty much all that was going on was the dance, wherein DJ Bleedingears was bringing down the house. By which I mean I believe that he was trying to literally collapse that physical structure with the volume of his music. Once again, small venue, few people, not necessary to use Hydra-designed sonic weapons as a means of entertainment. I hung out in the lobby a bit, finding that the 30 yard separation from the main ballroom tamped down the music to a pretty reasonable level. The venue was metaphorically if not literally pretty quiet though, so I called it for that night.
The next morning I found the curtains in my room to be profoundly inadequate, the intense sun that was gearing up to make it insufferably hot that weekend seeing fit to wake me up just before 6:00. A profoundly unfair act, given that sleep is quite fleeting at conventions and that I knew there was fuck all going on until noon on Saturday. Just as I was barely managing to shuffle off the burdensome mantle of consciousness a second time I got a text from a friend whom I’ll call Patrick Star such that his identity remains safely hidden from anyone who doesn’t click this link to his userpage. Naturally, Patrick’s text woke me again. He responded with befuddlement at my entirely reasonable response of telling him to stop sending me his inane Nazi bullshit at fucking stupid hours of the morning. His reply was so dazzlingly stupid I almost stopped being mad, as though one’s rage odometer can roll over back to zero at a certain point. He came back with “sorry I don’t understand time zones”. That message was broadcast live from SOUTH CAROLINA to MASSACHUSETTS, which astute observers will recognize as being in the SAME GODDAMN TIME ZONE. Ugh, I swear if he didn’t comprise roughly 12% of my active fanbase I’d drop him like a bad habit.
I proceeded then to a highly contentious continental breakfast. The con’s website said that breakfast wasn’t included with rooms, but they gave me a voucher for it when I checked in. One which they never bothered to collect before I obtained food. So in the course of my tumultuous morning I went on to either rightfully enjoy or accidentally steal a profoundly average continental breakfast. The scrambled eggs and homefries were about the same consistency, and for the life of me I’m not entirely certain which one of the two that is an indictment against. The bacon was pretty good though. I’d say you can’t screw up bacon, but once I sailed on a navy ship to Britain and watched both of those institutions passionately and gleefully fuck up bacon in disturbingly creative ways. Producing a product that could be tied into knots or seen through, their means of doing so likely best left to the imagination. So yeah, kudos to these guys on being true Americans and crisping up some delicious pig belly slices. It was hardly an ideal morning, but no matter. I’m sure every true champion starts his day with three hours of restless purgatory, furious text messages and a bacon sandwich.
The only thing allegedly going on that morning was the meet-and-greet with the honored guests and important folk. Naturally, unwashed plebeians such as myself were barred from it, which felt a little spiteful, honestly. Truly, I realize that there has to be an incentive to fork over some more cash and that’s never bothered me before, but when there’s literally nothing else happening at that time and I know damn well there’s going to be like six people actually attending that thing it really feels like that’s more a slap on the wrist to everyone else than a benefit of slugging registration in the face with your massive wallet. They ended up rescheduling that event anyway because nobody showed up, which I was surprised that they were surprised by. They made it a morning event when anyone who’s there was there on Friday and as such is hungover as fuck, and all the day-trip people hadn’t gotten there yet. Have these guys been to a furry con before? The first thing that happens is furry daylight savings time where everybody turns their clocks back five hours so they can sleep from 4AM to 11AM like Raptor Jesus intended. I came to find that such changes were now being tracked on a whiteboard in the lobby. Not a bad means of dealing with constant schedule flails, really. With such a small venue it’s pretty much guaranteed everyone is going to come through there pretty often, so that was actually a much more effective solution than any fancy technical stuff. Things were beginning to pick up slowly as the morning wore on, it was just barely enough to justify me throwing on my fursuit and getting down to brass tacks, which at this point are all that’s keeping the zipper attached. I bounced around a bit in the lobby, having some fun with those assembled. Togi was a standout as someone really engaging and fun to goof around with. That was good to see. A lot of the time people with Fursuiting.com suits are the sort that slowly plod by doing the dainty princess wave and never do much else. So good job to him on trying to break me of my ignorant fursuit stereotyping.
I made it to the photoshoot in good time to be a part of the group shot. I was a little disappointed to find that nobody was doing individual photos, as I’ve yet to get a good shot of the few hasty mods I’ve made to Blackjack in order to get him out of the shadow of his predecessor. I’d really like to have a couple good pictures to post so that people know what’s up. Ah well, that’s a task for another day then. I also got to participate in the glamorous 20-pace impromptu fursuit parade. That was pretty much just a dude with a camera who told us all to walk by him so he could use it in a music video. That was good enough reason for all of us! I met the indomitable Danruk Rooface there, someone I’d seen at many cons but never really had the opportunity to engage with before. Both of us being in fursuits was a wonderful icebreaker, so we had quite a time together. Now that I have a suit of my own that I can throw on just whenever and run off to do my own thing, I find that I underestimated what a social catalyst suiting can be. One of the things that I love about fursuiting so much is that it’s such a fun way to interact with people, and you certainly gain some distinctiveness by dressing up as a brightly-colored animal. That greatly accelerates and helps cement the process of making new acquaintances, something that happens with dizzying frequency at a con. It was really nice to get a chance to explore that effect in a place where I’m not just being mistaken for Ace constantly.
Next up was a “why the hell not?” event that I stopped in for, Halla’s fursuit dancing panel. It was really more of a discussion than instruction, but it was fun nothetheless. It’s always interesting to hear enthusiasts talk about why they do what they do. When they threw us out at the end, I was informed that they were throwing us out so that they could use the room for the talent show, an event of which I was previously unaware. Apparently I hadn’t been keeping close enough tabs on the all-mighty lobby whiteboard. Mainly that’s a function of the fact that there’s no room for glasses in my fursuit head. I’d previously given some brain-service to the idea of doing a standup bit for a talent show at a furry con so this idea was at least moderately enticing to me. Finding that out whilst being exhausted from having fursuited for a big chunk of the day and with less than 10 minutes’ notice was not ideal, but I was still riding high from all the fun I was having paling around with all the other fluffy folk that morning. So I went for it. Or I suppose in today’s gaming/mimetic parlance “You watch the animal people bouncing around happily. It fills you with determination.”
It was quite a harrowing experience to extract myself from my suit and hose off quickly before being thrust before my adoring public, but I made it work, and managed to put together a pretty darn competent routine in the course of it. I actually talked a fair bit about the confluence of events that led me to the stage once I got up there. I was a little nervous having to come up with something off the cuff. I stuck to mostly furry con-related things, since I had the truly brilliant intuition that that subject might resonate with my audience a bit. Unfamiliar territory of course, as long-time readers know that I’ve only been to a couple fur cons and have precious little practice at turning convention experiences into an entertaining narrative. Nah, never done anything like that at all. My nerves kept the pacing up, which I think actually leant itself to the act quite well. I kept moving right along so there was very little time for silences or awkward pauses. I talked over a few laughs but in my book that’s the right problem to have. Not exactly a proud moment that the biggest laugh came from me talking about Rainfurrest that one time, but I think it went over really well. Everybody clapped and lots of people told me that they really enjoyed it. I’m glad that I went for it. It was really great to get to try that out in a lower-pressure spot with a small audience so that maybe I can try it out at a bigger con someday. Someone did appear to be filming me, so maybe you guys will get a chance to see that if it shows up online sometime.
Next up after my entertainment debut was the dance competition. They actually managed to pull together a pretty all-star cast from the small pool of attendees and put on a really great show. I’ve been really amazed at the consistency of these. I’ve never been to a dance competition that I didn’t enjoy. I don’t know what the mojo at work was, but everybody seemed to have a really good sense for their song choice. Everyone’s tracks matched their characters and style so perfectly it was mystifying. Big shout out to the dancer just calling themself “Satan”. Pretty bold choice of a name, but I understood it a lot better once I saw the routine. I’ve never seen commanding presence like that before. Lots of people can get the crowd psyched up, but it’s rare that someone can command utter silence with just a wave of their hand. They really controlled that room. Truly a stunning display. After that I had my eye on TaurenTom’s panel called “Being a Good Social Potato”. It sounded like exactly the right kind of nonsense for a furry con. Unfortunately that was another event that ended up not happening. They actually moved the meet and greet that us shambling proletariat masses were barred from into that timeslot. Come on guys, you’ve got far too few events for them to be stomping on each other’s toes like this.
Once again I was out of events long before I ran out of day, and not keen to suffer the indignities of having my bones rendered into chalky powder by the music at the dance. I wandered listlessly for a bit and hung out in the lobby. That was really the only zoo-like generalized social space that the con had. Fair enough that the con had rather little need for such a thing as there were only a few people there, but I can see that becoming a problem in the future. This con is sure to grow, and we’d be tripping over each other out there without some place to be. I managed to come across Danruk again, who was in a mood for some games that evening. That sounded great to me, so we dug up a suitably-sized group for a couple games of King of Tokyo. My formidable opponents in the game that day included Mog and Cynders. Both of whose names were common enough to make their pages impossible to find. A couple others cycled through, but I didn’t manage to retain their identities as well as I usually do in scenarios like this. We were ushered out of the game room at 10:00, which seemed unnecessarily early to me. I can’t see what kind of harm we’d be doing in there with our board games and other tools of mischief. They were nice about it, but made it clear that we were done there. We could’ve easily played the game anywhere else where there was a table, but there was no such place available. Again, no social common area. So yeah, we were unquestionably done and then the night turned where all long, tired nights eventually turn, Cards Against Humanity. It was… pretty much the usual. A quick reminder of why I’ve had a falling out with that game of late. I used to really love it, but it was another one of those things like Undertale or Overwatch where the hype killed it for me. The only recall there other than the refugees from King of Tokyo there was Steve, or Kool Kat, who again, has too many matches for me to narrow down exactly who he is. I guess it seems as though my memory declines in effectiveness as the hours wane on into the night, which makes sense I suppose.
My extensive fiddling with the curtains that night yielded only marginal success. They seem to just be too small for the windows and there’s nothing for it. As such, Sunday started with another early morning and another disappointing breakfast that I may or may not have been actually entitled to. I planned to get my feet wet in my first fursuit competition that day by taking on the fursuit games, which just so happened to be just about the only thing happening that day. I got my feet wet a bit earlier than planned by way of the puddle that formed in front of the sink while I was shaving. Apparently the drain was confused about its purpose in life and was conveying water to the floor instead of the wall. That or there was also a waterpark in the bathroom that nobody told me about. I called it in to the front desk, more to deflect blame about the water damage than because I actually cared or expected it to be fixed. They asked if there was anything else they could do for me and I said a late checkout would be nice. The response being “too bad, that’ll cost ya”. SUPER helpful. I managed to haggle them up to 1 PM, which smoothed out a few things, but didn’t solve the morning’s big problem.
As eager as I was to get out there and show off my athletic skills, suiting on Sunday came with a unique set of complications for me. It had been inhumanely hot and humid all weekend. I could feel the wall of heat over by the window in my room. Made it feel like the world was ending out there. Every time I saw fursuiters outside I was pretty much counting down the seconds until they burst into flames. The issue with that was that nothing was drying ever. Even the stuff that’s made of super thin fancy synthetic fabric went a whole day without drying out. So suiting on Sunday meant both wearing a damp suit and packing it up to head out still damp. That’s a great way to invite some mold to join you on your next fursuiting excursion. There was also the matter of the hotel getting it into its head that I ought to check out of the room because I didn’t have Sunday night booked. That left me in the unenviable position of having to either drive home in fursuit or get naked in the parking lot. I’m fairly certain that someone would’ve eventually taken issue with either of those plans. So I had to get creative. I’d never really liked partial suiting much, and my suit doesn’t lend itself very well to that. It was really the only reasonable solution in this case though. It worked out okay, apart from a little phantom-tail syndrome and feeling a bit goofier than usual. I had a lot of fun at the fursuit games. They’re right about the sort of thrashing catastroflail you’d expect them to be, but that’s still a ton of fun. I didn’t even hurt myself! A sadly rare outcome given what I heard from some of the other participants. Good times though. I think I’ll get to those whenever I can in the future.
And so I got out of the portion of my suit that I’d used for the games and got everything stuffed back in my car in order to head back in and coast the rest of the con out. There was nothing going on other than more Cards Against Humanity, which I find to be damn near unplayable at any reasonable hour of the day. There was still a sizable collection of bored fursuiters running about though, and they tend to come up with some interesting antics given some time. So I elected to hang out for a while and see what might come up. It wasn’t a bad activity for a wind-down day, but that can only keep you going for so long. I was glad for the chance to finally catch up with Elbi and talk to her for a little bit. I could hardly justify never sitting down with someone who’s actually from my neck of the woods at a little con like this. We’d been there at the same time for much of the con but were pretty good at missing each other. She was impressed enough by the con that she wants to work there next time around, so I’ll call that a ringing endorsement. I mentioned at one point that I really needed a badge for Blackjack to help establish the character’s identity, and perhaps with a little luck and time, get him out of the previous pilot’s shadow. She said that she wasn’t doing badge commissions right then, but she’d be happy to make one for me. There was a conspicuous silence during the portion wherein one would typically discuss the cost of such a project, and I came to find that there was no cost! I was touched that Elbi would create something for me just because she knew how happy it would make me. Nowhere else have I ever encountered a group wherein I find so many people that make me say “How in the heck did I end up being friends with this person?” so often, with tones of either exasperated rage or breathless awe. It’s an exciting place to be.
I had thought that I’d stick it out until the closing ceremonies as I had relatively few matters pressing on my time, it was simply an issue of hanging out a bit until 4PM, or 5PM, or 6PM, or 6:30PM… The closing ceremonies were rescheduled frequently is what I’m saying. I’d done an extrapolation on it and though the reschedule rate had begun to taper off to a value less than the rate of the actual passage of time, suggesting that the ceremony theoretically would actually occur at some finite time, but I lost faith in it quickly. Most everyone I knew or could credibly claim to have gotten to know by the end of the con had left by 4 and the place was clearing out quite thoroughly. This made the extra hours seem rather unattractive, particularly since I knew that I’d need my sleep that night. So when my friends from college called and said that they’d all be going out to dinner and asked if I could make it, that was all the excuse I needed to push me out the door. I took off from the con, went to dinner and had one last hurrah with whomever was still left on campus before I had to take off early the next morning. The reason I was in a hurry to get out of there was because it was memorial day and I was on the docket for that. It is in the moments when one is hastily moving aside the giant day-glow orange fox uniform in the trunk of his car and retrieving a blue digital camouflage uniform to put on and carry a flag in a Memorial Day parade that a man is forced to stop and look at the sum total of the outcomes of events in his life and puzzle at how this all possibly could’ve come together. How does leading a stuffed animal parade get cut short in favor of beating feet back home to lead an actual parade through one’s hometown? What even am I at this point? Ah well, fortunately I have a long relaxing summer ahead of me to figure out those difficult quandaries. Can’t waste too much time though. I’ve got two other cons to get to!
Now, I’ve talked a lot of shit about Fur Xoticon over the course of this, but that’s mainly because such things are entertaining to read and because they make it so darn easy. I asked about why the con is named that and they came back with “Oh yeah that’s part of our theme. … which we haven’t implemented yet this year. Sorry!” Oh, these guys are just adorable! I made light of this being very obviously a first-year con, but that’s because most all of the things that went wrong are all very clearly first-year con problems. There are a lot of things that you’re inevitably going to screw up just because you’ve never done them before. And really none of those things irrevocably crippled my convention experience; I’m just really good at complaining about them. Experience is the best teacher for complex coordination like this and I could see the staff learning and streamlining as the convention went on. The real point is that everyone was motivated and seemed to be on top of their shit, even when they were scrambling to make sense of the ever-changing schedule of events. Every time I talked to a staff member they knew what to do, or at least who to find, which really is just as valuable. I was astonished to find that the staff listed only eight official members. They got a hell of a lot done for such a small team. These guys have got a TON of drive and spirit. They really want to get this thing to work and I very much believe that they can. Now that they’ve got a year under their belt to iron things out and appease the early skeptics I’m confident that they can pull in enough manpower and attendance to make next year’s event really something. I’ll be there for sure, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with!
In any case, I dropped off all my stuff at home, including some stuff that I actually needed to bring with me but didn’t because moving is fucking horrendous and you can’t rationally think about anything other than how badly you want it to be over. Particularly when you will be presently driving right back to the place you came from. A plan like that seems defeatist, but heading back to school gave me a place in the middle to stop and sleep. That’s what made the timing work out. I spent a lot of that break time working on plans for RMFC, actually. Very new, hastily drawn plans at that. Awhile back the FurtheMore guys asked if I'd like to run their table at FA:U. I couldn't think of a reason not to, so I said I'd go for it. In a shocking turn of events, I recently learned of a reason not to do it. That con happens to be the same weekend as RMFC. It seems like I've made a habit of attending RMFC, and I might even have been said have some fun there on occasion. I asked about it and the staff said it's cool if I can't make it to FAU. So I checked in with my spirit animal high in the mountains of Colorado to see if he's still in a good position to have me loiter around his place for a bit in support of actually doing this thing. Ryoken seemed willing to put up with me again, so I had a bunch more stuff to worry about on that end now that I had new plans. So yeah, I spent much of the trip to this con worrying about scheduling things for my trip two cons from now. Ever get the impression that I’m too into this sort of thing? Me neither.
From there it was on to Springfield, which was relatively easy to find. The hotel however seemed to have a stake in remaining hidden. They had giant signs that said Clarion in all manner of locations, except for nearby or affixed to the actual building that WAS the hotel or convention hall, making one’s approach a bewildering and unnerving experience. I went with my best guess at the correct building and checked in there. They had my name at the front desk, so either I guessed correctly or stumbled into a very clever kidnapping plot. I had trouble getting to my room as it was somehow not in the same building as the front desk. They also gave me a room number with three digits in it and directed me to a place that had only four digit room numbers. I was struck with the impression that they’d just hastily given me a fake number just to get rid of me, which is kind of a rude way to handle a hotel check-in. When I asked about it I came to find out that I had to walk through the pool to get to my room. I pointed out that that was really dumb and they told me I could also go outside and walk through the parking lot to get there. That’s less dumb but not really better. They actually seemed quite concerned about that and were looking into what they could do about it. For the most part I was exaggerating, so before they could lose their shit too much I told them that they could just find whoever designed this floorplan and tell him that it’s stupid. They seemed fine with that plan.
I apparently presented a supreme challenge to the assembled convention staff as I poked around trying to find my room, or indeed any rooms, the vast majority of the accommodations being hidden behind the secret pool corridor for reasons known only to the demon cult that laid out the design of this compound. The insurmountable task that I presented the staff with was registering on-site. Something that I was assured was for some reason much easier than picking up a pre-reg badge at the time by the person working in registration. What was a little disconcerting was the fact that he had to enlist four other people to assist him in this endeavor before they managed to complete it. I’d hate to think of what lengths they would’ve had to go to if I’d found out about this con earlier and convinced myself to come to it in time to preregister.
Thinking back on Furthe’More, whose success was one of the things that convinced me to take a chance on this new con, I recall that one of the things that impressed me about it so much was that I never would’ve guessed that it was their first year. Well this year was absolutely Fur Xoticon’s first year. Perhaps even their zeroth year. I go to registration:
“I’d like to register.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who does registration.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who can get this tablet to turn on.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who can work the credit card terminal.”
“Okay, let me find the guy who has the wifi password.”
“Okay, let me find this one dude who’s dressed as a Charizard right now but he’s probably actually the best guy for this job.”
They eventually did get it, but that process was worthy of a little concern. They had like six people on staff, so I was forced to wonder how they could afford to have everyone only know how to do one thing. I should really check and see if that payment went through correctly. At this point, not paying for registration feels like stealing from a doddering old lady.
Against all odds I did eventually make it to my room and used my disquietingly featureless key card to enter it. I’m not sure why that bothered me. I guess there’s not a huge amount of practical reason to have a lot printed on a room key, but having an entirely white and smooth chunk of plastic just seems wrong, like they’re trying to hide something. Maybe they were trying to make me feel like a secret agent to fit with the 007 theme. I guess I’ll think that from now on. It’ll hardly be the first time I’ve lied to myself to make the pain and confusion go away. I noticed there was a bottle opener attached to the wall in the bathroom, so this place is pretty old school. That or they just really know their audience. I certainly can’t fault them on the water pressure, the lack of which is usually a good cheap hotel marker. I was trying to fill a glass and the stream knocked it right out of my hand. Must be they need some pretty stout pumps to maintain an onsite waterpark. Oh yeah also they have an onsite waterpark for reasons apparent to precisely nobody. I noted that I was in time for a panel, ‘Creating a Fursona’. Seeing as I’ve made it this far without ever properly crafting a fursona for myself and there was only the barest handful of panels to be had, I went for it. Spitfire and Con Chair Krank put on a fairly entertaining shell-shocked ramble. Not really structured or on topic, but still somewhat interesting to see. I believe I caught them at peak “oh fuck what the hell are we doing?” An understandable sentiment to have when running a first-year con.
After that was the timeslot that the opening ceremonies were hastily moved to right after the dozen people in attendance realized that Friday morning was not the ideal time to host such a ceremony for the benefit of essentially no one. There was slightly more than no one at the ceremony, and our hosts kept up the “Oh God are we seriously actually doing this thing right now?” theme. I noted that the evening had a headliner of Niic the Singing Dog. Apparently he’s quite the public figure in the fandom. Fans, merchandise, the works. I’d only recently learned that his name is pronounced “nice”, so I can’t say that I was quite on board that hype train. However, there was very much nothing opposite his show’s timeslot, so I went for it. In technical or musicality terms I can’t say I was blown away, but I think that’s entirely a function of the reputation preceding him. Had I not been primed with this apparently vast media empire that underwrites this particular green akita (had to look that one up. Breeds are hard to parse out when they’re dayglow green.) I probably would’ve thought that he was pretty good. I’m sure a lot of what I was hearing was an effect of “I’m dancing around in a fursuit and am at a dangerous shortage of oxygen”, which I identify with greatly these days. He certainly has a thunderous stage presence and a ton of energy. It’s unquestionably obvious that he’s been doing this for a while with the way he conducts himself. If I had to name the show I’d probably go with ‘Niic: Guts and Enthusiasm’, as that’s what really comes through when he’s out there. It’s certainly better than the equally applicable ‘Niic: Transistor Amplifier Clipping: The Musical’. Their sound system was kind of rough is what I’m saying. Their AV setup looked pretty professional and the lights were dynamic, but it really sounded like they were overdriving it when they didn’t need to. It was a small room with most of the audience within 30 feet of the performer. They could’ve easily gotten away with very little or no amplification. In the end, it was still a really fun show. The canine personality suits him well. Whenever he’s not singing he has that unrelenting optimism that all dog lovers will recognize. “Ohmygosh I’m so happy right now are you happy too? I want you to be happy so BAD pleasepleaseplease come be happy with me BEING HAPPY IS THE BEST AWMUHGAWD!” You could see plenty of fluff that had been shaken into the air in the course of the show, so it’s plain to see that he’s really giving it his all out there.
It was pretty quiet on Friday. Most everyone was planning to make a day-trip of it, so there weren’t too many attendees there that early. I was glad for Moosefet bouncing about in the lobby energetically. At the time he was one of very few things making the place actually feel like a furry convention. I saw him giving out MOSFET ribbons, which made me curious enough to investigate. Turns out that they mean exactly what I thought they mean. His name is based on Mixed-Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors, because he’s an electrical tweaker and I guess his passion is showing through there. I never managed to catch up with him out of suit, which is a shame. He seemed like an interesting character. I poked about a bit at the Dealer’s Den, mostly just chatting with folks who were happy to see someone willing to engage with them a bit. I talked awhile with Cadmium Tea at his booth and he said that he recognized my username from FA. Always a flattering thing to hear from someone new. I may actually achieve a notable presence in the fandom one of these days.
I also came across Seth Drake, someone who I’d met not long before the con in a rather amusing coincidence. It actually is a pretty surreal feeling to run into someone from the fandom just by chance in your everyday life. A few weeks ago the choir had brought him on as a hired gun to sing the solo in Bach's Chirst Lag in Todes Banden. During one of our breaks he recognized Heather Bruton's art on my shirt, meaning that each of us instantly knew the other was a furry. He asked if I’d like a cup of tea sometime and I took him up on it eventually. It took a long time just to arrange that one short meeting. Would’ve been nice if our paths hadn't happened to cross at such a busy time of year. He’s working on a PhD at RPI though, so he’ll be around for a bit. He’s an interesting sort, weighed in on a wide variety of things. I came to find at the con that he was actually a guest of honor, so I suppose I could say that I was honored to have made his acquaintance. I came to find that he was hosting a panel about writing and cartooning with Gray Muzzle, who was handling the latter subject. It was an enjoyable time. Certainly fulfilled my desire to have at least one writing panel per con. It was amusing that they occasionally stopped to ask us if we’d like them to stop just rambling on and on, but really listening to that was all I was there for.
The Late Night with Zen variety show sounded pretty interesting, too bad it didn’t happen. Which of course left us with no more events for the day. I heard Seth discussing food, so I jumped in on that. Gray Muzzle rambled a bit in his description of a potential eatery for us. After he was done running through the whole sales pitch I sought to summarize a bit in order to make a better-informed decision.
“So what you’re saying is, quality: average, selection: average, cost: average?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I’m in.”
So I joined our two panelists along with Dyxxander and Palanth for a quiet late-evening dinner. I was glad that I took them up on it, as this was the only occasion during the whole con wherein I went out to eat with someone. I was at quite a severe shortage of people I knew at this con, and the con being in quite a severe shortage of people in general meant that I couldn’t do my usual thing of just quietly glomming on with a huge group of people who were unaware that none of them know me. For the record that dinner was only 3 out of 4 people who didn’t know me. When we got back to the venue pretty much all that was going on was the dance, wherein DJ Bleedingears was bringing down the house. By which I mean I believe that he was trying to literally collapse that physical structure with the volume of his music. Once again, small venue, few people, not necessary to use Hydra-designed sonic weapons as a means of entertainment. I hung out in the lobby a bit, finding that the 30 yard separation from the main ballroom tamped down the music to a pretty reasonable level. The venue was metaphorically if not literally pretty quiet though, so I called it for that night.
The next morning I found the curtains in my room to be profoundly inadequate, the intense sun that was gearing up to make it insufferably hot that weekend seeing fit to wake me up just before 6:00. A profoundly unfair act, given that sleep is quite fleeting at conventions and that I knew there was fuck all going on until noon on Saturday. Just as I was barely managing to shuffle off the burdensome mantle of consciousness a second time I got a text from a friend whom I’ll call Patrick Star such that his identity remains safely hidden from anyone who doesn’t click this link to his userpage. Naturally, Patrick’s text woke me again. He responded with befuddlement at my entirely reasonable response of telling him to stop sending me his inane Nazi bullshit at fucking stupid hours of the morning. His reply was so dazzlingly stupid I almost stopped being mad, as though one’s rage odometer can roll over back to zero at a certain point. He came back with “sorry I don’t understand time zones”. That message was broadcast live from SOUTH CAROLINA to MASSACHUSETTS, which astute observers will recognize as being in the SAME GODDAMN TIME ZONE. Ugh, I swear if he didn’t comprise roughly 12% of my active fanbase I’d drop him like a bad habit.
I proceeded then to a highly contentious continental breakfast. The con’s website said that breakfast wasn’t included with rooms, but they gave me a voucher for it when I checked in. One which they never bothered to collect before I obtained food. So in the course of my tumultuous morning I went on to either rightfully enjoy or accidentally steal a profoundly average continental breakfast. The scrambled eggs and homefries were about the same consistency, and for the life of me I’m not entirely certain which one of the two that is an indictment against. The bacon was pretty good though. I’d say you can’t screw up bacon, but once I sailed on a navy ship to Britain and watched both of those institutions passionately and gleefully fuck up bacon in disturbingly creative ways. Producing a product that could be tied into knots or seen through, their means of doing so likely best left to the imagination. So yeah, kudos to these guys on being true Americans and crisping up some delicious pig belly slices. It was hardly an ideal morning, but no matter. I’m sure every true champion starts his day with three hours of restless purgatory, furious text messages and a bacon sandwich.
The only thing allegedly going on that morning was the meet-and-greet with the honored guests and important folk. Naturally, unwashed plebeians such as myself were barred from it, which felt a little spiteful, honestly. Truly, I realize that there has to be an incentive to fork over some more cash and that’s never bothered me before, but when there’s literally nothing else happening at that time and I know damn well there’s going to be like six people actually attending that thing it really feels like that’s more a slap on the wrist to everyone else than a benefit of slugging registration in the face with your massive wallet. They ended up rescheduling that event anyway because nobody showed up, which I was surprised that they were surprised by. They made it a morning event when anyone who’s there was there on Friday and as such is hungover as fuck, and all the day-trip people hadn’t gotten there yet. Have these guys been to a furry con before? The first thing that happens is furry daylight savings time where everybody turns their clocks back five hours so they can sleep from 4AM to 11AM like Raptor Jesus intended. I came to find that such changes were now being tracked on a whiteboard in the lobby. Not a bad means of dealing with constant schedule flails, really. With such a small venue it’s pretty much guaranteed everyone is going to come through there pretty often, so that was actually a much more effective solution than any fancy technical stuff. Things were beginning to pick up slowly as the morning wore on, it was just barely enough to justify me throwing on my fursuit and getting down to brass tacks, which at this point are all that’s keeping the zipper attached. I bounced around a bit in the lobby, having some fun with those assembled. Togi was a standout as someone really engaging and fun to goof around with. That was good to see. A lot of the time people with Fursuiting.com suits are the sort that slowly plod by doing the dainty princess wave and never do much else. So good job to him on trying to break me of my ignorant fursuit stereotyping.
I made it to the photoshoot in good time to be a part of the group shot. I was a little disappointed to find that nobody was doing individual photos, as I’ve yet to get a good shot of the few hasty mods I’ve made to Blackjack in order to get him out of the shadow of his predecessor. I’d really like to have a couple good pictures to post so that people know what’s up. Ah well, that’s a task for another day then. I also got to participate in the glamorous 20-pace impromptu fursuit parade. That was pretty much just a dude with a camera who told us all to walk by him so he could use it in a music video. That was good enough reason for all of us! I met the indomitable Danruk Rooface there, someone I’d seen at many cons but never really had the opportunity to engage with before. Both of us being in fursuits was a wonderful icebreaker, so we had quite a time together. Now that I have a suit of my own that I can throw on just whenever and run off to do my own thing, I find that I underestimated what a social catalyst suiting can be. One of the things that I love about fursuiting so much is that it’s such a fun way to interact with people, and you certainly gain some distinctiveness by dressing up as a brightly-colored animal. That greatly accelerates and helps cement the process of making new acquaintances, something that happens with dizzying frequency at a con. It was really nice to get a chance to explore that effect in a place where I’m not just being mistaken for Ace constantly.
Next up was a “why the hell not?” event that I stopped in for, Halla’s fursuit dancing panel. It was really more of a discussion than instruction, but it was fun nothetheless. It’s always interesting to hear enthusiasts talk about why they do what they do. When they threw us out at the end, I was informed that they were throwing us out so that they could use the room for the talent show, an event of which I was previously unaware. Apparently I hadn’t been keeping close enough tabs on the all-mighty lobby whiteboard. Mainly that’s a function of the fact that there’s no room for glasses in my fursuit head. I’d previously given some brain-service to the idea of doing a standup bit for a talent show at a furry con so this idea was at least moderately enticing to me. Finding that out whilst being exhausted from having fursuited for a big chunk of the day and with less than 10 minutes’ notice was not ideal, but I was still riding high from all the fun I was having paling around with all the other fluffy folk that morning. So I went for it. Or I suppose in today’s gaming/mimetic parlance “You watch the animal people bouncing around happily. It fills you with determination.”
It was quite a harrowing experience to extract myself from my suit and hose off quickly before being thrust before my adoring public, but I made it work, and managed to put together a pretty darn competent routine in the course of it. I actually talked a fair bit about the confluence of events that led me to the stage once I got up there. I was a little nervous having to come up with something off the cuff. I stuck to mostly furry con-related things, since I had the truly brilliant intuition that that subject might resonate with my audience a bit. Unfamiliar territory of course, as long-time readers know that I’ve only been to a couple fur cons and have precious little practice at turning convention experiences into an entertaining narrative. Nah, never done anything like that at all. My nerves kept the pacing up, which I think actually leant itself to the act quite well. I kept moving right along so there was very little time for silences or awkward pauses. I talked over a few laughs but in my book that’s the right problem to have. Not exactly a proud moment that the biggest laugh came from me talking about Rainfurrest that one time, but I think it went over really well. Everybody clapped and lots of people told me that they really enjoyed it. I’m glad that I went for it. It was really great to get to try that out in a lower-pressure spot with a small audience so that maybe I can try it out at a bigger con someday. Someone did appear to be filming me, so maybe you guys will get a chance to see that if it shows up online sometime.
Next up after my entertainment debut was the dance competition. They actually managed to pull together a pretty all-star cast from the small pool of attendees and put on a really great show. I’ve been really amazed at the consistency of these. I’ve never been to a dance competition that I didn’t enjoy. I don’t know what the mojo at work was, but everybody seemed to have a really good sense for their song choice. Everyone’s tracks matched their characters and style so perfectly it was mystifying. Big shout out to the dancer just calling themself “Satan”. Pretty bold choice of a name, but I understood it a lot better once I saw the routine. I’ve never seen commanding presence like that before. Lots of people can get the crowd psyched up, but it’s rare that someone can command utter silence with just a wave of their hand. They really controlled that room. Truly a stunning display. After that I had my eye on TaurenTom’s panel called “Being a Good Social Potato”. It sounded like exactly the right kind of nonsense for a furry con. Unfortunately that was another event that ended up not happening. They actually moved the meet and greet that us shambling proletariat masses were barred from into that timeslot. Come on guys, you’ve got far too few events for them to be stomping on each other’s toes like this.
Once again I was out of events long before I ran out of day, and not keen to suffer the indignities of having my bones rendered into chalky powder by the music at the dance. I wandered listlessly for a bit and hung out in the lobby. That was really the only zoo-like generalized social space that the con had. Fair enough that the con had rather little need for such a thing as there were only a few people there, but I can see that becoming a problem in the future. This con is sure to grow, and we’d be tripping over each other out there without some place to be. I managed to come across Danruk again, who was in a mood for some games that evening. That sounded great to me, so we dug up a suitably-sized group for a couple games of King of Tokyo. My formidable opponents in the game that day included Mog and Cynders. Both of whose names were common enough to make their pages impossible to find. A couple others cycled through, but I didn’t manage to retain their identities as well as I usually do in scenarios like this. We were ushered out of the game room at 10:00, which seemed unnecessarily early to me. I can’t see what kind of harm we’d be doing in there with our board games and other tools of mischief. They were nice about it, but made it clear that we were done there. We could’ve easily played the game anywhere else where there was a table, but there was no such place available. Again, no social common area. So yeah, we were unquestionably done and then the night turned where all long, tired nights eventually turn, Cards Against Humanity. It was… pretty much the usual. A quick reminder of why I’ve had a falling out with that game of late. I used to really love it, but it was another one of those things like Undertale or Overwatch where the hype killed it for me. The only recall there other than the refugees from King of Tokyo there was Steve, or Kool Kat, who again, has too many matches for me to narrow down exactly who he is. I guess it seems as though my memory declines in effectiveness as the hours wane on into the night, which makes sense I suppose.
My extensive fiddling with the curtains that night yielded only marginal success. They seem to just be too small for the windows and there’s nothing for it. As such, Sunday started with another early morning and another disappointing breakfast that I may or may not have been actually entitled to. I planned to get my feet wet in my first fursuit competition that day by taking on the fursuit games, which just so happened to be just about the only thing happening that day. I got my feet wet a bit earlier than planned by way of the puddle that formed in front of the sink while I was shaving. Apparently the drain was confused about its purpose in life and was conveying water to the floor instead of the wall. That or there was also a waterpark in the bathroom that nobody told me about. I called it in to the front desk, more to deflect blame about the water damage than because I actually cared or expected it to be fixed. They asked if there was anything else they could do for me and I said a late checkout would be nice. The response being “too bad, that’ll cost ya”. SUPER helpful. I managed to haggle them up to 1 PM, which smoothed out a few things, but didn’t solve the morning’s big problem.
As eager as I was to get out there and show off my athletic skills, suiting on Sunday came with a unique set of complications for me. It had been inhumanely hot and humid all weekend. I could feel the wall of heat over by the window in my room. Made it feel like the world was ending out there. Every time I saw fursuiters outside I was pretty much counting down the seconds until they burst into flames. The issue with that was that nothing was drying ever. Even the stuff that’s made of super thin fancy synthetic fabric went a whole day without drying out. So suiting on Sunday meant both wearing a damp suit and packing it up to head out still damp. That’s a great way to invite some mold to join you on your next fursuiting excursion. There was also the matter of the hotel getting it into its head that I ought to check out of the room because I didn’t have Sunday night booked. That left me in the unenviable position of having to either drive home in fursuit or get naked in the parking lot. I’m fairly certain that someone would’ve eventually taken issue with either of those plans. So I had to get creative. I’d never really liked partial suiting much, and my suit doesn’t lend itself very well to that. It was really the only reasonable solution in this case though. It worked out okay, apart from a little phantom-tail syndrome and feeling a bit goofier than usual. I had a lot of fun at the fursuit games. They’re right about the sort of thrashing catastroflail you’d expect them to be, but that’s still a ton of fun. I didn’t even hurt myself! A sadly rare outcome given what I heard from some of the other participants. Good times though. I think I’ll get to those whenever I can in the future.
And so I got out of the portion of my suit that I’d used for the games and got everything stuffed back in my car in order to head back in and coast the rest of the con out. There was nothing going on other than more Cards Against Humanity, which I find to be damn near unplayable at any reasonable hour of the day. There was still a sizable collection of bored fursuiters running about though, and they tend to come up with some interesting antics given some time. So I elected to hang out for a while and see what might come up. It wasn’t a bad activity for a wind-down day, but that can only keep you going for so long. I was glad for the chance to finally catch up with Elbi and talk to her for a little bit. I could hardly justify never sitting down with someone who’s actually from my neck of the woods at a little con like this. We’d been there at the same time for much of the con but were pretty good at missing each other. She was impressed enough by the con that she wants to work there next time around, so I’ll call that a ringing endorsement. I mentioned at one point that I really needed a badge for Blackjack to help establish the character’s identity, and perhaps with a little luck and time, get him out of the previous pilot’s shadow. She said that she wasn’t doing badge commissions right then, but she’d be happy to make one for me. There was a conspicuous silence during the portion wherein one would typically discuss the cost of such a project, and I came to find that there was no cost! I was touched that Elbi would create something for me just because she knew how happy it would make me. Nowhere else have I ever encountered a group wherein I find so many people that make me say “How in the heck did I end up being friends with this person?” so often, with tones of either exasperated rage or breathless awe. It’s an exciting place to be.
I had thought that I’d stick it out until the closing ceremonies as I had relatively few matters pressing on my time, it was simply an issue of hanging out a bit until 4PM, or 5PM, or 6PM, or 6:30PM… The closing ceremonies were rescheduled frequently is what I’m saying. I’d done an extrapolation on it and though the reschedule rate had begun to taper off to a value less than the rate of the actual passage of time, suggesting that the ceremony theoretically would actually occur at some finite time, but I lost faith in it quickly. Most everyone I knew or could credibly claim to have gotten to know by the end of the con had left by 4 and the place was clearing out quite thoroughly. This made the extra hours seem rather unattractive, particularly since I knew that I’d need my sleep that night. So when my friends from college called and said that they’d all be going out to dinner and asked if I could make it, that was all the excuse I needed to push me out the door. I took off from the con, went to dinner and had one last hurrah with whomever was still left on campus before I had to take off early the next morning. The reason I was in a hurry to get out of there was because it was memorial day and I was on the docket for that. It is in the moments when one is hastily moving aside the giant day-glow orange fox uniform in the trunk of his car and retrieving a blue digital camouflage uniform to put on and carry a flag in a Memorial Day parade that a man is forced to stop and look at the sum total of the outcomes of events in his life and puzzle at how this all possibly could’ve come together. How does leading a stuffed animal parade get cut short in favor of beating feet back home to lead an actual parade through one’s hometown? What even am I at this point? Ah well, fortunately I have a long relaxing summer ahead of me to figure out those difficult quandaries. Can’t waste too much time though. I’ve got two other cons to get to!
Now, I’ve talked a lot of shit about Fur Xoticon over the course of this, but that’s mainly because such things are entertaining to read and because they make it so darn easy. I asked about why the con is named that and they came back with “Oh yeah that’s part of our theme. … which we haven’t implemented yet this year. Sorry!” Oh, these guys are just adorable! I made light of this being very obviously a first-year con, but that’s because most all of the things that went wrong are all very clearly first-year con problems. There are a lot of things that you’re inevitably going to screw up just because you’ve never done them before. And really none of those things irrevocably crippled my convention experience; I’m just really good at complaining about them. Experience is the best teacher for complex coordination like this and I could see the staff learning and streamlining as the convention went on. The real point is that everyone was motivated and seemed to be on top of their shit, even when they were scrambling to make sense of the ever-changing schedule of events. Every time I talked to a staff member they knew what to do, or at least who to find, which really is just as valuable. I was astonished to find that the staff listed only eight official members. They got a hell of a lot done for such a small team. These guys have got a TON of drive and spirit. They really want to get this thing to work and I very much believe that they can. Now that they’ve got a year under their belt to iron things out and appease the early skeptics I’m confident that they can pull in enough manpower and attendance to make next year’s event really something. I’ll be there for sure, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with!
Summer Convention Plans: Fur Xoticon, AC and FAU
General | Posted 9 years agoWell school is finally letting out so I may as well reveal my intricately constructed plan for summer recreation that I definitely didn't just throw together yesterday afternoon!
Fur Xoticon is a new convention in West Springfield Massachusetts starting on May 27. This being their first year made me a little nervous, but I went to FurtheMore the first year and they nailed that one, so it can be done. Plus it's a much better drive than trying to swing GLFC. Here's hoping for the best on that one. It'll be tight moving home and then leaving again the following week, but with how much trouble I've had fitting cons into this summer it's a chance I can't really pass up. Being within driving distance is a huge decision-maker for me. I can’t overstate how swag it is to drive to a con.
Likely I don’t have to explain Anthrocon to anyone, but I’ll be there. And since I don’t have many demands on my time I’ll be getting there stupid early. Wednesday to Monday is the plan at the moment. I’ve been to this one a lot, so I know I can depend on a good time. It’s a great con for meeting people. So if you’re in town be sure to hit me up.
I’ve never been to FAU before, but I was asked if I’d like to man the Furthemore table there and I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. The con has moved closer to me of late, so maybe this is my year. I’d like to give them a chance. Once again, them being within a good driving distance was a big factor in this one. It sounded too good to be true, and so of course it was. I came to find out that FAU is the same weekend as RMFC, so now I feel like a twit. I’d really hate to miss that one.
ryoken and 
nevir have always taken great care of me when I was in town and made that con a blast. That revelation has made that decision a lot more difficult. For one thing I’ve already committed to manning the table at FAU, and then there’s the $400 price difference thanks to not needing plane tickets, something that it’s difficult to ignore when one doesn’t have a job. Naturally my first thought upon saving some money is “Hey, if I don’t have to fly to Denver, maybe I can go to Megaplex!” Super responsible, as always. I’d heard good things about that con, and honestly the only strike against it is that it’s on the weekend adjacent to FAU. I’ve done two cons on consecutive weeks before. It’s rough. And both of those were within driving distance. I think flying to a con and then working at a con would be a bit much. Maybe give the summer boredom a chance to change my mind.
In any case, that’s the plan at the moment. Plans very seldom survive contact with reality, but they’re a good thing to have around. If your flimsy plan involves being at any of those locations, I’ll see you there. Maybe!
Fur Xoticon is a new convention in West Springfield Massachusetts starting on May 27. This being their first year made me a little nervous, but I went to FurtheMore the first year and they nailed that one, so it can be done. Plus it's a much better drive than trying to swing GLFC. Here's hoping for the best on that one. It'll be tight moving home and then leaving again the following week, but with how much trouble I've had fitting cons into this summer it's a chance I can't really pass up. Being within driving distance is a huge decision-maker for me. I can’t overstate how swag it is to drive to a con.
Likely I don’t have to explain Anthrocon to anyone, but I’ll be there. And since I don’t have many demands on my time I’ll be getting there stupid early. Wednesday to Monday is the plan at the moment. I’ve been to this one a lot, so I know I can depend on a good time. It’s a great con for meeting people. So if you’re in town be sure to hit me up.
I’ve never been to FAU before, but I was asked if I’d like to man the Furthemore table there and I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. The con has moved closer to me of late, so maybe this is my year. I’d like to give them a chance. Once again, them being within a good driving distance was a big factor in this one. It sounded too good to be true, and so of course it was. I came to find out that FAU is the same weekend as RMFC, so now I feel like a twit. I’d really hate to miss that one.
ryoken and 
nevir have always taken great care of me when I was in town and made that con a blast. That revelation has made that decision a lot more difficult. For one thing I’ve already committed to manning the table at FAU, and then there’s the $400 price difference thanks to not needing plane tickets, something that it’s difficult to ignore when one doesn’t have a job. Naturally my first thought upon saving some money is “Hey, if I don’t have to fly to Denver, maybe I can go to Megaplex!” Super responsible, as always. I’d heard good things about that con, and honestly the only strike against it is that it’s on the weekend adjacent to FAU. I’ve done two cons on consecutive weeks before. It’s rough. And both of those were within driving distance. I think flying to a con and then working at a con would be a bit much. Maybe give the summer boredom a chance to change my mind. In any case, that’s the plan at the moment. Plans very seldom survive contact with reality, but they’re a good thing to have around. If your flimsy plan involves being at any of those locations, I’ll see you there. Maybe!
Well this bears repeating
General | Posted 9 years agoOkay, so a bit of background here. I help out 
bendzz with writing and composing their TF porn comics. There's a Skype group with 20-odd people in it set up for that purpose. Bendzz often links WIP versions of the comics and documents full of story ideas as GoogleDocs, which I read and comment on. My fraternity has a shared google account that I'm logged into most all the time. What I came to learn in a rather untimely fashion, was that Google Drive tracks all the stuff you've been viewing and keeps that as a history. So yeah, that's the genesis of this prolonged Skype exchange. It's kind of a mess with all the back and forth and the quoting of multiple different means of communication and all that. I probably could clean it up a little better, but I don't feel super charitable towards putting a ton of work into basically letting you guys watch me get humiliated. Plus the general air of flailing chaos is brought to the forefront quite well by the disorganized nature of the chatlog. So yeah, enjoy!
[6:48:31 PM] Beau: Oh god.
[6:49:05 PM] Beau: I did not realize that was how the 'Recent Activity' feature in Google drive works.
[6:49:32 PM] ultipand: I know exactly what you mean :P
[6:49:36 PM] Bendzz: ?
[6:49:39 PM] ultipand: went in there to check out serious stuff and
[6:49:46 PM] ultipand: saw it loaded with TF stuff, was terrifying
[6:50:23 PM] Bendzz: You guys use the same google account for porn and IRL? Sounds risky
[6:50:43 PM] Beau: I was logged into a shared google account when I was looking at some of this stuff. Now other peeps from the account are looking through the history and being like "The fuck is Becumming 3?" and "Oh Jesus what am I even looking at?"
[6:51:02 PM] Bendzz: Oh fuuuuuck lol
[6:51:09 PM] Beau: And no, I didn't do it on purpose. I don't even have my own Google account.
[6:51:13 PM] ultipand: oh gawd
[6:51:24 PM] Bendzz: That's like my nightmare. Good luck
[6:51:31 PM] Deiser: Erk
[6:51:32 PM] Beau: I just leave the group one logged in on my laptop most of the time since I work with these guys.
[6:52:06 PM] Bendzz: Yeah let us know how this goes down
[6:52:12 PM] Bendzz: oh boy
[6:52:47 PM] Bendzz: This is why I have two separate web browsers for porn and life
[6:52:53 PM] Beau: Favorite quote so far is "There's just like... SO many boobs you guys. I know usually that's a good thing but... WTF seriously?"
[6:53:02 PM] Bendzz: lol did you get the captions page?
[6:53:07 PM] Bendzz: The one with all the comic images?
[6:53:25 PM] Bendzz: lol so is this a university project group or what?
[6:53:43 PM] Beau: Not sure which ones it was. I didn't want to look again and push them to the top of the history.
[6:53:58 PM] Bendzz: sounds like the damage is done
[6:54:01 PM] Beau: Right now I'm just going through and deleting anything that says Bendzz on it.
[6:54:03 PM] Bendzz: I could try making it private and boot them
[6:54:18 PM] Bendzz: But that's only temporary
[6:54:27 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: well it is a way to get an outsiders view on the subject :P
[6:55:22 PM] Beau: Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
[6:55:39 PM] Beau: And yeah, it's a group I'm on at college.
[6:56:01 PM] Bendzz: KS thinks that the group might not know which of u is the furry
[6:56:22 PM] Bendzz: Also where are these comments? Are they on google docs? Can I see them?
[6:56:45 PM] Beau: Actually they don't, so far anyway.
[6:56:56 PM] Beau: Since it's a shared account we all use the same login.
[6:57:36 PM] Beau: I'm sure some computer science nerd could trace which address was logged in at the time, but I doubt they're THAT interested in finding out. CS nerds are notoriously difficult to motivate.
[6:57:36 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: did you remember to make a "wtf is this" post a few hours before deleting it?
[6:58:01 PM] Bendzz: “CS nerds are notoriously difficult to motivate.” CS nerd here, can confirm
[6:58:06 PM] Beau: No, I haven't commented on it yet. That way I can more credibly claim to have no idea what they're talking about.
[6:58:20 PM] Bendzz: Seriously are these comments on the doc?
[6:58:23 PM] Bendzz: lemme check it....
[6:58:39 PM] Beau: No, the comments popped up on the Slack that we use for the same group.
[6:58:47 PM] Bendzz: dammit
[6:58:51 PM] Bendzz: What's slack?
[6:58:51 PM] Beau: Chat through Google is pretty ass, so we don't use that.
[6:59:00 PM] Deiser: I can confirm as a cs major
[6:59:00 PM] Bendzz: hmm
[6:59:03 PM] Beau: It's like Skype that actually works.
[6:59:14 PM] *** Bendzz googles ***
[6:59:44 PM] Beau: It's a more business-oriented chat program, where group chats are the focus and not an ancillary thing.
[6:59:49 PM] Deiser: Also hi
[6:59:57 PM] Beau: They actually had a furry commercial recently. I'll see if I can pull up that one.
[6:59:59 PM] Bendzz: Does it have any major perks?
[7:00:03 PM] Bendzz: hehe
[7:00:16 PM] Bendzz: Yeah I would certainly be interested in reading all the comments on my docs btw
[7:00:29 PM] Bendzz: If you want to make a pasteBin thing of them or something
[7:00:33 PM] Deiser: How's everything
[7:00:38 PM] Beau: I mean, it basically just works better. Easy to get into and such.
[7:00:53 PM] Bendzz: “How's everything” Good because I didn't just get outed as a multiboob furry lover lol
[7:01:16 PM] Beau: I don't notice that much of a difference, but I don't use it a lot. I do like that it can be opened in a browser instead of having a big clunky client like Skype.
[7:01:18 PM] Bendzz: Skype's been glitch for me lately, but everyone I know is on Skype so....
[7:01:37 PM] Bendzz: interesting....
[7:01:38 PM] Beau: Apparently Slack is WAY better on phones, but I no has smartyphone so I can't speak to that.
[7:02:03 PM] Bendzz: I use Skype on my phone, when it works it's good. But I couldn't log in for 2 months once
[7:02:14 PM] Beau: Ah yes. Here is furry slack users.
[7:02:16 PM] Beau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6sSa5NpqUI
[7:02:22 PM] Deiser: Xd
[7:03:36 PM] Beau: My favorite is the sloth that spends the whole commercial writing "Good idea, team!" and then goes home.
[7:04:07 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol zootopia ripoff it feels like SP
[7:04:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XP
[7:04:15 PM] Bendzz: still amusing
[7:05:00 PM] Bendzz: wait the people in the machining factory are human. And on the street. I just noticed.
[7:05:11 PM] Bendzz: So only that office building is furries?
[7:06:44 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: when you hit the weird anthropomorphic part of youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQgXeY_zi4
[7:06:48 PM] Beau: That is odd. I hadn't noticed.
[7:07:37 PM] Beau: Oh yeah, that murderous nightclub one. Not sure what the deal was there.
[7:07:42 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol i didn't finish it before linking, it became even more effed up
[7:07:48 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ya that scene just popped up
[7:09:39 PM] Beau: Wow there's a lot of furry crap in this history.
[7:09:47 PM] Beau: All me, unfortunately.
[7:09:50 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:09:52 PM] Deiser: Erk
[7:10:26 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: oh shit I'm loosing it, I'm sorry, it sounds mean, but that is funny
[7:10:28 PM] Beau: WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS IS HOW GOOGLE WORKS?
[7:11:01 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[7:11:05 PM] Bendzz: I am corrupting the masses
[7:11:20 PM] Bendzz: Also that nightclub video was cool but weird as shit
[7:11:28 PM] Beau: Though I guess most people don't get their creepy fetish porn from Googledocs.
[7:12:23 PM] *** Bendzz updates google doc: "Beau did it" ***
[7:13:06 PM] Beau: Thank God you people don't have my real name.
[7:13:18 PM] Beau: Heh, "you people".
[7:13:33 PM] Bendzz: =p
[7:13:42 PM] ultipand: I too divorce my TF-y persona with my actual persona
[7:13:44 PM] ultipand: it's safest :B
[7:13:46 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol my google docs is a mix of Bendzz docs, random internet doc files, random personal files, and porn stories
[7:13:54 PM] Deiser: Well same
[7:14:09 PM] Beau: I guess I'm not too sure about the gdocs though. Maybe some people think shared word processors are hot.
[7:15:14 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i keep my clean furry account separate from the adult side, but people who get to know me learn i am a furry
[7:15:41 PM] Deiser: Same
[7:15:45 PM] Bendzz: Man I just had a flashback to living at home in my teens, hiding TF sketchbooks under the couches....
[7:16:08 PM] Deiser: Theres two separate human and anthro deisers
[7:16:27 PM] Beau: Yeah, I don't really have much of a clean furry/adult furry divide in the art I consume. Mainly because the pie chart of the two of those would look like pac man chewing on a toothpick.
[7:16:54 PM] Beau: In my internet presence at least.
[7:17:20 PM] Bendzz: I can't even think of any furry stuff I've drawn that wasn't supposed to be porn. Even when they're wearing clothes
[7:18:28 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol i am such a furfag that i keep an furry ID in my wallet http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10550544/
[7:18:50 PM] Bendzz: I lost my wallet earlier today
[7:18:57 PM] Bendzz: A nice Chinese couple down the road found it
[7:19:03 PM] Bendzz: Thank god I don't have a card like that
[7:19:21 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i keep it under my license
[7:20:03 PM] Bendzz: They had to dig through my wallet to find my phone number
[7:20:12 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: the barcode links to my FA, it would work with the bardcode scanners at work, but it would just cause an error to pop up
[7:20:26 PM] Bendzz: huh
[7:20:34 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i got bored :P
[7:21:10 PM] Bendzz: I should make those cell phone square code things that link to my porn tumblr, then get someone to put them up on campus. See if there are reactions
[7:21:20 PM] Bendzz: Actually no I shouldn't
[7:21:30 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:21:43 PM] Beau: Pffff-
[7:21:54 PM] Beau: They're called QR codes.
[7:22:07 PM] Bendzz: couldn't remember the name. was thinking like CR
[7:22:08 PM] Beau: And honestly it hasn't been SUPER bad.
[7:22:13 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i have fursuit business cards, clean art account business cards, and my porn account business cards
[7:22:38 PM] Beau: Most people are just like "wat dis? Lawl so weird!"
[7:22:42 PM] Bendzz: Beau still waiting to see a paste bin of the conversation
[7:23:08 PM] Beau: Yeah and I'm still going through the Google Drive history and taking out all this furry crap!
[7:23:13 PM] Beau: Priorities, dammit!
[7:23:14 PM] Bendzz: ahh
[7:24:30 PM] Beau: Never used pastebin, actually. We'll see if it gets sick trying to C+P stuff out of a chat client.
[7:24:37 PM] Beau: Should probably take the names out too I guess.
[7:24:44 PM] Bendzz: might be wise
[7:26:14 PM] Beau: Actually, you'll probably be disappointed. Not many of them are talking about you. It seems like a lot more of them found Draconicon's stuff.
[7:26:29 PM] Deiser: Lol
[7:27:00 PM] Beau: The two groups seem to be talking past each other a lot. With any luck they'll never cross-reference each other and figure out they've been looking at two DIFFERENT sets of googledoc furry porn.
[7:27:26 PM] Bendzz: Oh wow you really boned yourself eh
[7:27:36 PM] Deiser: Heh, boned
[7:27:38 PM] Beau: Yes. Which is also my fetish.
[7:27:43 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: by the way i dont know if you were logged into the google account on youtube also, but youtube has a history too
[7:27:58 PM] Beau: Wat.
[7:28:18 PM] Deiser: Yep
[7:28:29 PM] Deiser: Viewing history
[7:28:35 PM] Beau: Yup. The shared account shows up in the corner when I watch youtube videos.
[7:28:36 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahahahaha
[7:28:46 PM] Bendzz: good old google
[7:29:00 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ok click the three grey bars to the left of the youtube logo
[7:29:00 PM] Beau: Why do you hurt me this way, Google?
[7:29:18 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one should say history
[7:29:23 PM] Bendzz: You're tearing me APART google!
[7:30:13 PM] Beau: FFFUUUUUUCK now I have to do this one too.
[7:30:21 PM] Bendzz: So you weren't even viewing my stuff on an incognito browser. You just went all in with your normal browser
[7:30:27 PM] Bendzz: That's like fucking a hooker without a condem
[7:31:01 PM] Bendzz: I shouldn't be laughing cause this will probably happen to me some day, but I'm totally fucking laughing
[7:31:33 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol who needs incognito, just remember to pull out, and whip that shit it will all be good
[7:31:33 PM] Beau: It's because Skype doesn't have an "open in new private window" option. That's how I normally keep this from happening.
[7:31:44 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: wipe*
[7:32:34 PM] Bendzz: Pulling out won't save you from HIV KS. Or bendzz apparently
[7:33:09 PM] Beau: Honestly the furry stuff I watch on Youtube is pretty tame. I don't think anyone would think much of it.
[7:33:24 PM] Beau: Might cause weird stuff to show up in the suggested videos, but that always happens.
[7:33:50 PM] Beau: Granted that's not because my habits change all that much on Youtube, it's just that most crazy fetish stuff is against their TOS.
[7:33:50 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: but i paid extra to have complete virus protection doesn't that cover your body too
[7:33:57 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: :P
[7:34:13 PM] Bendzz: firewall that dick
[7:34:31 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i dont remember if it was this chat or the other that linked to that weird car TF while back
[7:35:35 PM] Beau: Ahhh fuck some dickhead starred it.
[7:36:18 PM] Bendzz: yay fucking Skype crashed. I wonder if slack can be compatible with Skype users...
[7:36:24 PM] Bendzz: anyway:
HAHAHAHAHA
[7:36:45 PM] Beau: I doubt it. I've seen very little cross-compatibility with chat clients.
[7:37:18 PM] Beau: That would be fucking revolutionary, but nobody will do it because that would be super difficult to do technically and really hard to monetize.
[7:37:21 PM] Bendzz: I found a browser chat IM that could talk to like 7 of the top ones. But it was glitchy, wouldn't let me sign in on Skype sometimes
[7:37:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: I'm loosing it, anyway I'm sure you saw it but you can basically go incognito on youtube, there is a pause history button
[7:38:11 PM] Beau: Yeah, I looked at the Youtube history and I really don't think that'll be a problem.
[7:38:31 PM] Bendzz: I need to put some TFs on youtube to trip up Beau...
[7:38:38 PM] Beau: Most people use it for playing music videos so it's already a cacophanous mix of trippy visuals. Furry content blends right in.
[7:38:59 PM] Bendzz: Big ol' furry tits in the thumbnail, that no one can mistake...
[7:39:10 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im looking at my history too, the facebook crap you click pops up too, also i am sorry, so sorry if you click on this. this has 45 million views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq_d8VSM0nw
[7:39:59 PM] Bendzz: that guy needs to pull up his pants
[7:40:08 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: found some bob ross i opened up to watch later
[7:40:15 PM] Bendzz: oh fuck that's gonna get stuck in my head NOPE
[7:40:16 PM] Beau: Honestly people would probably be more weirded out by that than by the furry nightclub mass murder video.
[7:40:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: he thinks he is a great singer too
[7:40:54 PM] Beau: That's a great thing to have on in the background. Rob Ross is basically Xanax but a person.
[7:41:57 PM] Bendzz: My first thought was "Nah I shouldn't mention this, they'll think I'm weird" but then I remembered where I am... Anyway I use ASMR as Xanax. Fall asleep to that stuff constantly
[7:41:58 PM] Bendzz: So good
[7:43:21 PM] Beau: Wow, that's actually a pretty cool idea.
[7:43:59 PM] Beau: Makes sense. It's all about really soft, somewhat meaningless sounds. It's not something that your brain would try really hard to follow like music or a TV show.
[7:44:17 PM] Bendzz: yep, and I find it to be like morphine or something
[7:44:29 PM] Beau: Anyways, C+P from the Slack chat is working like ass just as I feared, so it might be a minute.
[7:44:34 PM] Bendzz: Been falling asleep with earbuds in and ASMR for about 2 years now
[7:44:50 PM] Bendzz: hmm
[7:45:46 PM] Bendzz: speaking of which I should get ready for bed. I've got the 3am giggles heh. brb
[7:47:30 PM] Beau: Yeah, mostly the chat is people reacting to Draconicon's document.
[7:49:44 PM] Beau: Unfortunately for you, "BC3" isn't quite as eye catching of a name as "100 Kinky Story Ideas".
[7:49:53 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:50:15 PM] Bendzz: damn I'll have to try harder next time
[7:50:15 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i kind of want a link now
[7:50:28 PM] Beau: Yeah, I'm working on it.
[7:50:34 PM] Bendzz: “Ahhh fuck some dickhead starred it.” hehehehehe
[7:50:48 PM] Beau: Another thing I didn't know Google did.
[7:51:40 PM] Bendzz: btw I came up with a solution to the "I draw furry porn" thing. So my roommate, we were hanging out and he started looking up weird porn subreddits. And he found /r/ClopClop
[7:52:02 PM] Bendzz: So he's looking at this shit and I'm just doubled over laughing, half because I recognize some pics
[7:53:08 PM] Bendzz: Then I came up with a great idea. I told him I had looked into that stuff after he showed it to me, and it pays well, so I was gonna draw it. And then all I had to do was just report the actual money I made off commissions, and he thought it was all his fault
[7:53:10 PM] Beau: Seems like a pretty plausible way to play it off.
[7:53:51 PM] Bendzz: And two years later that ploy is still working great. Why in October I was drawing Becumming #3 in a friend's kitchen with his wife walking around, and no one blinked
[7:54:14 PM] Beau: I guess he was kind of asking "Why would people do this?" and you answered "Because it pays pretty damn well."
[7:54:40 PM] Bendzz: Well he thinks he introduced it to me hehehehe
[7:55:27 PM] Beau: Alright, since I've got everyone on the edges of their seats with anticipation, I'm working on a C+P of the relevant chunk of the chat right now. Gotta do a ctrl+F for everyone's names still.
[7:55:50 PM] Bendzz: It went like this
"I came up with the best way to make money, but you HAVE to keep it a secret..."
"Ok..."
"So remember that stuff on /r/ClopClop?"
".....Yes.....?"
"Who do you think looks at that?"
"Sick fucks?"
"Sick fucks with DEEP POCKETS"
And that's how I laundered my income lol
[7:56:07 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:56:20 PM] Beau: The references to BC3 are few and scattered, so I'm just going to pick out those one by one and put them in the chat.
[7:56:29 PM] Bendzz: Frankly I'll take all the furry chat
[7:56:31 PM] Bendzz: Sounds funny
[7:57:57 PM] Beau: Let me see... "I think booby-cat should be our new fraternity mascot."
[7:58:08 PM] Bendzz: Oh my god yes
[7:58:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i think my best friend knows i know at furry stuff, though he hasn't been able to confirm it, but he will throw a joke about it every once and awhile to test me.
[7:58:23 PM] Beau: "Oh what the fuck my eyes may never walk again."
[7:58:34 PM] Bendzz: “my eyes may never walk again." did they before?
[7:58:42 PM] Beau: "What, how? HOW AND WHY!?"
[7:59:04 PM] Bendzz: What's the "how" about...
[7:59:16 PM] Bendzz: Seems straightforward. Just need a tablet and a sick fuck lol
[7:59:31 PM] Beau: "You know when I heard that there were sexy cat drawings all up in the GoogleDrive I thought you guys were just fucking with me."
[7:59:39 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahaha
[7:59:42 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:59:52 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast they called them sexy
[7:59:55 PM] Beau: "The boobycats are clearly interested in fucking with you [name]"
[8:00:15 PM] Bendzz: They aren't discerning
[8:00:20 PM] Beau: "NO ME GUSTA KIIITY!"
[8:00:26 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahaha
[8:00:33 PM] Beau: "MEOW MEANS MEOW!"
[8:00:37 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[8:00:45 PM] Bendzz: Should edit a megusta face on one of them
[8:00:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: that is a good one, you should use that
[8:01:05 PM] Bendzz: Seems like something TGwonder would write heh. But yeah I'll copy that
[8:01:53 PM] Beau: I think that's it for the scattered mentions. The big solid block is mostly about Draconicon's list. I'm going to pastebin that one once I figure out how to pastebin.
[8:02:06 PM] Beau: Let me see if I can link the document without putting it in the history again.
[8:02:30 PM] Beau: Aw fuck it I'll just link the FA journal. I'm not fucking around with this GoogleDrive shit anymore.
[8:02:34 PM] Bendzz: You can post the block here if it's not like 200 lines or something
[8:02:52 PM] Bendzz: cough incognito mode cough
[8:03:05 PM] Deiser: Btw guys
[8:03:18 PM] Beau: Okay, so this is the one that most of them are referring to.
[8:03:19 PM] Bendzz: Btw guysthe suspense
[8:03:20 PM] Beau: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7335284/
[8:03:22 PM] Deiser: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19371265/
[8:03:37 PM] Beau: I'll see about posting it here. Hopefully it won't eat everything.
[8:03:49 PM] Deiser: Rule 63 gaster blasters XD
[8:03:52 PM] Beau: Are those hot Gaster Blasters?
[8:04:02 PM] Bendzz: HOLY SHIT LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE ON THAT GOOGLE DOC
[8:04:04 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHAA
[8:04:09 PM] Beau: Of course they are. Why do I bother asking?
[8:04:24 PM] Beau: I'd look, but I'm not falling for that again.
[8:04:29 PM] Deiser: For some reason i can imagine them being tfd guys
[8:05:09 PM] Bendzz: those are some busty... neckless dinosaur things...
[8:05:26 PM] Bendzz: I wanna comment on the doc all your college buddies are viewing
[8:05:39 PM] Beau: Yeah, and notice how all of THEM are smart enough to be anon.
[8:05:39 PM] Bendzz: "For more like this google Bendzz!"
[8:06:18 PM] Beau: Anyways, the chat paste is like a page and a half. I'm gonna try and do the thing.
[8:06:33 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rbmxp1i0y.....06.13.png?dl=0 this is fucking hilarious I can't even
[8:07:19 PM] Bendzz: Is Delta Pi your shared group?
[8:07:42 PM] Deiser: XD
[8:07:49 PM] Deiser: XD XD
[8:09:38 PM] Beau: Yeah. It's actually quite distressing that that's still showing up.
[8:09:58 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: some other member could have it open
[8:10:05 PM] Beau: I'm really glad I don't have a shared dropbox because holy shit.
[8:10:36 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i wonder how many secretly saved the files
[8:10:54 PM] Beau: Yeah, could be it's someone else. BC3 keeps popping up to the top of the 'recent' list.
[8:11:03 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: "haha look at with weird stuff'' .... saves
[8:11:51 PM] Beau: It is kind of funny how a bunch of people jumped on that document as soon as someone mentioned it in group chat.
[8:12:16 PM] Bendzz: “I'm really glad I don't have a shared dropbox because holy shit.” Oh dear god
[8:12:34 PM] Bendzz: Oh is B#3 up again?
[8:12:39 PM] Bendzz: Do tell do tell
[8:13:11 PM] Bendzz: I'm pretty sure that's the captions doc too. So they've got a looooot of weird dialogues to get through haha
[8:13:25 PM] Beau: Nobody's saying anything, but it jumped up a few times while I was clearing the history.
[8:13:30 PM] Bendzz: damn
[8:13:43 PM] Bendzz: And yeah almost certainly someone else has it open on your shared account
[8:13:56 PM] Beau: And it's coming up again now. Someone's probably looking at it right now so it just gets confused when I try to take it out of the history.
[8:14:16 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe you can't kill the porn IT"S TOO POWERFUL
[8:14:45 PM] Beau: Back, back you mindless wretches!
[8:14:57 PM] *** Beau hacks at army of boobkitties with Ashbringer ***
[8:15:13 PM] Bendzz: Oh wow there's "anonymous dinosaur" on google docs. I always see armadillos and shit. Dammit
[8:15:49 PM] Beau: Anyways, got sidetracked. I'mma post the thing now.
[8:15:52 PM] Beau:
TR-8R:
3:02 PM guys
3:02 what am i and apparently seven other people reading on the drive right now?
3:02 100 Kinky Stories?
Spongebob:
3:31 PM oh gawd
George Washington:
3:35 PM The hell did i just read
Spongebob:
3:41 PM For anyone in Data Structures this semester, you should go to the Install Fest in DCC 308 from 6-8pm tonight and get everything you need installed, it will save you a headache in Lab 1
TR-8R:
4:55 PM back on the kinky side, i like #38
Spongebob:
5:04 PM salty Z
Raptor Jesus:
8:40 PM Where are the delta pi kinky stories? I can't find them
Kevin Spacy:
8:41 PM Quote board
Raptor Jesus:
He said they're on the drive
8:45 I need to get off, Nathan. What else am I gonna use? Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?
Kevin Spacy:
8:45 PM Quote board
Raptor Jesus:
8:46 PM I guess its another night using the composites then...
Me:
8:47 PM The whole composite? Don't exaggerate, Raptor Jesus.
8:47We know you only use those legendarily sexy pictures of Jacob from there.
Raptor Jesus:
8:49 PM It's those pearly whites, gets me every time
George Washington:
9:38 PM https://youtu.be/4IRdw_Qgwqc
[8:16:09 PM] Bendzz: Oh btw since I'm also viewing the doc, my name will show up. I wonder if they can click my name and find my public docs.... Boy WOULDN"T THAT BE FUN BEAU
[8:16:16 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: Bendzz you should start to talk to them through the doc, at the bottom just say "Hello Delta Pi"
[8:16:26 PM] Bendzz: hahahaha I should
[8:16:41 PM] Bendzz: hang on wanna read this
[8:17:06 PM] Beau: Wow I missed a lot of details I probably should've taken out of there.
[8:17:19 PM] Bendzz: Install Fest this is actually a great idea
[8:17:25 PM] Beau: Oh well. My real friends are learning all about my furry friends. May as well turn that the other way around.
[8:17:58 PM] Beau: Oh yeah. Installfest went really well and is going to lead to at least not-everyone being fucked during the first week of Data Structures.
[8:18:28 PM] squato_me: Two things.
[8:18:51 PM] squato_me: No one used the old "ZEE GOOGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!" chestnut? FOR SHAME!
[8:19:07 PM] squato_me: Secondly, lets see if BC3 gets a sales spike. :P
[8:19:10 PM] Bendzz: “I need to get off, Nathan. What else am I gonna use? Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?” Oh my your buddies are getting into it hehe
[8:19:34 PM] Bendzz: Well none since this afternoon.... But I'll keep an eye out
[8:19:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: your name isn't on the list, and according to your screen shot neither is mine, must be a settings thing
[8:19:47 PM] Bendzz: =T
[8:19:50 PM] Bendzz: Well that needs fixing
[8:20:06 PM] Bendzz: I'm gonna post
[8:20:20 PM] Beau: Yeah, cuz you guys actually understand how to porn.
[8:20:48 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yprp3i6cq.....20.32.png?dl=0
[8:20:53 PM] *** Bendzz giggles like a moron ***
[8:21:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one of my good friends was a manager at a adult store. though she quit from the stress of weirdos and issues with the viewing booths
[8:21:51 PM] Bendzz: “issues with the viewing booths” ew
[8:22:29 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: you put it in the kinks one XD i was talking about putting it in yours :P
[8:22:37 PM] Bendzz: oh
[8:22:46 PM] Bendzz: Well apparently the kinks one is getting all the traffic
[8:22:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: either way works
[8:23:26 PM] Beau: Like I sad. It's that attention-grabbing name.
[8:23:44 PM] Bendzz: Need to up my game
[8:23:46 PM] Bendzz: Let's see
[8:23:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: Bendzz change the title name :P
[8:23:51 PM] Bendzz: IYeah
[8:24:03 PM] Bendzz: I'll name it "WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:24:30 PM] Beau: Goddamnit.
[8:24:41 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: to the world of transformation porn
[8:25:03 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndzanwvfb.....24.47.png?dl=0 yeppers there are a couple in there!
[8:25:15 PM | Edited 8:25:26 PM] Beau: I dunno, you creeping all up on them while they're trying to read confusing porn suggestions might actually scare them off.
[8:25:26 PM] Bendzz: =T well shit
[8:25:35 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: so are they seeing the suggestions or the captions? or both
[8:25:44 PM] Bendzz: Btw If I'm actually doing damage here I won't name it that. But it might be fucking hilarious....
[8:26:15 PM] Beau: Oh good. My classmates are ALSO smart enough to use anon mode.
[8:26:28 PM] Bendzz: doc has no suggestions, not sure what you're asking
[8:26:44 PM] Bendzz: >B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI [Googledocs link to the document now named that]
[8:26:46 PM] Beau: And yeah. If you could like... not? That'd be greeeat.
[8:27:02 PM] Bendzz: aw. Ok I changed it back
[8:27:04 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: the script
[8:27:04 PM] Beau: Dick around with the kinky stories one if you must. That ship has sailed.
[8:27:20 PM] Bendzz: Has the cat titties not sailed?
[8:27:24 PM] Bendzz: should fix that
[8:27:30 PM] Beau: But I'm actually very relieved that only a couple people stumbled onto BC3.
[8:27:40 PM] Bendzz: Now there's 3
[8:27:47 PM] Bendzz: I could actually make the whole doc private if you want
[8:28:07 PM] Beau: Goddamnit stop linking that thing FUCK.
[8:28:14 PM] Bendzz: I'm not sure which way to go here... I could make it better. But it would be more hilarious to make it so much worse
[8:28:25 PM] Deiser: What thing
[8:28:41 PM] Bendzz: All Beau's classmates found my google porn doc, and someone else's
[8:28:53 PM] Beau: The pornGdocs that keep showing up in my history for christ's sake!
[8:29:05 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[8:29:14 PM] Bendzz: oh my now there's 4 people on my doc!
[8:29:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one of them is me
[8:29:33 PM] Bendzz: damn
[8:30:07 PM] Bendzz: Hey Beau I think I'm going to change the name back to "B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:30:40 PM] Beau: I'm flipping shit because I'm still in the habit of clicking links without thinking about it and if I do that'll put it right back on top.
[8:30:52 PM] Bendzz: [Links the googledrive several times]
[8:31:36 PM] Beau: Thanks.
[8:31:46 PM] Bendzz: hehehehehehe
[8:31:54 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast it wasn't #2 that had non-tf feral on tf action
[8:32:01 PM] Bendzz: oh true enough
[8:32:28 PM] Beau: I really can't look at it even if I wanted to. There just isn't an "open in secure window" option.
[8:32:29 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bxe3i337.....32.07.png?dl=0 I changed the title back to "B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:32:41 PM] Beau: I'd have to get an incognito window and paste it in.
[8:32:42 PM] Bendzz: Hey squato you're logged in with your real name
[8:32:53 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: this one is actually tame all around really
[8:32:55 PM] Bendzz: “I'd have to get an incognito window and paste it in.” yeah do that
[8:33:04 PM] Bendzz: “this one is actually tame all around really” What becumming #3?
[8:33:05 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: compaired to most other ideas
[8:33:08 PM] Bendzz: U crazy?
[8:33:53 PM] Bendzz: I was about to go to bed but this is much better
[8:33:57 PM] Beau: Not sure how they'd react to "Welcome to the party, college boys!"
[8:34:05 PM] Beau: Creeped out, probably.
[8:34:06 PM] Bendzz: Well there are 6 people in there now!
[8:34:13 PM] Bendzz: Me thinks it's working
[8:34:17 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: there is no inanimate, bondage, natural ferals, etc
[8:34:29 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: also the first scene was cut, think if that was still in it
[8:34:46 PM] Beau: "WELCOME DELTA PI" just popped up to the top of the list.
[8:34:46 PM] Bendzz: heh yeah that might actually break some laws, I didn't check...
[8:34:53 PM] Bendzz: SCORE.
[8:35:17 PM] Bendzz: AH HAHAHAHA https://www.dropbox.com/s/traa2y9i8.....35.05.png?dl=0
[8:35:36 PM] squato_me: “Hey squato you're logged in with your real name” Meh, let them confuse me for the other, more well known one with my name who is a doctor. :p
[8:35:47 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:35 PM “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
[8:35:49 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHA
[8:36:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im sorry to laugh at your expense, but at least you are still technically anonymous, just in a small group. but this is great
[8:36:27 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:35 PM “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
Matthew Waddingham joined group chat.
Delta Pi 8:36 PM “i have just stumled across this work and its wonderful”
X left group chat.
me 8:36 PM Holy fuck I'm dying
[8:36:58 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:36 PM: “sorry man
but you are like my fetish ifdol”
That took a weird turn
[8:37:57 PM] Bendzz: Beau is that you posting in the chat?
[8:38:08 PM] squato_me: As long as they give you money, you are happy. :P
[8:38:10 PM] Bendzz: Or are there other kinksters in your college?
[8:38:17 PM] Beau: Nope. It's somebody else.
[8:38:20 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im working on connecting to read
[8:38:22 PM] Beau: I promise this is genuine.
[8:38:26 PM] Bendzz: “Nope. It's somebody else.” Holy. Shit
[8:38:30 PM] Bendzz: What the fuck this is hilarious
[8:38:51 PM] Beau: As I've said. I'm not dumb enough to click on that thing while logged in anymore.
[8:39:23 PM] Beau: Remember when I said I HOPED they would be creeped out?
[8:39:43 PM] Bendzz: 7 people in there now
[8:39:43 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: awe i cant see any of the old comments :P
[8:40:22 PM] Bendzz: (3) Delta Pi, Michael W, bendzzTF
Delta Pi joined group chat.
Delta Pi 8:35 PM: “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
Delta Pi 8:36 PM i have just stumled across this work and its wonderful
me 8:36 PM Holy fuck I'm dying
Delta Pi 8:37 PM sorry man but you are like my fetish ifdol you make the best TG TF comics
me 8:37 PM Well that was unexpected
Delta Pi 8:38 PM same in terms of finding every document here on the drive
Michael W joined group chat.
me 8:39 PM That's fucking hilarious, my doc gets linked to a random college and someone in there is a fan of mine
[8:40:26 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: crap someone commented
[8:40:58 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol self censorship i said shit but wrote crap
[8:41:18 PM] Bendzz: What do you mean commented? This chat thing?
[8:41:25 PM] Bendzz: I don't see any page comments
[8:41:28 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ya the chat
[8:41:46 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:40 PM “Sir, Sallem has been a popular reread of mine for weeks. How or who linked it with this drive?”
Dude your classmates are into the weird shit
[8:42:18 PM] Beau: I... actually am kinda curious now.
[8:42:41 PM] PGS: Consider my interest piqued as well.
[8:43:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i wonder how long they have known, because that doc is over three months old
[8:44:32 PM] Bendzz: So at least 2 people in your group are massive furries Beau
[8:44:37 PM] Bendzz: How many people are in your group?
[8:44:52 PM] Beau: Like 25.
[8:45:15 PM] Beau: That's why I still had some hope of fading into the background without getting my secret identity exposed.
[8:45:48 PM] PGS: Oh. Well shoot.
[8:45:51 PM] Bendzz: So of the 25 people in your group, at least 2 of them are into hardcore TF fetish. That is fascinating.
[8:45:55 PM] Bendzz: I'm about to post that
[8:45:59 PM] Bendzz: that cool?
[8:46:01 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im dying, this is going to be a great story next time i hang out with my friends in the fandom
[8:46:08 PM] Bendzz: yea nk
[8:46:14 PM] Beau: Post "that"? as in what?
[8:46:19 PM] Bendzz: “So of the 25 people in your group, at least 2 of them are into hardcore TF fetish. That is fascinating.”
[8:46:37 PM] Beau: Ah, you want to say that sentence to whoever's logged into BC3?
[8:46:44 PM] Bendzz: yeah
[8:46:45 PM] Beau: Sure. I'm all for witty banter.
[8:47:06 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pl49kb7a9.....46.58.png?dl=0
[8:47:17 PM] Beau: He'll probably be like "how did you know how many people are in the fraternity chapter?"
[8:47:30 PM] squato_me: Guess it is time to rename your group (or whatever they call them over in American Uni's). Seems your group is the furry lover on. :p
[8:47:40 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: o god what if he thinks Bendzz is a part of the group
[8:47:53 PM] Bendzz: “o god what if he thinks Bendzz is a part of the group” HAHAHAHAHA
[8:48:22 PM] Bendzz: Oh a few just left. Maybe that '25' creeped them out
[8:49:26 PM] Beau: Okay so someone just ran into my apartment shouting OH MY GOD WHICH ONE OF YOU KNOWS BENDZZ.
[8:49:37 PM] Beau: So... that's a thing.
[8:49:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[8:49:44 PM] Bendzz: “Okay so someone just ran into my apartment shouting OH MY GOD WHICH ONE OF YOU KNOWS BENDZZ.” HYAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
[8:49:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im dying im dying
[8:50:06 PM] Bendzz: I wanna post that to the chat
[8:50:17 PM] Beau: I couldn't stop laughing long enough to not get made.
[8:50:39 PM] Bendzz: You got discovered?
[8:50:39 PM] Bendzz: Oh nooo hahaha
[8:50:53 PM] Bendzz: what the it says I'm offline. Think my internet's fluctuating...
[8:51:07 PM] Beau: He's like all starstruck and hyperventilating because you talked to him lol.
[8:51:14 PM] Bendzz: what?
[8:51:20 PM] Bendzz: lol
[8:51:20 PM] squato_me: SENPAI NOTICED ME!
[8:51:24 PM] squato_me: :P
[8:51:46 PM] Beau: Apparently he lost track of you and didn't know you were still out there making stuff.
[8:51:51 PM] Bendzz: I'm gonna post your apartment comment to the chat k?
[8:51:55 PM] Bendzz: brb
[8:51:57 PM] Beau: He says to stay healthy so nothing happens to you.
[8:52:35 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: this is the best laugh i have had in a long time
[8:52:49 PM] Beau: He can barely talk coherently this is amazing.
[8:53:06 PM] Beau: He wants to know if I know you from the Navy.
[8:53:20 PM] Beau: He can't accept that I just internetted at you.
[8:53:35 PM] Bendzz: hahaha
[8:53:39 PM] Beau: Yeah, post whatever you want.
[8:53:49 PM] Beau: So many cats just tore through the bag just now.
[8:54:02 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol the cat is out of the doc (bad joke)
[8:54:10 PM] Bendzz: Yeah hope you were ready to come out haha
[8:54:15 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: damn it
[8:54:30 PM] Bendzz: cat is out of the docboo =P
[8:55:09 PM] Bendzz: “this is the best laugh i have had in a long time” Yeah I feel dizzy from laughing
[8:55:45 PM] Deiser: Huh
[8:55:45 PM] Bendzz: How did the person know to run into YOUR dorm room or apartment?
[8:56:08 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: it is a fraternity right
[8:56:13 PM] Beau: Oh he's been busting down the door of everyone in the fraternity. He did it to like 12 other people before he got to me.
[8:56:27 PM] Bendzz: Oh. Wow. Alright I guess he was out of the closet already
[8:56:37 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i saved myself i almost took a drink
[8:56:39 PM] Bendzz: Also TIL you were in the Navy heh
[8:56:45 PM] Beau: He keeps calling you "THE BENDZ" it's the most adorable thing.
[8:56:49 PM] catldr: I am still in the doc thx
[8:56:50 PM] Bendzz: hahahahaha
[8:57:55 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: is he the one who said "Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?"
[8:58:25 PM] Bendzz: Oh that makes sense
[8:58:48 PM] Beau: Nope. But he's on the phone with that guy.
[8:59:01 PM] Bendzz: So there are THREE furries in your group of 25?
[8:59:17 PM] Beau: I don't know, but he's pretty hype about this too.
[8:59:23 PM] Bendzz: hahahaha
[8:59:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: he could have been making a joke
[8:59:35 PM] Beau: He's on speakerphone and trying to get me to explain the comic to him.
[8:59:40 PM] Bendzz: he's pretty hype Sounds legit to me
[8:59:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: well now you know of an extremely local furry
[8:59:53 PM] Bendzz: Oh you should mention that this is an early draft of the comic and captions
[8:59:59 PM] Beau: I just told him it's incomplete and he'd need to read BC1 and 2 if he wanted to understand it.
[9:00:07 PM] Bendzz: “understand it.” good luck
[9:00:10 PM] Beau: They're discussing splitting the cost of buying them.
[9:00:27 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHA I MADE FUCKING SALES OFF THIS DFHOASILFDGHBASDALJAKSD
[9:00:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
[9:01:08 PM] Beau: Aww, he doesn't want to pay.
[9:01:24 PM] Beau: Especially now that he has access to the development dartboard.
[9:01:34 PM] Bendzz: Tell him it's an early version
[9:01:50 PM] Beau: Goddamn it now he's explaining to the people downstairs who you are.
[9:02:01 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[9:02:02 PM] Bendzz: Holy fuck I'm going to wake up my roommates
[9:02:04 PM] catldr: this is quite a journey.
[9:03:09 PM] Beau: I never did ask how HE came across you.
[9:03:27 PM] Bendzz: My damn internet keeps dying, dammit I don't want to miss anything
[9:03:38 PM] Beau: He was too busy screeching like a barn owl about how excited he was.
[9:05:04 PM] Bendzz: hahaha
[9:05:17 PM] Beau: Yeah, this is definitely something you'd want to experience live.
[9:05:32 PM] Bendzz: yeah
[9:05:58 PM] Beau: Anyway, his phone died, so I lost track of fan #2, who I'm pretty sure is new to this and just reading the whole thing out of morbid fascination.
[9:06:07 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[9:06:14 PM] Beau: I think he was the one who was looking at it for like three hours straight there.
[9:06:24 PM] Bendzz: hahahahaha
[9:06:34 PM] Bendzz: brb gonna reset my router.
[9:06:55 PM] Beau: Then the door-kicking guy who actually knew about you just flamed out and started having heart palpitations and had to leave.
[9:07:36 PM] Beau: So yeah that all happened.
[9:07:47 PM] Beau: I think we're actually done here for the moment.
[9:08:09 PM] Beau: I'm really not looking forward to going downstairs and having to explain what the fuck to everybody down there.
[9:09:02 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: so was his heart like this warning this is actually disturbing so not for the feint of heart, and it wasn't really 20 readbulls that did this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya3j1ohPNuQ
[9:09:16 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: redbulls*
[9:10:36 PM] Bendzz: my fucking internet
[9:10:42 PM] Beau: Yeah, not quite to that extent.
[9:10:47 PM] Bendzz: “heart palpitations” actually?
[9:10:52 PM] Beau: He was definitely vibrating though.
[9:11:15 PM] Beau: Not like literal 'this threatens your life see a doctor" heart palpitations. He was just really excited.
[9:11:31 PM] Bendzz: wow that is freaky, the video. That can't be just from 20 redbulls
[9:11:54 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: no it was from a car accident or something, fake title to scare people
[9:11:57 PM] Bendzz: It looks more like he has a punctured lung
[9:11:59 PM] Bendzz: ahhh
[9:12:34 PM] Beau: So yeah, I was gonna like, do work tonight and then go to bed.
[9:12:41 PM] Bendzz: hehehe
[9:12:42 PM] Beau: I don't think those are happening.
[9:12:57 PM] Bendzz: Are there still comments in the other chat?
[9:13:11 PM] Beau: No new ones. That one has been quiet.
[9:13:12 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi just left the Becumnming doc
[9:13:17 PM] Bendzz: blast
[9:13:29 PM] Beau: Apparently the interested parties took this interaction to the meatspace.
[9:13:44 PM] Bendzz: damn
[9:14:18 PM] Beau: I never did manage to connect to the chat there on this machine.
[9:21:12 PM] Beau: Wow, 18 pages.
[9:21:25 PM] Beau: I didn't realize how long that dumpster fire went on for.
[9:21:40 PM] Bendzz: Quite the epic
[9:23:36 PM] Beau: So this is my life now.
[9:26:27 PM] Beau: I was hoping people wouldn't care. Most of them actually didn't. I certainly wasn't expecting someone to explode with excitement though.
[9:27:20 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast you wont have to constantly think in the back of your mind ''do any of them know it was me'' because they all know now :P
[9:27:38 PM] Bendzz: Hahahahaha
[9:27:43 PM] Bendzz: salting the wound KS
[9:27:48 PM] *** Bendzz claps ***
[9:34:33 PM] Beau: There was just a ping on the groupchat, hold on.
[9:35:23 PM] Beau: Ah, it's phone guy bragging about their elaborate scheme to uncover absolutely ALL of the furry porn that there was to be had, despite my attempts to purge it.
[9:37:08 PM] Beau: I was taking all the porn out of the history, but they were just revisiting and saving everything, so they've probably got it all.
bendzz with writing and composing their TF porn comics. There's a Skype group with 20-odd people in it set up for that purpose. Bendzz often links WIP versions of the comics and documents full of story ideas as GoogleDocs, which I read and comment on. My fraternity has a shared google account that I'm logged into most all the time. What I came to learn in a rather untimely fashion, was that Google Drive tracks all the stuff you've been viewing and keeps that as a history. So yeah, that's the genesis of this prolonged Skype exchange. It's kind of a mess with all the back and forth and the quoting of multiple different means of communication and all that. I probably could clean it up a little better, but I don't feel super charitable towards putting a ton of work into basically letting you guys watch me get humiliated. Plus the general air of flailing chaos is brought to the forefront quite well by the disorganized nature of the chatlog. So yeah, enjoy![6:48:31 PM] Beau: Oh god.
[6:49:05 PM] Beau: I did not realize that was how the 'Recent Activity' feature in Google drive works.
[6:49:32 PM] ultipand: I know exactly what you mean :P
[6:49:36 PM] Bendzz: ?
[6:49:39 PM] ultipand: went in there to check out serious stuff and
[6:49:46 PM] ultipand: saw it loaded with TF stuff, was terrifying
[6:50:23 PM] Bendzz: You guys use the same google account for porn and IRL? Sounds risky
[6:50:43 PM] Beau: I was logged into a shared google account when I was looking at some of this stuff. Now other peeps from the account are looking through the history and being like "The fuck is Becumming 3?" and "Oh Jesus what am I even looking at?"
[6:51:02 PM] Bendzz: Oh fuuuuuck lol
[6:51:09 PM] Beau: And no, I didn't do it on purpose. I don't even have my own Google account.
[6:51:13 PM] ultipand: oh gawd
[6:51:24 PM] Bendzz: That's like my nightmare. Good luck
[6:51:31 PM] Deiser: Erk
[6:51:32 PM] Beau: I just leave the group one logged in on my laptop most of the time since I work with these guys.
[6:52:06 PM] Bendzz: Yeah let us know how this goes down
[6:52:12 PM] Bendzz: oh boy
[6:52:47 PM] Bendzz: This is why I have two separate web browsers for porn and life
[6:52:53 PM] Beau: Favorite quote so far is "There's just like... SO many boobs you guys. I know usually that's a good thing but... WTF seriously?"
[6:53:02 PM] Bendzz: lol did you get the captions page?
[6:53:07 PM] Bendzz: The one with all the comic images?
[6:53:25 PM] Bendzz: lol so is this a university project group or what?
[6:53:43 PM] Beau: Not sure which ones it was. I didn't want to look again and push them to the top of the history.
[6:53:58 PM] Bendzz: sounds like the damage is done
[6:54:01 PM] Beau: Right now I'm just going through and deleting anything that says Bendzz on it.
[6:54:03 PM] Bendzz: I could try making it private and boot them
[6:54:18 PM] Bendzz: But that's only temporary
[6:54:27 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: well it is a way to get an outsiders view on the subject :P
[6:55:22 PM] Beau: Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
[6:55:39 PM] Beau: And yeah, it's a group I'm on at college.
[6:56:01 PM] Bendzz: KS thinks that the group might not know which of u is the furry
[6:56:22 PM] Bendzz: Also where are these comments? Are they on google docs? Can I see them?
[6:56:45 PM] Beau: Actually they don't, so far anyway.
[6:56:56 PM] Beau: Since it's a shared account we all use the same login.
[6:57:36 PM] Beau: I'm sure some computer science nerd could trace which address was logged in at the time, but I doubt they're THAT interested in finding out. CS nerds are notoriously difficult to motivate.
[6:57:36 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: did you remember to make a "wtf is this" post a few hours before deleting it?
[6:58:01 PM] Bendzz: “CS nerds are notoriously difficult to motivate.” CS nerd here, can confirm
[6:58:06 PM] Beau: No, I haven't commented on it yet. That way I can more credibly claim to have no idea what they're talking about.
[6:58:20 PM] Bendzz: Seriously are these comments on the doc?
[6:58:23 PM] Bendzz: lemme check it....
[6:58:39 PM] Beau: No, the comments popped up on the Slack that we use for the same group.
[6:58:47 PM] Bendzz: dammit
[6:58:51 PM] Bendzz: What's slack?
[6:58:51 PM] Beau: Chat through Google is pretty ass, so we don't use that.
[6:59:00 PM] Deiser: I can confirm as a cs major
[6:59:00 PM] Bendzz: hmm
[6:59:03 PM] Beau: It's like Skype that actually works.
[6:59:14 PM] *** Bendzz googles ***
[6:59:44 PM] Beau: It's a more business-oriented chat program, where group chats are the focus and not an ancillary thing.
[6:59:49 PM] Deiser: Also hi
[6:59:57 PM] Beau: They actually had a furry commercial recently. I'll see if I can pull up that one.
[6:59:59 PM] Bendzz: Does it have any major perks?
[7:00:03 PM] Bendzz: hehe
[7:00:16 PM] Bendzz: Yeah I would certainly be interested in reading all the comments on my docs btw
[7:00:29 PM] Bendzz: If you want to make a pasteBin thing of them or something
[7:00:33 PM] Deiser: How's everything
[7:00:38 PM] Beau: I mean, it basically just works better. Easy to get into and such.
[7:00:53 PM] Bendzz: “How's everything” Good because I didn't just get outed as a multiboob furry lover lol
[7:01:16 PM] Beau: I don't notice that much of a difference, but I don't use it a lot. I do like that it can be opened in a browser instead of having a big clunky client like Skype.
[7:01:18 PM] Bendzz: Skype's been glitch for me lately, but everyone I know is on Skype so....
[7:01:37 PM] Bendzz: interesting....
[7:01:38 PM] Beau: Apparently Slack is WAY better on phones, but I no has smartyphone so I can't speak to that.
[7:02:03 PM] Bendzz: I use Skype on my phone, when it works it's good. But I couldn't log in for 2 months once
[7:02:14 PM] Beau: Ah yes. Here is furry slack users.
[7:02:16 PM] Beau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6sSa5NpqUI
[7:02:22 PM] Deiser: Xd
[7:03:36 PM] Beau: My favorite is the sloth that spends the whole commercial writing "Good idea, team!" and then goes home.
[7:04:07 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol zootopia ripoff it feels like SP
[7:04:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XP
[7:04:15 PM] Bendzz: still amusing
[7:05:00 PM] Bendzz: wait the people in the machining factory are human. And on the street. I just noticed.
[7:05:11 PM] Bendzz: So only that office building is furries?
[7:06:44 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: when you hit the weird anthropomorphic part of youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQgXeY_zi4
[7:06:48 PM] Beau: That is odd. I hadn't noticed.
[7:07:37 PM] Beau: Oh yeah, that murderous nightclub one. Not sure what the deal was there.
[7:07:42 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol i didn't finish it before linking, it became even more effed up
[7:07:48 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ya that scene just popped up
[7:09:39 PM] Beau: Wow there's a lot of furry crap in this history.
[7:09:47 PM] Beau: All me, unfortunately.
[7:09:50 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:09:52 PM] Deiser: Erk
[7:10:26 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: oh shit I'm loosing it, I'm sorry, it sounds mean, but that is funny
[7:10:28 PM] Beau: WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS IS HOW GOOGLE WORKS?
[7:11:01 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[7:11:05 PM] Bendzz: I am corrupting the masses
[7:11:20 PM] Bendzz: Also that nightclub video was cool but weird as shit
[7:11:28 PM] Beau: Though I guess most people don't get their creepy fetish porn from Googledocs.
[7:12:23 PM] *** Bendzz updates google doc: "Beau did it" ***
[7:13:06 PM] Beau: Thank God you people don't have my real name.
[7:13:18 PM] Beau: Heh, "you people".
[7:13:33 PM] Bendzz: =p
[7:13:42 PM] ultipand: I too divorce my TF-y persona with my actual persona
[7:13:44 PM] ultipand: it's safest :B
[7:13:46 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol my google docs is a mix of Bendzz docs, random internet doc files, random personal files, and porn stories
[7:13:54 PM] Deiser: Well same
[7:14:09 PM] Beau: I guess I'm not too sure about the gdocs though. Maybe some people think shared word processors are hot.
[7:15:14 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i keep my clean furry account separate from the adult side, but people who get to know me learn i am a furry
[7:15:41 PM] Deiser: Same
[7:15:45 PM] Bendzz: Man I just had a flashback to living at home in my teens, hiding TF sketchbooks under the couches....
[7:16:08 PM] Deiser: Theres two separate human and anthro deisers
[7:16:27 PM] Beau: Yeah, I don't really have much of a clean furry/adult furry divide in the art I consume. Mainly because the pie chart of the two of those would look like pac man chewing on a toothpick.
[7:16:54 PM] Beau: In my internet presence at least.
[7:17:20 PM] Bendzz: I can't even think of any furry stuff I've drawn that wasn't supposed to be porn. Even when they're wearing clothes
[7:18:28 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol i am such a furfag that i keep an furry ID in my wallet http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10550544/
[7:18:50 PM] Bendzz: I lost my wallet earlier today
[7:18:57 PM] Bendzz: A nice Chinese couple down the road found it
[7:19:03 PM] Bendzz: Thank god I don't have a card like that
[7:19:21 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i keep it under my license
[7:20:03 PM] Bendzz: They had to dig through my wallet to find my phone number
[7:20:12 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: the barcode links to my FA, it would work with the bardcode scanners at work, but it would just cause an error to pop up
[7:20:26 PM] Bendzz: huh
[7:20:34 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i got bored :P
[7:21:10 PM] Bendzz: I should make those cell phone square code things that link to my porn tumblr, then get someone to put them up on campus. See if there are reactions
[7:21:20 PM] Bendzz: Actually no I shouldn't
[7:21:30 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:21:43 PM] Beau: Pffff-
[7:21:54 PM] Beau: They're called QR codes.
[7:22:07 PM] Bendzz: couldn't remember the name. was thinking like CR
[7:22:08 PM] Beau: And honestly it hasn't been SUPER bad.
[7:22:13 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i have fursuit business cards, clean art account business cards, and my porn account business cards
[7:22:38 PM] Beau: Most people are just like "wat dis? Lawl so weird!"
[7:22:42 PM] Bendzz: Beau still waiting to see a paste bin of the conversation
[7:23:08 PM] Beau: Yeah and I'm still going through the Google Drive history and taking out all this furry crap!
[7:23:13 PM] Beau: Priorities, dammit!
[7:23:14 PM] Bendzz: ahh
[7:24:30 PM] Beau: Never used pastebin, actually. We'll see if it gets sick trying to C+P stuff out of a chat client.
[7:24:37 PM] Beau: Should probably take the names out too I guess.
[7:24:44 PM] Bendzz: might be wise
[7:26:14 PM] Beau: Actually, you'll probably be disappointed. Not many of them are talking about you. It seems like a lot more of them found Draconicon's stuff.
[7:26:29 PM] Deiser: Lol
[7:27:00 PM] Beau: The two groups seem to be talking past each other a lot. With any luck they'll never cross-reference each other and figure out they've been looking at two DIFFERENT sets of googledoc furry porn.
[7:27:26 PM] Bendzz: Oh wow you really boned yourself eh
[7:27:36 PM] Deiser: Heh, boned
[7:27:38 PM] Beau: Yes. Which is also my fetish.
[7:27:43 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: by the way i dont know if you were logged into the google account on youtube also, but youtube has a history too
[7:27:58 PM] Beau: Wat.
[7:28:18 PM] Deiser: Yep
[7:28:29 PM] Deiser: Viewing history
[7:28:35 PM] Beau: Yup. The shared account shows up in the corner when I watch youtube videos.
[7:28:36 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahahahaha
[7:28:46 PM] Bendzz: good old google
[7:29:00 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ok click the three grey bars to the left of the youtube logo
[7:29:00 PM] Beau: Why do you hurt me this way, Google?
[7:29:18 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one should say history
[7:29:23 PM] Bendzz: You're tearing me APART google!
[7:30:13 PM] Beau: FFFUUUUUUCK now I have to do this one too.
[7:30:21 PM] Bendzz: So you weren't even viewing my stuff on an incognito browser. You just went all in with your normal browser
[7:30:27 PM] Bendzz: That's like fucking a hooker without a condem
[7:31:01 PM] Bendzz: I shouldn't be laughing cause this will probably happen to me some day, but I'm totally fucking laughing
[7:31:33 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol who needs incognito, just remember to pull out, and whip that shit it will all be good
[7:31:33 PM] Beau: It's because Skype doesn't have an "open in new private window" option. That's how I normally keep this from happening.
[7:31:44 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: wipe*
[7:32:34 PM] Bendzz: Pulling out won't save you from HIV KS. Or bendzz apparently
[7:33:09 PM] Beau: Honestly the furry stuff I watch on Youtube is pretty tame. I don't think anyone would think much of it.
[7:33:24 PM] Beau: Might cause weird stuff to show up in the suggested videos, but that always happens.
[7:33:50 PM] Beau: Granted that's not because my habits change all that much on Youtube, it's just that most crazy fetish stuff is against their TOS.
[7:33:50 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: but i paid extra to have complete virus protection doesn't that cover your body too
[7:33:57 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: :P
[7:34:13 PM] Bendzz: firewall that dick
[7:34:31 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i dont remember if it was this chat or the other that linked to that weird car TF while back
[7:35:35 PM] Beau: Ahhh fuck some dickhead starred it.
[7:36:18 PM] Bendzz: yay fucking Skype crashed. I wonder if slack can be compatible with Skype users...
[7:36:24 PM] Bendzz: anyway:
HAHAHAHAHA
[7:36:45 PM] Beau: I doubt it. I've seen very little cross-compatibility with chat clients.
[7:37:18 PM] Beau: That would be fucking revolutionary, but nobody will do it because that would be super difficult to do technically and really hard to monetize.
[7:37:21 PM] Bendzz: I found a browser chat IM that could talk to like 7 of the top ones. But it was glitchy, wouldn't let me sign in on Skype sometimes
[7:37:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: I'm loosing it, anyway I'm sure you saw it but you can basically go incognito on youtube, there is a pause history button
[7:38:11 PM] Beau: Yeah, I looked at the Youtube history and I really don't think that'll be a problem.
[7:38:31 PM] Bendzz: I need to put some TFs on youtube to trip up Beau...
[7:38:38 PM] Beau: Most people use it for playing music videos so it's already a cacophanous mix of trippy visuals. Furry content blends right in.
[7:38:59 PM] Bendzz: Big ol' furry tits in the thumbnail, that no one can mistake...
[7:39:10 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im looking at my history too, the facebook crap you click pops up too, also i am sorry, so sorry if you click on this. this has 45 million views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq_d8VSM0nw
[7:39:59 PM] Bendzz: that guy needs to pull up his pants
[7:40:08 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: found some bob ross i opened up to watch later
[7:40:15 PM] Bendzz: oh fuck that's gonna get stuck in my head NOPE
[7:40:16 PM] Beau: Honestly people would probably be more weirded out by that than by the furry nightclub mass murder video.
[7:40:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: he thinks he is a great singer too
[7:40:54 PM] Beau: That's a great thing to have on in the background. Rob Ross is basically Xanax but a person.
[7:41:57 PM] Bendzz: My first thought was "Nah I shouldn't mention this, they'll think I'm weird" but then I remembered where I am... Anyway I use ASMR as Xanax. Fall asleep to that stuff constantly
[7:41:58 PM] Bendzz: So good
[7:43:21 PM] Beau: Wow, that's actually a pretty cool idea.
[7:43:59 PM] Beau: Makes sense. It's all about really soft, somewhat meaningless sounds. It's not something that your brain would try really hard to follow like music or a TV show.
[7:44:17 PM] Bendzz: yep, and I find it to be like morphine or something
[7:44:29 PM] Beau: Anyways, C+P from the Slack chat is working like ass just as I feared, so it might be a minute.
[7:44:34 PM] Bendzz: Been falling asleep with earbuds in and ASMR for about 2 years now
[7:44:50 PM] Bendzz: hmm
[7:45:46 PM] Bendzz: speaking of which I should get ready for bed. I've got the 3am giggles heh. brb
[7:47:30 PM] Beau: Yeah, mostly the chat is people reacting to Draconicon's document.
[7:49:44 PM] Beau: Unfortunately for you, "BC3" isn't quite as eye catching of a name as "100 Kinky Story Ideas".
[7:49:53 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:50:15 PM] Bendzz: damn I'll have to try harder next time
[7:50:15 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i kind of want a link now
[7:50:28 PM] Beau: Yeah, I'm working on it.
[7:50:34 PM] Bendzz: “Ahhh fuck some dickhead starred it.” hehehehehe
[7:50:48 PM] Beau: Another thing I didn't know Google did.
[7:51:40 PM] Bendzz: btw I came up with a solution to the "I draw furry porn" thing. So my roommate, we were hanging out and he started looking up weird porn subreddits. And he found /r/ClopClop
[7:52:02 PM] Bendzz: So he's looking at this shit and I'm just doubled over laughing, half because I recognize some pics
[7:53:08 PM] Bendzz: Then I came up with a great idea. I told him I had looked into that stuff after he showed it to me, and it pays well, so I was gonna draw it. And then all I had to do was just report the actual money I made off commissions, and he thought it was all his fault
[7:53:10 PM] Beau: Seems like a pretty plausible way to play it off.
[7:53:51 PM] Bendzz: And two years later that ploy is still working great. Why in October I was drawing Becumming #3 in a friend's kitchen with his wife walking around, and no one blinked
[7:54:14 PM] Beau: I guess he was kind of asking "Why would people do this?" and you answered "Because it pays pretty damn well."
[7:54:40 PM] Bendzz: Well he thinks he introduced it to me hehehehe
[7:55:27 PM] Beau: Alright, since I've got everyone on the edges of their seats with anticipation, I'm working on a C+P of the relevant chunk of the chat right now. Gotta do a ctrl+F for everyone's names still.
[7:55:50 PM] Bendzz: It went like this
"I came up with the best way to make money, but you HAVE to keep it a secret..."
"Ok..."
"So remember that stuff on /r/ClopClop?"
".....Yes.....?"
"Who do you think looks at that?"
"Sick fucks?"
"Sick fucks with DEEP POCKETS"
And that's how I laundered my income lol
[7:56:07 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:56:20 PM] Beau: The references to BC3 are few and scattered, so I'm just going to pick out those one by one and put them in the chat.
[7:56:29 PM] Bendzz: Frankly I'll take all the furry chat
[7:56:31 PM] Bendzz: Sounds funny
[7:57:57 PM] Beau: Let me see... "I think booby-cat should be our new fraternity mascot."
[7:58:08 PM] Bendzz: Oh my god yes
[7:58:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i think my best friend knows i know at furry stuff, though he hasn't been able to confirm it, but he will throw a joke about it every once and awhile to test me.
[7:58:23 PM] Beau: "Oh what the fuck my eyes may never walk again."
[7:58:34 PM] Bendzz: “my eyes may never walk again." did they before?
[7:58:42 PM] Beau: "What, how? HOW AND WHY!?"
[7:59:04 PM] Bendzz: What's the "how" about...
[7:59:16 PM] Bendzz: Seems straightforward. Just need a tablet and a sick fuck lol
[7:59:31 PM] Beau: "You know when I heard that there were sexy cat drawings all up in the GoogleDrive I thought you guys were just fucking with me."
[7:59:39 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahaha
[7:59:42 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[7:59:52 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast they called them sexy
[7:59:55 PM] Beau: "The boobycats are clearly interested in fucking with you [name]"
[8:00:15 PM] Bendzz: They aren't discerning
[8:00:20 PM] Beau: "NO ME GUSTA KIIITY!"
[8:00:26 PM] Bendzz: hahahahahaha
[8:00:33 PM] Beau: "MEOW MEANS MEOW!"
[8:00:37 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[8:00:45 PM] Bendzz: Should edit a megusta face on one of them
[8:00:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: that is a good one, you should use that
[8:01:05 PM] Bendzz: Seems like something TGwonder would write heh. But yeah I'll copy that
[8:01:53 PM] Beau: I think that's it for the scattered mentions. The big solid block is mostly about Draconicon's list. I'm going to pastebin that one once I figure out how to pastebin.
[8:02:06 PM] Beau: Let me see if I can link the document without putting it in the history again.
[8:02:30 PM] Beau: Aw fuck it I'll just link the FA journal. I'm not fucking around with this GoogleDrive shit anymore.
[8:02:34 PM] Bendzz: You can post the block here if it's not like 200 lines or something
[8:02:52 PM] Bendzz: cough incognito mode cough
[8:03:05 PM] Deiser: Btw guys
[8:03:18 PM] Beau: Okay, so this is the one that most of them are referring to.
[8:03:19 PM] Bendzz: Btw guysthe suspense
[8:03:20 PM] Beau: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7335284/
[8:03:22 PM] Deiser: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19371265/
[8:03:37 PM] Beau: I'll see about posting it here. Hopefully it won't eat everything.
[8:03:49 PM] Deiser: Rule 63 gaster blasters XD
[8:03:52 PM] Beau: Are those hot Gaster Blasters?
[8:04:02 PM] Bendzz: HOLY SHIT LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE ON THAT GOOGLE DOC
[8:04:04 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHAA
[8:04:09 PM] Beau: Of course they are. Why do I bother asking?
[8:04:24 PM] Beau: I'd look, but I'm not falling for that again.
[8:04:29 PM] Deiser: For some reason i can imagine them being tfd guys
[8:05:09 PM] Bendzz: those are some busty... neckless dinosaur things...
[8:05:26 PM] Bendzz: I wanna comment on the doc all your college buddies are viewing
[8:05:39 PM] Beau: Yeah, and notice how all of THEM are smart enough to be anon.
[8:05:39 PM] Bendzz: "For more like this google Bendzz!"
[8:06:18 PM] Beau: Anyways, the chat paste is like a page and a half. I'm gonna try and do the thing.
[8:06:33 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rbmxp1i0y.....06.13.png?dl=0 this is fucking hilarious I can't even
[8:07:19 PM] Bendzz: Is Delta Pi your shared group?
[8:07:42 PM] Deiser: XD
[8:07:49 PM] Deiser: XD XD
[8:09:38 PM] Beau: Yeah. It's actually quite distressing that that's still showing up.
[8:09:58 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: some other member could have it open
[8:10:05 PM] Beau: I'm really glad I don't have a shared dropbox because holy shit.
[8:10:36 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i wonder how many secretly saved the files
[8:10:54 PM] Beau: Yeah, could be it's someone else. BC3 keeps popping up to the top of the 'recent' list.
[8:11:03 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: "haha look at with weird stuff'' .... saves
[8:11:51 PM] Beau: It is kind of funny how a bunch of people jumped on that document as soon as someone mentioned it in group chat.
[8:12:16 PM] Bendzz: “I'm really glad I don't have a shared dropbox because holy shit.” Oh dear god
[8:12:34 PM] Bendzz: Oh is B#3 up again?
[8:12:39 PM] Bendzz: Do tell do tell
[8:13:11 PM] Bendzz: I'm pretty sure that's the captions doc too. So they've got a looooot of weird dialogues to get through haha
[8:13:25 PM] Beau: Nobody's saying anything, but it jumped up a few times while I was clearing the history.
[8:13:30 PM] Bendzz: damn
[8:13:43 PM] Bendzz: And yeah almost certainly someone else has it open on your shared account
[8:13:56 PM] Beau: And it's coming up again now. Someone's probably looking at it right now so it just gets confused when I try to take it out of the history.
[8:14:16 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe you can't kill the porn IT"S TOO POWERFUL
[8:14:45 PM] Beau: Back, back you mindless wretches!
[8:14:57 PM] *** Beau hacks at army of boobkitties with Ashbringer ***
[8:15:13 PM] Bendzz: Oh wow there's "anonymous dinosaur" on google docs. I always see armadillos and shit. Dammit
[8:15:49 PM] Beau: Anyways, got sidetracked. I'mma post the thing now.
[8:15:52 PM] Beau:
TR-8R:
3:02 PM guys
3:02 what am i and apparently seven other people reading on the drive right now?
3:02 100 Kinky Stories?
Spongebob:
3:31 PM oh gawd
George Washington:
3:35 PM The hell did i just read
Spongebob:
3:41 PM For anyone in Data Structures this semester, you should go to the Install Fest in DCC 308 from 6-8pm tonight and get everything you need installed, it will save you a headache in Lab 1
TR-8R:
4:55 PM back on the kinky side, i like #38
Spongebob:
5:04 PM salty Z
Raptor Jesus:
8:40 PM Where are the delta pi kinky stories? I can't find them
Kevin Spacy:
8:41 PM Quote board
Raptor Jesus:
He said they're on the drive
8:45 I need to get off, Nathan. What else am I gonna use? Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?
Kevin Spacy:
8:45 PM Quote board
Raptor Jesus:
8:46 PM I guess its another night using the composites then...
Me:
8:47 PM The whole composite? Don't exaggerate, Raptor Jesus.
8:47We know you only use those legendarily sexy pictures of Jacob from there.
Raptor Jesus:
8:49 PM It's those pearly whites, gets me every time
George Washington:
9:38 PM https://youtu.be/4IRdw_Qgwqc
[8:16:09 PM] Bendzz: Oh btw since I'm also viewing the doc, my name will show up. I wonder if they can click my name and find my public docs.... Boy WOULDN"T THAT BE FUN BEAU
[8:16:16 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: Bendzz you should start to talk to them through the doc, at the bottom just say "Hello Delta Pi"
[8:16:26 PM] Bendzz: hahahaha I should
[8:16:41 PM] Bendzz: hang on wanna read this
[8:17:06 PM] Beau: Wow I missed a lot of details I probably should've taken out of there.
[8:17:19 PM] Bendzz: Install Fest this is actually a great idea
[8:17:25 PM] Beau: Oh well. My real friends are learning all about my furry friends. May as well turn that the other way around.
[8:17:58 PM] Beau: Oh yeah. Installfest went really well and is going to lead to at least not-everyone being fucked during the first week of Data Structures.
[8:18:28 PM] squato_me: Two things.
[8:18:51 PM] squato_me: No one used the old "ZEE GOOGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!" chestnut? FOR SHAME!
[8:19:07 PM] squato_me: Secondly, lets see if BC3 gets a sales spike. :P
[8:19:10 PM] Bendzz: “I need to get off, Nathan. What else am I gonna use? Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?” Oh my your buddies are getting into it hehe
[8:19:34 PM] Bendzz: Well none since this afternoon.... But I'll keep an eye out
[8:19:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: your name isn't on the list, and according to your screen shot neither is mine, must be a settings thing
[8:19:47 PM] Bendzz: =T
[8:19:50 PM] Bendzz: Well that needs fixing
[8:20:06 PM] Bendzz: I'm gonna post
[8:20:20 PM] Beau: Yeah, cuz you guys actually understand how to porn.
[8:20:48 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yprp3i6cq.....20.32.png?dl=0
[8:20:53 PM] *** Bendzz giggles like a moron ***
[8:21:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one of my good friends was a manager at a adult store. though she quit from the stress of weirdos and issues with the viewing booths
[8:21:51 PM] Bendzz: “issues with the viewing booths” ew
[8:22:29 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: you put it in the kinks one XD i was talking about putting it in yours :P
[8:22:37 PM] Bendzz: oh
[8:22:46 PM] Bendzz: Well apparently the kinks one is getting all the traffic
[8:22:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: either way works
[8:23:26 PM] Beau: Like I sad. It's that attention-grabbing name.
[8:23:44 PM] Bendzz: Need to up my game
[8:23:46 PM] Bendzz: Let's see
[8:23:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: Bendzz change the title name :P
[8:23:51 PM] Bendzz: IYeah
[8:24:03 PM] Bendzz: I'll name it "WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:24:30 PM] Beau: Goddamnit.
[8:24:41 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: to the world of transformation porn
[8:25:03 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndzanwvfb.....24.47.png?dl=0 yeppers there are a couple in there!
[8:25:15 PM | Edited 8:25:26 PM] Beau: I dunno, you creeping all up on them while they're trying to read confusing porn suggestions might actually scare them off.
[8:25:26 PM] Bendzz: =T well shit
[8:25:35 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: so are they seeing the suggestions or the captions? or both
[8:25:44 PM] Bendzz: Btw If I'm actually doing damage here I won't name it that. But it might be fucking hilarious....
[8:26:15 PM] Beau: Oh good. My classmates are ALSO smart enough to use anon mode.
[8:26:28 PM] Bendzz: doc has no suggestions, not sure what you're asking
[8:26:44 PM] Bendzz: >B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI [Googledocs link to the document now named that]
[8:26:46 PM] Beau: And yeah. If you could like... not? That'd be greeeat.
[8:27:02 PM] Bendzz: aw. Ok I changed it back
[8:27:04 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: the script
[8:27:04 PM] Beau: Dick around with the kinky stories one if you must. That ship has sailed.
[8:27:20 PM] Bendzz: Has the cat titties not sailed?
[8:27:24 PM] Bendzz: should fix that
[8:27:30 PM] Beau: But I'm actually very relieved that only a couple people stumbled onto BC3.
[8:27:40 PM] Bendzz: Now there's 3
[8:27:47 PM] Bendzz: I could actually make the whole doc private if you want
[8:28:07 PM] Beau: Goddamnit stop linking that thing FUCK.
[8:28:14 PM] Bendzz: I'm not sure which way to go here... I could make it better. But it would be more hilarious to make it so much worse
[8:28:25 PM] Deiser: What thing
[8:28:41 PM] Bendzz: All Beau's classmates found my google porn doc, and someone else's
[8:28:53 PM] Beau: The pornGdocs that keep showing up in my history for christ's sake!
[8:29:05 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[8:29:14 PM] Bendzz: oh my now there's 4 people on my doc!
[8:29:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: one of them is me
[8:29:33 PM] Bendzz: damn
[8:30:07 PM] Bendzz: Hey Beau I think I'm going to change the name back to "B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:30:40 PM] Beau: I'm flipping shit because I'm still in the habit of clicking links without thinking about it and if I do that'll put it right back on top.
[8:30:52 PM] Bendzz: [Links the googledrive several times]
[8:31:36 PM] Beau: Thanks.
[8:31:46 PM] Bendzz: hehehehehehe
[8:31:54 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast it wasn't #2 that had non-tf feral on tf action
[8:32:01 PM] Bendzz: oh true enough
[8:32:28 PM] Beau: I really can't look at it even if I wanted to. There just isn't an "open in secure window" option.
[8:32:29 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bxe3i337.....32.07.png?dl=0 I changed the title back to "B#3 WELCOME DELTA PI"
[8:32:41 PM] Beau: I'd have to get an incognito window and paste it in.
[8:32:42 PM] Bendzz: Hey squato you're logged in with your real name
[8:32:53 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: this one is actually tame all around really
[8:32:55 PM] Bendzz: “I'd have to get an incognito window and paste it in.” yeah do that
[8:33:04 PM] Bendzz: “this one is actually tame all around really” What becumming #3?
[8:33:05 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: compaired to most other ideas
[8:33:08 PM] Bendzz: U crazy?
[8:33:53 PM] Bendzz: I was about to go to bed but this is much better
[8:33:57 PM] Beau: Not sure how they'd react to "Welcome to the party, college boys!"
[8:34:05 PM] Beau: Creeped out, probably.
[8:34:06 PM] Bendzz: Well there are 6 people in there now!
[8:34:13 PM] Bendzz: Me thinks it's working
[8:34:17 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: there is no inanimate, bondage, natural ferals, etc
[8:34:29 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: also the first scene was cut, think if that was still in it
[8:34:46 PM] Beau: "WELCOME DELTA PI" just popped up to the top of the list.
[8:34:46 PM] Bendzz: heh yeah that might actually break some laws, I didn't check...
[8:34:53 PM] Bendzz: SCORE.
[8:35:17 PM] Bendzz: AH HAHAHAHA https://www.dropbox.com/s/traa2y9i8.....35.05.png?dl=0
[8:35:36 PM] squato_me: “Hey squato you're logged in with your real name” Meh, let them confuse me for the other, more well known one with my name who is a doctor. :p
[8:35:47 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:35 PM “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
[8:35:49 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHA
[8:36:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im sorry to laugh at your expense, but at least you are still technically anonymous, just in a small group. but this is great
[8:36:27 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:35 PM “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
Matthew Waddingham joined group chat.
Delta Pi 8:36 PM “i have just stumled across this work and its wonderful”
X left group chat.
me 8:36 PM Holy fuck I'm dying
[8:36:58 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:36 PM: “sorry man
but you are like my fetish ifdol”
That took a weird turn
[8:37:57 PM] Bendzz: Beau is that you posting in the chat?
[8:38:08 PM] squato_me: As long as they give you money, you are happy. :P
[8:38:10 PM] Bendzz: Or are there other kinksters in your college?
[8:38:17 PM] Beau: Nope. It's somebody else.
[8:38:20 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im working on connecting to read
[8:38:22 PM] Beau: I promise this is genuine.
[8:38:26 PM] Bendzz: “Nope. It's somebody else.” Holy. Shit
[8:38:30 PM] Bendzz: What the fuck this is hilarious
[8:38:51 PM] Beau: As I've said. I'm not dumb enough to click on that thing while logged in anymore.
[8:39:23 PM] Beau: Remember when I said I HOPED they would be creeped out?
[8:39:43 PM] Bendzz: 7 people in there now
[8:39:43 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: awe i cant see any of the old comments :P
[8:40:22 PM] Bendzz: (3) Delta Pi, Michael W, bendzzTF
Delta Pi joined group chat.
Delta Pi 8:35 PM: “why has the great and holy bendzz graced this fraternity google drive?”
Delta Pi 8:36 PM i have just stumled across this work and its wonderful
me 8:36 PM Holy fuck I'm dying
Delta Pi 8:37 PM sorry man but you are like my fetish ifdol you make the best TG TF comics
me 8:37 PM Well that was unexpected
Delta Pi 8:38 PM same in terms of finding every document here on the drive
Michael W joined group chat.
me 8:39 PM That's fucking hilarious, my doc gets linked to a random college and someone in there is a fan of mine
[8:40:26 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: crap someone commented
[8:40:58 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol self censorship i said shit but wrote crap
[8:41:18 PM] Bendzz: What do you mean commented? This chat thing?
[8:41:25 PM] Bendzz: I don't see any page comments
[8:41:28 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: ya the chat
[8:41:46 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi 8:40 PM “Sir, Sallem has been a popular reread of mine for weeks. How or who linked it with this drive?”
Dude your classmates are into the weird shit
[8:42:18 PM] Beau: I... actually am kinda curious now.
[8:42:41 PM] PGS: Consider my interest piqued as well.
[8:43:09 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i wonder how long they have known, because that doc is over three months old
[8:44:32 PM] Bendzz: So at least 2 people in your group are massive furries Beau
[8:44:37 PM] Bendzz: How many people are in your group?
[8:44:52 PM] Beau: Like 25.
[8:45:15 PM] Beau: That's why I still had some hope of fading into the background without getting my secret identity exposed.
[8:45:48 PM] PGS: Oh. Well shoot.
[8:45:51 PM] Bendzz: So of the 25 people in your group, at least 2 of them are into hardcore TF fetish. That is fascinating.
[8:45:55 PM] Bendzz: I'm about to post that
[8:45:59 PM] Bendzz: that cool?
[8:46:01 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im dying, this is going to be a great story next time i hang out with my friends in the fandom
[8:46:08 PM] Bendzz: yea nk
[8:46:14 PM] Beau: Post "that"? as in what?
[8:46:19 PM] Bendzz: “So of the 25 people in your group, at least 2 of them are into hardcore TF fetish. That is fascinating.”
[8:46:37 PM] Beau: Ah, you want to say that sentence to whoever's logged into BC3?
[8:46:44 PM] Bendzz: yeah
[8:46:45 PM] Beau: Sure. I'm all for witty banter.
[8:47:06 PM] Bendzz: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pl49kb7a9.....46.58.png?dl=0
[8:47:17 PM] Beau: He'll probably be like "how did you know how many people are in the fraternity chapter?"
[8:47:30 PM] squato_me: Guess it is time to rename your group (or whatever they call them over in American Uni's). Seems your group is the furry lover on. :p
[8:47:40 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: o god what if he thinks Bendzz is a part of the group
[8:47:53 PM] Bendzz: “o god what if he thinks Bendzz is a part of the group” HAHAHAHAHA
[8:48:22 PM] Bendzz: Oh a few just left. Maybe that '25' creeped them out
[8:49:26 PM] Beau: Okay so someone just ran into my apartment shouting OH MY GOD WHICH ONE OF YOU KNOWS BENDZZ.
[8:49:37 PM] Beau: So... that's a thing.
[8:49:38 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[8:49:44 PM] Bendzz: “Okay so someone just ran into my apartment shouting OH MY GOD WHICH ONE OF YOU KNOWS BENDZZ.” HYAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
[8:49:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: im dying im dying
[8:50:06 PM] Bendzz: I wanna post that to the chat
[8:50:17 PM] Beau: I couldn't stop laughing long enough to not get made.
[8:50:39 PM] Bendzz: You got discovered?
[8:50:39 PM] Bendzz: Oh nooo hahaha
[8:50:53 PM] Bendzz: what the it says I'm offline. Think my internet's fluctuating...
[8:51:07 PM] Beau: He's like all starstruck and hyperventilating because you talked to him lol.
[8:51:14 PM] Bendzz: what?
[8:51:20 PM] Bendzz: lol
[8:51:20 PM] squato_me: SENPAI NOTICED ME!
[8:51:24 PM] squato_me: :P
[8:51:46 PM] Beau: Apparently he lost track of you and didn't know you were still out there making stuff.
[8:51:51 PM] Bendzz: I'm gonna post your apartment comment to the chat k?
[8:51:55 PM] Bendzz: brb
[8:51:57 PM] Beau: He says to stay healthy so nothing happens to you.
[8:52:35 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: this is the best laugh i have had in a long time
[8:52:49 PM] Beau: He can barely talk coherently this is amazing.
[8:53:06 PM] Beau: He wants to know if I know you from the Navy.
[8:53:20 PM] Beau: He can't accept that I just internetted at you.
[8:53:35 PM] Bendzz: hahaha
[8:53:39 PM] Beau: Yeah, post whatever you want.
[8:53:49 PM] Beau: So many cats just tore through the bag just now.
[8:54:02 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: lol the cat is out of the doc (bad joke)
[8:54:10 PM] Bendzz: Yeah hope you were ready to come out haha
[8:54:15 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: damn it
[8:54:30 PM] Bendzz: cat is out of the docboo =P
[8:55:09 PM] Bendzz: “this is the best laugh i have had in a long time” Yeah I feel dizzy from laughing
[8:55:45 PM] Deiser: Huh
[8:55:45 PM] Bendzz: How did the person know to run into YOUR dorm room or apartment?
[8:56:08 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: it is a fraternity right
[8:56:13 PM] Beau: Oh he's been busting down the door of everyone in the fraternity. He did it to like 12 other people before he got to me.
[8:56:27 PM] Bendzz: Oh. Wow. Alright I guess he was out of the closet already
[8:56:37 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: i saved myself i almost took a drink
[8:56:39 PM] Bendzz: Also TIL you were in the Navy heh
[8:56:45 PM] Beau: He keeps calling you "THE BENDZ" it's the most adorable thing.
[8:56:49 PM] catldr: I am still in the doc thx
[8:56:50 PM] Bendzz: hahahahaha
[8:57:55 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: is he the one who said "Regular porn? Do I look like an amateur?"
[8:58:25 PM] Bendzz: Oh that makes sense
[8:58:48 PM] Beau: Nope. But he's on the phone with that guy.
[8:59:01 PM] Bendzz: So there are THREE furries in your group of 25?
[8:59:17 PM] Beau: I don't know, but he's pretty hype about this too.
[8:59:23 PM] Bendzz: hahahaha
[8:59:23 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: he could have been making a joke
[8:59:35 PM] Beau: He's on speakerphone and trying to get me to explain the comic to him.
[8:59:40 PM] Bendzz: he's pretty hype Sounds legit to me
[8:59:47 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: well now you know of an extremely local furry
[8:59:53 PM] Bendzz: Oh you should mention that this is an early draft of the comic and captions
[8:59:59 PM] Beau: I just told him it's incomplete and he'd need to read BC1 and 2 if he wanted to understand it.
[9:00:07 PM] Bendzz: “understand it.” good luck
[9:00:10 PM] Beau: They're discussing splitting the cost of buying them.
[9:00:27 PM] Bendzz: HAHAHAHAHA I MADE FUCKING SALES OFF THIS DFHOASILFDGHBASDALJAKSD
[9:00:39 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
[9:01:08 PM] Beau: Aww, he doesn't want to pay.
[9:01:24 PM] Beau: Especially now that he has access to the development dartboard.
[9:01:34 PM] Bendzz: Tell him it's an early version
[9:01:50 PM] Beau: Goddamn it now he's explaining to the people downstairs who you are.
[9:02:01 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: XD
[9:02:02 PM] Bendzz: Holy fuck I'm going to wake up my roommates
[9:02:04 PM] catldr: this is quite a journey.
[9:03:09 PM] Beau: I never did ask how HE came across you.
[9:03:27 PM] Bendzz: My damn internet keeps dying, dammit I don't want to miss anything
[9:03:38 PM] Beau: He was too busy screeching like a barn owl about how excited he was.
[9:05:04 PM] Bendzz: hahaha
[9:05:17 PM] Beau: Yeah, this is definitely something you'd want to experience live.
[9:05:32 PM] Bendzz: yeah
[9:05:58 PM] Beau: Anyway, his phone died, so I lost track of fan #2, who I'm pretty sure is new to this and just reading the whole thing out of morbid fascination.
[9:06:07 PM] Bendzz: hehehehe
[9:06:14 PM] Beau: I think he was the one who was looking at it for like three hours straight there.
[9:06:24 PM] Bendzz: hahahahaha
[9:06:34 PM] Bendzz: brb gonna reset my router.
[9:06:55 PM] Beau: Then the door-kicking guy who actually knew about you just flamed out and started having heart palpitations and had to leave.
[9:07:36 PM] Beau: So yeah that all happened.
[9:07:47 PM] Beau: I think we're actually done here for the moment.
[9:08:09 PM] Beau: I'm really not looking forward to going downstairs and having to explain what the fuck to everybody down there.
[9:09:02 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: so was his heart like this warning this is actually disturbing so not for the feint of heart, and it wasn't really 20 readbulls that did this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya3j1ohPNuQ
[9:09:16 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: redbulls*
[9:10:36 PM] Bendzz: my fucking internet
[9:10:42 PM] Beau: Yeah, not quite to that extent.
[9:10:47 PM] Bendzz: “heart palpitations” actually?
[9:10:52 PM] Beau: He was definitely vibrating though.
[9:11:15 PM] Beau: Not like literal 'this threatens your life see a doctor" heart palpitations. He was just really excited.
[9:11:31 PM] Bendzz: wow that is freaky, the video. That can't be just from 20 redbulls
[9:11:54 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: no it was from a car accident or something, fake title to scare people
[9:11:57 PM] Bendzz: It looks more like he has a punctured lung
[9:11:59 PM] Bendzz: ahhh
[9:12:34 PM] Beau: So yeah, I was gonna like, do work tonight and then go to bed.
[9:12:41 PM] Bendzz: hehehe
[9:12:42 PM] Beau: I don't think those are happening.
[9:12:57 PM] Bendzz: Are there still comments in the other chat?
[9:13:11 PM] Beau: No new ones. That one has been quiet.
[9:13:12 PM] Bendzz: Delta Pi just left the Becumnming doc
[9:13:17 PM] Bendzz: blast
[9:13:29 PM] Beau: Apparently the interested parties took this interaction to the meatspace.
[9:13:44 PM] Bendzz: damn
[9:14:18 PM] Beau: I never did manage to connect to the chat there on this machine.
[9:21:12 PM] Beau: Wow, 18 pages.
[9:21:25 PM] Beau: I didn't realize how long that dumpster fire went on for.
[9:21:40 PM] Bendzz: Quite the epic
[9:23:36 PM] Beau: So this is my life now.
[9:26:27 PM] Beau: I was hoping people wouldn't care. Most of them actually didn't. I certainly wasn't expecting someone to explode with excitement though.
[9:27:20 PM] Kitsune Shapeshifter: atleast you wont have to constantly think in the back of your mind ''do any of them know it was me'' because they all know now :P
[9:27:38 PM] Bendzz: Hahahahaha
[9:27:43 PM] Bendzz: salting the wound KS
[9:27:48 PM] *** Bendzz claps ***
[9:34:33 PM] Beau: There was just a ping on the groupchat, hold on.
[9:35:23 PM] Beau: Ah, it's phone guy bragging about their elaborate scheme to uncover absolutely ALL of the furry porn that there was to be had, despite my attempts to purge it.
[9:37:08 PM] Beau: I was taking all the porn out of the history, but they were just revisiting and saving everything, so they've probably got it all.
Genericon II: Bigger and Generic-er
General | Posted 10 years agoAh, it seems I've once more fallen prey to leaving a stupid-long con journal up on my page for way to long. So here's a short one to fight that scrollwheel fatigue for those brave intrepid few trying to navigate my userpage.
So recently I found that it was once more time for that most generic of all-purpose conventions, Genericon. I recall being underwhelmed by it last year, but as they say in the real estate business "Location, location, location." Being that it's held in a place that I'm literally already at every day and only costs $10 for students, it's hardly an opportunity I could pass up, especially given that I now have a fursuit to show off. I actually had some admin to take care of on that front with the small window of time I had remaining on Friday after I was done with classes and cooking dinner up at the house. I'd gotten a nice opportunity to commission Elbi for some new paws for pickup at the con. She makes some seriously adorable bubble paws that I just couldn't pass up. After exploring the con, chatting a bit and picking those paws up, I figured it was too late to try them out. I'd blown over an hour and a half in the registration line (the con is growing, it seems, guess I can hardly criticize them for that) and other logistical stuff. So I just looked over the vendors a bit more, hung out for a bit with some people from the local furry group and went to a late night panel before turning in. The panel was one hosted by one of the guests of honor, a Joker cosplayer who goes by "Clown Prince Vincent James". It sounded like a fun time, so I dropped by. Our host was energetic, engaging, and had pretty good stage presence. He was definitely an entertainer. He was a little short on content, but he had a good dynamic with the audience and there were plenty of cosplayers who were into it. It was still a pretty good time.
Saturday morning was pretty quiet, but that was probably for the best. I knew it would be a busy weekend and I had a lot of work to get done by Monday. It's a bit of a surreal moment to think "oh good, I finished this essay on the Linear Non-Threshold model of radiation exposure control protocols, that'll free up time for dressing up like a cartoon fox and dancing around like an idiot the rest of the weekend!" I actually ended up putting that off a bit more because a Hearthstone tournament had been scheduled that weekend as well. Not as part of Genericon, but at the same time as it for some strange reason. So that left me with a tough decision to make. Zootopia also premiered that weekend of course, so yeah, that's a difficult spot. I picked the tournament because I figured it wouldn't take long and I could get back to the con afterwards. I was pretty wrong about that. Despite how badly I got humiliated in the tournament, it took a bit for me to get eliminated because of how the brackets work. I figured by then it wouldn't be too much trouble to stick around for the raffle, which also took longer than expected and I also lost. So yeah, grand slam on that one.
So eventually I did get dressed up and set off to do... whatever it is I was doing that evening. I didn't really have it planned out all that well. I figured that things would just kind of fall into place once I was suitably accessorized, and in fact they did. It's a very different environment suiting at a convention that's not furry. People expect to see fursuiters at a con specifically for that, so it's easy to fade into the very brightly-colored background. Hell, at even a modestly sized furcon I wouldn't even be the only orange fox in attendance. Here though, I really stood out. So many people were excited to see me. I couldn't make it 20 yards in the main venue without someone wanting a photo. It was really exciting. I think having the con going on puts people in the mood for some crazy nonsense, so they're a lot more open to interacting with costumed performers than they would be ordinarily. It was a really fun environment to be in when people aren't weirded out like they'd normally be. It's even better when you're in a group of other suiters, as I of course soon was. That way it looks like you've really got a thing going. If you’ve got a crew with you, people don't assume you're from a video game or something. They know you're just doing your thing. A few people actually did know what's up, going so far as to ask if I had a character badge. One person even seemed very disappointed that I lacked one. I guess I'm going to have to commission one of those, now that I have a character and all.
I spent a lot of time running about and getting into shenanigans with Kida Fusky and Farah. Elbi and her little floof Butterscotch were also along after the dealer's room closed. Yes, my memory is tipped disproportionately in favor of fursuiters, but that's just how it be. It's as though the impressions one gains from spending time with cartoon animal people are more distinctive for some reason. I took a quick break that turned into a relatively long one as we waited for our chance to tear up the dance floor. My saving grace in spending a long day suiting was that it was in the mid 30s out, meaning that outside provided an excellent replacement for a headless lounge. Having my head off for a long time out there got it pretty chilled, which of course made putting it back on quite a shock. Don't know if you've ever had the chance to have all of your body massively overheating and then jam a near-freezing helm of foam and fuzz down over your exposed head, but that’s definitely a thing. It's the sort of invigoration that in many ways resembles blind, flailing terror in terms of physiological responses. I'm glad I still have a young heart.
So after that brief out-of-body experience I was ready to bang to the beat for a bit. I had a lot of fun at the dance. They put on a really good show there given what they had to work with. I actually got out into the middle of the dance circle when we were doing one of those so I could strut my stuff a bit. That’s something I’d never had the guts to do before. I don't know if they were applauding my dancing or just my audacity, but I certainly got a rise out of the crowd there. Apparently I really was loving it, because I went pretty much to the limit before the idea entered my head to leave. Towards the end of the night both the available events and my blood oxygen trailed off quite sharply. It actually unsettled my contemporaries a bit when they saw the aggressive steaming that happened when I took my head off outside. Having given my all, I turned in for the night.
It sounds like such a simple thing when I look back on it now, but I guess I was really into it. The time just flew by without hardly any effort. I missed all the panels and events I was planning to attend and I never had good enough visibility to parse out where the photo booth was. So I accomplished very few of my stated objectives and yet managed to have a blast doing it. That night was the most wrecked I've been after fursuiting in a long time. Sure, I'm well known for crashing pretty hard after suiting, but I usually bounce back okay. This was one of those times where I gingerly lowered myself into bed, loosing a groan that morphed into numerous different vowels and completely consumed all my breath in its course. It was one of those moments where finally allowing yourself to relax produces that foreboding feeling that this is incredibly excruciating but God help you if you do literally anything other than lie perfectly still for as long as it takes for the hurt to go away.
Against all odds I in fact was alive the next morning. Quite fortunate, actually, as Elbi had expressed a desire to point a camera in our general direction for extended periods that afternoon. Being once more in possession of a functioning body I was up for it. Elbi has done a lot of other fun con videos, so I couldn't very well pass up the opportunity to be in one. Bizzy the penguin also showed up for a brief cameo in it. I had no idea Bizzy was from around here, I'll have to see if I can follow up on that. In any case, we did the thing and then the thing was done. Someone had turned up the thermostat on the outdoors by about 25 degrees though, so I didn't last much beyond that. Still managed to squeeze Zootopia in that night, as a few of my friends were going. It was too late to make a real experience though. It was pretty quiet there, so I felt kind of stupid fursuiting to it. The ticket-takers absolutely freaked though. They said I made their night. The exact words when they saw me carrying a fursuit head were “Okay yes you definitely can’t wear that into the theater so you’ll have to carry it but put it on real quick we HAVE to take pictures.” I hadn't realized it before, but you know what? Making two people I've never met really happy, it actually does make all that worth doing.
I won't say too much about Zootopia because it's approaching Undertale levels of internet saturation and I loved it so much that I refuse to allow myself to get sick of hearing about it and thinking about it. It was a great film, truly. Uplifting and inspiring in theme, engaging in content, with just enough cartoon gags and little references and in-jokes to keep everyone entertained. It was an excellent piece of work. It’s been a long time since I’ve been prompted to try and see where I’d fit into a story, but I came out of this one convinced that I’d most likely end up as one of the secret researchers at Cliffside Asylum. I suppose it's most telling that I really don't like seeing movies multiple times, but when I was asked about seeing it again the following week I was all for it. I absolutely wanted to see it a second time. There wasn’t even any question there. And despite my best efforts to fuck it up I enjoyed the hell out of it the second time through as well.
You see, whilst I was excited to have a chance to fursuit with actual people around, it had been so long since I’d seen a matinee showing on a weekend afternoon that I’d forgotten why I never go see a matinee showing on a weekend afternoon. Between getting ready to go home for spring break, fursuit logistics, traffic delays and having to park on the dark side of the moon because of how crowded it was, I missed our showtime substantially. Naturally I was endeavoring to hang out with a group of people I’d never met before, as one does, so I didn’t have anyone’s number and the prospect of trying to find them in a dark, crowded theater was pretty daunting. I would've loved to make this work, but coming off of exams Thursday and Friday in my two weakest subjects that I probably shat all over I just wasn't in the mood to jump through any more hoops before getting my much-needed time off. Fortunately, pulling the ripcord on that one was a simple matter of attending a slightly later showtime with a few of my friends from college. I say "with" somewhat colloquially, as by then there wasn't enough room left for us to sit together, but whatevs.
Really the last thing I can say on the subject is that the opening chorus of Gazelle’s “Try Everything” instantly made all of that better, and time absolutely flew by through the second showing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that could turn a bad day into a good one like that.
Really though, what con report would be complete without a bunch of hastily-snapped cell phone pictures?
Me showing off the new paws.
A good shot of the crew. Naturally we're all distracted by something off to the side.
Here's a great Rick Sanchez cosplayer that I got to hang out with.
And of course me on the subway headed to the big premiere.
So recently I found that it was once more time for that most generic of all-purpose conventions, Genericon. I recall being underwhelmed by it last year, but as they say in the real estate business "Location, location, location." Being that it's held in a place that I'm literally already at every day and only costs $10 for students, it's hardly an opportunity I could pass up, especially given that I now have a fursuit to show off. I actually had some admin to take care of on that front with the small window of time I had remaining on Friday after I was done with classes and cooking dinner up at the house. I'd gotten a nice opportunity to commission Elbi for some new paws for pickup at the con. She makes some seriously adorable bubble paws that I just couldn't pass up. After exploring the con, chatting a bit and picking those paws up, I figured it was too late to try them out. I'd blown over an hour and a half in the registration line (the con is growing, it seems, guess I can hardly criticize them for that) and other logistical stuff. So I just looked over the vendors a bit more, hung out for a bit with some people from the local furry group and went to a late night panel before turning in. The panel was one hosted by one of the guests of honor, a Joker cosplayer who goes by "Clown Prince Vincent James". It sounded like a fun time, so I dropped by. Our host was energetic, engaging, and had pretty good stage presence. He was definitely an entertainer. He was a little short on content, but he had a good dynamic with the audience and there were plenty of cosplayers who were into it. It was still a pretty good time.
Saturday morning was pretty quiet, but that was probably for the best. I knew it would be a busy weekend and I had a lot of work to get done by Monday. It's a bit of a surreal moment to think "oh good, I finished this essay on the Linear Non-Threshold model of radiation exposure control protocols, that'll free up time for dressing up like a cartoon fox and dancing around like an idiot the rest of the weekend!" I actually ended up putting that off a bit more because a Hearthstone tournament had been scheduled that weekend as well. Not as part of Genericon, but at the same time as it for some strange reason. So that left me with a tough decision to make. Zootopia also premiered that weekend of course, so yeah, that's a difficult spot. I picked the tournament because I figured it wouldn't take long and I could get back to the con afterwards. I was pretty wrong about that. Despite how badly I got humiliated in the tournament, it took a bit for me to get eliminated because of how the brackets work. I figured by then it wouldn't be too much trouble to stick around for the raffle, which also took longer than expected and I also lost. So yeah, grand slam on that one.
So eventually I did get dressed up and set off to do... whatever it is I was doing that evening. I didn't really have it planned out all that well. I figured that things would just kind of fall into place once I was suitably accessorized, and in fact they did. It's a very different environment suiting at a convention that's not furry. People expect to see fursuiters at a con specifically for that, so it's easy to fade into the very brightly-colored background. Hell, at even a modestly sized furcon I wouldn't even be the only orange fox in attendance. Here though, I really stood out. So many people were excited to see me. I couldn't make it 20 yards in the main venue without someone wanting a photo. It was really exciting. I think having the con going on puts people in the mood for some crazy nonsense, so they're a lot more open to interacting with costumed performers than they would be ordinarily. It was a really fun environment to be in when people aren't weirded out like they'd normally be. It's even better when you're in a group of other suiters, as I of course soon was. That way it looks like you've really got a thing going. If you’ve got a crew with you, people don't assume you're from a video game or something. They know you're just doing your thing. A few people actually did know what's up, going so far as to ask if I had a character badge. One person even seemed very disappointed that I lacked one. I guess I'm going to have to commission one of those, now that I have a character and all.
I spent a lot of time running about and getting into shenanigans with Kida Fusky and Farah. Elbi and her little floof Butterscotch were also along after the dealer's room closed. Yes, my memory is tipped disproportionately in favor of fursuiters, but that's just how it be. It's as though the impressions one gains from spending time with cartoon animal people are more distinctive for some reason. I took a quick break that turned into a relatively long one as we waited for our chance to tear up the dance floor. My saving grace in spending a long day suiting was that it was in the mid 30s out, meaning that outside provided an excellent replacement for a headless lounge. Having my head off for a long time out there got it pretty chilled, which of course made putting it back on quite a shock. Don't know if you've ever had the chance to have all of your body massively overheating and then jam a near-freezing helm of foam and fuzz down over your exposed head, but that’s definitely a thing. It's the sort of invigoration that in many ways resembles blind, flailing terror in terms of physiological responses. I'm glad I still have a young heart.
So after that brief out-of-body experience I was ready to bang to the beat for a bit. I had a lot of fun at the dance. They put on a really good show there given what they had to work with. I actually got out into the middle of the dance circle when we were doing one of those so I could strut my stuff a bit. That’s something I’d never had the guts to do before. I don't know if they were applauding my dancing or just my audacity, but I certainly got a rise out of the crowd there. Apparently I really was loving it, because I went pretty much to the limit before the idea entered my head to leave. Towards the end of the night both the available events and my blood oxygen trailed off quite sharply. It actually unsettled my contemporaries a bit when they saw the aggressive steaming that happened when I took my head off outside. Having given my all, I turned in for the night.
It sounds like such a simple thing when I look back on it now, but I guess I was really into it. The time just flew by without hardly any effort. I missed all the panels and events I was planning to attend and I never had good enough visibility to parse out where the photo booth was. So I accomplished very few of my stated objectives and yet managed to have a blast doing it. That night was the most wrecked I've been after fursuiting in a long time. Sure, I'm well known for crashing pretty hard after suiting, but I usually bounce back okay. This was one of those times where I gingerly lowered myself into bed, loosing a groan that morphed into numerous different vowels and completely consumed all my breath in its course. It was one of those moments where finally allowing yourself to relax produces that foreboding feeling that this is incredibly excruciating but God help you if you do literally anything other than lie perfectly still for as long as it takes for the hurt to go away.
Against all odds I in fact was alive the next morning. Quite fortunate, actually, as Elbi had expressed a desire to point a camera in our general direction for extended periods that afternoon. Being once more in possession of a functioning body I was up for it. Elbi has done a lot of other fun con videos, so I couldn't very well pass up the opportunity to be in one. Bizzy the penguin also showed up for a brief cameo in it. I had no idea Bizzy was from around here, I'll have to see if I can follow up on that. In any case, we did the thing and then the thing was done. Someone had turned up the thermostat on the outdoors by about 25 degrees though, so I didn't last much beyond that. Still managed to squeeze Zootopia in that night, as a few of my friends were going. It was too late to make a real experience though. It was pretty quiet there, so I felt kind of stupid fursuiting to it. The ticket-takers absolutely freaked though. They said I made their night. The exact words when they saw me carrying a fursuit head were “Okay yes you definitely can’t wear that into the theater so you’ll have to carry it but put it on real quick we HAVE to take pictures.” I hadn't realized it before, but you know what? Making two people I've never met really happy, it actually does make all that worth doing.
I won't say too much about Zootopia because it's approaching Undertale levels of internet saturation and I loved it so much that I refuse to allow myself to get sick of hearing about it and thinking about it. It was a great film, truly. Uplifting and inspiring in theme, engaging in content, with just enough cartoon gags and little references and in-jokes to keep everyone entertained. It was an excellent piece of work. It’s been a long time since I’ve been prompted to try and see where I’d fit into a story, but I came out of this one convinced that I’d most likely end up as one of the secret researchers at Cliffside Asylum. I suppose it's most telling that I really don't like seeing movies multiple times, but when I was asked about seeing it again the following week I was all for it. I absolutely wanted to see it a second time. There wasn’t even any question there. And despite my best efforts to fuck it up I enjoyed the hell out of it the second time through as well.
You see, whilst I was excited to have a chance to fursuit with actual people around, it had been so long since I’d seen a matinee showing on a weekend afternoon that I’d forgotten why I never go see a matinee showing on a weekend afternoon. Between getting ready to go home for spring break, fursuit logistics, traffic delays and having to park on the dark side of the moon because of how crowded it was, I missed our showtime substantially. Naturally I was endeavoring to hang out with a group of people I’d never met before, as one does, so I didn’t have anyone’s number and the prospect of trying to find them in a dark, crowded theater was pretty daunting. I would've loved to make this work, but coming off of exams Thursday and Friday in my two weakest subjects that I probably shat all over I just wasn't in the mood to jump through any more hoops before getting my much-needed time off. Fortunately, pulling the ripcord on that one was a simple matter of attending a slightly later showtime with a few of my friends from college. I say "with" somewhat colloquially, as by then there wasn't enough room left for us to sit together, but whatevs.
Really the last thing I can say on the subject is that the opening chorus of Gazelle’s “Try Everything” instantly made all of that better, and time absolutely flew by through the second showing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that could turn a bad day into a good one like that.
Really though, what con report would be complete without a bunch of hastily-snapped cell phone pictures?
Me showing off the new paws.
A good shot of the crew. Naturally we're all distracted by something off to the side.
Here's a great Rick Sanchez cosplayer that I got to hang out with.
And of course me on the subway headed to the big premiere.
FC 2016: A series of dumpster fires that I still kinda liked
General | Posted 10 years agoAnd we're back. If you want to know how I got into this situation, be sure to check out Part I
That got us to Wednesday, which left me with a day to gear up for the con. Or so I naively assumed. As it turned out, that was the day that we left for the con soooo, right back to it then! Really though, when the adventure starts with hauling half a ton of photo gear and a full ton of Archai’s Seussian menagerie of fursuits then just kind of hanging around I can’t say it was too stressful for me. My records are spotty from this early period for reasons that we’ll get into later, but a big part of it was working out rooms, as I’d be finding myself on site for a lot longer than I thought I would. I had worked out Thursday night with Casihe at dinner a few days prior, but Wednesday was yet another surprise, so I had to get on that. Fortunately Archai was in touch with Erbis, whose con arrival choices differed from those of his friends in the other direction, so I spent that night with him.
The next day was pretty quiet again, but just like last year I was among very few who seemed to think that this was a problem. Everyone else thinks it’s a great chance to hang out. Meanwhile for me it’s just a reminder that despite my best efforts I don’t have too many contacts around here. It was kind of a late start as days in California all seem to be. Managed to hit up Archai and his crew for some food and then floundered about for a bit. At any other con time like this isn’t hard to fill, but again, I found myself awash in a vast ocean of people who only seem to know each other. After that it was some more wandering about I had a small victory, someone I (now) knew invited me to a party! It was Stormy saying I was welcome to drop by their spot on the party floor that night if I felt so inclined. I was pretty confident about that, my docket being as empty as it was. It took just about all day for me to pull it off, but I finally managed to do the thing that usually won’t STOP happening at conventions, tripping over a handful people I know all at once. I found ArcRa and a few of his friends in the lobby, and whilst hanging out there, LanHao came to say hey. And as we sat and chatted, various friends of theirs came by and joined in. It was a major relief to finally have that happen. That kind of thing is the real way that hours disappear in a con without you even realizing it. I was so glad to have it happen at least once.
That got me to the ‘Out of Position’ release party, which was literally the only event going on that day. I figured I’d attend because it’s always good to hear from Kyell Gold and Rukis, even if they’re too busy being mobbed by fans to really talk at all. The pleasant surprise there was I got to see Sparf and Serval. They were running the joint. Apparently it just isn’t in them to not work. Naturally once we got to the actual reading that everyone was there for I finally got the call that tonight’s room was open and I could move my stuff there. Casidhe had his roommates bail on him and didn’t want to have a double all by himself. I’d had something similar happen, but I’d booked a king for just three nights in anticipation of it. When you’re dealing with furries you’ve always gotta play the Xanatos gambit and have a failure mode that still benefits you. In any case, he’d been working to fix that for some time. He’d canceled his reservations and found a new room that also had space for me one night, so good for everyone. I felt like an idiot for leaving right when the reading was starting, but I also didn’t like the fact that I’d left my stuff with Erbis so long. So I went and took care of that. Room shuffling was already becoming quite tiresome. Normally I’m all about this kind of thing. It gets me the flexibility I need to handle shenanigans that come up and I can still have my own sanctuary for the middle of the con where I really need it. I’m going to have to start working something else out in the future though, seeing as the people I’m traveling to the con with electing to show up irresponsibly early seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Ah well, lessons for another day.
I got back down to the event and hung around a bit as it wrapped up. Got to chat with my Furthemore bros for a good while there. It went a long way towards making me feel a little more at home here. I actually got down to Stormy’s party a lot later than I’d expected to. The party was not a huge improvement in terms of social atmosphere as it was a small room packed to the ceiling with people I’d never met as opposed to a large lobby sparsely strewn with them, but there was food and booze. I have an easy time calling someplace welcoming if it boasts those two amenities. I had a healthy splash of some crazy jungle juice we came to call P’thahck, which was not only the drink’s Klingon name but also the sound you make when you have a sip. It was one of those wonderful occasions when I drink something and think “oh, this will take a while” and it very much does NOT take a while and WOOOOO IAMHAVINGAGOODTIMEALLOFASUDDEN. So yeah, got to chat up a few folks and have a good experience with that one after all. Exactly who was in the neighborhood didn’t stick too well. Video Wolf maybe? I distinctly recall encountering him in that timeframe and him being a pretty cool dude. Whatevs, it was way too many people for drunk me to keep track of. After that all wound down it was time for some sleep. Or so I thought.
A note on who I was staying with that night. I’m not linking the name of our gracious host because of the amount of shit I’m going to talk about him later. I’m just gonna call him Anakin, because he managed to fuck things up surprisingly hard for someone with essentially good intentions, and also because he’s got one of those garish-looking CPAP breathing machines that he spends the night hooked up to. That comes later though. Tonight, the big problem was that I found myself unable to sleep through the earthquake that was presently occurring in the room. Anakin had said that his iron lung over on the nightstand might buzz or hiss a little bit, and I’ll have to take his word for it as I wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it if it sounded like an air raid siren. It turns out that Casidhe snores like a running diesel truck that’s being cut in half by a chainsaw powered by a much larger truck. Holy shit, man. I kind of wished there had been a dance or something going on because after an hour listening to that I could’ve easily gone out and danced all night. Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I tried nudging him a few times, which helped for literally a couple seconds each time. He seemed to be sleeping just fine though, despite not so much sawing logs as knocking entire stands of trees over with dynamite. So I figured I could try something a little more daring without disturbing him.
I managed to unobtrusively get the comforter and a pillow off the bed and took them to the bathroom. This allowed me to set up shop in there where I could close the door and dampen the riot that was going on in the bed I was meant to be using. Stretching out on the cold tile floor with my knees resting up against the toilet was a… non-ideal scenario to be sure, but that’s the kind of idea that sounds appealing when it’s 4:30 and you still haven’t slept yet. I actually managed alright in there, given what it was. I’m sure that having someone else pee on you while you’re sleeping is somebody’s fetish out there, but I was kinda not into that. I felt pretty stupid freezing my ass off in there, but I got six different kinds of validation the next morning. Anakin’s roommate mentioned the next morning that he saw me in there and thought “Damn. That’s a good idea.” I thought it was odd that he would’ve come in more than once, as he woke me two times during the course of my sojourn in the tile tundra. Turns out that he was just scoping out the tub to see if he could sleep in there. So yeah, when I saw that the guy on the opposite side of the opposite bed is also blearily stumbling about in desperate search of literally anywhere horizontal to bed down that’s out of range of the rocket engine tests in the other room I figured that I wasn’t being too unreasonable in thinking that this snoring was pretty unholy in its intensity. Anakin managed okay, but I guess you learn to sleep through snoring when you yourself used to sound like a jackhammer jousting match.
I was very relieved that this would not be my problem the next day, but I underestimated how not my problem it would be. I came to learn in the course of Friday morning that our gracious hosts had asked Casidhe to leave. That was pretty rough. I understood though. He’s a good guy, but there’s no denying that he’s just not sleepable. It’s not his fault and that made everybody involved feel really bad about it. Really though, if he had tuberculosis it wouldn’t be his fault either, but I would feel quite justified in not wanting to share a bed with him. It was unfortunate that these discussions took place without me, as I thought to work out a swap with him. I would’ve been happy to stay in Anakin’s room and have him take my king room by himself. That would’ve taken a lot of the sting out of it. I was too late on getting the intel though. By the time I got in touch with him he’d already recovered his reservations. If he tried to get back out he’d have to pay the cancelation fee again. It was a real shame. So yeah, I guess I’ll add those kinds of shenanigans to the list of reasons I’ll be fixing the way I do rooms in the future.
The first flailing, desperate texts of the morning were Archai freaking out about how he was drowning in familiar faces and couldn’t even handle all the socializing he was doing. Yeah, that was really something that I needed rubbed in my face first thing in the morning after barely sleeping, dickhead. I’m happy for him though. At least I’m no longer baffled as to why this con remains so popular. The bay has truly irresponsible amounts of furries and it’s only that fact that makes them seem insular and disconnected. They don’t have to cast a net the size of Connecticut to reach out to people and that’s wonderful for them. Still didn’t make blearily stumbling through the mostly-abandoned convention hall any more exciting though. I was glad for the arrival of opening ceremonies to break it up a little, even if that was the only event that day which held any substantial amount of interest for me.
With as much of a lurching faceplant as that day started with, my hopes weren’t inordinately high for the festivities. For the most part, I got what I expected. Whatever staff could easily be cobbled together came in to talk about what an exciting time they had planned for us and we got to have a cute little QnA with the GOHs and it was A-OK. It kept me awake. Which, at the time, was quite a high standard to set. The big game-changer though was Pepper Coyote performing. Pep has been around awhile and I’d heard a few generally agreeable things about him, but it was nowhere near enough to pull me away from the tidal wave of other content to be had at AnthroCon. That’s the only other place he’s performed that I’ve been to and that one’s MY home con, wherein I’m the one that gets to spend the whole time tripping over all the people I know and can’t find a chance to take a break, as opposed to having breaks that last entire days. So yeah, hadn’t ever managed to make the time for our friendly neighborhood canine spice. I’m immensely grateful for that odd confluence of circumstances that put me in that seat though, because Pepper is actually a real class act. He has such a beautiful earnestness to his performance and he clearly enjoys what he’s doing very much. It’s always fun to watch someone who’s unmistakably having the time of their lives. As soon as I heard that he had a song called “AA Battery Control Telescopic Knife” I knew he was my kind of musician. The hook that he uses is that he’s got a bunch of fancy tech that lets him do a bunch of cool looping shenanigans. He basically writes a whole score in realtime using just his voice, and I am ALL ABOUT stuff like that. He’s immensely fun and brings a lot of energy to the room. I was so happy that I was there because there’s a fair chance that I might’ve passed him by otherwise.
In any case, the elephant in the room showed up soon enough and I was off on my next adventure. The occasion of note was the arrival of Ace, another holder of the rare distinction of being a person I know in California. He also owed me money, an even more exclusive group to be sure. He’d gotten a new suit recently and we’d batted about the idea of him paying me back in the form of the old Ace suit. That was certainly not ideal as far as a suit for me goes. It’s a little small and there’s a lot attached to that character. Ace has had him for many years and has gained quite a lot of renown during that time. Add to that the fact that he is very much NOT retiring the character, as his new suit was a point-for-point clone of the old one, just given a sexy makeover by the good folks at DTWA. Really though, it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s probably the only financially workable option that’ll get me into a suit before I leave college, and knowing Ace if I demand cash repayment I’ll never see it. And of course, there’s the fact that AceFox 1.0 was the first fursuit I ever wore all those many (only four? Wow.) years ago. So yeah, I guess he’s got some notoriety with me as well. So against my better judgment I went for it! That sentence actually describes a lot of things I’ve done in the furry fandom now that I think about it. And there began the next series of intricately woven dumpster fires that comprised the rest of the day.
The major snag was that Ace 1.0 didn’t come with feet. I knew this in advance, but not advance enough to commission paws for him. Ace (player) suggested Happy Feet. They’re a brand of plush slipper that’s made to look like cleats, tennis shoes or what have you. They work decently well with fursuits, but they kind of look like what they are. A hasty, $40 patch to cover up a lack of paws. Archai had offered to drive me out to a shop and get some earlier in the week as well, but I was still opposed to the idea. I was depending on borrowing some of Arc’s paws for the weekend, something that I thought would work quite well. The thing is, I only thought that because human brains are extremely well equipped for condensing down information and recalling the general way of things, but not so much for key details. The detail in this case was that, despite owning a number of predominantly black suits, Archai’s team has nothing but solid white paws between them. Well, fuck. I had to concede that happy feet would look a lot less dumb than using white ones, and it just so happened that Arc needed to make a run back homewards to pick up cables for the photo shoot. It also so happened that this opportunity occurred right in the middle of the lunch plans I’d just made with LanHao. I felt bad about bailing on them, but being able to suit this con was important to me. Lord knows I needed some way to fill the vast stretches of absolutely fucking nothing that most days were filled with.
So we piled into the armored personnel carrier that had ferried all these supplies here in the first place and were off on our new quest. As we discussed how the starter’s pistol had been fired directly up by left nostril at the opening of today’s festivities, Archai had the brilliant insight that my input wasn’t really needed for the driving process and I could nap for a bit if I felt so inclined. I liked the idea and inclined my seat for that purpose immediately. That was actually a really great opportunity, one I thought I wouldn’t get until I finally checked into my own room that afternoon. It was actually a pretty good spot for it. The gallery with attached breakfast nook in the back of the Yukon meant that they had enough room to essentially install armchairs and loveseats in it, so it was a comfy spot to rest for a bit. I don’t know if I slept or not, but it was heavenly to lie back and shut my eyes for a bit. After my brief respite it was time to begin the search. Right off the bat we learned that Target’s website is a teetering Jenga tower made of lies, as most retail sites are, so we checked a few other stores but to no avail.
Arc asked if I’d like to keep searching or settle for something even weirder like a regular pair of slippers or shoes. I didn’t care for either of those options, particularly not just wearing shoes. That would look stupid and I’ll be damned if I’m going to dress up as a blaze orange cartoon fox and look foolish doing so, dammit! Also by that point I felt like I’d imposed on Archai enough. He had both work and fun con things to do. He was very gracious to help me out and I was unquestionably holding him up by this point. LanHao also texted a few times during that period to ask if everything was okay, my bailing on lunch had concerned him. So yeah, I came to realize that though I only knew like five people who were around, they were some great folks that really have my best interests at heart. Also, three store visits was about the time it took for the notion to percolate through my abused brain that this sort of obscure ridiculous and outlandishly specific thing might be available for purchase in the dealer’s den, which by then was actually open but I’d yet to visit it. So I bet all my chips on the den and we returned to the con.
Going further in on that particular bet, I went and picked up the suit from Ace because by the time our adventure was over room check-ins were open so I was actually able to obtain a place to put the suit. Steeling myself against the very real possibility of a flame-out, I proceeded into the dealer’s den to find… no happy feet whatsoever. Fate is not without mercy though, or at the very least a sense of humor. What or rather whom I did find there was the master suitcrafter/transforming robot known as Jill0r. She happened to have paws available to be adopted into good homes. I took brief umbrage with the adoption fee, but at this point it was really my last chance. I do hope that if Jill has need in the future of an example of a motivated sale, she uses this one. While I was there looking at the paws and still slightly on the fence I witnessed her selling the second-to-last pair of them, so yeah, that kind of did it for me. If they fit, I was buying them. I profaned upon Jill to hide them for me for a moment and ran back down moments later in a footless Ace to see how they worked with the suit. They matched up very nicely and fit great. It’s a bit obvious that the fur is newer, but there’s nothing for that. Despite the fact that I would’ve paid almost anything, that pricetag still stung. Really though, I think they were worth it. They’re quite sturdy and look pretty sharp, fitting the toony aesthetic nicely. The small but revolutionary innovation that really puts them over the top are the little tags that let me know what side they’re on. When I saw an ‘L’ I thought it was just the size, but when I realized that the tags were actually instructions I was overjoyed. Differentiable paws! What a time to be alive!
So, since I was at long last wearing 100% of a fursuit and also at a furry convention I ran off and did my thing. Roughly what I expected to happen did end up happening, that is to say everyone thought that I was Ace(player) because they hadn’t heard about his new suit yet. Still kinda fun though. I at the very least get a brief flash of what it’s like to actually know people before they wander off all confused and betrayed. I got a pretty spectacular flying tacklehug from someone that I’m like 94% sure was Rahne, whom we both know actually, rare intersection there. I got to do some photos and hugs and some of those at the same time. I also visited the dance and got to shake my tail with Zarafa a bit, the usual stuff. Apparently I was active enough to make the zipper completely eat shit and start ripping out at both ends. Did I mention the suit is a little small on me? Apparently the lazy basting stitch that had served the suit’s previous occupant well enough just couldn’t handle me. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that a fox would be spontaneously developing big holes in the ass, but I decided I’d best retire for the day as that was likely sending the wrong message. So to recap I spent all morning getting everything all together to suit for like two hours and then it all went to shit and I was left wondering what the fuck to do with myself for the rest of the day. Again. So yeah, nailed it.
The end of this lumbering trainwreck was meeting up with Archai after his work at the photo sweatshop was done and heading up to the party floor, a place that I am just SO profoundly indifferent about. Though I knew a statistically insignificant portion of the people at Stormy’s party, at least I had been invited there. At the other party rooms it’s kind of a perfunctory thing. We know you’re just here for free booze so let’s get on with it. And of course EVERYONE and their brother is there for free booze, so it’s a big, crowded, line-waiting experience more than a party experience. The Klingons put on a good production as always, and had suitably dangerous concoctions on hand. Not anything worth waiting in line for 20 minutes though. I had a brief elastic scattering collision with Hixbi, nice to see him again though I doubt he looks fondly back on the few words we managed to incoherently shout at each other in the hallway. The immeasurably pleasant surprise was my finding the Fallout room. Despite being a big suite it was quite reasonable in its reasonable population density. They also had pineapple cider, ON. TAP. I’d been working non-stop to cultivate new contacts in this strange land, but that was by FAR the fastest I’d made a new friend during my stay. So yes, it was truly a magical evening and not just because I got to cap that off with nine hours of mad, passionate sleep. (In California that’s an amount of sleep where people start worriedly checking your pulse.)
Anakin had mentioned that he might be able to help me out with my suit problems, at the very least getting it patched well enough to be in the parade, which at this point in the cavalcade of consecutive disasters I was willing to settle for. I worried initially about waking them too early, but given that I got myself around at the crack of 12:30 that was no longer a concern. Anakin’s force powers proved quite useful and I got enough of a functioning suit to go and star in the big event. Getting Arc to zip for me when the moment came made a big difference in the suit’s survivability, I think. The trouble with equipping Ace 1.0 is it limits pretty much the exact range of motion you need to reach a zipper on your back. So yeah, having a pit crew to help you in makes a world of difference. I got down to the parade staging area with plenty of time to spare. Normally I’d say that’s the way to be, but being wrapped in shag carpet substantially decreases my waiting ability. Still, there were enough cool folks to mill about with that it went okay. There are a lot of mystery suiters that I only see during the parade, so it was a good chance to catch up with those dudes. There was a bit more shuffling that usual at the front end because they’d moved the photo to before the parade. A good idea, certainly. Since fursuiters are more cooperative before they get all tired and burned out. Since it was their first time doing it this way though, it was just a little bit of a mess. They also had a lot more participants than they anticipated, but you can hardly blame them for that success.
The parade went much the way parades usually go, a little less orderly than most but I think that relates once again to the turnout. They might not have gotten enough herders to the scene in time to make everything work as smoothly as it could have. Still, good time though. I got to stick close to Ace 2.0 during the run of the parade, and that was really all I hoped to get out of it. The one big bright side to having an old version is that I think twin suits are fucking adorable. So that was a great chance to have a little fun with that dynamic. I thought at the beginning it was actually pretty nice that I went go kart racing earlier because they give you a balaclava for your helmet. So inside a week of owning a fursuit I conveniently started owning a balaclava. Naturally I lost it in the course of the parade because fate simply cannot allow an unqualified actually good thing to happen without restitution. I was stunned by the “chat with friends in the lobby” thing actually working after I got out of suit. LanHao was around and I got caught up with him, and as I was hanging out like such a pro, Soron, champion of the indomitable FurryCon came by to say hey. He noted with obvious excitement that I was still wearing the lanyard from his con.
I did want to eat with Lan since I ran off on him earlier, so I endeavored to lead both he and Arc to food simultaneously. I was expecting this to be one of those fun, simple little ideas that explodes horribly right out of the gate for no apparent reason. The fact that it actually worked baffled me. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop when I realized that this arrangement made me miss the dance competition. Should’ve known that I’d have to sacrifice roughly 25% of the day’s worthwhile events to make such an impossible dream happen. The dinner went quite well actually, so apparently sacrifice begets success. It was odd though. I couldn’t really eat much, despite my last real meal being lunch the previous day. Normally I’d chalk that up to my internal clock still blinking 12:00, but I’d been in California for some time by then. I really ought to have been on track by that point. Oh well. In biological terms, conventions are just as much of a great, lumbering disaster as they are by most other metrics. I suppose a few snags in circadian-related functions are to be expected. Though I will say that my pants were pretty much falling off by the end of this one, and not in a sexy way either. I really should track how much weight I lose during a con, as this is not a new occurrence. For what it’s worth, LanHao looked to enjoy the dinner very much. He’s often the only sane man in the crowd he runs with and that clearly wears on him. So I think the chance to hang out with us was very relaxing for him. It probably helps a lot that Arc and I are both ex-military and he’s ex-defense contractor, so we’ve got a lot in common.
After breaking company I made it back to the convention hall in time for Yuuki’s Hypnosis Discussion Panel. I guess telling you the host and content is a bit unnecessary at this point. In any case, I was happy to have a chance to check this one out. Hypnosis has been a recent fascination of mine and I’ve written about it on a few occasions, so having a chance to discuss it clinically in reality was very interesting. Yuuki had some interesting things to say after he finished telling us that he wasn’t a licensed hypnotist 47 times. I like the way he approached that though. “I know it sounds like a stupid ‘State of California’ thing but I actually have to say that no matter where we are.” Productivity was kind of spotty, but it was fun. I don’t feel like I really came away with a lot of new insight since it went over mostly the basics. Still, there were some cool things touched on that I’d never thought of before and it was nice to get some perspective on something I don’t understand nearly well enough. It was also a great atmosphere. Yuuki was very accommodating and so we talked about everything under the sun and pretty much ran out the clock on our discussion time. Really glad that I came to that one.
Next up was the “Foxes and Peppers” after dark show. I was definitely set on coming to this one because I really liked Pepper Coyote earlier and this time he was alongside the indomitable Foxamoore. Fox has a fantastic stage presence and is very versatile. He’s a great foil for other performers and it seems like he can work great with just about anyone. So I knew that these two together would be a winning combo. The fact that it was AD so they were allowed to drink and swear and make crude jokes and whatnot was unquestionably a bonus. As I expected, the show was a ton of fun. It was such a beautifully honest show. At one point during a transition, Pep just shouted “G MAJOR” before jumping back into it. High scores for segues.
Confidence has its place, but in little shows like this for an intimate sort of crowd it pays to have a bit of self-awareness. Small town club staff will always talk about these weekend bands that show up to play there. It’ll be all these accountants and dentists and whatever that will blow crazy amounts of money on great equipment to come out and live the dream. They’ll clearly have barely practiced and yet think they’re the hottest shit since an hour after they ate a huge handful of ghost peppers. The tiniest amount of recognition and they already have heads that belong in the Rose Bowl parade. That’s part of what I love about furry celebrities so much. Being big within a niche crowd keeps them grounded and sane, so they stay the humble, relatable people that you love no matter how big they get.
I was hanging out with Pepper and his crew after the show because I had stuck around to let him know what a great job he was doing and a few people remarked on how amazing that was and asked how I pulled it off. “Umm… I asked if he wanted to hang out and he was like ‘Yeah totally. We’re gonna get drinks in a few.’ It’s not rocket surgery or anything.” So yeah, still pretty down to earth. That hanging out didn’t go quite perfectly, though. I got to talk to some cool guys and run around the convention hall like idiots at an irresponsible hour of the morning, but it wasn’t a terribly organized endeavor. Pepper is one of those super-energetic drunks that will NEVER listen if you tell him that he shouldn’t do something. So yeah, shenanigans of various sorts were afoot very quickly and the bouncing around got so intense that I actually lost track of him at one point. An odd moment, that. I never got anybody’s phone number, so losing a visual trace meant that adventure was over whether I liked it or not. Oh well. They can’t all be winners. Part of taking a risk is the chance that shit might just flame out and accidentally obliterate a small Nigerian village. It’s all good.
I wound down the night by meeting up with Archai and whoever he had accrued in his travels. A notable addition this time around was Roman Otter, who I had one hell of a time remembering. Thankfully my meticulously maintained journal archive let me know that I’d seen him at AC, once again, as a part of Arc’s crew. On this occasion he was wearing Kayze and was absolutely killing it out there. He was super engaging and was just bouncing off the ceiling with energy. I came to learn later that it was his first time suiting, which made it all the more impressive. He must be a lot like me, just getting his throttle stuck all the way open as soon as he suits up. It was a great way to end a night.
Sunday continued the emerging trend by being filled with the most nothing out of any day so far. There may have been a shenanigan or two in there in the early afternoon that I’ve forgotten about, but the fact that I’ve forgotten it attests to its level of excitement. At one point a handful of us got together and tried some of the oft-recommended Indigeny Cider. I was all about trying a new kind of cider, but despite practically yelling at everyone about it the entire conversation I never got a straight answer as to why we couldn’t go up to someone’s room before drinking it. During our attempt we got caught by security literally before we even finished pouring because of fucking course we did. The convention hall is operated by the City of San Jose, so drinking in there is technically public intoxication. How do I understand that and these chucklefucks that are actually from here don’t? Security guards running through the Marriot lobby were a common sight during the convention, so it wasn’t like anyone would’ve been given the impression that it would be easy to pull some shit. It may have been the thrill of lawbreaking, but that cider was pretty good. We dispersed quickly out of necessity after that.
A lull like this would’ve been a great time to suit were my new suit not literally hanging on by a thread. Arc needed a babysitter for Sesame, so that filled the spot rather well. Sesame is a dangerously adorable plush sparkledragon suit, but a bit lacking in visibility, practicality, range of motion and… fingers, so I could see the problem with him going it alone. Brokenwing was also on hand for the occasion and formed the second half of the reason that having a seeing-eyed human was a prudent measure. Arc was introducing him to the wild world of suiting. Lucky bastard. Arc is a far superior fursuit senpai than the one I had my first time. Unfortunately, there was a notable enough weight-class difference between the two competitors that B-Dubs had to do a partial. Not a bad place to start though. Good outing all around. Sesame is a real attention-getter and it’s great to watch him in action.
Later on I mentioned my conclusion that I ought not tempt fate with Ace 1.0 any further and Archai would have none of it. He was adamant that this was not an occasion for caution. I was at a furry con. If there was a time to take chances, make mistakes, get messy and risk tearing myself a new one then this was it! A fairly compelling point, I had to admit. Being that I was looking at just going back to being bored to tears as an alternative I eventually ended up going for it. It helped that Arc was planning to get into a more agile suit to ambush Roman and I very much wanted the chance to see him again and let him know how stellar of a suiter he is. So yeah, we both dressed to the nines and crashed the charity auction to do that. It was kind of nice. A little more of a low-key suiting event than I’m used to, but that’s a new territory for me to explore. I got to have a nice chat with someone who was at her first con and had a million questions for someone who was in one of these crazy costumes and willing to be grilled about it. That was pretty cool actually. I like it when I get the chance to represent. After we got dressed down I got a ray of refreshing directness amid all the flaky furry social awkwardness. The conversation with Brokenwing went:
“You have dinner plans?”
“No.”
“Well let’s have dinner plans.”
“Ok.”
So then dinner, apparently. That was actually pretty nice. I never got a lot of one-on-one with any locals who weren’t Arc, so this was a cool change of pace. A lot of these guys are great folks, it’s just that only getting groups of six or seven thrown at you gets tough to handle after a while. So yeah, getting a chance to hang with Brokenwing was pretty nice. I almost forgive him for subjecting me to that British deathtrap he drove us to Frolic in. If I failed to mention that, BW drives a Mini Cooper, wherein the lock stem on the door does NOTHING. It cannot be operated by means of human hands and serves only to indicate how fucked you are by the stupid-ass design of this Orwellian bullshit machine. There is, in fact, no independent mechanism of any kind to unlock that door. Rather, in order to get it open you “Just pull the handle twice.” You JUST do something idiotic and completely counterintuitive and take a shit on the face of logic every time you want to escape from this esoteric torture chamber. “Oh what? That thing didn’t work? Just keep doing that exact same thing over and over again and I’m sure everything will be fine”, the clearly sociopathic designers whisper, drawing strength from your frustration and final submission to their twisted worldview. Fuck those degenerate swamp monsters! I climbed out of the window like a sensible person. What was I talking about? Ah, probably wasn’t important.
Changing after fursuiting managed to get my glasses left in Archai’s room, so the “FC Unleashed Furry Bandstand” ended up being rather blurry, but nonetheless quite entertaining. Pepper was out in force again, filling a break in the action with “Hey guys I’m turning down the gain just so you know!” Classy. Vox was up again with his band putting in another star performance. It was a lovely variety of personalities and artforms that I find almost exclusively in the furry fandom. I was really disappointed that they didn’t have an album minted yet that had Fox and Pep together, I would’ve totally bought that, and that’s saying something. I’m an entitled Millennial fuckwad, so I haven’t bought music in like five years. I was actually wracking my brain to come up with some kind of use for a CD when all my music players use flash memory. Really I kinda just wanted to give Pepper some money because of how great he is and just handing it to him felt kind of skeezy. After the show I managed to just barely snag Archai to get my glasses back before he left to head out to his fancy dinner plans. It was one of the handful of occasions that I might’ve ended up going to, but Archai raised the point that everyone else in attendance was having sex with at least one other person in attendance and that might make things a little awkward. A fair point, actually. My presence at many of the events of the various social bubbles Arc flits between were often plenty tenuous enough without having to worry about the love-dodecahedrons that were involved.
I went and stopped by the open mic night after that. I never seem to find out about those events early enough to prepare something to perform, but that also seemed to be true of a majority of the performers that night. I’d had good experiences with them before, but this one kinda stumbled a bit. I mean, it stumbled earnestly and in a way that maintained forward motion, but it was pretty sad. I think having a GOH or other performer-type as a host might’ve carried it a little better, but they gave it the ol’ college try. Not much for them to work with there, honestly. There were maybe three people other than myself there that were there to watch but not perform. Eight acts or something like that. Somewhat competent singing, but mostly comedy acts or stories from people that were reading from a script and still managing to forget details, or forget to be entertaining. I marvel sometimes at the way people respond to my storytelling. For a long time I didn’t think much of it, but when I take samplings of how entertaining the general populous is it’s a nice reminder of just how entertaining I actually am. There was someone who totally fucking nailed an opera, and a great reading by Mary Lowd. Those, and the fact that fuck all else was happening made the “show” worth my time I guess. After that I checked out the mostly run-down party floor. I found the Fallout guys again and came to learn that they were having some trouble moving the last of their pineapple cider before they closed up shop. At long last, I thought, my time has come. So yeah, I woke up extra late the next day for… entirely unrelated reasons.
So Monday had officially nothing happening, as opposed to most other days wherein nothing happened quite organically. This day presented me with the familiar problem of not having reservations when I found that my ride may or may not have intended on staying at the con for a further interminable period. I had to impose upon Anakin again for at the very least a place to store my stuff while I waited for Archai to figure out what he was doing with his life. I’ve never really much cared for FC’s method of fighting Post-Con Depression. That is to say, spending a whole day stringing the con up by its ankles and violently exsanguinating it in front of you until you can bear it no longer and view the end of the con as a welcome relief from its suffering. To each his own though, I suppose. Given that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter I made the most of it, mostly by saying goodbye to everyone that I knew, meaning of course that they were no longer around to spend time with. Did I mention that Mondays at FC are depressing as fuck? A wizened and world-weary gentleman in the mostly-desolate zoo/hangout spot noticed me somberly tossing the last of my Furthemore fliers onto the tables and inquired after the con. He seemed interested in staffing, which was a great thing to hear. We actually chatted for quite some time about all manner of things. Apparently he’d worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab and he countered my recommendation that he work at FTM with a recommendation that I work at LLNL. Not what I was expecting, but still a fascinating find. Penname was ‘Mercia’ or something, haven’t been able to nail that one down anywhere. Shame, too. I would’ve liked to follow up with him. That was just the sort of out-of-the-blue thing that makes the fandom such a fun thing to be a part of.
By some vector I ended up in Rioku’s room with his roomies hanging out for a bit. Again, an entirely new crowd to me, but when I saw some of the stuff they were drinking I figured that these were my people. I was lured in by a chance at relaxing in a hot tub, which was getting serviced at the time so sadface. Stunningly enough, our plan of just waiting until it was done being fixed actually worked, so we loaded up on some “Gatorade” and headed down there. I drank our (about 75% vodka) mix pretty fast to avoid being caught drinking in the hot tub. That speed made me glad I didn’t have to stand up for a while. So yeah, very relaxing, good times. I met up with Archai again, who was, for once, doing nothing. We had some good lobby hangout times as the crowd thinned. We were all kind of giggly from exertion, so it was a fun occasion. Some of my wisdom made it into a very quotable tweet as Brokenwing was trying to explain what it meant to be pansexual. My response was, quite succinctly: “What? So you stepped onto the Kinsey Scale one day and it was like ‘You’re too fat, fuck off!’ so you were like ‘Fuck it’?” Good stuff. Truly I am the voice of this generation.
Arc had another sex polyhedron dinner to run off to, so he dumped me on this complete ass, this complete ass, and this complete ass. For those not following, they were three fursuiters who were all donkeys. It was pretty swag. They were actually pretty nice asses, and I don’t say that about many people. We had dinner and did at least one shenanigan, and I had some good talk with Reveille. He seemed really interested in what I’m about and the stuff I’ve been up to. After that the plan was to spend some time at the dead dog dance that I wasn’t super psyched up for. They let me smoke some weed though and that patched that up nice. I got a dance and a vector to make the dance more interesting, so I was all for it. I didn’t really feel much from the little hit that I took, but that’s a failure mode that I’m totally okay with. I’ve taken a good solid full hit before and had trouble walking afterwards, so I called it well with a light one in order to try and get out there and do more things. Even that eventually wore on me and I found myself pretty much giving up on that day.
By then it was plenty late enough that I was convinced of Archai’s desire to remain here yet another night. Fat lot of good that did me. I checked in at Anakin’s place around midnight. He was busy with his harem of young Asian boys, so I doubted I’d be able to bed down in there anytime soon. What was actually going on was he was trying to coordinate the homeward flights of a group of his friends, but that’s the only way I could describe the scene of the five or six Asian kids all staging for departure. A noble enough cause, but it didn’t improve my situation any. I poked about a bit more, as always discovering entirely new levels of having fucking nothing to do. This time it was even worse with the added frosting on the depression cake consisting of my not even having the desire to do anything anymore. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt impotent, stupid listlessness like that. I was very tired and very sick of not knowing what the fuck to do with myself.
My next “progress” update from Anakin when I went up to get my laptop to kill time in the lobby was certainly not encouraging. He had shuttled off all but one of his sweatshop crew up there, but had hooked up with another friend and they were going to use their remaining manpower to host an impromptu photoshoot. Obviously I’m not going to obstruct them on this, everybody should get the chance to have fun here, but FUUUUUCK was I ever done with this shit. It’s so hard to convey such a simple desire “OKAY. Done! You understand that, furries? Done playing dress-up now. Want SLEEP. Go to bed and stop being stupid for a while. Make yourself not feel like a rusty trainwreck in the morning. Understand?” So yeah, that was another big wait. I got what I thought was my deliverance at about 2:30 when Anakin said they were done. I took that as my signal to head to bed, naïve twit that I was. The remaining migrant laborer was there reading, but I felt like I could deal with that. I got to bed and tried not to let my frustration keep me awake. I was unsuccessful.
The real problem came when it turned out that Anakin’s signal actually means “Hey in about an hour we’re going to come crashing in there and stumble into bed and then drunkenly grind on each other in full fursuit until we exhaust ourselves and fall asleep. Even THAT I could’ve potentially dealt with but they left the fucking LIGHTS ON. I took care of that and asked the astute reader in the corner if his tablet worked in the dark. When he confirmed this, I asked that he demonstrate it for me in a rather curt and forceful manner. I got dangerously close to sleeping after that. Naturally, Anakin pulled me back from that precipice at the last second via the fact that he was wearing a wad of foam and shag carpet on his head instead of his anti-snoring cyclotron. Hence, the triumphant return of nighttime log dynamiting. After some time of that, he saw fit to turn it up to eleven by waking just long enough to blearily tear the fursuit head off, removing the convenient sonic dampener he’d accidentally installed previously. Once again, thoughts that occur to one when he has not slept yet and it’s 4:30 in the morning. I lacked the wherewithal to get out of bed this time, plus my new bed-neighbor was quite a fair bit more attached to the comforter than Casidhe had been. No, this time the thought was a simple, occasional, very nihilist “Oh, Anakin stopped breathing. Good.”
The momentary breaks that Anakin’s sleep apnea provided were hardly enough to get anything approximating useful sleep. But I perhaps did achieve unconsciousness a few times in the 6:00 range. Oh joy. Around 8:00 I was once again awake enough to give up entirely on rest. I went back to the lobby and dicked around on my computer while I awaited deliverance from this purgatory. I wasn’t yet to the point where I’d be bull-headed enough to wake Archai and demand an immediate evac, but that was definitely the first thing I did as soon as I heard from him. Kyreeth and asked “Did you ever leave the lobby all night?” Though I rather wished I hadn’t, the reality was only slightly better than he assumed. Regardless, we were on our way soon enough. Trying to get all the people and photo gear and suits into the Yukon all at once was quite the adventure, especially given that the number of suits had increased by one in the course of the con. We did managed to Tetris three vaguely person-shaped holes into the thoroughly crammed space in there and made our way homeward at long last. So for the record, if you’re wondering how to overstay your welcome at a con, SIX FUCKING DAYS is a good way to pull it off. Arc had some shit to take care of by then since his job’s mercy is vast but not infinite. Where I once would’ve hated missing out, I was at the time merely grateful for the respite. I doubt I even said much about it. Just bid him well and slinked off to the blissful oblivion that had called to me for so long.
A final word on my ill-fated sleeping arrangements. If you know or can figure out who Anakin is, I’d ask that you don’t call him out here or hold this against him. He and his cadre are a good sort for the most part, I believe. Sure I had a pretty bad time, but I think I’ll just put them in the same category as Casidhe. Good guys that I will absolutely not sleep with under any circumstances. I actually do feel quite guilty now that I neglected to pay him on my way out. I say neglected as though I forgot and in the moment yes, I probably used my crippling fatigue as an excuse. In reality it occurred to me to settle up whilst I still had plenty of time to make that particular transaction happen. I was just in such a bad way at the time though that I didn’t think I could suffer the sight of him without cursing a blue streak at the very least and perhaps even taking that that rattling turbine engine that kept me up all night and bashing it right out of his insufferable face. Properly-rested me made a much more mature assessment of the situation and I’m very grateful for that. With a little luck perhaps there remains a happy ending to be found here, and I would be quite remiss if I didn’t put my best foot forward to find it.
I managed to get back to life in time for some dinner Tuesday night. We gathered up an entirely new set of Arc’s friends and went to a lovely little Irish pub, the sort of place I’d been wanting to go for some time but couldn’t seem to find near the convention hall. Very nice place, great atmosphere too. They even brought out the fife and fiddle and the whole deal for some great live music. That night Archai had a look at the zipper in Ace 1.0, and by “had a look” I mean “completely tear it out and re-sew it” because there was absolutely nothing salvageable about the way it was in there. He got halfway through the job before knocking off for the night, resolving to throw the rest of it together before my flight the next day. I would’ve been insulted by his work ethic were I not paying him in gregariousness. Despite having spent much of the day sleeping, sleep seemed a very attractive option to me as well. After all, I had a flight to catch the following morn- oh. Turns out I had a flight the following evening. Really glad I checked that one before going to bed. I couldn’t fathom what could’ve possessed me to book a 7:30 PM flight. I may have done it accidentally, to be honest. AM and PM being one of those clunky, inefficient crusty relics of the past that America sticks with out of habit because change is HARD. You know, things like daylight savings time, pennies, imperial measurements, the QWERTY keyboard, or most of Congress.
I was actually rather grateful for the reprieve on my flight time, though, because as discussed previously I had only just recovered useful consciousness for the first time that morning. The visit’s end was more dictated by the start of classes than anything else, but I did still want something of a buffer against stumbling out of a convention directly into an airplane. That’s usually a bummer. This bonus day was one to be spent with Zantal, it seemed. Or rather that was the plan. In keeping with his usual patterns he arrived at Zantal O’clock, which I had come to learn was usually “sometime this afternoon” regardless of what actual numbers he specified. He actually did have a rough time of it though. On top of usual Zantanigans, there was a snag with the flight of the person he was driving to the airport, so he had to go grab him again and ferry him to an airport that wasn’t defective. Or as he phrased it “Goin to Oakland because SFO was \o/” True to his (suitably translated) word he did arrive close to Zantal:00. It was like Zantal:35 at the latest. We loaded up all my stuff and headed out to meet Arc for lunch.
Lunch happened, and was quite fun. I’d been getting along with Zan pretty well in the course of all this, so it was good to have a more quiet space to interact with him. I was very flattered when I heard that he was going to throw on Fyre, his sergal, just so that I could spend some time with him, because I’d missed my narrow window to do so at the con. I’d mentioned a week earlier that I was a big fan of the character. As I recall I was eating my own kneecaps at the time because we had to make room for Zan in the back of Arc’s BRZ. I was filled with immeasurable rage and bafflement, not unlike people trying to pay their taxes ‘round this time, as to how in the hell someone would ever think that anything even vaguely humanoid would fit in those decorative cubbyholes behind the front seats. Why the fuck did they even bother? To my astonishment, there actually was an answer to this.
Two-seaters are often much more expensive to insure because they tend to be fancy, high-performance sportscars that young people with more dollars than brain cells (or more cents than sense, HAH! Now you can’t unread that!) use to do irresponsible things. Since they’re expensive as fuck to repair and spend a fair amount of time going sideways and doing sick kick-flips off of cloverleaf ramps or whatever it is fancy cars do, they’re considered high-risk, and thus cost more to insure than the hands of a professional chainsaw juggler. Stamping two useless, seat-shaped divots into the interior of the car behind the actual, person-accommodating seats can be done without massively impacting the performance of the vehicle and thus advertised size of the owners genitals, but you can still write “4 seats” on your insurance policy without it technically being fraud. To me that smacks of a layer cake auspiciously filled with bullshit and foam packing peanuts. So far as I’m aware, the risk tables that insurance companies use today are specified down to model, year and sometimes even trim. Maybe that’s an ulterior motive behind all fancy sports cars having unintelligible ciphers scrawled across their quarter-panels in the raving chickenscratch of a madman instead of model names. They’ve just gotta throw enough confusing junk codes at their insurance company to bamboozle them into thinking they’re doing something other than rushing headlong into the wild world of competitive spinal compression.
“What? Oh that can’t be right. I have a ZGX1337 TkzXx 2048, not a CLS5500 TzzxB 420. That bill should totally be like $430 less.”
“… Sir, you also wrote a random alphanumeric string as your occupation.”
“Well, I’m SORRY we can’t all be insurance adjusters and SOME of us have to work as lowly MKXCTS370Zs.”
I dunno, I think it just pissed me off because it made me resent having company. It turned my favorable reaction to Zan into “What? We’re bringing Zan along? My fucking femurs don’t fold in half, Archai!”
Seriously. All you’re saying to anyone who you’re putting into a coupe with more than two people is “Fuck you AND your ostentatious desire to have bones!”
Oh yeah, that’s what I was talking about. The previous week when we origamied Zan into an inverse water lotus so that we could stuff him into a space that was verifiably never designed with accommodating full-size a human body in mind it came up in conversation that I’d seen his suit before I’d ever met him or so much as learned his name. Fyre was one of those characters that I’d never properly had a chance to properly meet or engage with, but were always a joy to see just because they had a really pleasing aesthetic and great stage presence. Kinda like slightly-more-desirable-collection-of-random-letters Klovix. I’ve never met the guy, but I smile every time I see him in suit. So yeah, I had told Zan a week prior that Fyre was one of those suits that I just loved to see all the time and he adorably exploded into a cascade of bashful giggling, as he does from time to time. I never really expected much to come of it beyond that, but I came to find that prior to the interference of aeromobile shenanigans and the correction for converting to Pacific Zantard Time he had intended to throw on Fyre just for me because he’s always there for his fans. That was a really lovely thought and I was disappointed that we didn’t have time for it.
As it was, we barely had a moment to spare to drive to the server farm where Archai spends his days industriously working the land and praying for a fertile data harvest so that we could meet up and get some illicit back-alley needlework done. And by that I mean we met up in the parking lot so that I could spread Ace 1.0 out in the back of the Yukon so Arc could finish sewing the zipper. Zantal took what looked to be a much-needed nap as his better half did more textile magic. It was kind of funny how he woke up to observe “Are you playing that song just because Archai is sewing?” For the record, yes. Yes I was. We were starting to feel like we were cutting it close, but Archai got me a functional zipper in good time. I was immensely grateful for that, as I was looking forward to wearing Ace 1.0 in some environs where nobody is familiar with his pedigree.
With a few quick parting words, we were off. I joked on the way that I hoped it went better than Zan’s last airport trip. I got through security quite smoothly, actually. It was pretty quick given that I had to check my Ace Case and then process my other bag through the checkpoint, as I was going to run the free ride luggage gambit again. You know, because I like to live dangerously. I’d heard a few strange things coming out of the flight notification systems, so I went to ask a gate agent if everything was going okay. As I walked away after hearing her reassurance, her answer went from “Yes” to “Oh, well hold on a second.” The incoming flight’s arrival had been delayed slightly, which wasn’t an issue, mostly. In my case in particular the 50 minute delay and 35 minute layover left me with -15 minutes to change planes. Negotiations followed.
“Hm, that’s not going to work. Further flights to Boston are probably going to be canceled because of the snow.”
“Well, you literally just mentioned how I’m going to miss a connection in Boston. Implying that I do not actually intend to go there, yes?”
“Oh. Oh! Yes that makes this much easier. I can do SFO-PHL-ROC. You’ve got about 90 minutes to make that departure.”
That was very good news. Usually “you’re going to miss a connection” means that your life is about to become suddenly very difficult. So a short delay was about the best-case scenario for that one. 2-for-2 on Zan taking people to defective airports though. Way to drop the ball, Zan! Anyways, I went back down and un-checked my bag, hopped on a shuttle and was on my way. SFO actually had a plane at the gate, a notable improvement in my mind. Not having a plane there is a significant disadvantage. They also announced free gate check as soon as I got there, so I won that game before I was even ready to play. Naturally what followed was a brutal and unforgettable reminder as to why I never intentionally book redeye flights. Sleeping on a plane for an hour or two in a daytime flight is a nice way to make the flight go a little bit faster, but that hour or two is really all I’m capable of. The rest of the flight is just more exhausted torture. Being kept up all night by a cruel confluence of circumstance was something that I’d had plenty enough of already, so this was not quite a tiptoe through the tulips. I managed to drag myself into the ruined wasteland that was Philadelphia airport right in the middle of clock-butthole. At least ruins were what I expected to find. I skipped the shuttle this time because I had a long connecting time and I could take this terminal. My momma didn’t raise no quitter! I came to find that some large portions of the airport were actually pretty competently maintained. It was only at the concourse that served the Northeast that you drifted off the edge of the map into an area that the game developers never intended for players to wander into. Ah well. They took me home, can’t fault them there.
What followed was another pretty much solid day of sleep. Like, dangerously so. I slept from 10:30 AM to 2 PM, and then from 11 PM to 2 PM. Kind of impressive, actually. Of course that meant that I got there just in time to leave once again. I was nudged out the door early by the weather, which appeared to be quite paradoxically pouring snow all over the damn place all along the eastern seaboard pretty much everywhere except Buffalo. I should’ve known it would be my luck to return on opposite day. So yeah, I’m back at college now and I’ve spent much of this week writing a con report instead of doing work. Oh dear, I should probably get on that.
That got us to Wednesday, which left me with a day to gear up for the con. Or so I naively assumed. As it turned out, that was the day that we left for the con soooo, right back to it then! Really though, when the adventure starts with hauling half a ton of photo gear and a full ton of Archai’s Seussian menagerie of fursuits then just kind of hanging around I can’t say it was too stressful for me. My records are spotty from this early period for reasons that we’ll get into later, but a big part of it was working out rooms, as I’d be finding myself on site for a lot longer than I thought I would. I had worked out Thursday night with Casihe at dinner a few days prior, but Wednesday was yet another surprise, so I had to get on that. Fortunately Archai was in touch with Erbis, whose con arrival choices differed from those of his friends in the other direction, so I spent that night with him.
The next day was pretty quiet again, but just like last year I was among very few who seemed to think that this was a problem. Everyone else thinks it’s a great chance to hang out. Meanwhile for me it’s just a reminder that despite my best efforts I don’t have too many contacts around here. It was kind of a late start as days in California all seem to be. Managed to hit up Archai and his crew for some food and then floundered about for a bit. At any other con time like this isn’t hard to fill, but again, I found myself awash in a vast ocean of people who only seem to know each other. After that it was some more wandering about I had a small victory, someone I (now) knew invited me to a party! It was Stormy saying I was welcome to drop by their spot on the party floor that night if I felt so inclined. I was pretty confident about that, my docket being as empty as it was. It took just about all day for me to pull it off, but I finally managed to do the thing that usually won’t STOP happening at conventions, tripping over a handful people I know all at once. I found ArcRa and a few of his friends in the lobby, and whilst hanging out there, LanHao came to say hey. And as we sat and chatted, various friends of theirs came by and joined in. It was a major relief to finally have that happen. That kind of thing is the real way that hours disappear in a con without you even realizing it. I was so glad to have it happen at least once.
That got me to the ‘Out of Position’ release party, which was literally the only event going on that day. I figured I’d attend because it’s always good to hear from Kyell Gold and Rukis, even if they’re too busy being mobbed by fans to really talk at all. The pleasant surprise there was I got to see Sparf and Serval. They were running the joint. Apparently it just isn’t in them to not work. Naturally once we got to the actual reading that everyone was there for I finally got the call that tonight’s room was open and I could move my stuff there. Casidhe had his roommates bail on him and didn’t want to have a double all by himself. I’d had something similar happen, but I’d booked a king for just three nights in anticipation of it. When you’re dealing with furries you’ve always gotta play the Xanatos gambit and have a failure mode that still benefits you. In any case, he’d been working to fix that for some time. He’d canceled his reservations and found a new room that also had space for me one night, so good for everyone. I felt like an idiot for leaving right when the reading was starting, but I also didn’t like the fact that I’d left my stuff with Erbis so long. So I went and took care of that. Room shuffling was already becoming quite tiresome. Normally I’m all about this kind of thing. It gets me the flexibility I need to handle shenanigans that come up and I can still have my own sanctuary for the middle of the con where I really need it. I’m going to have to start working something else out in the future though, seeing as the people I’m traveling to the con with electing to show up irresponsibly early seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Ah well, lessons for another day.
I got back down to the event and hung around a bit as it wrapped up. Got to chat with my Furthemore bros for a good while there. It went a long way towards making me feel a little more at home here. I actually got down to Stormy’s party a lot later than I’d expected to. The party was not a huge improvement in terms of social atmosphere as it was a small room packed to the ceiling with people I’d never met as opposed to a large lobby sparsely strewn with them, but there was food and booze. I have an easy time calling someplace welcoming if it boasts those two amenities. I had a healthy splash of some crazy jungle juice we came to call P’thahck, which was not only the drink’s Klingon name but also the sound you make when you have a sip. It was one of those wonderful occasions when I drink something and think “oh, this will take a while” and it very much does NOT take a while and WOOOOO IAMHAVINGAGOODTIMEALLOFASUDDEN. So yeah, got to chat up a few folks and have a good experience with that one after all. Exactly who was in the neighborhood didn’t stick too well. Video Wolf maybe? I distinctly recall encountering him in that timeframe and him being a pretty cool dude. Whatevs, it was way too many people for drunk me to keep track of. After that all wound down it was time for some sleep. Or so I thought.
A note on who I was staying with that night. I’m not linking the name of our gracious host because of the amount of shit I’m going to talk about him later. I’m just gonna call him Anakin, because he managed to fuck things up surprisingly hard for someone with essentially good intentions, and also because he’s got one of those garish-looking CPAP breathing machines that he spends the night hooked up to. That comes later though. Tonight, the big problem was that I found myself unable to sleep through the earthquake that was presently occurring in the room. Anakin had said that his iron lung over on the nightstand might buzz or hiss a little bit, and I’ll have to take his word for it as I wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it if it sounded like an air raid siren. It turns out that Casidhe snores like a running diesel truck that’s being cut in half by a chainsaw powered by a much larger truck. Holy shit, man. I kind of wished there had been a dance or something going on because after an hour listening to that I could’ve easily gone out and danced all night. Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I tried nudging him a few times, which helped for literally a couple seconds each time. He seemed to be sleeping just fine though, despite not so much sawing logs as knocking entire stands of trees over with dynamite. So I figured I could try something a little more daring without disturbing him.
I managed to unobtrusively get the comforter and a pillow off the bed and took them to the bathroom. This allowed me to set up shop in there where I could close the door and dampen the riot that was going on in the bed I was meant to be using. Stretching out on the cold tile floor with my knees resting up against the toilet was a… non-ideal scenario to be sure, but that’s the kind of idea that sounds appealing when it’s 4:30 and you still haven’t slept yet. I actually managed alright in there, given what it was. I’m sure that having someone else pee on you while you’re sleeping is somebody’s fetish out there, but I was kinda not into that. I felt pretty stupid freezing my ass off in there, but I got six different kinds of validation the next morning. Anakin’s roommate mentioned the next morning that he saw me in there and thought “Damn. That’s a good idea.” I thought it was odd that he would’ve come in more than once, as he woke me two times during the course of my sojourn in the tile tundra. Turns out that he was just scoping out the tub to see if he could sleep in there. So yeah, when I saw that the guy on the opposite side of the opposite bed is also blearily stumbling about in desperate search of literally anywhere horizontal to bed down that’s out of range of the rocket engine tests in the other room I figured that I wasn’t being too unreasonable in thinking that this snoring was pretty unholy in its intensity. Anakin managed okay, but I guess you learn to sleep through snoring when you yourself used to sound like a jackhammer jousting match.
I was very relieved that this would not be my problem the next day, but I underestimated how not my problem it would be. I came to learn in the course of Friday morning that our gracious hosts had asked Casidhe to leave. That was pretty rough. I understood though. He’s a good guy, but there’s no denying that he’s just not sleepable. It’s not his fault and that made everybody involved feel really bad about it. Really though, if he had tuberculosis it wouldn’t be his fault either, but I would feel quite justified in not wanting to share a bed with him. It was unfortunate that these discussions took place without me, as I thought to work out a swap with him. I would’ve been happy to stay in Anakin’s room and have him take my king room by himself. That would’ve taken a lot of the sting out of it. I was too late on getting the intel though. By the time I got in touch with him he’d already recovered his reservations. If he tried to get back out he’d have to pay the cancelation fee again. It was a real shame. So yeah, I guess I’ll add those kinds of shenanigans to the list of reasons I’ll be fixing the way I do rooms in the future.
The first flailing, desperate texts of the morning were Archai freaking out about how he was drowning in familiar faces and couldn’t even handle all the socializing he was doing. Yeah, that was really something that I needed rubbed in my face first thing in the morning after barely sleeping, dickhead. I’m happy for him though. At least I’m no longer baffled as to why this con remains so popular. The bay has truly irresponsible amounts of furries and it’s only that fact that makes them seem insular and disconnected. They don’t have to cast a net the size of Connecticut to reach out to people and that’s wonderful for them. Still didn’t make blearily stumbling through the mostly-abandoned convention hall any more exciting though. I was glad for the arrival of opening ceremonies to break it up a little, even if that was the only event that day which held any substantial amount of interest for me.
With as much of a lurching faceplant as that day started with, my hopes weren’t inordinately high for the festivities. For the most part, I got what I expected. Whatever staff could easily be cobbled together came in to talk about what an exciting time they had planned for us and we got to have a cute little QnA with the GOHs and it was A-OK. It kept me awake. Which, at the time, was quite a high standard to set. The big game-changer though was Pepper Coyote performing. Pep has been around awhile and I’d heard a few generally agreeable things about him, but it was nowhere near enough to pull me away from the tidal wave of other content to be had at AnthroCon. That’s the only other place he’s performed that I’ve been to and that one’s MY home con, wherein I’m the one that gets to spend the whole time tripping over all the people I know and can’t find a chance to take a break, as opposed to having breaks that last entire days. So yeah, hadn’t ever managed to make the time for our friendly neighborhood canine spice. I’m immensely grateful for that odd confluence of circumstances that put me in that seat though, because Pepper is actually a real class act. He has such a beautiful earnestness to his performance and he clearly enjoys what he’s doing very much. It’s always fun to watch someone who’s unmistakably having the time of their lives. As soon as I heard that he had a song called “AA Battery Control Telescopic Knife” I knew he was my kind of musician. The hook that he uses is that he’s got a bunch of fancy tech that lets him do a bunch of cool looping shenanigans. He basically writes a whole score in realtime using just his voice, and I am ALL ABOUT stuff like that. He’s immensely fun and brings a lot of energy to the room. I was so happy that I was there because there’s a fair chance that I might’ve passed him by otherwise.
In any case, the elephant in the room showed up soon enough and I was off on my next adventure. The occasion of note was the arrival of Ace, another holder of the rare distinction of being a person I know in California. He also owed me money, an even more exclusive group to be sure. He’d gotten a new suit recently and we’d batted about the idea of him paying me back in the form of the old Ace suit. That was certainly not ideal as far as a suit for me goes. It’s a little small and there’s a lot attached to that character. Ace has had him for many years and has gained quite a lot of renown during that time. Add to that the fact that he is very much NOT retiring the character, as his new suit was a point-for-point clone of the old one, just given a sexy makeover by the good folks at DTWA. Really though, it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s probably the only financially workable option that’ll get me into a suit before I leave college, and knowing Ace if I demand cash repayment I’ll never see it. And of course, there’s the fact that AceFox 1.0 was the first fursuit I ever wore all those many (only four? Wow.) years ago. So yeah, I guess he’s got some notoriety with me as well. So against my better judgment I went for it! That sentence actually describes a lot of things I’ve done in the furry fandom now that I think about it. And there began the next series of intricately woven dumpster fires that comprised the rest of the day.
The major snag was that Ace 1.0 didn’t come with feet. I knew this in advance, but not advance enough to commission paws for him. Ace (player) suggested Happy Feet. They’re a brand of plush slipper that’s made to look like cleats, tennis shoes or what have you. They work decently well with fursuits, but they kind of look like what they are. A hasty, $40 patch to cover up a lack of paws. Archai had offered to drive me out to a shop and get some earlier in the week as well, but I was still opposed to the idea. I was depending on borrowing some of Arc’s paws for the weekend, something that I thought would work quite well. The thing is, I only thought that because human brains are extremely well equipped for condensing down information and recalling the general way of things, but not so much for key details. The detail in this case was that, despite owning a number of predominantly black suits, Archai’s team has nothing but solid white paws between them. Well, fuck. I had to concede that happy feet would look a lot less dumb than using white ones, and it just so happened that Arc needed to make a run back homewards to pick up cables for the photo shoot. It also so happened that this opportunity occurred right in the middle of the lunch plans I’d just made with LanHao. I felt bad about bailing on them, but being able to suit this con was important to me. Lord knows I needed some way to fill the vast stretches of absolutely fucking nothing that most days were filled with.
So we piled into the armored personnel carrier that had ferried all these supplies here in the first place and were off on our new quest. As we discussed how the starter’s pistol had been fired directly up by left nostril at the opening of today’s festivities, Archai had the brilliant insight that my input wasn’t really needed for the driving process and I could nap for a bit if I felt so inclined. I liked the idea and inclined my seat for that purpose immediately. That was actually a really great opportunity, one I thought I wouldn’t get until I finally checked into my own room that afternoon. It was actually a pretty good spot for it. The gallery with attached breakfast nook in the back of the Yukon meant that they had enough room to essentially install armchairs and loveseats in it, so it was a comfy spot to rest for a bit. I don’t know if I slept or not, but it was heavenly to lie back and shut my eyes for a bit. After my brief respite it was time to begin the search. Right off the bat we learned that Target’s website is a teetering Jenga tower made of lies, as most retail sites are, so we checked a few other stores but to no avail.
Arc asked if I’d like to keep searching or settle for something even weirder like a regular pair of slippers or shoes. I didn’t care for either of those options, particularly not just wearing shoes. That would look stupid and I’ll be damned if I’m going to dress up as a blaze orange cartoon fox and look foolish doing so, dammit! Also by that point I felt like I’d imposed on Archai enough. He had both work and fun con things to do. He was very gracious to help me out and I was unquestionably holding him up by this point. LanHao also texted a few times during that period to ask if everything was okay, my bailing on lunch had concerned him. So yeah, I came to realize that though I only knew like five people who were around, they were some great folks that really have my best interests at heart. Also, three store visits was about the time it took for the notion to percolate through my abused brain that this sort of obscure ridiculous and outlandishly specific thing might be available for purchase in the dealer’s den, which by then was actually open but I’d yet to visit it. So I bet all my chips on the den and we returned to the con.
Going further in on that particular bet, I went and picked up the suit from Ace because by the time our adventure was over room check-ins were open so I was actually able to obtain a place to put the suit. Steeling myself against the very real possibility of a flame-out, I proceeded into the dealer’s den to find… no happy feet whatsoever. Fate is not without mercy though, or at the very least a sense of humor. What or rather whom I did find there was the master suitcrafter/transforming robot known as Jill0r. She happened to have paws available to be adopted into good homes. I took brief umbrage with the adoption fee, but at this point it was really my last chance. I do hope that if Jill has need in the future of an example of a motivated sale, she uses this one. While I was there looking at the paws and still slightly on the fence I witnessed her selling the second-to-last pair of them, so yeah, that kind of did it for me. If they fit, I was buying them. I profaned upon Jill to hide them for me for a moment and ran back down moments later in a footless Ace to see how they worked with the suit. They matched up very nicely and fit great. It’s a bit obvious that the fur is newer, but there’s nothing for that. Despite the fact that I would’ve paid almost anything, that pricetag still stung. Really though, I think they were worth it. They’re quite sturdy and look pretty sharp, fitting the toony aesthetic nicely. The small but revolutionary innovation that really puts them over the top are the little tags that let me know what side they’re on. When I saw an ‘L’ I thought it was just the size, but when I realized that the tags were actually instructions I was overjoyed. Differentiable paws! What a time to be alive!
So, since I was at long last wearing 100% of a fursuit and also at a furry convention I ran off and did my thing. Roughly what I expected to happen did end up happening, that is to say everyone thought that I was Ace(player) because they hadn’t heard about his new suit yet. Still kinda fun though. I at the very least get a brief flash of what it’s like to actually know people before they wander off all confused and betrayed. I got a pretty spectacular flying tacklehug from someone that I’m like 94% sure was Rahne, whom we both know actually, rare intersection there. I got to do some photos and hugs and some of those at the same time. I also visited the dance and got to shake my tail with Zarafa a bit, the usual stuff. Apparently I was active enough to make the zipper completely eat shit and start ripping out at both ends. Did I mention the suit is a little small on me? Apparently the lazy basting stitch that had served the suit’s previous occupant well enough just couldn’t handle me. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that a fox would be spontaneously developing big holes in the ass, but I decided I’d best retire for the day as that was likely sending the wrong message. So to recap I spent all morning getting everything all together to suit for like two hours and then it all went to shit and I was left wondering what the fuck to do with myself for the rest of the day. Again. So yeah, nailed it.
The end of this lumbering trainwreck was meeting up with Archai after his work at the photo sweatshop was done and heading up to the party floor, a place that I am just SO profoundly indifferent about. Though I knew a statistically insignificant portion of the people at Stormy’s party, at least I had been invited there. At the other party rooms it’s kind of a perfunctory thing. We know you’re just here for free booze so let’s get on with it. And of course EVERYONE and their brother is there for free booze, so it’s a big, crowded, line-waiting experience more than a party experience. The Klingons put on a good production as always, and had suitably dangerous concoctions on hand. Not anything worth waiting in line for 20 minutes though. I had a brief elastic scattering collision with Hixbi, nice to see him again though I doubt he looks fondly back on the few words we managed to incoherently shout at each other in the hallway. The immeasurably pleasant surprise was my finding the Fallout room. Despite being a big suite it was quite reasonable in its reasonable population density. They also had pineapple cider, ON. TAP. I’d been working non-stop to cultivate new contacts in this strange land, but that was by FAR the fastest I’d made a new friend during my stay. So yes, it was truly a magical evening and not just because I got to cap that off with nine hours of mad, passionate sleep. (In California that’s an amount of sleep where people start worriedly checking your pulse.)
Anakin had mentioned that he might be able to help me out with my suit problems, at the very least getting it patched well enough to be in the parade, which at this point in the cavalcade of consecutive disasters I was willing to settle for. I worried initially about waking them too early, but given that I got myself around at the crack of 12:30 that was no longer a concern. Anakin’s force powers proved quite useful and I got enough of a functioning suit to go and star in the big event. Getting Arc to zip for me when the moment came made a big difference in the suit’s survivability, I think. The trouble with equipping Ace 1.0 is it limits pretty much the exact range of motion you need to reach a zipper on your back. So yeah, having a pit crew to help you in makes a world of difference. I got down to the parade staging area with plenty of time to spare. Normally I’d say that’s the way to be, but being wrapped in shag carpet substantially decreases my waiting ability. Still, there were enough cool folks to mill about with that it went okay. There are a lot of mystery suiters that I only see during the parade, so it was a good chance to catch up with those dudes. There was a bit more shuffling that usual at the front end because they’d moved the photo to before the parade. A good idea, certainly. Since fursuiters are more cooperative before they get all tired and burned out. Since it was their first time doing it this way though, it was just a little bit of a mess. They also had a lot more participants than they anticipated, but you can hardly blame them for that success.
The parade went much the way parades usually go, a little less orderly than most but I think that relates once again to the turnout. They might not have gotten enough herders to the scene in time to make everything work as smoothly as it could have. Still, good time though. I got to stick close to Ace 2.0 during the run of the parade, and that was really all I hoped to get out of it. The one big bright side to having an old version is that I think twin suits are fucking adorable. So that was a great chance to have a little fun with that dynamic. I thought at the beginning it was actually pretty nice that I went go kart racing earlier because they give you a balaclava for your helmet. So inside a week of owning a fursuit I conveniently started owning a balaclava. Naturally I lost it in the course of the parade because fate simply cannot allow an unqualified actually good thing to happen without restitution. I was stunned by the “chat with friends in the lobby” thing actually working after I got out of suit. LanHao was around and I got caught up with him, and as I was hanging out like such a pro, Soron, champion of the indomitable FurryCon came by to say hey. He noted with obvious excitement that I was still wearing the lanyard from his con.
I did want to eat with Lan since I ran off on him earlier, so I endeavored to lead both he and Arc to food simultaneously. I was expecting this to be one of those fun, simple little ideas that explodes horribly right out of the gate for no apparent reason. The fact that it actually worked baffled me. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop when I realized that this arrangement made me miss the dance competition. Should’ve known that I’d have to sacrifice roughly 25% of the day’s worthwhile events to make such an impossible dream happen. The dinner went quite well actually, so apparently sacrifice begets success. It was odd though. I couldn’t really eat much, despite my last real meal being lunch the previous day. Normally I’d chalk that up to my internal clock still blinking 12:00, but I’d been in California for some time by then. I really ought to have been on track by that point. Oh well. In biological terms, conventions are just as much of a great, lumbering disaster as they are by most other metrics. I suppose a few snags in circadian-related functions are to be expected. Though I will say that my pants were pretty much falling off by the end of this one, and not in a sexy way either. I really should track how much weight I lose during a con, as this is not a new occurrence. For what it’s worth, LanHao looked to enjoy the dinner very much. He’s often the only sane man in the crowd he runs with and that clearly wears on him. So I think the chance to hang out with us was very relaxing for him. It probably helps a lot that Arc and I are both ex-military and he’s ex-defense contractor, so we’ve got a lot in common.
After breaking company I made it back to the convention hall in time for Yuuki’s Hypnosis Discussion Panel. I guess telling you the host and content is a bit unnecessary at this point. In any case, I was happy to have a chance to check this one out. Hypnosis has been a recent fascination of mine and I’ve written about it on a few occasions, so having a chance to discuss it clinically in reality was very interesting. Yuuki had some interesting things to say after he finished telling us that he wasn’t a licensed hypnotist 47 times. I like the way he approached that though. “I know it sounds like a stupid ‘State of California’ thing but I actually have to say that no matter where we are.” Productivity was kind of spotty, but it was fun. I don’t feel like I really came away with a lot of new insight since it went over mostly the basics. Still, there were some cool things touched on that I’d never thought of before and it was nice to get some perspective on something I don’t understand nearly well enough. It was also a great atmosphere. Yuuki was very accommodating and so we talked about everything under the sun and pretty much ran out the clock on our discussion time. Really glad that I came to that one.
Next up was the “Foxes and Peppers” after dark show. I was definitely set on coming to this one because I really liked Pepper Coyote earlier and this time he was alongside the indomitable Foxamoore. Fox has a fantastic stage presence and is very versatile. He’s a great foil for other performers and it seems like he can work great with just about anyone. So I knew that these two together would be a winning combo. The fact that it was AD so they were allowed to drink and swear and make crude jokes and whatnot was unquestionably a bonus. As I expected, the show was a ton of fun. It was such a beautifully honest show. At one point during a transition, Pep just shouted “G MAJOR” before jumping back into it. High scores for segues.
Confidence has its place, but in little shows like this for an intimate sort of crowd it pays to have a bit of self-awareness. Small town club staff will always talk about these weekend bands that show up to play there. It’ll be all these accountants and dentists and whatever that will blow crazy amounts of money on great equipment to come out and live the dream. They’ll clearly have barely practiced and yet think they’re the hottest shit since an hour after they ate a huge handful of ghost peppers. The tiniest amount of recognition and they already have heads that belong in the Rose Bowl parade. That’s part of what I love about furry celebrities so much. Being big within a niche crowd keeps them grounded and sane, so they stay the humble, relatable people that you love no matter how big they get.
I was hanging out with Pepper and his crew after the show because I had stuck around to let him know what a great job he was doing and a few people remarked on how amazing that was and asked how I pulled it off. “Umm… I asked if he wanted to hang out and he was like ‘Yeah totally. We’re gonna get drinks in a few.’ It’s not rocket surgery or anything.” So yeah, still pretty down to earth. That hanging out didn’t go quite perfectly, though. I got to talk to some cool guys and run around the convention hall like idiots at an irresponsible hour of the morning, but it wasn’t a terribly organized endeavor. Pepper is one of those super-energetic drunks that will NEVER listen if you tell him that he shouldn’t do something. So yeah, shenanigans of various sorts were afoot very quickly and the bouncing around got so intense that I actually lost track of him at one point. An odd moment, that. I never got anybody’s phone number, so losing a visual trace meant that adventure was over whether I liked it or not. Oh well. They can’t all be winners. Part of taking a risk is the chance that shit might just flame out and accidentally obliterate a small Nigerian village. It’s all good.
I wound down the night by meeting up with Archai and whoever he had accrued in his travels. A notable addition this time around was Roman Otter, who I had one hell of a time remembering. Thankfully my meticulously maintained journal archive let me know that I’d seen him at AC, once again, as a part of Arc’s crew. On this occasion he was wearing Kayze and was absolutely killing it out there. He was super engaging and was just bouncing off the ceiling with energy. I came to learn later that it was his first time suiting, which made it all the more impressive. He must be a lot like me, just getting his throttle stuck all the way open as soon as he suits up. It was a great way to end a night.
Sunday continued the emerging trend by being filled with the most nothing out of any day so far. There may have been a shenanigan or two in there in the early afternoon that I’ve forgotten about, but the fact that I’ve forgotten it attests to its level of excitement. At one point a handful of us got together and tried some of the oft-recommended Indigeny Cider. I was all about trying a new kind of cider, but despite practically yelling at everyone about it the entire conversation I never got a straight answer as to why we couldn’t go up to someone’s room before drinking it. During our attempt we got caught by security literally before we even finished pouring because of fucking course we did. The convention hall is operated by the City of San Jose, so drinking in there is technically public intoxication. How do I understand that and these chucklefucks that are actually from here don’t? Security guards running through the Marriot lobby were a common sight during the convention, so it wasn’t like anyone would’ve been given the impression that it would be easy to pull some shit. It may have been the thrill of lawbreaking, but that cider was pretty good. We dispersed quickly out of necessity after that.
A lull like this would’ve been a great time to suit were my new suit not literally hanging on by a thread. Arc needed a babysitter for Sesame, so that filled the spot rather well. Sesame is a dangerously adorable plush sparkledragon suit, but a bit lacking in visibility, practicality, range of motion and… fingers, so I could see the problem with him going it alone. Brokenwing was also on hand for the occasion and formed the second half of the reason that having a seeing-eyed human was a prudent measure. Arc was introducing him to the wild world of suiting. Lucky bastard. Arc is a far superior fursuit senpai than the one I had my first time. Unfortunately, there was a notable enough weight-class difference between the two competitors that B-Dubs had to do a partial. Not a bad place to start though. Good outing all around. Sesame is a real attention-getter and it’s great to watch him in action.
Later on I mentioned my conclusion that I ought not tempt fate with Ace 1.0 any further and Archai would have none of it. He was adamant that this was not an occasion for caution. I was at a furry con. If there was a time to take chances, make mistakes, get messy and risk tearing myself a new one then this was it! A fairly compelling point, I had to admit. Being that I was looking at just going back to being bored to tears as an alternative I eventually ended up going for it. It helped that Arc was planning to get into a more agile suit to ambush Roman and I very much wanted the chance to see him again and let him know how stellar of a suiter he is. So yeah, we both dressed to the nines and crashed the charity auction to do that. It was kind of nice. A little more of a low-key suiting event than I’m used to, but that’s a new territory for me to explore. I got to have a nice chat with someone who was at her first con and had a million questions for someone who was in one of these crazy costumes and willing to be grilled about it. That was pretty cool actually. I like it when I get the chance to represent. After we got dressed down I got a ray of refreshing directness amid all the flaky furry social awkwardness. The conversation with Brokenwing went:
“You have dinner plans?”
“No.”
“Well let’s have dinner plans.”
“Ok.”
So then dinner, apparently. That was actually pretty nice. I never got a lot of one-on-one with any locals who weren’t Arc, so this was a cool change of pace. A lot of these guys are great folks, it’s just that only getting groups of six or seven thrown at you gets tough to handle after a while. So yeah, getting a chance to hang with Brokenwing was pretty nice. I almost forgive him for subjecting me to that British deathtrap he drove us to Frolic in. If I failed to mention that, BW drives a Mini Cooper, wherein the lock stem on the door does NOTHING. It cannot be operated by means of human hands and serves only to indicate how fucked you are by the stupid-ass design of this Orwellian bullshit machine. There is, in fact, no independent mechanism of any kind to unlock that door. Rather, in order to get it open you “Just pull the handle twice.” You JUST do something idiotic and completely counterintuitive and take a shit on the face of logic every time you want to escape from this esoteric torture chamber. “Oh what? That thing didn’t work? Just keep doing that exact same thing over and over again and I’m sure everything will be fine”, the clearly sociopathic designers whisper, drawing strength from your frustration and final submission to their twisted worldview. Fuck those degenerate swamp monsters! I climbed out of the window like a sensible person. What was I talking about? Ah, probably wasn’t important.
Changing after fursuiting managed to get my glasses left in Archai’s room, so the “FC Unleashed Furry Bandstand” ended up being rather blurry, but nonetheless quite entertaining. Pepper was out in force again, filling a break in the action with “Hey guys I’m turning down the gain just so you know!” Classy. Vox was up again with his band putting in another star performance. It was a lovely variety of personalities and artforms that I find almost exclusively in the furry fandom. I was really disappointed that they didn’t have an album minted yet that had Fox and Pep together, I would’ve totally bought that, and that’s saying something. I’m an entitled Millennial fuckwad, so I haven’t bought music in like five years. I was actually wracking my brain to come up with some kind of use for a CD when all my music players use flash memory. Really I kinda just wanted to give Pepper some money because of how great he is and just handing it to him felt kind of skeezy. After the show I managed to just barely snag Archai to get my glasses back before he left to head out to his fancy dinner plans. It was one of the handful of occasions that I might’ve ended up going to, but Archai raised the point that everyone else in attendance was having sex with at least one other person in attendance and that might make things a little awkward. A fair point, actually. My presence at many of the events of the various social bubbles Arc flits between were often plenty tenuous enough without having to worry about the love-dodecahedrons that were involved.
I went and stopped by the open mic night after that. I never seem to find out about those events early enough to prepare something to perform, but that also seemed to be true of a majority of the performers that night. I’d had good experiences with them before, but this one kinda stumbled a bit. I mean, it stumbled earnestly and in a way that maintained forward motion, but it was pretty sad. I think having a GOH or other performer-type as a host might’ve carried it a little better, but they gave it the ol’ college try. Not much for them to work with there, honestly. There were maybe three people other than myself there that were there to watch but not perform. Eight acts or something like that. Somewhat competent singing, but mostly comedy acts or stories from people that were reading from a script and still managing to forget details, or forget to be entertaining. I marvel sometimes at the way people respond to my storytelling. For a long time I didn’t think much of it, but when I take samplings of how entertaining the general populous is it’s a nice reminder of just how entertaining I actually am. There was someone who totally fucking nailed an opera, and a great reading by Mary Lowd. Those, and the fact that fuck all else was happening made the “show” worth my time I guess. After that I checked out the mostly run-down party floor. I found the Fallout guys again and came to learn that they were having some trouble moving the last of their pineapple cider before they closed up shop. At long last, I thought, my time has come. So yeah, I woke up extra late the next day for… entirely unrelated reasons.
So Monday had officially nothing happening, as opposed to most other days wherein nothing happened quite organically. This day presented me with the familiar problem of not having reservations when I found that my ride may or may not have intended on staying at the con for a further interminable period. I had to impose upon Anakin again for at the very least a place to store my stuff while I waited for Archai to figure out what he was doing with his life. I’ve never really much cared for FC’s method of fighting Post-Con Depression. That is to say, spending a whole day stringing the con up by its ankles and violently exsanguinating it in front of you until you can bear it no longer and view the end of the con as a welcome relief from its suffering. To each his own though, I suppose. Given that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter I made the most of it, mostly by saying goodbye to everyone that I knew, meaning of course that they were no longer around to spend time with. Did I mention that Mondays at FC are depressing as fuck? A wizened and world-weary gentleman in the mostly-desolate zoo/hangout spot noticed me somberly tossing the last of my Furthemore fliers onto the tables and inquired after the con. He seemed interested in staffing, which was a great thing to hear. We actually chatted for quite some time about all manner of things. Apparently he’d worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab and he countered my recommendation that he work at FTM with a recommendation that I work at LLNL. Not what I was expecting, but still a fascinating find. Penname was ‘Mercia’ or something, haven’t been able to nail that one down anywhere. Shame, too. I would’ve liked to follow up with him. That was just the sort of out-of-the-blue thing that makes the fandom such a fun thing to be a part of.
By some vector I ended up in Rioku’s room with his roomies hanging out for a bit. Again, an entirely new crowd to me, but when I saw some of the stuff they were drinking I figured that these were my people. I was lured in by a chance at relaxing in a hot tub, which was getting serviced at the time so sadface. Stunningly enough, our plan of just waiting until it was done being fixed actually worked, so we loaded up on some “Gatorade” and headed down there. I drank our (about 75% vodka) mix pretty fast to avoid being caught drinking in the hot tub. That speed made me glad I didn’t have to stand up for a while. So yeah, very relaxing, good times. I met up with Archai again, who was, for once, doing nothing. We had some good lobby hangout times as the crowd thinned. We were all kind of giggly from exertion, so it was a fun occasion. Some of my wisdom made it into a very quotable tweet as Brokenwing was trying to explain what it meant to be pansexual. My response was, quite succinctly: “What? So you stepped onto the Kinsey Scale one day and it was like ‘You’re too fat, fuck off!’ so you were like ‘Fuck it’?” Good stuff. Truly I am the voice of this generation.
Arc had another sex polyhedron dinner to run off to, so he dumped me on this complete ass, this complete ass, and this complete ass. For those not following, they were three fursuiters who were all donkeys. It was pretty swag. They were actually pretty nice asses, and I don’t say that about many people. We had dinner and did at least one shenanigan, and I had some good talk with Reveille. He seemed really interested in what I’m about and the stuff I’ve been up to. After that the plan was to spend some time at the dead dog dance that I wasn’t super psyched up for. They let me smoke some weed though and that patched that up nice. I got a dance and a vector to make the dance more interesting, so I was all for it. I didn’t really feel much from the little hit that I took, but that’s a failure mode that I’m totally okay with. I’ve taken a good solid full hit before and had trouble walking afterwards, so I called it well with a light one in order to try and get out there and do more things. Even that eventually wore on me and I found myself pretty much giving up on that day.
By then it was plenty late enough that I was convinced of Archai’s desire to remain here yet another night. Fat lot of good that did me. I checked in at Anakin’s place around midnight. He was busy with his harem of young Asian boys, so I doubted I’d be able to bed down in there anytime soon. What was actually going on was he was trying to coordinate the homeward flights of a group of his friends, but that’s the only way I could describe the scene of the five or six Asian kids all staging for departure. A noble enough cause, but it didn’t improve my situation any. I poked about a bit more, as always discovering entirely new levels of having fucking nothing to do. This time it was even worse with the added frosting on the depression cake consisting of my not even having the desire to do anything anymore. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt impotent, stupid listlessness like that. I was very tired and very sick of not knowing what the fuck to do with myself.
My next “progress” update from Anakin when I went up to get my laptop to kill time in the lobby was certainly not encouraging. He had shuttled off all but one of his sweatshop crew up there, but had hooked up with another friend and they were going to use their remaining manpower to host an impromptu photoshoot. Obviously I’m not going to obstruct them on this, everybody should get the chance to have fun here, but FUUUUUCK was I ever done with this shit. It’s so hard to convey such a simple desire “OKAY. Done! You understand that, furries? Done playing dress-up now. Want SLEEP. Go to bed and stop being stupid for a while. Make yourself not feel like a rusty trainwreck in the morning. Understand?” So yeah, that was another big wait. I got what I thought was my deliverance at about 2:30 when Anakin said they were done. I took that as my signal to head to bed, naïve twit that I was. The remaining migrant laborer was there reading, but I felt like I could deal with that. I got to bed and tried not to let my frustration keep me awake. I was unsuccessful.
The real problem came when it turned out that Anakin’s signal actually means “Hey in about an hour we’re going to come crashing in there and stumble into bed and then drunkenly grind on each other in full fursuit until we exhaust ourselves and fall asleep. Even THAT I could’ve potentially dealt with but they left the fucking LIGHTS ON. I took care of that and asked the astute reader in the corner if his tablet worked in the dark. When he confirmed this, I asked that he demonstrate it for me in a rather curt and forceful manner. I got dangerously close to sleeping after that. Naturally, Anakin pulled me back from that precipice at the last second via the fact that he was wearing a wad of foam and shag carpet on his head instead of his anti-snoring cyclotron. Hence, the triumphant return of nighttime log dynamiting. After some time of that, he saw fit to turn it up to eleven by waking just long enough to blearily tear the fursuit head off, removing the convenient sonic dampener he’d accidentally installed previously. Once again, thoughts that occur to one when he has not slept yet and it’s 4:30 in the morning. I lacked the wherewithal to get out of bed this time, plus my new bed-neighbor was quite a fair bit more attached to the comforter than Casidhe had been. No, this time the thought was a simple, occasional, very nihilist “Oh, Anakin stopped breathing. Good.”
The momentary breaks that Anakin’s sleep apnea provided were hardly enough to get anything approximating useful sleep. But I perhaps did achieve unconsciousness a few times in the 6:00 range. Oh joy. Around 8:00 I was once again awake enough to give up entirely on rest. I went back to the lobby and dicked around on my computer while I awaited deliverance from this purgatory. I wasn’t yet to the point where I’d be bull-headed enough to wake Archai and demand an immediate evac, but that was definitely the first thing I did as soon as I heard from him. Kyreeth and asked “Did you ever leave the lobby all night?” Though I rather wished I hadn’t, the reality was only slightly better than he assumed. Regardless, we were on our way soon enough. Trying to get all the people and photo gear and suits into the Yukon all at once was quite the adventure, especially given that the number of suits had increased by one in the course of the con. We did managed to Tetris three vaguely person-shaped holes into the thoroughly crammed space in there and made our way homeward at long last. So for the record, if you’re wondering how to overstay your welcome at a con, SIX FUCKING DAYS is a good way to pull it off. Arc had some shit to take care of by then since his job’s mercy is vast but not infinite. Where I once would’ve hated missing out, I was at the time merely grateful for the respite. I doubt I even said much about it. Just bid him well and slinked off to the blissful oblivion that had called to me for so long.
A final word on my ill-fated sleeping arrangements. If you know or can figure out who Anakin is, I’d ask that you don’t call him out here or hold this against him. He and his cadre are a good sort for the most part, I believe. Sure I had a pretty bad time, but I think I’ll just put them in the same category as Casidhe. Good guys that I will absolutely not sleep with under any circumstances. I actually do feel quite guilty now that I neglected to pay him on my way out. I say neglected as though I forgot and in the moment yes, I probably used my crippling fatigue as an excuse. In reality it occurred to me to settle up whilst I still had plenty of time to make that particular transaction happen. I was just in such a bad way at the time though that I didn’t think I could suffer the sight of him without cursing a blue streak at the very least and perhaps even taking that that rattling turbine engine that kept me up all night and bashing it right out of his insufferable face. Properly-rested me made a much more mature assessment of the situation and I’m very grateful for that. With a little luck perhaps there remains a happy ending to be found here, and I would be quite remiss if I didn’t put my best foot forward to find it.
I managed to get back to life in time for some dinner Tuesday night. We gathered up an entirely new set of Arc’s friends and went to a lovely little Irish pub, the sort of place I’d been wanting to go for some time but couldn’t seem to find near the convention hall. Very nice place, great atmosphere too. They even brought out the fife and fiddle and the whole deal for some great live music. That night Archai had a look at the zipper in Ace 1.0, and by “had a look” I mean “completely tear it out and re-sew it” because there was absolutely nothing salvageable about the way it was in there. He got halfway through the job before knocking off for the night, resolving to throw the rest of it together before my flight the next day. I would’ve been insulted by his work ethic were I not paying him in gregariousness. Despite having spent much of the day sleeping, sleep seemed a very attractive option to me as well. After all, I had a flight to catch the following morn- oh. Turns out I had a flight the following evening. Really glad I checked that one before going to bed. I couldn’t fathom what could’ve possessed me to book a 7:30 PM flight. I may have done it accidentally, to be honest. AM and PM being one of those clunky, inefficient crusty relics of the past that America sticks with out of habit because change is HARD. You know, things like daylight savings time, pennies, imperial measurements, the QWERTY keyboard, or most of Congress.
I was actually rather grateful for the reprieve on my flight time, though, because as discussed previously I had only just recovered useful consciousness for the first time that morning. The visit’s end was more dictated by the start of classes than anything else, but I did still want something of a buffer against stumbling out of a convention directly into an airplane. That’s usually a bummer. This bonus day was one to be spent with Zantal, it seemed. Or rather that was the plan. In keeping with his usual patterns he arrived at Zantal O’clock, which I had come to learn was usually “sometime this afternoon” regardless of what actual numbers he specified. He actually did have a rough time of it though. On top of usual Zantanigans, there was a snag with the flight of the person he was driving to the airport, so he had to go grab him again and ferry him to an airport that wasn’t defective. Or as he phrased it “Goin to Oakland because SFO was \o/” True to his (suitably translated) word he did arrive close to Zantal:00. It was like Zantal:35 at the latest. We loaded up all my stuff and headed out to meet Arc for lunch.
Lunch happened, and was quite fun. I’d been getting along with Zan pretty well in the course of all this, so it was good to have a more quiet space to interact with him. I was very flattered when I heard that he was going to throw on Fyre, his sergal, just so that I could spend some time with him, because I’d missed my narrow window to do so at the con. I’d mentioned a week earlier that I was a big fan of the character. As I recall I was eating my own kneecaps at the time because we had to make room for Zan in the back of Arc’s BRZ. I was filled with immeasurable rage and bafflement, not unlike people trying to pay their taxes ‘round this time, as to how in the hell someone would ever think that anything even vaguely humanoid would fit in those decorative cubbyholes behind the front seats. Why the fuck did they even bother? To my astonishment, there actually was an answer to this.
Two-seaters are often much more expensive to insure because they tend to be fancy, high-performance sportscars that young people with more dollars than brain cells (or more cents than sense, HAH! Now you can’t unread that!) use to do irresponsible things. Since they’re expensive as fuck to repair and spend a fair amount of time going sideways and doing sick kick-flips off of cloverleaf ramps or whatever it is fancy cars do, they’re considered high-risk, and thus cost more to insure than the hands of a professional chainsaw juggler. Stamping two useless, seat-shaped divots into the interior of the car behind the actual, person-accommodating seats can be done without massively impacting the performance of the vehicle and thus advertised size of the owners genitals, but you can still write “4 seats” on your insurance policy without it technically being fraud. To me that smacks of a layer cake auspiciously filled with bullshit and foam packing peanuts. So far as I’m aware, the risk tables that insurance companies use today are specified down to model, year and sometimes even trim. Maybe that’s an ulterior motive behind all fancy sports cars having unintelligible ciphers scrawled across their quarter-panels in the raving chickenscratch of a madman instead of model names. They’ve just gotta throw enough confusing junk codes at their insurance company to bamboozle them into thinking they’re doing something other than rushing headlong into the wild world of competitive spinal compression.
“What? Oh that can’t be right. I have a ZGX1337 TkzXx 2048, not a CLS5500 TzzxB 420. That bill should totally be like $430 less.”
“… Sir, you also wrote a random alphanumeric string as your occupation.”
“Well, I’m SORRY we can’t all be insurance adjusters and SOME of us have to work as lowly MKXCTS370Zs.”
I dunno, I think it just pissed me off because it made me resent having company. It turned my favorable reaction to Zan into “What? We’re bringing Zan along? My fucking femurs don’t fold in half, Archai!”
Seriously. All you’re saying to anyone who you’re putting into a coupe with more than two people is “Fuck you AND your ostentatious desire to have bones!”
Oh yeah, that’s what I was talking about. The previous week when we origamied Zan into an inverse water lotus so that we could stuff him into a space that was verifiably never designed with accommodating full-size a human body in mind it came up in conversation that I’d seen his suit before I’d ever met him or so much as learned his name. Fyre was one of those characters that I’d never properly had a chance to properly meet or engage with, but were always a joy to see just because they had a really pleasing aesthetic and great stage presence. Kinda like slightly-more-desirable-collection-of-random-letters Klovix. I’ve never met the guy, but I smile every time I see him in suit. So yeah, I had told Zan a week prior that Fyre was one of those suits that I just loved to see all the time and he adorably exploded into a cascade of bashful giggling, as he does from time to time. I never really expected much to come of it beyond that, but I came to find that prior to the interference of aeromobile shenanigans and the correction for converting to Pacific Zantard Time he had intended to throw on Fyre just for me because he’s always there for his fans. That was a really lovely thought and I was disappointed that we didn’t have time for it.
As it was, we barely had a moment to spare to drive to the server farm where Archai spends his days industriously working the land and praying for a fertile data harvest so that we could meet up and get some illicit back-alley needlework done. And by that I mean we met up in the parking lot so that I could spread Ace 1.0 out in the back of the Yukon so Arc could finish sewing the zipper. Zantal took what looked to be a much-needed nap as his better half did more textile magic. It was kind of funny how he woke up to observe “Are you playing that song just because Archai is sewing?” For the record, yes. Yes I was. We were starting to feel like we were cutting it close, but Archai got me a functional zipper in good time. I was immensely grateful for that, as I was looking forward to wearing Ace 1.0 in some environs where nobody is familiar with his pedigree.
With a few quick parting words, we were off. I joked on the way that I hoped it went better than Zan’s last airport trip. I got through security quite smoothly, actually. It was pretty quick given that I had to check my Ace Case and then process my other bag through the checkpoint, as I was going to run the free ride luggage gambit again. You know, because I like to live dangerously. I’d heard a few strange things coming out of the flight notification systems, so I went to ask a gate agent if everything was going okay. As I walked away after hearing her reassurance, her answer went from “Yes” to “Oh, well hold on a second.” The incoming flight’s arrival had been delayed slightly, which wasn’t an issue, mostly. In my case in particular the 50 minute delay and 35 minute layover left me with -15 minutes to change planes. Negotiations followed.
“Hm, that’s not going to work. Further flights to Boston are probably going to be canceled because of the snow.”
“Well, you literally just mentioned how I’m going to miss a connection in Boston. Implying that I do not actually intend to go there, yes?”
“Oh. Oh! Yes that makes this much easier. I can do SFO-PHL-ROC. You’ve got about 90 minutes to make that departure.”
That was very good news. Usually “you’re going to miss a connection” means that your life is about to become suddenly very difficult. So a short delay was about the best-case scenario for that one. 2-for-2 on Zan taking people to defective airports though. Way to drop the ball, Zan! Anyways, I went back down and un-checked my bag, hopped on a shuttle and was on my way. SFO actually had a plane at the gate, a notable improvement in my mind. Not having a plane there is a significant disadvantage. They also announced free gate check as soon as I got there, so I won that game before I was even ready to play. Naturally what followed was a brutal and unforgettable reminder as to why I never intentionally book redeye flights. Sleeping on a plane for an hour or two in a daytime flight is a nice way to make the flight go a little bit faster, but that hour or two is really all I’m capable of. The rest of the flight is just more exhausted torture. Being kept up all night by a cruel confluence of circumstance was something that I’d had plenty enough of already, so this was not quite a tiptoe through the tulips. I managed to drag myself into the ruined wasteland that was Philadelphia airport right in the middle of clock-butthole. At least ruins were what I expected to find. I skipped the shuttle this time because I had a long connecting time and I could take this terminal. My momma didn’t raise no quitter! I came to find that some large portions of the airport were actually pretty competently maintained. It was only at the concourse that served the Northeast that you drifted off the edge of the map into an area that the game developers never intended for players to wander into. Ah well. They took me home, can’t fault them there.
What followed was another pretty much solid day of sleep. Like, dangerously so. I slept from 10:30 AM to 2 PM, and then from 11 PM to 2 PM. Kind of impressive, actually. Of course that meant that I got there just in time to leave once again. I was nudged out the door early by the weather, which appeared to be quite paradoxically pouring snow all over the damn place all along the eastern seaboard pretty much everywhere except Buffalo. I should’ve known it would be my luck to return on opposite day. So yeah, I’m back at college now and I’ve spent much of this week writing a con report instead of doing work. Oh dear, I should probably get on that.
FC 2016 Part I: I didn't get to talk about the con yet
General | Posted 10 years agoAnd so with a shuddering lurch I began my latest adventure out into the world. At the very least I had the sense to go about the always phenomenally entertaining production of jumping through my own asshole to avoid the various indignities of travel to buy plane tickets two months ago. Never before did I realize what an expensive inconvenience it is to desire to not leave and arrive at inhuman, torturous hours of the morning. I realize that’s how the world works these days in many ways, but I remain convinced that if clocks needed to shit, their assholes would be located between two and five AM. It’s such a theatrical balancing act, sitting at one’s computer, skittering deftly over a half-dozen different booking aggregators and booking aggregator aggregators, convinced that you’re going to be gaming the system like it’s never been gamed before. Naturally that system has been gamed so hard already that at this point it’s playing Dungeon Master and has a stack of rulebooks limited only by the height of the ceiling in its mother’s basement.
I’m almost certain that I paid myself substantially less than minimum wage for the time I spent on the Great 2015 Booking Hoedown. I suppose it’s still an important ritual though. There are a lot of key things to be hashed out. Things like “I like Southwest, but do I like Southwest $85 much?” Probably not. “Do I like them 5:30 AM much?” Fuck no. So yeah, it’s a lot of important stuff which, while conferring only a moderate tangible benefit, makes me feel a whole lot better about the whole process. At the very least when I’m sitting here I get to have the thought that this, somewhat depressingly, is the best possible experience I could’ve had. Sure, there were a few somewhat tempting alternatives. I discovered this new wrinkle in the quantum mesh that forms this strange construct; some special fare rates that were available by phone only. They were undoubtedly a small but statistically significant savings, but the offer felt skeezy as fuck and wanted me to fly out uncomfortably close to clockbutthole-in-the-morning, so I didn’t take them up on it. That’s just as well, I suppose. A phone call would’ve brought an uncomfortably high level of human interaction to the process. Simply can’t have that.
I suppose what finally made the decision for me was the fact that I decided this was the time I was going to really go for it and try to sneak my way through without a checked bag. I usually travel with a rolling bag that narrowly meets the dimensions of a carry-on and a backpack that narrowly meets the definition of a personal item, so the attempt was really just a matter of nutting up and shouldering the burden of carrying everything with me everywhere I went. Usually I just break down and pay the extra $25 to have the bag not be my problem for a while. My experience led me to believe that I had fairly good odds of slipping a free bag through without too much trouble. Even if it doesn’t fit in the bin (a feat I’d actually never tried) I knew that I could just check it at the gate, for free, ideally. Almost every time I fly there’s an announcement at the gate that the plane is too small for traditional carry-on luggage or it’s just like, SUPER full, you guys, and they’re relying on the assistance of we, the noble travelers, in order to free up bin space, so free gate-check for everyone!
It’s extremely rare these days to be on a flight that’s not 97% or more full. Hell, I’ve been on several that were 102% full. I guess that’s the influence of all the broke losers like me who are min/maxing their travel plans to shave as much as possible off the fares. I’m sure it’s done all manner of unholy things to their profit margins. Probably if you sent up a plane that was less than 90% full you’d lose money. Makes me wonder if they’re not shrewdly gaming us right back with their flight cancellations. It would explain how they’ve suddenly gotten so conspicuously good at filling all their flights. When a sudden mechanical problem comes up that shuffles everyone onto other planes, perhaps it might be that flight was merely unprofitable, and those people would be put to better use topping off eight or ten other flights than by betting on the loser. Sneaky, but I guess it is ultimately all our fault. If the only behavior we reward is lower fares, then we shouldn’t be too surprised when they add a new fare classes called “economy minus” or “steerage plus” where they just strap you to the wall for the duration of the flight.
In any case, leg one from Rochester to Philly was of the “oops the plane is too small, sorry!” variety, so my luggage subterfuge ( luggterfuge?) was off to a good start. I checked it, but this was the kind of check where they give it back to you at the end of the flight instead of at your destination. It was one of those little jumps where drink service is just barely shorter than the flight itself. Fine by me, especially since my bizarre and nonsensical insistence on daylight-hour flying had led to the trip consisting of three legs instead of two. Once again I ask a lot of my booking ritual. I want to fly to San Jose because Archai assures me that though it’s fairly close to the major hubs on the map, a change of airports can make a substantial difference in driving. Seeing as he’s letting me stay at his place for quite a substantial period, I ought to do what I can to accommodate him. The fare difference there would probably get me 2/3 of a night in a hotel, so it’s still a win for me overall.
Regardless, if one is trying to fly from a somewhat obscure regional airport to a somewhat obscure regional airport, you’re gonna have a bad time. Hence my realization that Rochester sends out all its flights to any place good smack dab in the middle of clockbutthole and I’d have to do something weird and dumb like reach O’hare by way of Philadelphia. In any case, the plane to Philly did get there (yay) and I got to see what kind of fresh inconvenience hell was spawned by the entire plane gate-checking their bags. It was decidedly not fun, though I don’t know what the hell I was expecting. Avoiding this kind of crap is what kept me paying baggage fees (or the Southwest fare/asinine scheduling markup) all this time. So yeah, we all got to stand around jammed close together in the gantry to scramble over each other to grab our bags. It looked remarkably like hyenas descending upon a fresh carcass, though less orderly and entertaining.
I wasn’t too bummed out about the delay at the gate because I had a long layover and I was looking for any excuse I could get to spend less time in the moldy tar-paper shack that Philly stubbornly insists is an airport. The board at the concourse didn’t list my connection and I couldn’t get a signal to ask the internet about it. I’m sure the gate attendant could’ve looked it up, but again I saw a chance to skim off some more of that silly human interaction nonsense and went with the hard way. And really, taking the most difficult path was far more entertaining and rewarding in the end. By taking the path less traveled by I spent more time in pursuit of actually accomplishing a thing and less time simply languishing in this decrepit sarlacc pit regretting, individually and collectively, every single decision that led me there.
Thumbing my nose at the intended path just to be spiteful of my situation reminded me of the time that the XO told me that I’d better not be on his bridge while wearing THAT hat with THAT uniform because it was out of regs. Naturally I responded by climbing eight decks down and walking the requisite 1.6 football fields aft to change into a different uniform because fuck you old man I like this hat! As I continued to survey what I surmise an airport would look like if it were a level in a post-apocalypse first-person shooter game, I recalled my father driving me to the airport. Upon hearing that I was connecting in Philly, he responded with “Ooh. You gonna be stuck there long? That place is a shithole, you know. Grungy, nasty dump of a place. I spent the whole time there wondering if that’s what it felt like to be homeless.” (I can’t imagine from whence I inherited my tremendously tactful discourse.) So yeah, it would seem dad wasn’t exaggerating and apparently this is far from a new problem.
A lot of the most decayed, dangerous and confusingly arranged areas of the concourse were under the guise of “renovation”, to which I responded with a politely skeptical “Fuck you. Ain’t none of this place ever been renovated. I bet that part of the building just fell down so you slapped up some sheetrock to cover it up.” In any case, though my archaeological surveys of the surrounding ruins, I learned the correct gate for my flight and got on the bus to get there. That’s always the first thing I do on arrival, because every airport seems to have a unique shenanigan in place to obstruct that process. Philly’s complication du jour was that our bus had to wait for a plane to take off before we could go across. Striking that no one thought of busses and planes crossing the same travel lanes as being a problem in the design stage. That trip involved some notable jaunts outdoors that were quite invigorating as I’d already put away my coat for the preceding flight and was hesitant to get it out again for just a little wait at the gantry and just a little dash for the slightly less frigid lean-to that I was being shuttled towards. I forewent the heavy coat this time because I wasn’t getting to California by way of a week in Denver like last time. The coat I brought this time is a nifty affair that transforms into a somewhat passable neck pillow when the scenario demands. A neat trick to be sure, but the process of inarticulately jamming all that into a space only allegedly designed to accommodate it is far less elegant and seamless than I was led to believe. (That’s what she said! Oh… No wonder she doesn’t return my calls.) So yes, I ended up making some not-insignificant outdoor jaunts in breezy see-your-breath kinds of conditions in just a t-shirt and jeans. Netted a few odd looks for my optimism about the whole production, but it felt good in the end, tipping my hat to a kindly passerby and assuring them “Why yes, I AM an indestructible highlander, wholly unmoved by this pathetic bluster you peasants claim to be winter, thank you for asking.”
Ah well, I soon found the hovel within which I was to while away the next few hours. Perhaps it was a good experience in the end. My constitution may have been softened by having been conditioned to expect frivolities like electrical power and windows that close properly. When I began using my laptop I was tempted to blow the extra battery power on leaving the wireless card enabled just because the erratic sputtering of the signal was hilarious to watch. I don’t think I could fuck up a wireless hotspot that badly if I tried. Just trying to navigate to the Cross Time Café Forum yielded one of the most interesting error messages I’ve seen in a long time. The spasmodic flickering of the wireless network icon in the taskbar was a lot like how the control panels on the starship Enterprise will flash wildly and shoot out a hail of molten slag at the slightest provocation. It’s like someone took the time to make the connection look as dramatically and devastatingly broken as possible. Wait, maybe that was it! This place looks the way it does because it was strafed by a squadron of TIE fighters just weeks ago and the Caprican refugees are struggling to hold it together to continue sheltering the budding Argent Dawn so that they can safely resume their crusade to take down Voldemort and his army of flying monkeys. It’s the most logical explanation! Realistically though, they were playing Fallout Boy over the announcing system a lot, so I forgive them for everything.
In any case, I eventually realized that I know a few giant eagles from way back and they owed me a favor, so I enlisted their help to be delivered from the clutches of the Urgals infesting the Philadelphia lowlands. Fortunately the eagles had very limited overhead bin space, so I was able to check my bag for free all the way to my destination. Hah! Consider yourself gamed, “the system”. I’mma take this hard won $25 to California and buy like, as much weed as that buys. I don’t actually know how much that is I’ve never bought weed before. It’s probably not a lot. Which is good as I’ve also never smoked much of it before. I thought through this decision very carefully is what I’m saying. Anyways, the Deus Eagles Machina dropped me off still pretty damn far from my destination, but then again they’re known for doing that. “The Lonely Mountain is right there, assholes! What gives?” I guess that’s why I only use them when I’ve written myself into a corner and need to handwave away a bunch of important details. Still, they did manage to confer me to the shining palace of the Goddess Oharé, where the vaunted ceilings and cheery merchants granted me solace. And also where they wanted $7 to use the internet so on second thought fuck those guys.
The last plane was large and fancy enough to have TVs. Not much in the free queue, but I took the opportunity to watch the Departed. It’s one of those movies that I have several friends who would never forgive me for having never seen it. Great film though, once you get past the sickeningly bad Boston accents. Lots of classics I don’t really “get”, but this one was solid. Had some of Jack Nicholson at his most Jack Nicholson-est and Leonardo Dicaprio at his most difficult-to-distinguish-from-Matt-Damon-est. I made it to San Jose and into Archai’s fancy sportscar without further incident worthy of note. I suppose that in and of itself is rather significant given that I just threw 2000 words at discussing how the flight was. The next day was the much-vaunted chicken meet. Actually it’s more like the kind-of-unremarkable chicken meet if you’re actually from the bay area. I am quite reliably both awed and sickened with envy that there are so many furry events in California (I’d say “the California coast” but let’s face it that’s the only part of California that has people.) that they start to compete with each other for the most primo timeslots and people get blasé about them because there’s just so damn many happening all over the place all the time. Chicken was the first of many reminders that I am a stranger in a strange land. Though quite well attended, there was a distinct lack of people I didn’t need an introduction to. I did manage to pick Casidhe out of the crowd though. That was nice. I never seem to be around him for very long at a stretch, but he’s a pretty chill dude.
I had met Rioku at chicken, and on Friday I came to find that he was slated to be my babysitter for the day while Arc went down to the peninsula to till the furrows at the server farm and other responsible adult things. As such, my day was filled with a lot more racecargofast kind of stuff, which I was by then at long last developing an appreciation for. It actually is kind of interesting to see and feel the differences in performance between different cars, now that I’ve managed to convince myself to care about such things. Rioku’s ride had a pretty interesting weight distribution in that its engine could be described as bigger than a breadbox but only slightly, with a minimalist body on the car to match. Really good power for fighting in the featherweight class. There’s plenty of great driving to be had up in the hills. It really is quite the novelty to be able to just throw a day at driving around and hanging out. It takes some good people and beautiful countryside to be able to do that.
Saturday’s highlight was go-karting. This place was one of the more advanced ones, so it was good stuff. I’d always thought of karting as a kid’s thing, but apparently there are some pretty intense racing experiences to be had if you’re willing to look. And boy are these guys willing to look! Archai has got quite a crew out here, and a great many of them were huge gearheads. Even the ones without fancy sportscars are pretty hard up about fancy sportscars and have done a lot of work souping up what they do have. One of them had a van that sounded like it wanted to grow up to be a turbine. It gets a little overwhelming and tiresome for someone that’s pretty lukewarm about cars. They’re still good people though, and I zone out sometimes anyways, so it’s nice to have designated zoning out periods built into the conversation. Or I could just talk to Sidian. Officially doubling the always-critical “people I saw in California who I can credibly claim to know” statistic with her eventual recollections of our previous interactions, Sidian was in much the same boat as I was. It was good to know there was someone else around who could get through the day without needing to huff octane and mainline a half-ounce of SAE 10W-30 to take the edge off.
It’s tougher to ignore the fact that I’m surrounded by a hypercompetitive Mad Max caravan on the racetrack though. I’m sure that I could’ve had a lot of fun out there if not for the all-city racing circuit out there trying to defy physics with nothing but the insatiable fury of their motor boners. It’s not a great experience if you’re just trying to have fun. Everyone out there doing their damndest to be immortalized as the fastest thing on earth powered by a leaf blower engine doesn’t make for the most cheery atmosphere. Plus there’s the fact that if everyone else in attendance is going to pass you four times then the race is going to be more letting people pass than actual racing. I did get some good advice that led to substantial performance improvements, but when you’re trying to actually accomplish something it’s a lot more aggravating to get slapped into the outside lane by OctaneCock #29. I guess in the end I made an impression though. By the end of our session everyone had learned to either stay the hell away from me or plow straight through me, because trying to predict my driving patterns was something that I couldn’t do myself. So woe betide those who’d waste their precious time attempting it. I still have really amazing skid control, which let me do a lot of fun stuff that felt really good. I got a pretty decent lap time for someone doing essentially everything wrong, so I’ll roll with it. A few times I’d try to do an actual coherent racing thing in order to improve my performance, but I’d always get t-boned straight into the wall in the middle of doing it, so I settled on the “Fuck lap times and fuck anyone within 20 yards of me” style that came naturally to me.
In any case, I resolved not to let something like a discontinuity in choice of hobbies make me bring everyone down and in the end I had a lot of fun having dinner with all those guys. Being constantly buried in new people is a bit exhausting, but at least I’m quite capable of it. I’d always thought of myself as being something of an acquired taste, but apparently I can still hack it when I’m playing away games. There was some discussion of who would drive that night at the end. I wasn’t feeling up to drinking a lot given the prolonged omnidirectional trauma that my abdomen had just been subjected to, so I briefly entertained the idea of being a driver. Until I remembered that all these piston-fucking gear twinks only have manual transmissions. So I just went as a passenger and then ended up drinking a bunch anyway. Zantal and Scotch had some egg nog left that wasn’t quite to the point of developing independent locomotion, so we managed to make some drinkable stuff with it. Honorable mentions of other gear twinks in attendance go to Broken Wing, LeadPaw, Leda and Frish.
From there we proceeded to Frolic, a monthly furry event that a local nightclub puts on. It wasn’t in conjunction with FC this year, but I think that’s really for the best. It would seem to me that the two events would compete rather than synergize, but then again I’m notoriously bad at predicting the behavior and values of this peculiar race known as “Californians”. It seemed like a cool opportunity though, and not one that ought to be dismissed out of hand. It was nice, I guess. It was a little difficult to get past the simple fact that “Let’s make this EDM mix show up on seismographs in Dallas” isn’t exactly my preferred choice of atmosphere. There were plenty of people outside though, so it wasn’t like taking a break outside was boring. I spent most of the night there, actually. Hell, that’s where most of the good stuff happened. Indoors had precisely one good thing and her name was Bernadette. She was a wily and spirited bar matron who took very good care of the animals in her charge. She was an absolute artist with cocktails and, had cash or perforated tympanic membranes not been valid considerations, she might’ve led me to get far more inebriated than I did. I’ve never before met someone who could reliably produce entirely palatable drinks of that potency and believe me, I take every chance I can get to investigate rumors of such things. All other such claims have proven to be more stuffed with crap than a dung beetle condo. I know it’s a little superficial to say that the true magic of the place was behind the bar, but it totally was, you guys.
Like I said, I found the outside of the club to be a lot more fun, lack of available organic solvents notwithstanding. For a time it was put upon me to hold SilverWolf in a somewhat vertical position. I’m not certain if he approached me because he remembered me from RainFurrest or because I had the sturdiest looking shoulders within grabbing distance. I couldn’t get much out of him in regards to that or any other question, but he appeared to be having a really good time. Corvus from the Furthemore staff also found me there and I got to catch up with him. It’s nice to stay at least a little in the loop on that. Not being able to go and staff this time around was a real bummer, but it sounds to me like they’re still doing great work out there. I’m glad that I remembered to bring those promotional fliers that Serval sent me back at RMFC. Not sure how many people we might be able to entice from this far out, but I bet it’ll be zero if I don’t try. Also hanging around outside was Vox Fox. I had to talk to him for a while and listen closely, but I remembered him singing at last year’s FC talent show and totally killing it. He was very flattered that I remembered him, even if it took me a bit to come around. Axio also featured prominently in this adventure, but was usually moving too fast to properly interact with.
One of those ubiquitous folks who I’d seen many times but never managed to pin down was the indomitable purple giraffe, Zarafa. He was quite a find and I’m glad I reached out to him. Ordinarily I’d say that he has quite a lot of energy, but that phrase carries a very different meaning in furry circles. That really wasn’t it. It was more like vitality. He had this sort of Mister Rodgers vibe to him where he’d take the most earnest and delightful interest in whatever you were up to and make you feel good about it no matter what it was. Also very common in the fandom is that whole “Yeah! Everyone hug everyone!” kind of attitude, but Zarafa has this way about him that actually gets people to do it. I got involved in a hug that he started which ballooned out to contain eight people or so. It fluctuated some, but it had to be 10 or 15 minutes after he left that the number trickled down. One of the last holdouts of that particular hug was Spottacus, who seemed to be just dying for someone to talk to in the best possible way. He does fancy technology things, like so many people around here, and was apparently making fantastical breakthroughs in wearable tech the likes of which the world has never seen. We were out there together for quite a while and I think Spotty spent more time draped over my shoulders than my jacket did. Really though, there are far worse positions to be stuck in than listening to exuberant strings of Oh God you guys I need to tell you about how happy I am AAAAAGH!
Out of convenience of location and presumably in service of the doing of more things, we spent the night at Zantal’s house. Sunday morning was kind of slow, but that’s to be expected for following a night of Frolicking. Vertanir, Tuna and I all went to Trader Joe’s in the morning to stock up with the ultimate intent of creating breakfast, and eventually we did so. Once we got ourselves around we concluded that there were sights to be seen and Catdude was up in the hills in sort of the area where we needed to be. He works at The Chabot Space and Science Center, so that sounded like a fun place to drop by. That didn’t work out ideally as some stalling on our departure and various logistical complications led to us arriving rather close to closing time and quite short on daylight. Still, it was nice to meet someone from the Freefall forum and we were close to the Embarcadero, one of the things that Archai had been so keen to show me.
We parked along one of the less famous parts of the famous Lombard Street and climbed the hill to see Coit Tower. We got there just in time for it to close, so yeah. There are consequences for staying out late, kids! Really though, it’s worth it. California has so many furries and so much stuff to do, I don’t think there was a single night where I went to bed earlier than 2 AM. Normally I’d be pissed about that schedule but this was amazing! We went on to climb down the hill and see the fascinating phenomenon of all the houses stacked like lego bricks all the way up the hillside. Lots of fascinating architecture there. Some creative stuff comes out when you’ve got some of the most expensive real-estate in the world and a whole host of crippling space constraints. Some spots look like they belong in a fantasy novel. There’s no way you’d assume people would build like that, but build they do.
The trip back up we did by cable car. A lot better than climbing, to be sure, and Arc remarked on how he’d never ridden one before either. I think he actually appreciated the chance to do all the tourist stuff that you just don’t normally do when you live in a place. We learned why they weren’t a commuter staple while we were waiting a half hour for our connection, but still, it’s about the experience. Cable cars are just about the most steampunk thing I’ve ever seen that actually serves a practical experience, so they’re definitely worth the price of admission. Which is occasionally free, so you can’t argue with that. Though I suppose we did get a reminder why it’s so rare for people to use them these days when we had to wait more than half an hour to make our connection.
Finishing out that night was a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant with a half dozen people I’d never met commemorating the return of two other people I’ve never met, Stormy Kittyhawk and Toby Snow Wolf if I recall correctly. So yeah, plenty of time to practice introductions once again. I’d say practice remembering names too, but I’m pretty ass at that even under normal conditions. Still pretty fun. Lobster ravioli is a thing that exists. My life is a little better for knowing that. And eating it. Monday had another quiet start, but I could hardly complain. We did a lot of fun driving that day. Out to see the sights in a couple parks and then a hell of a trip down Skyline Drive. I actually loved that one, a lot. Not just a putting-up-with-car-stuff-because-otherwise-I’ll-have-no-one-to-hang-out-with kind of thing either. That was actually a ton of fun. The roads were fantastically well designed for this. Great views, interesting layouts and plenty of space to really open up the throttle. I supposed that I’d best appreciate this stuff while I was in California, because I just don’t see roads like that back home. It was extreme sightseeing, such a delightful combination. I felt like I could spend a whole day doing that.
Actually, we kinda did. We walked down the downtown beach head when we were through and it was quite dark by then. It was a bit late for beachgoers and a bit early for bonfires, but I liked the quiet. I didn’t expect to be able to see at the waterfront, but we were right next to the massive disco ball that is San Francisco, so it was actually quite easy to see out there. Arc did his usual thing where we stopped at a coffee shop so he could work for a while. I was actually quite impressed with how little he’d had to work so far, especially given that he was about to take time off for FC. The next day that would change, but for right then we’d managed a pretty solid day together. Just when I thought that things were winding down though, Vert came to kidnap us for booze and cartoons. Of the things to be kidnapped for, that’s gotta be among the better ones.
The planned viewing was a bunch of episodes of Stephen Universe, which I could hardly contain my indifference about. The program was changed to cut out a few episodes in order to fit in a showing of Labyrinth in honor of the late Mr. Bowie. That sounded pretty nice. I’d never seen the movie, so I guess it would be worth figuring what all the fuss was about. The little bit of Stephen Universe that I did watch was in many ways about what I’d expected to find, but was also something of a pleasant surprise. It had some of the wildly insubstantial avalanches of Deus Ex Machina that I expected, but I came to look past that. There was some good character development and pacing, along with a very compelling heel-face-turn that I rather enjoyed. Not saying I’ll stick with the show, but for all the confusion I’ve experienced about the show’s massive and positively frothing fan base, I guess I can say now that I kinda get it. Labyrinth was pretty good too, definitely does deserve to be a classic. I wasn’t blown away, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie with such rock solid fundamentals. It hit all the right points, good pacing, very engaging, and had a lot of very impressive practical effects. All around, a great way to end a night.
Tuesday was where Arc’s whole “having a job” habit really caught up with him. Fortunately I’d managed to eventually put together some plans to meet a friend from school who lives in Novato. That town is a somewhat reasonable distance away, but I’d still be asking for a lot if I wanted a pickup. As such, it was put upon me to embark on a public transportation adventure of some notable scope. Having only casual familiarities with cities and transport infrastructures of any kind, this was a bit more of a tall order than one might expect. Archai was clever enough to toss me an old tablet to allow me to use modern space magic to smooth things over. That solved pretty much everything, actually. I’m actually considering getting a tablet. My objection to a smartphone is based in large part around the fact that if I had access to the internet at all times I’d probably never communicate with another human face to face again. Having a tablet divorces the phone functionality from all the future space magic, so I’d be able to use it only when it’s actually needed, and honestly so far traveling is the only time I’ve ever felt like I need one.
Archai had told me that the metro station was a few minutes away from his house. I came to learn later that he meant driving not walking, and had intended to deposit me there on his way to work. By the time I realized this I’d already YOLO’d out of the house and it was a bit too late to un-YOLO. I’d woken up to the sun that morning at like 7:30 as I had several times before and I realized that I could let it beat me as I’d done every other morning, or I could get mad! Ask to see this morning’s manager! Have my engineers invent combustible lemons and burn this morning’s house down! So yeah I got an early start just in case I suck at doing trains. In the end I did pretty okay at trains, so I got a good amount of useable time for the day. I took the ferry to Larkspur and was greeted by a most fascinating sign. Well there go all my plans I guess. Meeting up with my fraternity brother kicked off another day of mostly “Oh cool I never do these things because I live here this is really neat!”
Something that he definitely did a lot was go to In-N-Out Burger, but obviously that’s still worth doing. I’d been to one last time I was in California, obviously, since it’s a requirement. I didn’t really get it though. I'm not saying In-N-Out makes a bad burger by any stretch of the imagination. The thing is, people don't treat In-N-Out Burger like it makes a fine burger. People treat In-N-Out Burger like it cures cancer and makes you shit solid gold for a week. Essentially everyone I’ve ever known from the west coast was constantly spewing all of the over-the-top "It will change your life" kind of praise at me before I had ever even considered going to California. So, naturally, I was very much looking forward to investigating the hype once I arrived. I did. It was fine. Just fine. It took a second pass for me to figure it all out though. When you actually press someone for detail while they’re cleaning the ecstatic smear of jizz off the front of their shirt from the mere mention of In-N-Out, usually you come to find that it’s not really the quality of the food that makes the restaurant so iconic. Usually you’ll get them to admit that FatBurger or Five Guys or some other chain makes a superior product. The real reason for all the hype is right in the name.
This place has an incredibly streamlined architecture that lets them put people through with incredible speed and efficiency. I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more places that have a limited menu like they do. Having just a few things to specialize in means faster service, better quality and a cost savings as well, since maintaining a crazy huge inventory harms all those things. Having just three menu choices is actually a pretty clever way of circumventing the problem of people getting to the front of the line and just sitting there, gormlessly staring at the bewildering array of choices before them, finding themselves utterly unprepared for this utterly trivial decision. I’d never really understood the point of the secret menu until I saw it in action. Again, it’s all about efficiency. Secret menu items let you add variety without confusing any decision-impaired sea cucumbers with too many options, lest they experience a panic attack when asked what they wish to eat and vomit up their internal organs instead of placing an order. Because secret orders have to be looked up elsewhere, you’ve got to come in the door knowing exactly what you want or you won’t get it, and that’s exactly what this place needs to keep running smoothly. And of course no mention of this place would be complete without pointing out how jarring it is to see someone in the back cutting up potatoes to make into French fries. Did you know that French fries started as potatoes? It’s a well-concealed secret in most fast food joints.
In any case, I slogged through all that irreverent drivel in order to tell you all about the awful service that I got at In-N-Out Burger. I’m not even being facetious or anything. They fucked up objectively quite badly. It was a little awkward when my friend got his meal and I was still just sitting there. Being a long-time veteran of this crystal sky palace, he assured me that I need only have faith. For about ten minutes. Then his counsel changed to a baffled “Yeah, I guess maybe you should say something.” So with due diligence I mentioned how odd it was that they were serving up order 53 when I hadn’t seen order 46 yet. The employee that I asked about this confirmed that she had no recollection of filling that order. She asked for the receipt so that she could track it down. When she handed the paper to the fry cook he looked like she had just handed him a live squid. He’d never seen it before. So yeah, it wasn’t like my order was ready somewhere or someone else had picked it up. The cashier took my money and it just never got made.
Naturally from our vantage point we found this pretty hilarious. My friend because this was legitimately the first time he’d ever even heard of this place screwing up an order, and me because I was quite impressed with the amount of bricks that were shat when they realized how badly they’d dropped the ball on this one. They whipped through that order like a thing possessed. I actually felt a little bad when it got to me and I came back with “Yeah, but I ordered a shake too.” So they scrambled to get that over to me, and then scrambled to get me a fork to deal with my animal-style fries, and then scrambled to get me a gift card because they’re just like SUPER sorry about all this, for real. I thought the whole production was just adorable. That would’ve been a complete non-event anywhere else, but the commitment I saw there. Ya just don’t see that very much anymore. So yeah, I get it now. It’s basically just Waffle House but with hamburgers. I really wish someone could’ve just explained it to me like that early on. So take note, west-coasters. If you need to describe In-N-Out to someone, just call it the Waffle House of hamburgers and save yourself all the conclusion. It can be understood if you take the time. I get it now. If I had a place like that and went to a state without it, I’d miss it. Granted, I’d tell people the fucking ACTUAL reasons why it’s so great instead of acting like it’s some big goddamned secret for no reason, but that’s California for you.
The remainder of our time together was more of the same touring kind of stuff that the rest of my tenure in California was composed of, just north of the bay instead of south. Got to see some of those famous redwoods up close as we drove through a state park, and then some more fun twisty mountain road stuff in the Marin Headlands. Beautiful country out there. It was a California cold sort of day, so perfectly good beach weather in my opinion. We found a pretty big stretch that we had mostly to ourselves and walked down it. ALL the way down it. We got to talking and not really paying attention, and pretty soon we were pretty close to the end of the beach. He’d never walked to the end before, so we decided to go with it. Mostly I talked about shit that I’d had to put up with in the navy. Seemed to pass the time quite well actually. Our social chair for this semester has confirmed that getting me drunk and listening to me talk about the navy will be an event soon. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it now. I managed to fill about 7 miles of walking without even really trying, so I guess I’m pretty good at continuing to be entertaining when I get on that subject.
After that my friend showed me around his neck of the woods a little more and we took a break at his house. I thought that it might be easier and a little more fun if we all got together for dinner so we could make the handoff. That’s one of those cool ideas I tend to have that end up being a logistical catastrofuck in the end. There were a lot of snags trying to communicate with Arc at work because he wanted to use fancy spacephone methods and the tablet he gave me didn’t really feel like talking to cell networks at the time. This was especially complicated by the fact that we had to leave pretty much immediately if we were to get anywhere within a reasonable span of time. Naturally with only my wild assumptions as guidance I’d put our meet-in-the middle spot far too close to San Francisco, wherein a tornado of traffic was about to destroy all life in the area. I guess that’s the sort of mistake that comes from having the only person involved who is NOT familiar with the area making the decisions. Fortunately both natives were adamant that SF was a place to be avoided this time of day. Surprisingly my plan of “just start driving south and we’ll figure it out on the way actually worked and we managed to successfully find a target a ways down the peninsula to get sushi.
So yeah if I tried to feed the whole journal to FA all at once it would just sputter nervously and then puke on itself. Though to be fair, that's its response to a lot of things. Click here for the actual convention-containing part of the con journal.
I’m almost certain that I paid myself substantially less than minimum wage for the time I spent on the Great 2015 Booking Hoedown. I suppose it’s still an important ritual though. There are a lot of key things to be hashed out. Things like “I like Southwest, but do I like Southwest $85 much?” Probably not. “Do I like them 5:30 AM much?” Fuck no. So yeah, it’s a lot of important stuff which, while conferring only a moderate tangible benefit, makes me feel a whole lot better about the whole process. At the very least when I’m sitting here I get to have the thought that this, somewhat depressingly, is the best possible experience I could’ve had. Sure, there were a few somewhat tempting alternatives. I discovered this new wrinkle in the quantum mesh that forms this strange construct; some special fare rates that were available by phone only. They were undoubtedly a small but statistically significant savings, but the offer felt skeezy as fuck and wanted me to fly out uncomfortably close to clockbutthole-in-the-morning, so I didn’t take them up on it. That’s just as well, I suppose. A phone call would’ve brought an uncomfortably high level of human interaction to the process. Simply can’t have that.
I suppose what finally made the decision for me was the fact that I decided this was the time I was going to really go for it and try to sneak my way through without a checked bag. I usually travel with a rolling bag that narrowly meets the dimensions of a carry-on and a backpack that narrowly meets the definition of a personal item, so the attempt was really just a matter of nutting up and shouldering the burden of carrying everything with me everywhere I went. Usually I just break down and pay the extra $25 to have the bag not be my problem for a while. My experience led me to believe that I had fairly good odds of slipping a free bag through without too much trouble. Even if it doesn’t fit in the bin (a feat I’d actually never tried) I knew that I could just check it at the gate, for free, ideally. Almost every time I fly there’s an announcement at the gate that the plane is too small for traditional carry-on luggage or it’s just like, SUPER full, you guys, and they’re relying on the assistance of we, the noble travelers, in order to free up bin space, so free gate-check for everyone!
It’s extremely rare these days to be on a flight that’s not 97% or more full. Hell, I’ve been on several that were 102% full. I guess that’s the influence of all the broke losers like me who are min/maxing their travel plans to shave as much as possible off the fares. I’m sure it’s done all manner of unholy things to their profit margins. Probably if you sent up a plane that was less than 90% full you’d lose money. Makes me wonder if they’re not shrewdly gaming us right back with their flight cancellations. It would explain how they’ve suddenly gotten so conspicuously good at filling all their flights. When a sudden mechanical problem comes up that shuffles everyone onto other planes, perhaps it might be that flight was merely unprofitable, and those people would be put to better use topping off eight or ten other flights than by betting on the loser. Sneaky, but I guess it is ultimately all our fault. If the only behavior we reward is lower fares, then we shouldn’t be too surprised when they add a new fare classes called “economy minus” or “steerage plus” where they just strap you to the wall for the duration of the flight.
In any case, leg one from Rochester to Philly was of the “oops the plane is too small, sorry!” variety, so my luggage subterfuge ( luggterfuge?) was off to a good start. I checked it, but this was the kind of check where they give it back to you at the end of the flight instead of at your destination. It was one of those little jumps where drink service is just barely shorter than the flight itself. Fine by me, especially since my bizarre and nonsensical insistence on daylight-hour flying had led to the trip consisting of three legs instead of two. Once again I ask a lot of my booking ritual. I want to fly to San Jose because Archai assures me that though it’s fairly close to the major hubs on the map, a change of airports can make a substantial difference in driving. Seeing as he’s letting me stay at his place for quite a substantial period, I ought to do what I can to accommodate him. The fare difference there would probably get me 2/3 of a night in a hotel, so it’s still a win for me overall.
Regardless, if one is trying to fly from a somewhat obscure regional airport to a somewhat obscure regional airport, you’re gonna have a bad time. Hence my realization that Rochester sends out all its flights to any place good smack dab in the middle of clockbutthole and I’d have to do something weird and dumb like reach O’hare by way of Philadelphia. In any case, the plane to Philly did get there (yay) and I got to see what kind of fresh inconvenience hell was spawned by the entire plane gate-checking their bags. It was decidedly not fun, though I don’t know what the hell I was expecting. Avoiding this kind of crap is what kept me paying baggage fees (or the Southwest fare/asinine scheduling markup) all this time. So yeah, we all got to stand around jammed close together in the gantry to scramble over each other to grab our bags. It looked remarkably like hyenas descending upon a fresh carcass, though less orderly and entertaining.
I wasn’t too bummed out about the delay at the gate because I had a long layover and I was looking for any excuse I could get to spend less time in the moldy tar-paper shack that Philly stubbornly insists is an airport. The board at the concourse didn’t list my connection and I couldn’t get a signal to ask the internet about it. I’m sure the gate attendant could’ve looked it up, but again I saw a chance to skim off some more of that silly human interaction nonsense and went with the hard way. And really, taking the most difficult path was far more entertaining and rewarding in the end. By taking the path less traveled by I spent more time in pursuit of actually accomplishing a thing and less time simply languishing in this decrepit sarlacc pit regretting, individually and collectively, every single decision that led me there.
Thumbing my nose at the intended path just to be spiteful of my situation reminded me of the time that the XO told me that I’d better not be on his bridge while wearing THAT hat with THAT uniform because it was out of regs. Naturally I responded by climbing eight decks down and walking the requisite 1.6 football fields aft to change into a different uniform because fuck you old man I like this hat! As I continued to survey what I surmise an airport would look like if it were a level in a post-apocalypse first-person shooter game, I recalled my father driving me to the airport. Upon hearing that I was connecting in Philly, he responded with “Ooh. You gonna be stuck there long? That place is a shithole, you know. Grungy, nasty dump of a place. I spent the whole time there wondering if that’s what it felt like to be homeless.” (I can’t imagine from whence I inherited my tremendously tactful discourse.) So yeah, it would seem dad wasn’t exaggerating and apparently this is far from a new problem.
A lot of the most decayed, dangerous and confusingly arranged areas of the concourse were under the guise of “renovation”, to which I responded with a politely skeptical “Fuck you. Ain’t none of this place ever been renovated. I bet that part of the building just fell down so you slapped up some sheetrock to cover it up.” In any case, though my archaeological surveys of the surrounding ruins, I learned the correct gate for my flight and got on the bus to get there. That’s always the first thing I do on arrival, because every airport seems to have a unique shenanigan in place to obstruct that process. Philly’s complication du jour was that our bus had to wait for a plane to take off before we could go across. Striking that no one thought of busses and planes crossing the same travel lanes as being a problem in the design stage. That trip involved some notable jaunts outdoors that were quite invigorating as I’d already put away my coat for the preceding flight and was hesitant to get it out again for just a little wait at the gantry and just a little dash for the slightly less frigid lean-to that I was being shuttled towards. I forewent the heavy coat this time because I wasn’t getting to California by way of a week in Denver like last time. The coat I brought this time is a nifty affair that transforms into a somewhat passable neck pillow when the scenario demands. A neat trick to be sure, but the process of inarticulately jamming all that into a space only allegedly designed to accommodate it is far less elegant and seamless than I was led to believe. (That’s what she said! Oh… No wonder she doesn’t return my calls.) So yes, I ended up making some not-insignificant outdoor jaunts in breezy see-your-breath kinds of conditions in just a t-shirt and jeans. Netted a few odd looks for my optimism about the whole production, but it felt good in the end, tipping my hat to a kindly passerby and assuring them “Why yes, I AM an indestructible highlander, wholly unmoved by this pathetic bluster you peasants claim to be winter, thank you for asking.”
Ah well, I soon found the hovel within which I was to while away the next few hours. Perhaps it was a good experience in the end. My constitution may have been softened by having been conditioned to expect frivolities like electrical power and windows that close properly. When I began using my laptop I was tempted to blow the extra battery power on leaving the wireless card enabled just because the erratic sputtering of the signal was hilarious to watch. I don’t think I could fuck up a wireless hotspot that badly if I tried. Just trying to navigate to the Cross Time Café Forum yielded one of the most interesting error messages I’ve seen in a long time. The spasmodic flickering of the wireless network icon in the taskbar was a lot like how the control panels on the starship Enterprise will flash wildly and shoot out a hail of molten slag at the slightest provocation. It’s like someone took the time to make the connection look as dramatically and devastatingly broken as possible. Wait, maybe that was it! This place looks the way it does because it was strafed by a squadron of TIE fighters just weeks ago and the Caprican refugees are struggling to hold it together to continue sheltering the budding Argent Dawn so that they can safely resume their crusade to take down Voldemort and his army of flying monkeys. It’s the most logical explanation! Realistically though, they were playing Fallout Boy over the announcing system a lot, so I forgive them for everything.
In any case, I eventually realized that I know a few giant eagles from way back and they owed me a favor, so I enlisted their help to be delivered from the clutches of the Urgals infesting the Philadelphia lowlands. Fortunately the eagles had very limited overhead bin space, so I was able to check my bag for free all the way to my destination. Hah! Consider yourself gamed, “the system”. I’mma take this hard won $25 to California and buy like, as much weed as that buys. I don’t actually know how much that is I’ve never bought weed before. It’s probably not a lot. Which is good as I’ve also never smoked much of it before. I thought through this decision very carefully is what I’m saying. Anyways, the Deus Eagles Machina dropped me off still pretty damn far from my destination, but then again they’re known for doing that. “The Lonely Mountain is right there, assholes! What gives?” I guess that’s why I only use them when I’ve written myself into a corner and need to handwave away a bunch of important details. Still, they did manage to confer me to the shining palace of the Goddess Oharé, where the vaunted ceilings and cheery merchants granted me solace. And also where they wanted $7 to use the internet so on second thought fuck those guys.
The last plane was large and fancy enough to have TVs. Not much in the free queue, but I took the opportunity to watch the Departed. It’s one of those movies that I have several friends who would never forgive me for having never seen it. Great film though, once you get past the sickeningly bad Boston accents. Lots of classics I don’t really “get”, but this one was solid. Had some of Jack Nicholson at his most Jack Nicholson-est and Leonardo Dicaprio at his most difficult-to-distinguish-from-Matt-Damon-est. I made it to San Jose and into Archai’s fancy sportscar without further incident worthy of note. I suppose that in and of itself is rather significant given that I just threw 2000 words at discussing how the flight was. The next day was the much-vaunted chicken meet. Actually it’s more like the kind-of-unremarkable chicken meet if you’re actually from the bay area. I am quite reliably both awed and sickened with envy that there are so many furry events in California (I’d say “the California coast” but let’s face it that’s the only part of California that has people.) that they start to compete with each other for the most primo timeslots and people get blasé about them because there’s just so damn many happening all over the place all the time. Chicken was the first of many reminders that I am a stranger in a strange land. Though quite well attended, there was a distinct lack of people I didn’t need an introduction to. I did manage to pick Casidhe out of the crowd though. That was nice. I never seem to be around him for very long at a stretch, but he’s a pretty chill dude.
I had met Rioku at chicken, and on Friday I came to find that he was slated to be my babysitter for the day while Arc went down to the peninsula to till the furrows at the server farm and other responsible adult things. As such, my day was filled with a lot more racecargofast kind of stuff, which I was by then at long last developing an appreciation for. It actually is kind of interesting to see and feel the differences in performance between different cars, now that I’ve managed to convince myself to care about such things. Rioku’s ride had a pretty interesting weight distribution in that its engine could be described as bigger than a breadbox but only slightly, with a minimalist body on the car to match. Really good power for fighting in the featherweight class. There’s plenty of great driving to be had up in the hills. It really is quite the novelty to be able to just throw a day at driving around and hanging out. It takes some good people and beautiful countryside to be able to do that.
Saturday’s highlight was go-karting. This place was one of the more advanced ones, so it was good stuff. I’d always thought of karting as a kid’s thing, but apparently there are some pretty intense racing experiences to be had if you’re willing to look. And boy are these guys willing to look! Archai has got quite a crew out here, and a great many of them were huge gearheads. Even the ones without fancy sportscars are pretty hard up about fancy sportscars and have done a lot of work souping up what they do have. One of them had a van that sounded like it wanted to grow up to be a turbine. It gets a little overwhelming and tiresome for someone that’s pretty lukewarm about cars. They’re still good people though, and I zone out sometimes anyways, so it’s nice to have designated zoning out periods built into the conversation. Or I could just talk to Sidian. Officially doubling the always-critical “people I saw in California who I can credibly claim to know” statistic with her eventual recollections of our previous interactions, Sidian was in much the same boat as I was. It was good to know there was someone else around who could get through the day without needing to huff octane and mainline a half-ounce of SAE 10W-30 to take the edge off.
It’s tougher to ignore the fact that I’m surrounded by a hypercompetitive Mad Max caravan on the racetrack though. I’m sure that I could’ve had a lot of fun out there if not for the all-city racing circuit out there trying to defy physics with nothing but the insatiable fury of their motor boners. It’s not a great experience if you’re just trying to have fun. Everyone out there doing their damndest to be immortalized as the fastest thing on earth powered by a leaf blower engine doesn’t make for the most cheery atmosphere. Plus there’s the fact that if everyone else in attendance is going to pass you four times then the race is going to be more letting people pass than actual racing. I did get some good advice that led to substantial performance improvements, but when you’re trying to actually accomplish something it’s a lot more aggravating to get slapped into the outside lane by OctaneCock #29. I guess in the end I made an impression though. By the end of our session everyone had learned to either stay the hell away from me or plow straight through me, because trying to predict my driving patterns was something that I couldn’t do myself. So woe betide those who’d waste their precious time attempting it. I still have really amazing skid control, which let me do a lot of fun stuff that felt really good. I got a pretty decent lap time for someone doing essentially everything wrong, so I’ll roll with it. A few times I’d try to do an actual coherent racing thing in order to improve my performance, but I’d always get t-boned straight into the wall in the middle of doing it, so I settled on the “Fuck lap times and fuck anyone within 20 yards of me” style that came naturally to me.
In any case, I resolved not to let something like a discontinuity in choice of hobbies make me bring everyone down and in the end I had a lot of fun having dinner with all those guys. Being constantly buried in new people is a bit exhausting, but at least I’m quite capable of it. I’d always thought of myself as being something of an acquired taste, but apparently I can still hack it when I’m playing away games. There was some discussion of who would drive that night at the end. I wasn’t feeling up to drinking a lot given the prolonged omnidirectional trauma that my abdomen had just been subjected to, so I briefly entertained the idea of being a driver. Until I remembered that all these piston-fucking gear twinks only have manual transmissions. So I just went as a passenger and then ended up drinking a bunch anyway. Zantal and Scotch had some egg nog left that wasn’t quite to the point of developing independent locomotion, so we managed to make some drinkable stuff with it. Honorable mentions of other gear twinks in attendance go to Broken Wing, LeadPaw, Leda and Frish.
From there we proceeded to Frolic, a monthly furry event that a local nightclub puts on. It wasn’t in conjunction with FC this year, but I think that’s really for the best. It would seem to me that the two events would compete rather than synergize, but then again I’m notoriously bad at predicting the behavior and values of this peculiar race known as “Californians”. It seemed like a cool opportunity though, and not one that ought to be dismissed out of hand. It was nice, I guess. It was a little difficult to get past the simple fact that “Let’s make this EDM mix show up on seismographs in Dallas” isn’t exactly my preferred choice of atmosphere. There were plenty of people outside though, so it wasn’t like taking a break outside was boring. I spent most of the night there, actually. Hell, that’s where most of the good stuff happened. Indoors had precisely one good thing and her name was Bernadette. She was a wily and spirited bar matron who took very good care of the animals in her charge. She was an absolute artist with cocktails and, had cash or perforated tympanic membranes not been valid considerations, she might’ve led me to get far more inebriated than I did. I’ve never before met someone who could reliably produce entirely palatable drinks of that potency and believe me, I take every chance I can get to investigate rumors of such things. All other such claims have proven to be more stuffed with crap than a dung beetle condo. I know it’s a little superficial to say that the true magic of the place was behind the bar, but it totally was, you guys.
Like I said, I found the outside of the club to be a lot more fun, lack of available organic solvents notwithstanding. For a time it was put upon me to hold SilverWolf in a somewhat vertical position. I’m not certain if he approached me because he remembered me from RainFurrest or because I had the sturdiest looking shoulders within grabbing distance. I couldn’t get much out of him in regards to that or any other question, but he appeared to be having a really good time. Corvus from the Furthemore staff also found me there and I got to catch up with him. It’s nice to stay at least a little in the loop on that. Not being able to go and staff this time around was a real bummer, but it sounds to me like they’re still doing great work out there. I’m glad that I remembered to bring those promotional fliers that Serval sent me back at RMFC. Not sure how many people we might be able to entice from this far out, but I bet it’ll be zero if I don’t try. Also hanging around outside was Vox Fox. I had to talk to him for a while and listen closely, but I remembered him singing at last year’s FC talent show and totally killing it. He was very flattered that I remembered him, even if it took me a bit to come around. Axio also featured prominently in this adventure, but was usually moving too fast to properly interact with.
One of those ubiquitous folks who I’d seen many times but never managed to pin down was the indomitable purple giraffe, Zarafa. He was quite a find and I’m glad I reached out to him. Ordinarily I’d say that he has quite a lot of energy, but that phrase carries a very different meaning in furry circles. That really wasn’t it. It was more like vitality. He had this sort of Mister Rodgers vibe to him where he’d take the most earnest and delightful interest in whatever you were up to and make you feel good about it no matter what it was. Also very common in the fandom is that whole “Yeah! Everyone hug everyone!” kind of attitude, but Zarafa has this way about him that actually gets people to do it. I got involved in a hug that he started which ballooned out to contain eight people or so. It fluctuated some, but it had to be 10 or 15 minutes after he left that the number trickled down. One of the last holdouts of that particular hug was Spottacus, who seemed to be just dying for someone to talk to in the best possible way. He does fancy technology things, like so many people around here, and was apparently making fantastical breakthroughs in wearable tech the likes of which the world has never seen. We were out there together for quite a while and I think Spotty spent more time draped over my shoulders than my jacket did. Really though, there are far worse positions to be stuck in than listening to exuberant strings of Oh God you guys I need to tell you about how happy I am AAAAAGH!
Out of convenience of location and presumably in service of the doing of more things, we spent the night at Zantal’s house. Sunday morning was kind of slow, but that’s to be expected for following a night of Frolicking. Vertanir, Tuna and I all went to Trader Joe’s in the morning to stock up with the ultimate intent of creating breakfast, and eventually we did so. Once we got ourselves around we concluded that there were sights to be seen and Catdude was up in the hills in sort of the area where we needed to be. He works at The Chabot Space and Science Center, so that sounded like a fun place to drop by. That didn’t work out ideally as some stalling on our departure and various logistical complications led to us arriving rather close to closing time and quite short on daylight. Still, it was nice to meet someone from the Freefall forum and we were close to the Embarcadero, one of the things that Archai had been so keen to show me.
We parked along one of the less famous parts of the famous Lombard Street and climbed the hill to see Coit Tower. We got there just in time for it to close, so yeah. There are consequences for staying out late, kids! Really though, it’s worth it. California has so many furries and so much stuff to do, I don’t think there was a single night where I went to bed earlier than 2 AM. Normally I’d be pissed about that schedule but this was amazing! We went on to climb down the hill and see the fascinating phenomenon of all the houses stacked like lego bricks all the way up the hillside. Lots of fascinating architecture there. Some creative stuff comes out when you’ve got some of the most expensive real-estate in the world and a whole host of crippling space constraints. Some spots look like they belong in a fantasy novel. There’s no way you’d assume people would build like that, but build they do.
The trip back up we did by cable car. A lot better than climbing, to be sure, and Arc remarked on how he’d never ridden one before either. I think he actually appreciated the chance to do all the tourist stuff that you just don’t normally do when you live in a place. We learned why they weren’t a commuter staple while we were waiting a half hour for our connection, but still, it’s about the experience. Cable cars are just about the most steampunk thing I’ve ever seen that actually serves a practical experience, so they’re definitely worth the price of admission. Which is occasionally free, so you can’t argue with that. Though I suppose we did get a reminder why it’s so rare for people to use them these days when we had to wait more than half an hour to make our connection.
Finishing out that night was a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant with a half dozen people I’d never met commemorating the return of two other people I’ve never met, Stormy Kittyhawk and Toby Snow Wolf if I recall correctly. So yeah, plenty of time to practice introductions once again. I’d say practice remembering names too, but I’m pretty ass at that even under normal conditions. Still pretty fun. Lobster ravioli is a thing that exists. My life is a little better for knowing that. And eating it. Monday had another quiet start, but I could hardly complain. We did a lot of fun driving that day. Out to see the sights in a couple parks and then a hell of a trip down Skyline Drive. I actually loved that one, a lot. Not just a putting-up-with-car-stuff-because-otherwise-I’ll-have-no-one-to-hang-out-with kind of thing either. That was actually a ton of fun. The roads were fantastically well designed for this. Great views, interesting layouts and plenty of space to really open up the throttle. I supposed that I’d best appreciate this stuff while I was in California, because I just don’t see roads like that back home. It was extreme sightseeing, such a delightful combination. I felt like I could spend a whole day doing that.
Actually, we kinda did. We walked down the downtown beach head when we were through and it was quite dark by then. It was a bit late for beachgoers and a bit early for bonfires, but I liked the quiet. I didn’t expect to be able to see at the waterfront, but we were right next to the massive disco ball that is San Francisco, so it was actually quite easy to see out there. Arc did his usual thing where we stopped at a coffee shop so he could work for a while. I was actually quite impressed with how little he’d had to work so far, especially given that he was about to take time off for FC. The next day that would change, but for right then we’d managed a pretty solid day together. Just when I thought that things were winding down though, Vert came to kidnap us for booze and cartoons. Of the things to be kidnapped for, that’s gotta be among the better ones.
The planned viewing was a bunch of episodes of Stephen Universe, which I could hardly contain my indifference about. The program was changed to cut out a few episodes in order to fit in a showing of Labyrinth in honor of the late Mr. Bowie. That sounded pretty nice. I’d never seen the movie, so I guess it would be worth figuring what all the fuss was about. The little bit of Stephen Universe that I did watch was in many ways about what I’d expected to find, but was also something of a pleasant surprise. It had some of the wildly insubstantial avalanches of Deus Ex Machina that I expected, but I came to look past that. There was some good character development and pacing, along with a very compelling heel-face-turn that I rather enjoyed. Not saying I’ll stick with the show, but for all the confusion I’ve experienced about the show’s massive and positively frothing fan base, I guess I can say now that I kinda get it. Labyrinth was pretty good too, definitely does deserve to be a classic. I wasn’t blown away, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie with such rock solid fundamentals. It hit all the right points, good pacing, very engaging, and had a lot of very impressive practical effects. All around, a great way to end a night.
Tuesday was where Arc’s whole “having a job” habit really caught up with him. Fortunately I’d managed to eventually put together some plans to meet a friend from school who lives in Novato. That town is a somewhat reasonable distance away, but I’d still be asking for a lot if I wanted a pickup. As such, it was put upon me to embark on a public transportation adventure of some notable scope. Having only casual familiarities with cities and transport infrastructures of any kind, this was a bit more of a tall order than one might expect. Archai was clever enough to toss me an old tablet to allow me to use modern space magic to smooth things over. That solved pretty much everything, actually. I’m actually considering getting a tablet. My objection to a smartphone is based in large part around the fact that if I had access to the internet at all times I’d probably never communicate with another human face to face again. Having a tablet divorces the phone functionality from all the future space magic, so I’d be able to use it only when it’s actually needed, and honestly so far traveling is the only time I’ve ever felt like I need one.
Archai had told me that the metro station was a few minutes away from his house. I came to learn later that he meant driving not walking, and had intended to deposit me there on his way to work. By the time I realized this I’d already YOLO’d out of the house and it was a bit too late to un-YOLO. I’d woken up to the sun that morning at like 7:30 as I had several times before and I realized that I could let it beat me as I’d done every other morning, or I could get mad! Ask to see this morning’s manager! Have my engineers invent combustible lemons and burn this morning’s house down! So yeah I got an early start just in case I suck at doing trains. In the end I did pretty okay at trains, so I got a good amount of useable time for the day. I took the ferry to Larkspur and was greeted by a most fascinating sign. Well there go all my plans I guess. Meeting up with my fraternity brother kicked off another day of mostly “Oh cool I never do these things because I live here this is really neat!”
Something that he definitely did a lot was go to In-N-Out Burger, but obviously that’s still worth doing. I’d been to one last time I was in California, obviously, since it’s a requirement. I didn’t really get it though. I'm not saying In-N-Out makes a bad burger by any stretch of the imagination. The thing is, people don't treat In-N-Out Burger like it makes a fine burger. People treat In-N-Out Burger like it cures cancer and makes you shit solid gold for a week. Essentially everyone I’ve ever known from the west coast was constantly spewing all of the over-the-top "It will change your life" kind of praise at me before I had ever even considered going to California. So, naturally, I was very much looking forward to investigating the hype once I arrived. I did. It was fine. Just fine. It took a second pass for me to figure it all out though. When you actually press someone for detail while they’re cleaning the ecstatic smear of jizz off the front of their shirt from the mere mention of In-N-Out, usually you come to find that it’s not really the quality of the food that makes the restaurant so iconic. Usually you’ll get them to admit that FatBurger or Five Guys or some other chain makes a superior product. The real reason for all the hype is right in the name.
This place has an incredibly streamlined architecture that lets them put people through with incredible speed and efficiency. I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more places that have a limited menu like they do. Having just a few things to specialize in means faster service, better quality and a cost savings as well, since maintaining a crazy huge inventory harms all those things. Having just three menu choices is actually a pretty clever way of circumventing the problem of people getting to the front of the line and just sitting there, gormlessly staring at the bewildering array of choices before them, finding themselves utterly unprepared for this utterly trivial decision. I’d never really understood the point of the secret menu until I saw it in action. Again, it’s all about efficiency. Secret menu items let you add variety without confusing any decision-impaired sea cucumbers with too many options, lest they experience a panic attack when asked what they wish to eat and vomit up their internal organs instead of placing an order. Because secret orders have to be looked up elsewhere, you’ve got to come in the door knowing exactly what you want or you won’t get it, and that’s exactly what this place needs to keep running smoothly. And of course no mention of this place would be complete without pointing out how jarring it is to see someone in the back cutting up potatoes to make into French fries. Did you know that French fries started as potatoes? It’s a well-concealed secret in most fast food joints.
In any case, I slogged through all that irreverent drivel in order to tell you all about the awful service that I got at In-N-Out Burger. I’m not even being facetious or anything. They fucked up objectively quite badly. It was a little awkward when my friend got his meal and I was still just sitting there. Being a long-time veteran of this crystal sky palace, he assured me that I need only have faith. For about ten minutes. Then his counsel changed to a baffled “Yeah, I guess maybe you should say something.” So with due diligence I mentioned how odd it was that they were serving up order 53 when I hadn’t seen order 46 yet. The employee that I asked about this confirmed that she had no recollection of filling that order. She asked for the receipt so that she could track it down. When she handed the paper to the fry cook he looked like she had just handed him a live squid. He’d never seen it before. So yeah, it wasn’t like my order was ready somewhere or someone else had picked it up. The cashier took my money and it just never got made.
Naturally from our vantage point we found this pretty hilarious. My friend because this was legitimately the first time he’d ever even heard of this place screwing up an order, and me because I was quite impressed with the amount of bricks that were shat when they realized how badly they’d dropped the ball on this one. They whipped through that order like a thing possessed. I actually felt a little bad when it got to me and I came back with “Yeah, but I ordered a shake too.” So they scrambled to get that over to me, and then scrambled to get me a fork to deal with my animal-style fries, and then scrambled to get me a gift card because they’re just like SUPER sorry about all this, for real. I thought the whole production was just adorable. That would’ve been a complete non-event anywhere else, but the commitment I saw there. Ya just don’t see that very much anymore. So yeah, I get it now. It’s basically just Waffle House but with hamburgers. I really wish someone could’ve just explained it to me like that early on. So take note, west-coasters. If you need to describe In-N-Out to someone, just call it the Waffle House of hamburgers and save yourself all the conclusion. It can be understood if you take the time. I get it now. If I had a place like that and went to a state without it, I’d miss it. Granted, I’d tell people the fucking ACTUAL reasons why it’s so great instead of acting like it’s some big goddamned secret for no reason, but that’s California for you.
The remainder of our time together was more of the same touring kind of stuff that the rest of my tenure in California was composed of, just north of the bay instead of south. Got to see some of those famous redwoods up close as we drove through a state park, and then some more fun twisty mountain road stuff in the Marin Headlands. Beautiful country out there. It was a California cold sort of day, so perfectly good beach weather in my opinion. We found a pretty big stretch that we had mostly to ourselves and walked down it. ALL the way down it. We got to talking and not really paying attention, and pretty soon we were pretty close to the end of the beach. He’d never walked to the end before, so we decided to go with it. Mostly I talked about shit that I’d had to put up with in the navy. Seemed to pass the time quite well actually. Our social chair for this semester has confirmed that getting me drunk and listening to me talk about the navy will be an event soon. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it now. I managed to fill about 7 miles of walking without even really trying, so I guess I’m pretty good at continuing to be entertaining when I get on that subject.
After that my friend showed me around his neck of the woods a little more and we took a break at his house. I thought that it might be easier and a little more fun if we all got together for dinner so we could make the handoff. That’s one of those cool ideas I tend to have that end up being a logistical catastrofuck in the end. There were a lot of snags trying to communicate with Arc at work because he wanted to use fancy spacephone methods and the tablet he gave me didn’t really feel like talking to cell networks at the time. This was especially complicated by the fact that we had to leave pretty much immediately if we were to get anywhere within a reasonable span of time. Naturally with only my wild assumptions as guidance I’d put our meet-in-the middle spot far too close to San Francisco, wherein a tornado of traffic was about to destroy all life in the area. I guess that’s the sort of mistake that comes from having the only person involved who is NOT familiar with the area making the decisions. Fortunately both natives were adamant that SF was a place to be avoided this time of day. Surprisingly my plan of “just start driving south and we’ll figure it out on the way actually worked and we managed to successfully find a target a ways down the peninsula to get sushi.
So yeah if I tried to feed the whole journal to FA all at once it would just sputter nervously and then puke on itself. Though to be fair, that's its response to a lot of things. Click here for the actual convention-containing part of the con journal.
Gnu ears and a voyage on the Eff Sea. (Further Confusion)
General | Posted 10 years agoSo yeah, just a quick shout out to anyone who might be interested that the calendar is ending and I'll be spending a big chunk of the early part of next year in California to attend the Further Confusion and visit with 
archai and his crew. I'll be in San Jose from January 6th through the 22nd if anyone is around and wants to say hey. In any case, Happy New Year to all six or seven of you that actually follow my journals!
archai and his crew. I'll be in San Jose from January 6th through the 22nd if anyone is around and wants to say hey. In any case, Happy New Year to all six or seven of you that actually follow my journals!The scourge of United and future cons
General | Posted 10 years agoOnce again I feel bad for the scrollwheel fatigue encountered by people visiting my userpage, so I'll write a shorter journal real quick to alleviate the strain. I hung around for quite a bit in Denver after RMFC. It's a little awkward being there for so long by myself since my hosts there have jobs, but a chance to relax is always useful. It's definitely a good environment for getting work done. I know RMFC was the fastest I've ever gotten a con report done, before the trip was finished even. So yeah, it was a good time overall. I got to hang out some more with 
loomy and 
maxwelldaemon during game night, so that was plenty of fun. Clyde Hyena also dropped by later on, so I got a good chance to connect with some of the Denver furries. It was nice.
Travel is a pain in the ass as usual though. So glad my destination made it worth the aggravation. The part that gets to me the most was that I did a lot of searching, moved the dates around, paid a little more, and chose United all so that my flights wouldn't land at "aww fuck" o'clock in the morning and inconvenience the people picking me up. Well as it turns out, that's apparently the only time it's physically possible to land a plane. The one-hour flight to Washington Dulles was the only one they managed to not fuck up. Getting to Denver was supposed to happen at 9:05 and ended up at nearly 1 AM. Same shit on the way home. I was initially impressed with how they managed to only book one person in my seat, and then was profoundly unsurprised when I got news of a 40 minute delay. Perhaps I'd been judging them by the wrong standard, then. Maybe United simply operates 40 minutes into the future. That's what gets to me a lot. Not that there was a delay, it's that I spend two and a half hours being told again and again that it'll be just another few minutes. I was really worried that I'd miss my connection, particularly after I hit more delays after we landed. Fortunately though my connecting flight was also severely delayed, so I managed to get on it. Naturally then it was delayed further, again and again. It makes it a huge pain in the ass to try and communicate it to the person picking you up when you're going to be there. I had foolishly thought that pulling away from the gate was the critical point, but we managed to jam in more than an hour of waiting just taxiing about on the runway. I sent out an update text during takeoff, FAA regulations be damned! it was the only way to put out accurate intel after spending the entire evening being lied to about everything that was going to happen. Since I had nothing better to do, I tracked all the numbers on this so that I could help myself be justified about all the outrage I felt. The final count?
Time spent in the air: 9.5 hours
Time spent on delays: 7.5 hours
I was thinking it would be more just because of how absurd all this was, but it wasn't quite that bad, apparently. In any case, I'm glad all that's over. I got home just in time to move out again and start my next semester of college. I leave Saturday morning, so I'd better quit whining and get my shit together pretty quick. Back to work then, I suppose.
Regardless, one of the things that I mulled over while waiting in the long and circuitous line to register at RMFC was my rather severe con-blindness. That's what put me there, as my focus on AC had lead me to miss the pre-registration deadline for RMFC. I'm not sure if anyone else has run into this, but con-blindness is what I call my inability to think about or plan for any furry conventions beyond the one that occurs first chronologically with respect to the present time. It's actually rather crippling, as cons require quite a great deal of advanced planning very far in advance, particularly if they're stupid far away and you have to fly to them. So, better news then. I'm going to start making plans to have fun in the future, today!
So yeah, I managed to jam Furpocalypse in on a weekend last year. That was a good time, so I don't see any reason why I wouldn't give that another go. Also archai seems enthused to see me again, so I'll take another swing at FC over winter break, hopefully this time giving him the time he needs to properly show of all that Silicon Valley has to offer. Something that also has cropped up to tantalize me has been the prospect of Anthro New England, also in January. It's on the weekend immediately following FC. Two cons in adjacent weeks is an... adventurous prospect, as I've found out recently, particularly when there's a notable amount of travel involved. At the moment though it looks to be physically possible, so why not give it a shot?
So then, onward, to adventure!
loomy and 
maxwelldaemon during game night, so that was plenty of fun. Clyde Hyena also dropped by later on, so I got a good chance to connect with some of the Denver furries. It was nice. Travel is a pain in the ass as usual though. So glad my destination made it worth the aggravation. The part that gets to me the most was that I did a lot of searching, moved the dates around, paid a little more, and chose United all so that my flights wouldn't land at "aww fuck" o'clock in the morning and inconvenience the people picking me up. Well as it turns out, that's apparently the only time it's physically possible to land a plane. The one-hour flight to Washington Dulles was the only one they managed to not fuck up. Getting to Denver was supposed to happen at 9:05 and ended up at nearly 1 AM. Same shit on the way home. I was initially impressed with how they managed to only book one person in my seat, and then was profoundly unsurprised when I got news of a 40 minute delay. Perhaps I'd been judging them by the wrong standard, then. Maybe United simply operates 40 minutes into the future. That's what gets to me a lot. Not that there was a delay, it's that I spend two and a half hours being told again and again that it'll be just another few minutes. I was really worried that I'd miss my connection, particularly after I hit more delays after we landed. Fortunately though my connecting flight was also severely delayed, so I managed to get on it. Naturally then it was delayed further, again and again. It makes it a huge pain in the ass to try and communicate it to the person picking you up when you're going to be there. I had foolishly thought that pulling away from the gate was the critical point, but we managed to jam in more than an hour of waiting just taxiing about on the runway. I sent out an update text during takeoff, FAA regulations be damned! it was the only way to put out accurate intel after spending the entire evening being lied to about everything that was going to happen. Since I had nothing better to do, I tracked all the numbers on this so that I could help myself be justified about all the outrage I felt. The final count?
Time spent in the air: 9.5 hours
Time spent on delays: 7.5 hours
I was thinking it would be more just because of how absurd all this was, but it wasn't quite that bad, apparently. In any case, I'm glad all that's over. I got home just in time to move out again and start my next semester of college. I leave Saturday morning, so I'd better quit whining and get my shit together pretty quick. Back to work then, I suppose.
Regardless, one of the things that I mulled over while waiting in the long and circuitous line to register at RMFC was my rather severe con-blindness. That's what put me there, as my focus on AC had lead me to miss the pre-registration deadline for RMFC. I'm not sure if anyone else has run into this, but con-blindness is what I call my inability to think about or plan for any furry conventions beyond the one that occurs first chronologically with respect to the present time. It's actually rather crippling, as cons require quite a great deal of advanced planning very far in advance, particularly if they're stupid far away and you have to fly to them. So, better news then. I'm going to start making plans to have fun in the future, today!
So yeah, I managed to jam Furpocalypse in on a weekend last year. That was a good time, so I don't see any reason why I wouldn't give that another go. Also
archai seems enthused to see me again, so I'll take another swing at FC over winter break, hopefully this time giving him the time he needs to properly show of all that Silicon Valley has to offer. Something that also has cropped up to tantalize me has been the prospect of Anthro New England, also in January. It's on the weekend immediately following FC. Two cons in adjacent weeks is an... adventurous prospect, as I've found out recently, particularly when there's a notable amount of travel involved. At the moment though it looks to be physically possible, so why not give it a shot?So then, onward, to adventure!
RMFC 2015: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?
General | Posted 10 years agoOkay, so this is a thing I’m doing now, Rocky Mountain Fur Con! Once again I’ve been relying on the bafflingly generous hospitality of Nevir and Ryoken here in Denver. Recalling that last time they were a bit disappointed at how little time I had to spend with them, I blocked off two whole weeks for this trip. Realistically that means that I’m spending a whole lot of time just kind of hanging around because both of them are afflicted with full time occupations, but that’s just as well. I’m in a quiet spot away from a lot of the distractions that I have at home. It’s actually a pretty good environment for getting some writing done.
Recalling, dimly, what some of the concerns of employed folk are, I worked hard to look for a flight that didn’t land at half-past Goddamnit in the morning. Unfortunately, United were the only ones with a good price on flights that weren’t at that time. I probably should’ve factored in baggage, because 25 bucks each way actually does make a big difference in the end cost. I think the only reason that all these service fees keep popping up like so many moles to be whacked is that travel search sites don’t take those costs into account when comparing fares. It’s that kind of behavior that makes me lose a bit of the guilt I would’ve otherwise had for gaming the system. I’m not saying that I’m gonna go full-on hidden-city booking (actually, an RPI grad made the news for programming a utility to do that recently), but there are opportunities here and there that you can snag. One thing I’ve noticed that they’re doing a lot recently is saying that the flight is really full and they need us to conserve bin space by checking bags at the gate, which they’ll let you do for free since you’re doing them a solid. I might start doing that. It’s a bit of a risk since not every flight will be jammed full for sure and also a bit of a pain to be dragging my bag everywhere, but that’s the kind of thing that’s worth about $25 to me.
One thing I certainly wouldn’t take them up on is a bribe to give up my seat. Both legs of the trip were overbooked and needed to shuffle several passengers off to another flight. As the bids for ticket vouchers got higher and higher like some kind of rather insulting auction wherein they’re paying you to go away, I almost let myself get convinced that this sort of thing might be a good cost-cutting measure. After all, I was traveling for pleasure and had entire days of leeway built into my schedule, why shouldn’t I take such an obvious opportunity to save $150 or $200? Shenanigans, that’s why. They give out a flight voucher instead of a cash rebate to protect their bottom line, and ostensibly to keep you from spending it on cocaine to snort off of a new iPad or whatever. Really, if they paid out in cocaine-laced tablets then they’d have a hell of a lot easier time finding volunteers for this. That’s not the point though. The point is that airlines are really good at weaving webs of red tape to make the numbers on their flight vouchers translate into farting a Morse code message about how you can go fuck a jar of broken glass.
I was glad for the good Doctor Conway’s advice at Anthrocon in regards to United’s practically Lovecraftian amounts of torturous insanity when it comes to rebooking. At his storytime this year he spoke at length of how he recently flew to like Gainsville or some other Podunk crater that still bafflingly has an airport just because it was literally the only place that he could fly with the voucher he had. He talked for easily a half hour about what a pain in the ass it was to try and actually extract some kind of useable value from that thing. That left me with a dose of healthy skepticism about the whole process when I approached the attendant at the gate to parley about this sort of thing, to pass the time if nothing else.
The main thing that struck me about the scenario was that Kage flies a LOT. People are pretty impressed with the number of conventions that I attend in a year and it’s not nearly half what he does, and has been doing probably about as long as I’ve been able to tie my shoes. Given how little I fly, I knew I’d have to take a hardline to actually get something I needed. When the attendant asked if I’d like to accept the voucher, I asked what flights it could be used for. Naturally, the answer was “It depends”. Which kind of makes it sound like there’s some capricious demon or other whose whims dictate whether the voucher will sear my flesh or not, but really means “We’re going to shove you into whatever seat is open anyways so we can act like you got something valuable out of this when we’re really just trying to sweep you under the rug.” I somehow managed to not find this offer compelling, so I decided to press for specifics up front to scare off or at least placate Unitaeus, the Booking Demon.
“Can I use this voucher to fly to San Jose in January?”
“No.” She didn’t even look up anything before telling me that.
“Then I guess we’re done here.”
They did eventually find people willing to try their hands at the obfuscating bureaucracy roulette wheel and God bless those poor about-to-be-still-more-disappointed souls for their sacrifice that graciously allowed me to reach Washington Dulles in very good time. The gate lady seemed a bit taken aback at my sudden congeniality when she said she needed someone to take an exit-row seat because they’d fucked up the arrangement in some new and fascinating way in the course of kicking off the half-dozen people they’d apparently planned on strapping to the roof initially. I volunteered for that straight away because single passengers are easy to move and I’m fully capable of operating doors in even the most adverse of situations. When asked why I was suddenly excited about the change I responded with “Why wouldn’t I want this? It’s more legroom and a chance to be a hero. I am all about exit rows!”
Fortunately the flight went quite smoothly and none of my fabled lever-operating skills were needed. The same couldn’t quite be said for the next one. One of the lashes I had to endure for actually getting something convenient was a three and a half hour layover at IAD. I went to find my gate and made sure everything was on the up-and-up as I usually do, only to get the cheeky slap on the dick of seeing that there was a different flight leaving for Denver in 40 minutes that those chucklefucks totally could’ve put me on. Whatever, I signed this blood contract with Unitaeus two months ago when I bought these tickets so I was definitively stuck with it. The wait left me a chance to survey the entirety of the airport’s offerings before just getting a burger because I wasn’t in the mood to think about my food too much. Still, got bleu cheese, grilled onions, bacon, barbeque sauce, all the good stuff. That kinda made the decision actually. Dedicated burger places can really make something worthwhile if you let them.
Anyways, I did manage to waste enough time to get myself to the boarding call, timewasting being one of my many marketable skills. I spent some of that time telling them where they could stick the allegedly-valuable vouchers for the overcrowding on this flight. Very satisfying, really. It’s fun to look back on how silly and naive you were just this morning. Still, this boarding managed to be a fun tapdance, seeing as some of the seats were indeed double-booked still. One of them not quite being mine but being close enough to mine that someone felt herself entitled to my seat so that she could stay next to the person she booked with. It’s fair enough that she was promised the ability to sit next to her companion but by the same token my ticket has the seat number that your ass is touching and yours does not I have the moral highground here! Though I would’ve been entirely justified in so doing, elbowing her out of there and taking what was rightfully mine in pitched combat would’ve been a glorious victory lap spent next to someone who would spend the entire flight being pissed off at me. So I went for the more congenial option of asking the crew to sort this catastrofuck all out.
There actually was someone going back and forth in the plane trying to match all the people with seats. Apparently he wasn’t even flightcrew. His whole purpose in life was this kind of thing. Not only do I very much the-opposite-of-envy him in this task, it speaks volumes of their system that United has “designated seat-booking un-fucker” as a job opening. I took to basically standing as unobtrusively as I could in the isle to remind the Seating Pixie that yes, there was still a problem and he needed to find a somewhat person-shaped hole to fit me in. I preferred that option because boarding was proceeding at a pace that a sloth would soon grow exasperated with, so I was in no hurry to sit down early and get a head start on all that sitting I was about to do. The increasingly frantic Seat Pixie asked me if I was Michael Corwin enough times that I eventually agreed that I must be, if only because both Mike and myself allegedly had seats with only one person’s name attached to them. I do hope it worked out okay for him, as I unexpectedly did end up spending the entire flight, and the nearly-as-long wait on the ground, in his seat. Apparently once I finally got tired of waiting for a real solution and just went with identity theft our Seat Pixie decided that his work here was done and told them to close the door and prepare for departure. I got a little glimpse of what it was like to work at United in that moment. Basically a vague sense that I was screwing someone over but that if I played my cards right the consequences would never find their way back to me.
In any case, after all that carefully prescribed waiting in the terminal and at the gate, came still more surprise bonus waiting! There was a mechanical fault and then there wasn’t and then there was a problem with the paperwork that said there wasn’t a problem and then there were “emergent booking difficulties”, most likely Michael Corwin showing up at the gate and asking what the fuck. After all that got straightened out it started raining so we might as well just chill because God clearly doesn’t want us to leave and then the other delayed planes delayed us out of our position in the takeoff queue and then the pilot’s chakras weren’t properly aligned for taxiing and then it turned out that this plane was only designed to fly through thin air and there was a system of fat air moving through overhead and then angry raccoons were hanging off the ailerons and making mean faces at the baggage handlers, you know, the usual. In the end it was over two and a half hours’ worth of “just a few more minutes”. It was like I’d sponsored this flight’s Kickstarter instead of buying an actual ticket. I paid money with the expectation of results but in its stead all I get is a series of increasingly enthusiastic messages about production delays all saying how if you’ll just bear with us for a moment longer we’ll totally have that thing you pledged us money for and not at all buy enough weed to make a blue whale think it can drive a taxi cab. Honestly a couple hours’ delay isn’t torture. I can deal with that. I just need to hear “hey, give us a minute to get our shit together and then you can leave. Tell me up front what the delay is and I’ll deal with it. The absolute last thing I need is to be lied to 46 times about how long the wait is going to be. Just like with politicians, your lies are fooling essentially no one and helping even less.
They made DirecTV free for everyone to help pass the time. Good move on their part. At least United is experienced enough at wasting peoples’ time that they know how to do it in the least objectionable way possible. Unfortunately it didn’t work very well since the plane was still in safe mode or whatever due to having not moved since lunchtime. There was one guy a few seats in front of me who was on the movie channel, despite the fact that movies apparently can only be played when the plane is off the ground because of one of the many important entertainment safety interlocks that the craft is equipped with. His screen just played the trailer for Tomorrowland on loop again and again the entire time. I managed to be completely blasé about it, get kind of interested, get over that, get really interested and then become completely sick of that movie all before the plane ever moved. That was certainly a singular experience. Seriously, try constantly watching a film trailer for longer than the runtime of said film and try to keep what little remains of your sanity. It’s pretty intense. Searching for silver linings wherever I could, I noticed that by the time the plane had gotten enough air under it for the TV to actually start working, it was just in time for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, something I quite rarely get the chance to watch when it actually airs. Naturally this just provided a reminder that Jon is leaving, information I really didn’t need when keeping my spirits afloat was the biggest challenge I faced.
In any case, this ill-fated flying snafu actually did make it to Denver, and when it did I got my feet on the ground secure in the knowledge that everything I’d gone through to ensure that I wasn’t keeping Ryoken out stupid late at night had been totally worthless, as it was still about half-past tomorrow before we managed to get out of there. So yeah, made it there alive, despite my best efforts. I was rooming down in the ample basement here at casa canine, which is lit by some comically large CFL bulbs that cause me to severely question the use of “compact” in their name. I didn’t really know how useful or expensive such artifices were, but by the next morning I did learn how difficult it is to accidentally karate chop one in half while you’re putting on a shirt. The answer, for those of you wondering, is “not particularly difficult at all, actually.” I’d woken up a bit bleary and sluggish that day from the previous night/morning’s adventures. I was entertaining the idea of a shower to wake me up a bit and to its credit an unexpected shower of finely-splintered glass is certainly a good way to recover one’s senses. I debate with myself a bit as to whether or not turning on the offending light would’ve improved the situation. I would’ve been no less disoriented having just flipped on the Batsignal down there and this probably would’ve just led to me engaging in gentlemen’s fisticuffs with an energized beehive-sized light bulb, probably resulting in an experience rather similar to intense melee combat with an actual beehive.
As such, my morning libations began with washing very carefully to try and get all the mercury and Phazon and whatever other awful crap makes those things work out of the cuts on my hand. On the other hand, the presently non-bleeding one, I now had a project for the day, making the lack of company less of a big deal. Certainly not the activity I would’ve picked, but it kept me busy. Being free of a time limit was nice, and let me be careful enough to only further cut myself one time throughout the process. Hooray, I suppose. The rest of the gap leading up to the convention was mercifully uneventful, and then of course got eventful as all hell because that’s how cons roll. Logistical seizure the first had happened in the planning stages, as many of them do. Nev and Ryo’s rooms were already quite full, precluding me from staying with them again this year. That put me in a tough spot because I don’t know too many people coming to this con, hardly any, in fact. As such, I threw in my lot with literally anyone who would take me and came up with a spot for Friday and Saturday. I was hoping that my hosts’ living rather nearby would help fill in the gaps. That was, as you might surmise, not quite how things went down.
Thursday:
The actual plan, I found, was to arrive on Thursday and overnight at the hotel to get an early start on the con. Naturally, I found this out on Thursday, leaving me a rather short window with which to adapt my approach. My prospective roommate wasn’t arriving until Friday, so no help there, but a frantic flip through the convention forums turned up someone that had an opening, so that worked out okay. And of course after I got all that worked out and got moved into the room, I was hanging out at Nev’s and found out that they were probably going to have a cancellation and I could’ve stayed there after all! This salvation came entirely too late because ofcourseitdid. I was set to a course now though. I hate those flake-at-the-last-second sorts, so letting myself become one would’ve been a bit hypocritical. And of course the contest of whole-bed vs half-bed is a pretty lopsided affair.
Next up on the coordination chopping block were some advertising and promotion tasks for Furthe’More that I’d taken on. I felt dumb about missing an opportunity at a free badge for Anthrocon by not knowing they were available for people working the dealer’s table. To forestall that sort of thing from happening again I’d asked if Furthe’More had any presence at RMFC. We didn’t. Until I asked about it, naturally. The gameplan was to send some flyers and such to the hotel so that I could post and hand them out while I was in the neighborhood. I’d offered up Ryo’s address to Serval so that he could ship the stuff early enough that shenanigans along the way wouldn’t be a problem and they’d still reach me in time for the con. Of course shenanigans did inevitably happen and the buffer was not nearly so large as it needed to be. I still didn’t have an estimated delivery time when we left for the con. So that was lame. I checked shipping updates regularly, but thanks to my brilliant insight on sending it to the house instead of the hotel we’d have to go pick them up even if they did get there. So yeah, goes to prove that nothing is quite simple enough that we can’t fuck it up.
Much of the evening was spent hanging around in the lobby meeting friends of Nev and Ryo, since I’ll be damned if I knew anyone that was there, particularly that early. It was still rather quiet, but even a small amount of fursuits can make for a rather lively night. Someone was making balloon animals and I managed to get a spare balloon for Ryoken to play with. I never would’ve guessed that his fascination with it would last for days, but I’m glad he got so much out of it. He soon figured out that he could thread the balloon in one ear and out the other, looking profoundly ridiculous in the process. I suppose you can do some really fun things with your suit when it’s hanging in rags and you don’t really care what happens to it. Plans for his next suit have been simmering quietly in the background for some time now. So staving off the demise of the old spotty husky is not so much of a concern as it once was. I didn’t think much of my activities that night, but apparently I didn’t go unnoticed. A tweet from @thatdamntiger, popped up the next day saying “Big thank-you to @Cruxaholic, @Shawhsank_Crux, and that really cute guy in the glasses for the entertainment in the lobby tonight.” So our collective efforts managed to make at least one person’s night. That’s not too bad. I went to bed early that night, not necessarily out of boredom though it was pretty quiet. It was more that I knew I’d need the rest. I still managed to not sleep particularly well, but such is my lot in life sometimes.
Friday:
Opening ceremonies were pretty neat. The theme was game shows this year, so that’s actually how the event was formatted. They did quite a lot with the theme this time around and that’s something I really like to see. Far too often the theme is confined to the art in the con book and maybe like a QR game or something. They really went all out with this one. Lots of cool games going on and a lot of prizes to be won. There were quite a few things that I’d like to see brought back, theme-matching or not.
Straight out of the gate I got a whirlwind tour of some more of the notably large pool of friends-of-a-friend from around here. On Friday that group included but was not limited to Zander, Dexter, Helix, Quoala Quinn, and Sprocket. So yeah, busy day bouncing around among those dudes. I hit up the usual things, game room, dealer’s den, art show, so the morning went pretty quickly. Then I went and had lunch with Nye at Firehouse Subs. I’ve missed that place. There don’t seem to be any in the northeast. I really like how they don’t give you dirty looks for asking for irresponsible amounts of meat on your sandwich like Subway does. Hell, double-meat is a standard menu option.
When we got back, I checked out fursuit charades, which was pretty much The Return of I Can’t Understand this Motherfucker: Indistinct Edition. So that’s one lesson not learned from last time. I actually ended up kinda bored after that, wandering about without much of anyone to see or anything to do. I came across Jake Otter and talked to him a little bit. I was quite flattered by how many of the Unmentionables seemed to vaguely recall having met me before. Maxwell came by to request Jake’s help and ended up netting both of us. I’d been asked about volunteering at this convention before and I was pretty solidly against the idea of spending $600 on plane tickets to go do work, so I doubt I’ll ever register as a volunteer. How strange though, that they don’t seem too quick to turn down help that drops in out of the blue just because the proper paperwork hasn’t been filled out. I did what I could to help set up American Gladiafur and then I was on my way again.
Nye had spent all day practically wetting himself with excitement over the match game, and in fact he did win many fabulous prizes playing it. I thought it might’ve been worth a shot checking out the adult version of it, since lewd content improves pretty much anything. Apparently that wasn’t nearly as dependable a characteristic as I thought, as the event was fucking miserable. I probably would’ve been better off going to the regular one, as it actually does seem like a fun game. Basically there are a couple contestants and a panel on the stage. The contestants fill in a blank for a sentence presented to them. They gain points based on the number of people in the panel whose answers matched theirs. The late-night one was pretty half-assed though. Not even that. Maybe more like 30%-assed, at best. The fill-in-the-blank statements were all admittedly written by Maxwell in a sleep-deprived near-coma, so they didn’t have much variety or cleverness to them. There were only two contestants and one of them was very clearly not taking this seriously. It wasn’t long before I really wanted them to just give the prizes to the only one who actually appeared to give a damn and just be done with it. Of course, by the time I realized that I really didn’t want to be there they were the only game in town, so I stuck it out. Really a pretty sad showing. At least I didn’t miss much. I came to find out later that the gladiafur event had been pretty badly mismanaged as well. Some surprising disappointments from these guys, actually.
Ryo said I could come up and hang out with his crew that night if I felt so inclined. His crew at this point consisting of Zenel, Neki, and Fitz. Dropping by their place was a good chance to relax a little bit. Zenel seemed to be in good spirits, and also drinking quite an impressive quantity of good spirits. We sat around and chatted for quite a while. I was very much in the minority in that I wasn’t drawing dog penises at the time, but I’ve gotten used to that. Zenel actually found me a kind of whisky that I don’t passionately hate. An event unlikely enough that calling it a miracle would be only a small exaggeration. It’s called “the Knot”, and despite my (likely correct) assumption that it was only on the premises because of the hilarious implications of that name I tried it anyway. Now, I’d had a rather substantial amount of vodka by the time I’d tried it so I wouldn’t trust my judgment at the time with my life, but I recall it as being not entirely unpleasant. Apparently the stuff is rather difficult to come across, but if it actually is as astonishingly acceptable as I remember it being then buying some would certainly be worth looking into. In any case, eventually we all ran out of steam and turned in for the night.
Saturday:
The next morning started off with early sirens, which is just as well. You’re not a real con until you’ve been baptized in fire. Though in figurative terms, the morning was rather quiet. So once the fire was confirmed to have been imaginary I took my laptop down to the lobby to catch up on a few things, and check the tracking on the flyers I was still waiting on. Taking my laptop down to the lobby every time was a pain, but once again, that’s the kind of pain I’m willing to deal with when the alternative is paying $13 a day for internet access. (Thanks Obama!) It even ended up benefitting me. Drawing at a nearby table was Halcyon, an artist that I’ve been a fan of for some time, so I appreciated the chance to chat. Also joining in later was Octogon, who was very interested to talk in detail once he heard that I worked in nuclear power. In all it was a nice way to spend the morning. The fursuit parade actually kind of snuck up on me and I had to hurry to get ready. Realistically I needn’t have bothered to rush. The parade faced some notable logistical delays in getting started, one of them being the ultimately disastrous decision to try and take an eye-level fursuit photo. It’s a bit of an irritant, but I suppose I can’t blame them too much. Setting up something like that is a lot like, and in some cases is literally herding cats.
Quite by accident I made the most of the time though, as this was when Psycosword found me. He had been planning on handing out some fudge at the convention because he liked making it and wanted to get his name out there as a fudgeteer and such. That effort got canned because the hotel had a non-compete clause on selling or even just giving away food and snacks. So he reached out to anyone who would like a pound of fudge to give it to them specifically, as this was not against the rules. That’s a tough offer to refuse seeing as I am a huge fan both of delicious chocolate and still-more-delicious clever subversion of the man and his rules. So we managed to find each other such that I might enjoy some of his bounty. Honestly that limitation is kind of a dick move by the hotel. It really does seem to frustrate them that despite their hosting our event, a relatively small amount of us were eating at their overpriced restaurant and drinking at their overpriced bar. It’s almost as though most furries have blown most of their discretionary cash on just showing up and having a place to sleep (and also drawings and figurines of animal dicks), meaning that they can’t afford to bullshit around with marked-up food whose only advantage is location. How strange. Guess we’ll never get to the bottom of that mystery.
Far from just being a pile of inconveniences though, I’m starting to see a rather distressing pattern with this venue. While I don’t personally enjoy being treated like a wallet on the back of an easily-entranced magpie, that one at the very least is good business sense. The bigger things have more to do with booking. They tried to book a wedding in the atrium on Friday, which would’ve sucked abominably for both sides. Their plan was to just bar the atrium from all furries for the duration of the wedding. Firstly, it’s impossible to get to anywhere without going through the atrium because of how huge and poorly designed that room is. Second, over a hundred balconies open up into the atrium, balconies that we control because we booked rooms. So if the intent was to not have furries observing or visible during the ceremony, mission failed on that one. The walls of the room were literally lined with cartoonish pooltoys and severed fursuit heads. The couple holding the reservations eventually got wind of our presence and cancelled the wedding. Which, while it did solve the problem, is precisely the opposite of a win. Not only does it underscore the idea that we are a scourge to be avoided at all costs, it begs the question of why the hotel is putting people in the position of doing a costly and difficult reschedule to avoid the slavering mutant hordes that have descended on the atrium in the first place.
The room where we had our fursuit lounge last year was also booked up by someone else this go-around. The corporation that was holding meetings there seemed a bit more willing to suffer our presence, as they remained in there the entire time. But just in case we were wanting for reminders that we subhuman scum were not welcome here, there were very clear corporate stooges only signs on the refreshment tables and no freaks allowed barriers put up all the way across the hall that their room was in. This hallway also contained the Dealer’s Den and Artshow, and was meant to be part of the fursuit parade route, but apparently no inconvenience is too much for us, the slavering proletariat, to bear such that the real people needn’t have their space sullied with the indignity of having us walk past them.
What scares me is that all this kind of shit is exactly what I saw right before Hunt Valley Inn told Furthe’More about the many grand and wondrous places that we could fuck off to. Courting our money instead of our attendees, selling rooms in the middle of the convention hall out from under us, reminding us at every available opportunity that everyone else in the hotel is a higher priority than we are, jerking us around when we try to get services… They’re all little nudges to indicate that our presence is not appreciated. That’s how Hunt Valley behaved right before they handed us a contract renegotiation that may as well have read “get fucked” with a dollars sign next to it at the bottom. Ah well, I don’t work at this one, so it’s beyond me and not my problem. I do hope they can pull it together. Rocky Mountain Fur Con has had something of a rocky past in terms of venues. I may have complaints about their finished product, but they’re good guys and they don’t deserve this. Word on the street is that their present home is going to be undergoing substantial renovation in the near future, such that they won’t be there next year. Hopefully that’ll be an opportunity to scope out alternatives.
Anyways, that’s enough depressing musings for the moment. Saturday actually went quite quickly with the parade, improv, 2 Gryphon’s performance and the fursuit dance competition all pretty much running right into each other. The dance competition was a TON of fun this time around. It looked to have been planned well and went very smoothly. I remembered this event as being very disappointing last year, and apparently they took my complaining to heart because they put on quite a show this time. I was glad that we arrived early because it was quite popular. I was lucky in that Nev and Ryo were also eager to get there because their friend Qytrain was competing. She did a very interesting and unconventional dance that had kind of an exotic Latin feel to it. It was very compelling to watch, so I threw her a rose. It seemed to fit the theme and I had received one from a fursuiter earlier. That seemed like a worthy use for it. I’m not sure how I ended up with a token of affection like that in the first place, to be honest. Apparently I’m quite the ladykiller provided that lady is dressed up as a sultry vixen at the time.
I managed to catch up with Toast after 2’s set and had a good chat with him. It was actually pretty funny. We got along quite well with the other people who had gathered to talk with him, maybe half an hour or so of just shooting the breeze, and all of a sudden he said “Oh, OH! It’s you, you’re that guy!” He hadn’t actually made the connection up until that point, which was pretty funny. I didn’t mind at all, given the number of people there who had no connection to make at all. That actually got rather oppressive during this convention. I don’t know what was different this year. I got kind of a really quiet and subdued feel from the con this time around and I could only contribute it to the lack of interaction that I had. I never really noticed it last time. Perhaps it was simply that I wasn’t rooming with my hosts here. Last time when I did that it was pretty easy to fall in with their crowd. I was amazed with how far I could get just based on “It’s fine. Nev says he’s good people.” No such luck this time. Ryo actually remarked on how weird it was to have me attending but not rooming with them. There was an obvious “Well whose fuckin’ fault is that?” in response, but I didn’t lay into him too hard. Apparently he was also having some difficulty with the fact that he wasn’t in control of his own room reservations. That’s pretty standard practice for me, but Nev and Ryo were apparently new to the unique pitfalls of the situation. Their intent is to take the helm again for next year, so hopefully this will be a little easier on us in the future.
Speaking of those two, I’d meant to join them for dinner that night, but shenanigans. We were going to meet up in the lobby, so I was hanging out there waiting for them. A few people came by, Helix and his crew, I got to say hi to Dexter again, too. I talked a lot with Rahne also. It was a wonderful treat to see him again. He was in the best possible spirits as he had just won the dance competition, so he was a lot of fun. Perhaps he’ll become a regular on my roster yet! Here’s hoping. Eventually I ended up talking to Loomy a lot, and shortly a little circle gathered around him. Among his friends was Yonoa, who was a delight to talk to, and was overcome with glee to hear that I recognized some of the hallmarks of the suits that he’s made.
After a long wait I checked in and was notified that I’d missed the boat on Nevir’s trip in search of food. That’s a “these things happen” if there ever was one, but it actually kind of was a big deal. Nev complained once about how he’d have to choose among the six dinner invites he’d get on a given day and felt swamped with them. I had very much the opposite problem. Getting caught up in things and forgetting to eat is a long-standing issue for me, and even when I was actively looking for a chance to go out to eat I’d end up with a handful of air at times. That’s why I decided it was time to go for broke and get this done by any means necessary. Just as I was weighing my options, the group that I’d been idly chatting with the whole time decided that it was food O’clock as well. The interesting part being that Loomy (whom I barely knew) and Yonoa (whom I had just met but had at least spoken with a bit) had both left by that point. So I was among a group of eleven people, none of whom I knew, when we headed out. It’s a con though, so “just roll with it” is a very useful attitude to have.
This was a supreme test of my “Okay yeah, so we’re friends now” mojo and in fact I passed with flying colors. Apparently the larger the group gets, the less likely it is that anyone will ask who you are or what the hell you’re doing there because it becomes easier to assume that you’re with someone else. As such, I managed to get through a whole dinner without the subject ever being broached even though I was “with” precisely zero of those people. It helped quite a bit that several of them were dancers and I had just come from the dance competition. Saying “Oh yeah, you were the red husky. I remember you twerking all up in the judges’ faces!” is actually a pretty good segue into a conversation. Anyways, regardless of the bizarre adversities that my presence there presented we all had a great time. So I doubt any of them minded. I wish I could’ve kept better track of their names. Oh well, see you next time, “strangers”!
It was rather quiet when I got back to the convention hall. Granted it was a bit late, but that wouldn’t explain all of it. I was kind of getting that subdued vibe again, but that might just be my imagination. It probably was just that I’d been spoiled by being able to stay with Nev’s crew last time around. That’s certainly an easy way to fill the time. So maybe I wasn’t judging the atmosphere fairly. I like to think that I did well on my own though. I spent some time with Violentz Jolt in the lobby. I stopped by because they were in fursuit and sitting very still by themselves. I once encountered someone who fitted that description who turned out to be rather close to losing consciousness and needed help to get back to their room, so I always check on suiters that exhibit a conspicuous lack of movement. It turned out that they had simply figured out that the wall they were up against was a solid concrete load-bearing wall. Thus, it was quite capable of absorbing a noteworthy amount of heat. I begrudge no one in that position their source of a heat sink, so I let them carry on with it until I was sure that seeking refuge from the heat was all they were up to.
My other interesting find in the lobby was an impromptu performer whose work I’d very much admired during the con. Soong Dae had come up with a very entertaining gig for this con. Since the theme was game shows, he decided to make himself the perfect parody of an utterly insane Asian game show host. He had a giant dice that he would challenge people to roll. “A test of honor and a test of luck!” he billed it as, offering appropriately hyperbolic challenges to passerbys as he roamed throughout the hotel. Several times a crowd gathered around wherever he was to watch the spectacle of him giving out fantastic prizes to those who would dare challenge his glorious dice. Of course, the unfavorable outcome of his dice’s wrath was “PUNISHMENT TIMEEERUUH!”, consisting of being bapped with a giant paper fan, and of course presumably dishonoring your ancestors.
This production was hilarious to watch, and so much work went into it that I couldn’t believe it was just the work of some guy who wanted to do something special for the convention. He didn’t even work there! He footed the bill and took on all the effort himself. Naturally I was eager to let him know what a good job he was doing and that I appreciated all he had done. He was profoundly humble in hearing that. Really, he was just trying to prove that there was fun to be had at a furry convention even if you didn’t have a fursuit to wear. I found that he was actually quite astonished by the notoriety he had acquired during the con, and I did my best to assure him that he richly deserved all the praise he had received there. It was great getting to talk to him and hearing what motivated him to do all these things. He was mentioned multiple times during the feedback panel, and even awarded a gift card by the staff for his efforts. So it would seem I was far from the only one to have noticed him.
I got word from Ryoken that he’d managed to retrieve the long-awaited flyers from his place, so I stopped by to pick them up and hang out with his crew some more. Zenel was far more sober this time around, though no less fun. After getting all my promotional materials organized into a somewhat useful format I shuffled those off to my room. After that I poked around a bit, finding little to do. That wasn’t all that unusual in itself, as it was nearly 2:00 AM by that point, but I just didn’t want the day to end. And as signs go, that’s a damn good one.
Sunday:
Mercifully, there was one writing panel left on the last day, so I actually did get a chance to plug the Regional Anthropomorphics Writing Retreat (we’re calling it RAWR because that’s adorable) to its target audience. Also that’s a link because I’m still plugging it. There was actually a rather substantial amount of interest in it, so I may have actually done some good. If any of you aspiring writers are interested in heading out to sunny California this January to learn a thing or two from the pros you should definitely look into it. Anyways, I got to check out the improv workshop with the Unmentionables, which was a blast as always. Seeing things like this is slowly starting to convince me that perhaps I ought to look into joining RPI’s improv comedy group. They seem to think that I have a knack for it and it’s certainly a hell of a lot of fun. I bumped into Redd while I was walking about and so we visited a bit. It was great to see her again. She’d apparently been having a rough time of it lately and had actually told me that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the con this year. It was nice that she was able to at least show her face and say hi to people. Heck, that’s a big part of what I do when I’m in a place where I actually know some folks, so I was happy to help her navigate and make the most of her short visit.
Ryo had assembled a small, possibly intentional gathering out in the atrium where a handful of people were hanging out or doing art or what have you, so I stopped by that thing for a while. Riley Coyote was one of the many who stopped by and he had just the cutest goddamn paws I’d ever seen. He was in the process of making good on his promise to suit pretty much the entire con, so he was burning up by this point. I got him some water since I wasn’t doing much. The straw I gave him actually showed up later on during Free Fox’s cooking panel. It let him sample the soup that Free was making without desuiting, so that was neat. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work for the bacon that came later, but such is life. Now that the challenge is out there though, I’m certain that someone somewhere out there on the internet is going to make consuming bacon through a straw a reality. After that I checked out Furry Feud quickly and then bitched a whole bunch at the feedback panel. I can’t help it. I’m just really good at complaining. The emcee really did seem to appreciate the nice things I said about the dance competition though. I could tell he had worked hard on it.
Somewhere in the course of all this I was informed in an oh-so-timely manner that we’d also be spending Sunday night at the con. Ryoken seemed unconcerned at the logistical challenge that this presented when I complained about it. Though I couldn’t really argue with his reasoning. Here’s an excerpt: “You know, you’re always complaining about how you’re a fish out of water here and you don’t know anyone and yet you managed to get two rooms with practically no notice and you’ve got guys giving you free fudge and inviting you out to eat and whatever. You’ve also been in like a dozen fursuits just because. You’ll be fine. Apparently you can talk your way into anything.” Heh, it actually was kind of noteworthy that I didn’t manage to make it into a suit this convention. At this point that has become downright unusual.
Though Ryoken’s confidence was flattering, I actually was out of clever tricks by that point. Most everyone was leaving on Sunday, so I couldn’t come up with anything. In the moment I didn’t much see the point. I was all ready to head out at the end of the festivities, but then again I don’t own a fursuit. So weighing anchor is a far less labor-intensive process for me. In any case, they ended up getting a cot for me. It wasn’t great but it worked just fine. Really if you can’t sleep standing up at the end of a con then you didn’t con hard enough. I did regret that a little bit though, as I met Bindi in that room but had far too few remaining higher brain functions to interact with her in any meaningful way and probably came off as a little rude.
Anyways, the night pressed on. I got to tag a few people one last time as they trickled out. I spent a lot of time in the lobby with the fursuiters that had gathered there. Rory was putting on a hell of a show out there, with an utterly inconceivable energy level for that hour at the end of the con. His character is quite notable for being the first squeaker that was something other than soul-searingly annoying. The squeaks suited his personality well and were actually quite cute and expressive. He was a real crowd-pleaser and just a joy to watch. That performance definitely deserves a tip of the hat.
I followed Loomy around for a little bit more while he was trying to drum up attendance for that night’s band at the dance. Apparently the dances at RMFC can be a bit poorly attended. Having checked in on them a few times I get the impression that the room is to blame. It’s far too large for the actual dancefloor that they have. It makes it feel kind of empty even if there are a good number of people in there. Anyways, having live performers was nice, but the “goth/witchhouse” style fell pretty flat with me, and many others. I would’ve loved to do some things that night, but the dance and karaoke both had their amps turned up to a debilitating volume. Definitely not what I needed when it was that late. My key didn’t work because the room keys pretty much never work at that stupid place, but I got lucky and caught Nev in the room just as he was leaving. Apparently there was more suiting to be done, and going along with that was a tempting prospect, but I’d done plenty enough wandering and following by then. Bed was a far more compelling option by then.
Monday:
So at the crack of noon-ish when we finally managed to haul out of there, essentially everyone else had already done so. That made for a pretty quiet farewell to the con, but being that we were all dead tired from having enjoyed ourselves so much, that’s really all you can ask in the end. I didn’t feel like I needed much more rest since I’d turned in a lot earlier than my entourage, but after lying down to relax a bit and realizing that “relaxing a bit” had gone on for over three hours I suppose I can admit that I was still pretty tired too. I really should try weighing myself before and after cons in the future. Judging by the way my pants were sliding down at the end of this one I’m starting to think it’s quite accurate to say that these things literally take a lot out of you. Though in the end I can think of nothing else in the world more worth my pound(s) of flesh.
Recalling, dimly, what some of the concerns of employed folk are, I worked hard to look for a flight that didn’t land at half-past Goddamnit in the morning. Unfortunately, United were the only ones with a good price on flights that weren’t at that time. I probably should’ve factored in baggage, because 25 bucks each way actually does make a big difference in the end cost. I think the only reason that all these service fees keep popping up like so many moles to be whacked is that travel search sites don’t take those costs into account when comparing fares. It’s that kind of behavior that makes me lose a bit of the guilt I would’ve otherwise had for gaming the system. I’m not saying that I’m gonna go full-on hidden-city booking (actually, an RPI grad made the news for programming a utility to do that recently), but there are opportunities here and there that you can snag. One thing I’ve noticed that they’re doing a lot recently is saying that the flight is really full and they need us to conserve bin space by checking bags at the gate, which they’ll let you do for free since you’re doing them a solid. I might start doing that. It’s a bit of a risk since not every flight will be jammed full for sure and also a bit of a pain to be dragging my bag everywhere, but that’s the kind of thing that’s worth about $25 to me.
One thing I certainly wouldn’t take them up on is a bribe to give up my seat. Both legs of the trip were overbooked and needed to shuffle several passengers off to another flight. As the bids for ticket vouchers got higher and higher like some kind of rather insulting auction wherein they’re paying you to go away, I almost let myself get convinced that this sort of thing might be a good cost-cutting measure. After all, I was traveling for pleasure and had entire days of leeway built into my schedule, why shouldn’t I take such an obvious opportunity to save $150 or $200? Shenanigans, that’s why. They give out a flight voucher instead of a cash rebate to protect their bottom line, and ostensibly to keep you from spending it on cocaine to snort off of a new iPad or whatever. Really, if they paid out in cocaine-laced tablets then they’d have a hell of a lot easier time finding volunteers for this. That’s not the point though. The point is that airlines are really good at weaving webs of red tape to make the numbers on their flight vouchers translate into farting a Morse code message about how you can go fuck a jar of broken glass.
I was glad for the good Doctor Conway’s advice at Anthrocon in regards to United’s practically Lovecraftian amounts of torturous insanity when it comes to rebooking. At his storytime this year he spoke at length of how he recently flew to like Gainsville or some other Podunk crater that still bafflingly has an airport just because it was literally the only place that he could fly with the voucher he had. He talked for easily a half hour about what a pain in the ass it was to try and actually extract some kind of useable value from that thing. That left me with a dose of healthy skepticism about the whole process when I approached the attendant at the gate to parley about this sort of thing, to pass the time if nothing else.
The main thing that struck me about the scenario was that Kage flies a LOT. People are pretty impressed with the number of conventions that I attend in a year and it’s not nearly half what he does, and has been doing probably about as long as I’ve been able to tie my shoes. Given how little I fly, I knew I’d have to take a hardline to actually get something I needed. When the attendant asked if I’d like to accept the voucher, I asked what flights it could be used for. Naturally, the answer was “It depends”. Which kind of makes it sound like there’s some capricious demon or other whose whims dictate whether the voucher will sear my flesh or not, but really means “We’re going to shove you into whatever seat is open anyways so we can act like you got something valuable out of this when we’re really just trying to sweep you under the rug.” I somehow managed to not find this offer compelling, so I decided to press for specifics up front to scare off or at least placate Unitaeus, the Booking Demon.
“Can I use this voucher to fly to San Jose in January?”
“No.” She didn’t even look up anything before telling me that.
“Then I guess we’re done here.”
They did eventually find people willing to try their hands at the obfuscating bureaucracy roulette wheel and God bless those poor about-to-be-still-more-disappointed souls for their sacrifice that graciously allowed me to reach Washington Dulles in very good time. The gate lady seemed a bit taken aback at my sudden congeniality when she said she needed someone to take an exit-row seat because they’d fucked up the arrangement in some new and fascinating way in the course of kicking off the half-dozen people they’d apparently planned on strapping to the roof initially. I volunteered for that straight away because single passengers are easy to move and I’m fully capable of operating doors in even the most adverse of situations. When asked why I was suddenly excited about the change I responded with “Why wouldn’t I want this? It’s more legroom and a chance to be a hero. I am all about exit rows!”
Fortunately the flight went quite smoothly and none of my fabled lever-operating skills were needed. The same couldn’t quite be said for the next one. One of the lashes I had to endure for actually getting something convenient was a three and a half hour layover at IAD. I went to find my gate and made sure everything was on the up-and-up as I usually do, only to get the cheeky slap on the dick of seeing that there was a different flight leaving for Denver in 40 minutes that those chucklefucks totally could’ve put me on. Whatever, I signed this blood contract with Unitaeus two months ago when I bought these tickets so I was definitively stuck with it. The wait left me a chance to survey the entirety of the airport’s offerings before just getting a burger because I wasn’t in the mood to think about my food too much. Still, got bleu cheese, grilled onions, bacon, barbeque sauce, all the good stuff. That kinda made the decision actually. Dedicated burger places can really make something worthwhile if you let them.
Anyways, I did manage to waste enough time to get myself to the boarding call, timewasting being one of my many marketable skills. I spent some of that time telling them where they could stick the allegedly-valuable vouchers for the overcrowding on this flight. Very satisfying, really. It’s fun to look back on how silly and naive you were just this morning. Still, this boarding managed to be a fun tapdance, seeing as some of the seats were indeed double-booked still. One of them not quite being mine but being close enough to mine that someone felt herself entitled to my seat so that she could stay next to the person she booked with. It’s fair enough that she was promised the ability to sit next to her companion but by the same token my ticket has the seat number that your ass is touching and yours does not I have the moral highground here! Though I would’ve been entirely justified in so doing, elbowing her out of there and taking what was rightfully mine in pitched combat would’ve been a glorious victory lap spent next to someone who would spend the entire flight being pissed off at me. So I went for the more congenial option of asking the crew to sort this catastrofuck all out.
There actually was someone going back and forth in the plane trying to match all the people with seats. Apparently he wasn’t even flightcrew. His whole purpose in life was this kind of thing. Not only do I very much the-opposite-of-envy him in this task, it speaks volumes of their system that United has “designated seat-booking un-fucker” as a job opening. I took to basically standing as unobtrusively as I could in the isle to remind the Seating Pixie that yes, there was still a problem and he needed to find a somewhat person-shaped hole to fit me in. I preferred that option because boarding was proceeding at a pace that a sloth would soon grow exasperated with, so I was in no hurry to sit down early and get a head start on all that sitting I was about to do. The increasingly frantic Seat Pixie asked me if I was Michael Corwin enough times that I eventually agreed that I must be, if only because both Mike and myself allegedly had seats with only one person’s name attached to them. I do hope it worked out okay for him, as I unexpectedly did end up spending the entire flight, and the nearly-as-long wait on the ground, in his seat. Apparently once I finally got tired of waiting for a real solution and just went with identity theft our Seat Pixie decided that his work here was done and told them to close the door and prepare for departure. I got a little glimpse of what it was like to work at United in that moment. Basically a vague sense that I was screwing someone over but that if I played my cards right the consequences would never find their way back to me.
In any case, after all that carefully prescribed waiting in the terminal and at the gate, came still more surprise bonus waiting! There was a mechanical fault and then there wasn’t and then there was a problem with the paperwork that said there wasn’t a problem and then there were “emergent booking difficulties”, most likely Michael Corwin showing up at the gate and asking what the fuck. After all that got straightened out it started raining so we might as well just chill because God clearly doesn’t want us to leave and then the other delayed planes delayed us out of our position in the takeoff queue and then the pilot’s chakras weren’t properly aligned for taxiing and then it turned out that this plane was only designed to fly through thin air and there was a system of fat air moving through overhead and then angry raccoons were hanging off the ailerons and making mean faces at the baggage handlers, you know, the usual. In the end it was over two and a half hours’ worth of “just a few more minutes”. It was like I’d sponsored this flight’s Kickstarter instead of buying an actual ticket. I paid money with the expectation of results but in its stead all I get is a series of increasingly enthusiastic messages about production delays all saying how if you’ll just bear with us for a moment longer we’ll totally have that thing you pledged us money for and not at all buy enough weed to make a blue whale think it can drive a taxi cab. Honestly a couple hours’ delay isn’t torture. I can deal with that. I just need to hear “hey, give us a minute to get our shit together and then you can leave. Tell me up front what the delay is and I’ll deal with it. The absolute last thing I need is to be lied to 46 times about how long the wait is going to be. Just like with politicians, your lies are fooling essentially no one and helping even less.
They made DirecTV free for everyone to help pass the time. Good move on their part. At least United is experienced enough at wasting peoples’ time that they know how to do it in the least objectionable way possible. Unfortunately it didn’t work very well since the plane was still in safe mode or whatever due to having not moved since lunchtime. There was one guy a few seats in front of me who was on the movie channel, despite the fact that movies apparently can only be played when the plane is off the ground because of one of the many important entertainment safety interlocks that the craft is equipped with. His screen just played the trailer for Tomorrowland on loop again and again the entire time. I managed to be completely blasé about it, get kind of interested, get over that, get really interested and then become completely sick of that movie all before the plane ever moved. That was certainly a singular experience. Seriously, try constantly watching a film trailer for longer than the runtime of said film and try to keep what little remains of your sanity. It’s pretty intense. Searching for silver linings wherever I could, I noticed that by the time the plane had gotten enough air under it for the TV to actually start working, it was just in time for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, something I quite rarely get the chance to watch when it actually airs. Naturally this just provided a reminder that Jon is leaving, information I really didn’t need when keeping my spirits afloat was the biggest challenge I faced.
In any case, this ill-fated flying snafu actually did make it to Denver, and when it did I got my feet on the ground secure in the knowledge that everything I’d gone through to ensure that I wasn’t keeping Ryoken out stupid late at night had been totally worthless, as it was still about half-past tomorrow before we managed to get out of there. So yeah, made it there alive, despite my best efforts. I was rooming down in the ample basement here at casa canine, which is lit by some comically large CFL bulbs that cause me to severely question the use of “compact” in their name. I didn’t really know how useful or expensive such artifices were, but by the next morning I did learn how difficult it is to accidentally karate chop one in half while you’re putting on a shirt. The answer, for those of you wondering, is “not particularly difficult at all, actually.” I’d woken up a bit bleary and sluggish that day from the previous night/morning’s adventures. I was entertaining the idea of a shower to wake me up a bit and to its credit an unexpected shower of finely-splintered glass is certainly a good way to recover one’s senses. I debate with myself a bit as to whether or not turning on the offending light would’ve improved the situation. I would’ve been no less disoriented having just flipped on the Batsignal down there and this probably would’ve just led to me engaging in gentlemen’s fisticuffs with an energized beehive-sized light bulb, probably resulting in an experience rather similar to intense melee combat with an actual beehive.
As such, my morning libations began with washing very carefully to try and get all the mercury and Phazon and whatever other awful crap makes those things work out of the cuts on my hand. On the other hand, the presently non-bleeding one, I now had a project for the day, making the lack of company less of a big deal. Certainly not the activity I would’ve picked, but it kept me busy. Being free of a time limit was nice, and let me be careful enough to only further cut myself one time throughout the process. Hooray, I suppose. The rest of the gap leading up to the convention was mercifully uneventful, and then of course got eventful as all hell because that’s how cons roll. Logistical seizure the first had happened in the planning stages, as many of them do. Nev and Ryo’s rooms were already quite full, precluding me from staying with them again this year. That put me in a tough spot because I don’t know too many people coming to this con, hardly any, in fact. As such, I threw in my lot with literally anyone who would take me and came up with a spot for Friday and Saturday. I was hoping that my hosts’ living rather nearby would help fill in the gaps. That was, as you might surmise, not quite how things went down.
Thursday:
The actual plan, I found, was to arrive on Thursday and overnight at the hotel to get an early start on the con. Naturally, I found this out on Thursday, leaving me a rather short window with which to adapt my approach. My prospective roommate wasn’t arriving until Friday, so no help there, but a frantic flip through the convention forums turned up someone that had an opening, so that worked out okay. And of course after I got all that worked out and got moved into the room, I was hanging out at Nev’s and found out that they were probably going to have a cancellation and I could’ve stayed there after all! This salvation came entirely too late because ofcourseitdid. I was set to a course now though. I hate those flake-at-the-last-second sorts, so letting myself become one would’ve been a bit hypocritical. And of course the contest of whole-bed vs half-bed is a pretty lopsided affair.
Next up on the coordination chopping block were some advertising and promotion tasks for Furthe’More that I’d taken on. I felt dumb about missing an opportunity at a free badge for Anthrocon by not knowing they were available for people working the dealer’s table. To forestall that sort of thing from happening again I’d asked if Furthe’More had any presence at RMFC. We didn’t. Until I asked about it, naturally. The gameplan was to send some flyers and such to the hotel so that I could post and hand them out while I was in the neighborhood. I’d offered up Ryo’s address to Serval so that he could ship the stuff early enough that shenanigans along the way wouldn’t be a problem and they’d still reach me in time for the con. Of course shenanigans did inevitably happen and the buffer was not nearly so large as it needed to be. I still didn’t have an estimated delivery time when we left for the con. So that was lame. I checked shipping updates regularly, but thanks to my brilliant insight on sending it to the house instead of the hotel we’d have to go pick them up even if they did get there. So yeah, goes to prove that nothing is quite simple enough that we can’t fuck it up.
Much of the evening was spent hanging around in the lobby meeting friends of Nev and Ryo, since I’ll be damned if I knew anyone that was there, particularly that early. It was still rather quiet, but even a small amount of fursuits can make for a rather lively night. Someone was making balloon animals and I managed to get a spare balloon for Ryoken to play with. I never would’ve guessed that his fascination with it would last for days, but I’m glad he got so much out of it. He soon figured out that he could thread the balloon in one ear and out the other, looking profoundly ridiculous in the process. I suppose you can do some really fun things with your suit when it’s hanging in rags and you don’t really care what happens to it. Plans for his next suit have been simmering quietly in the background for some time now. So staving off the demise of the old spotty husky is not so much of a concern as it once was. I didn’t think much of my activities that night, but apparently I didn’t go unnoticed. A tweet from @thatdamntiger, popped up the next day saying “Big thank-you to @Cruxaholic, @Shawhsank_Crux, and that really cute guy in the glasses for the entertainment in the lobby tonight.” So our collective efforts managed to make at least one person’s night. That’s not too bad. I went to bed early that night, not necessarily out of boredom though it was pretty quiet. It was more that I knew I’d need the rest. I still managed to not sleep particularly well, but such is my lot in life sometimes.
Friday:
Opening ceremonies were pretty neat. The theme was game shows this year, so that’s actually how the event was formatted. They did quite a lot with the theme this time around and that’s something I really like to see. Far too often the theme is confined to the art in the con book and maybe like a QR game or something. They really went all out with this one. Lots of cool games going on and a lot of prizes to be won. There were quite a few things that I’d like to see brought back, theme-matching or not.
Straight out of the gate I got a whirlwind tour of some more of the notably large pool of friends-of-a-friend from around here. On Friday that group included but was not limited to Zander, Dexter, Helix, Quoala Quinn, and Sprocket. So yeah, busy day bouncing around among those dudes. I hit up the usual things, game room, dealer’s den, art show, so the morning went pretty quickly. Then I went and had lunch with Nye at Firehouse Subs. I’ve missed that place. There don’t seem to be any in the northeast. I really like how they don’t give you dirty looks for asking for irresponsible amounts of meat on your sandwich like Subway does. Hell, double-meat is a standard menu option.
When we got back, I checked out fursuit charades, which was pretty much The Return of I Can’t Understand this Motherfucker: Indistinct Edition. So that’s one lesson not learned from last time. I actually ended up kinda bored after that, wandering about without much of anyone to see or anything to do. I came across Jake Otter and talked to him a little bit. I was quite flattered by how many of the Unmentionables seemed to vaguely recall having met me before. Maxwell came by to request Jake’s help and ended up netting both of us. I’d been asked about volunteering at this convention before and I was pretty solidly against the idea of spending $600 on plane tickets to go do work, so I doubt I’ll ever register as a volunteer. How strange though, that they don’t seem too quick to turn down help that drops in out of the blue just because the proper paperwork hasn’t been filled out. I did what I could to help set up American Gladiafur and then I was on my way again.
Nye had spent all day practically wetting himself with excitement over the match game, and in fact he did win many fabulous prizes playing it. I thought it might’ve been worth a shot checking out the adult version of it, since lewd content improves pretty much anything. Apparently that wasn’t nearly as dependable a characteristic as I thought, as the event was fucking miserable. I probably would’ve been better off going to the regular one, as it actually does seem like a fun game. Basically there are a couple contestants and a panel on the stage. The contestants fill in a blank for a sentence presented to them. They gain points based on the number of people in the panel whose answers matched theirs. The late-night one was pretty half-assed though. Not even that. Maybe more like 30%-assed, at best. The fill-in-the-blank statements were all admittedly written by Maxwell in a sleep-deprived near-coma, so they didn’t have much variety or cleverness to them. There were only two contestants and one of them was very clearly not taking this seriously. It wasn’t long before I really wanted them to just give the prizes to the only one who actually appeared to give a damn and just be done with it. Of course, by the time I realized that I really didn’t want to be there they were the only game in town, so I stuck it out. Really a pretty sad showing. At least I didn’t miss much. I came to find out later that the gladiafur event had been pretty badly mismanaged as well. Some surprising disappointments from these guys, actually.
Ryo said I could come up and hang out with his crew that night if I felt so inclined. His crew at this point consisting of Zenel, Neki, and Fitz. Dropping by their place was a good chance to relax a little bit. Zenel seemed to be in good spirits, and also drinking quite an impressive quantity of good spirits. We sat around and chatted for quite a while. I was very much in the minority in that I wasn’t drawing dog penises at the time, but I’ve gotten used to that. Zenel actually found me a kind of whisky that I don’t passionately hate. An event unlikely enough that calling it a miracle would be only a small exaggeration. It’s called “the Knot”, and despite my (likely correct) assumption that it was only on the premises because of the hilarious implications of that name I tried it anyway. Now, I’d had a rather substantial amount of vodka by the time I’d tried it so I wouldn’t trust my judgment at the time with my life, but I recall it as being not entirely unpleasant. Apparently the stuff is rather difficult to come across, but if it actually is as astonishingly acceptable as I remember it being then buying some would certainly be worth looking into. In any case, eventually we all ran out of steam and turned in for the night.
Saturday:
The next morning started off with early sirens, which is just as well. You’re not a real con until you’ve been baptized in fire. Though in figurative terms, the morning was rather quiet. So once the fire was confirmed to have been imaginary I took my laptop down to the lobby to catch up on a few things, and check the tracking on the flyers I was still waiting on. Taking my laptop down to the lobby every time was a pain, but once again, that’s the kind of pain I’m willing to deal with when the alternative is paying $13 a day for internet access. (Thanks Obama!) It even ended up benefitting me. Drawing at a nearby table was Halcyon, an artist that I’ve been a fan of for some time, so I appreciated the chance to chat. Also joining in later was Octogon, who was very interested to talk in detail once he heard that I worked in nuclear power. In all it was a nice way to spend the morning. The fursuit parade actually kind of snuck up on me and I had to hurry to get ready. Realistically I needn’t have bothered to rush. The parade faced some notable logistical delays in getting started, one of them being the ultimately disastrous decision to try and take an eye-level fursuit photo. It’s a bit of an irritant, but I suppose I can’t blame them too much. Setting up something like that is a lot like, and in some cases is literally herding cats.
Quite by accident I made the most of the time though, as this was when Psycosword found me. He had been planning on handing out some fudge at the convention because he liked making it and wanted to get his name out there as a fudgeteer and such. That effort got canned because the hotel had a non-compete clause on selling or even just giving away food and snacks. So he reached out to anyone who would like a pound of fudge to give it to them specifically, as this was not against the rules. That’s a tough offer to refuse seeing as I am a huge fan both of delicious chocolate and still-more-delicious clever subversion of the man and his rules. So we managed to find each other such that I might enjoy some of his bounty. Honestly that limitation is kind of a dick move by the hotel. It really does seem to frustrate them that despite their hosting our event, a relatively small amount of us were eating at their overpriced restaurant and drinking at their overpriced bar. It’s almost as though most furries have blown most of their discretionary cash on just showing up and having a place to sleep (and also drawings and figurines of animal dicks), meaning that they can’t afford to bullshit around with marked-up food whose only advantage is location. How strange. Guess we’ll never get to the bottom of that mystery.
Far from just being a pile of inconveniences though, I’m starting to see a rather distressing pattern with this venue. While I don’t personally enjoy being treated like a wallet on the back of an easily-entranced magpie, that one at the very least is good business sense. The bigger things have more to do with booking. They tried to book a wedding in the atrium on Friday, which would’ve sucked abominably for both sides. Their plan was to just bar the atrium from all furries for the duration of the wedding. Firstly, it’s impossible to get to anywhere without going through the atrium because of how huge and poorly designed that room is. Second, over a hundred balconies open up into the atrium, balconies that we control because we booked rooms. So if the intent was to not have furries observing or visible during the ceremony, mission failed on that one. The walls of the room were literally lined with cartoonish pooltoys and severed fursuit heads. The couple holding the reservations eventually got wind of our presence and cancelled the wedding. Which, while it did solve the problem, is precisely the opposite of a win. Not only does it underscore the idea that we are a scourge to be avoided at all costs, it begs the question of why the hotel is putting people in the position of doing a costly and difficult reschedule to avoid the slavering mutant hordes that have descended on the atrium in the first place.
The room where we had our fursuit lounge last year was also booked up by someone else this go-around. The corporation that was holding meetings there seemed a bit more willing to suffer our presence, as they remained in there the entire time. But just in case we were wanting for reminders that we subhuman scum were not welcome here, there were very clear corporate stooges only signs on the refreshment tables and no freaks allowed barriers put up all the way across the hall that their room was in. This hallway also contained the Dealer’s Den and Artshow, and was meant to be part of the fursuit parade route, but apparently no inconvenience is too much for us, the slavering proletariat, to bear such that the real people needn’t have their space sullied with the indignity of having us walk past them.
What scares me is that all this kind of shit is exactly what I saw right before Hunt Valley Inn told Furthe’More about the many grand and wondrous places that we could fuck off to. Courting our money instead of our attendees, selling rooms in the middle of the convention hall out from under us, reminding us at every available opportunity that everyone else in the hotel is a higher priority than we are, jerking us around when we try to get services… They’re all little nudges to indicate that our presence is not appreciated. That’s how Hunt Valley behaved right before they handed us a contract renegotiation that may as well have read “get fucked” with a dollars sign next to it at the bottom. Ah well, I don’t work at this one, so it’s beyond me and not my problem. I do hope they can pull it together. Rocky Mountain Fur Con has had something of a rocky past in terms of venues. I may have complaints about their finished product, but they’re good guys and they don’t deserve this. Word on the street is that their present home is going to be undergoing substantial renovation in the near future, such that they won’t be there next year. Hopefully that’ll be an opportunity to scope out alternatives.
Anyways, that’s enough depressing musings for the moment. Saturday actually went quite quickly with the parade, improv, 2 Gryphon’s performance and the fursuit dance competition all pretty much running right into each other. The dance competition was a TON of fun this time around. It looked to have been planned well and went very smoothly. I remembered this event as being very disappointing last year, and apparently they took my complaining to heart because they put on quite a show this time. I was glad that we arrived early because it was quite popular. I was lucky in that Nev and Ryo were also eager to get there because their friend Qytrain was competing. She did a very interesting and unconventional dance that had kind of an exotic Latin feel to it. It was very compelling to watch, so I threw her a rose. It seemed to fit the theme and I had received one from a fursuiter earlier. That seemed like a worthy use for it. I’m not sure how I ended up with a token of affection like that in the first place, to be honest. Apparently I’m quite the ladykiller provided that lady is dressed up as a sultry vixen at the time.
I managed to catch up with Toast after 2’s set and had a good chat with him. It was actually pretty funny. We got along quite well with the other people who had gathered to talk with him, maybe half an hour or so of just shooting the breeze, and all of a sudden he said “Oh, OH! It’s you, you’re that guy!” He hadn’t actually made the connection up until that point, which was pretty funny. I didn’t mind at all, given the number of people there who had no connection to make at all. That actually got rather oppressive during this convention. I don’t know what was different this year. I got kind of a really quiet and subdued feel from the con this time around and I could only contribute it to the lack of interaction that I had. I never really noticed it last time. Perhaps it was simply that I wasn’t rooming with my hosts here. Last time when I did that it was pretty easy to fall in with their crowd. I was amazed with how far I could get just based on “It’s fine. Nev says he’s good people.” No such luck this time. Ryo actually remarked on how weird it was to have me attending but not rooming with them. There was an obvious “Well whose fuckin’ fault is that?” in response, but I didn’t lay into him too hard. Apparently he was also having some difficulty with the fact that he wasn’t in control of his own room reservations. That’s pretty standard practice for me, but Nev and Ryo were apparently new to the unique pitfalls of the situation. Their intent is to take the helm again for next year, so hopefully this will be a little easier on us in the future.
Speaking of those two, I’d meant to join them for dinner that night, but shenanigans. We were going to meet up in the lobby, so I was hanging out there waiting for them. A few people came by, Helix and his crew, I got to say hi to Dexter again, too. I talked a lot with Rahne also. It was a wonderful treat to see him again. He was in the best possible spirits as he had just won the dance competition, so he was a lot of fun. Perhaps he’ll become a regular on my roster yet! Here’s hoping. Eventually I ended up talking to Loomy a lot, and shortly a little circle gathered around him. Among his friends was Yonoa, who was a delight to talk to, and was overcome with glee to hear that I recognized some of the hallmarks of the suits that he’s made.
After a long wait I checked in and was notified that I’d missed the boat on Nevir’s trip in search of food. That’s a “these things happen” if there ever was one, but it actually kind of was a big deal. Nev complained once about how he’d have to choose among the six dinner invites he’d get on a given day and felt swamped with them. I had very much the opposite problem. Getting caught up in things and forgetting to eat is a long-standing issue for me, and even when I was actively looking for a chance to go out to eat I’d end up with a handful of air at times. That’s why I decided it was time to go for broke and get this done by any means necessary. Just as I was weighing my options, the group that I’d been idly chatting with the whole time decided that it was food O’clock as well. The interesting part being that Loomy (whom I barely knew) and Yonoa (whom I had just met but had at least spoken with a bit) had both left by that point. So I was among a group of eleven people, none of whom I knew, when we headed out. It’s a con though, so “just roll with it” is a very useful attitude to have.
This was a supreme test of my “Okay yeah, so we’re friends now” mojo and in fact I passed with flying colors. Apparently the larger the group gets, the less likely it is that anyone will ask who you are or what the hell you’re doing there because it becomes easier to assume that you’re with someone else. As such, I managed to get through a whole dinner without the subject ever being broached even though I was “with” precisely zero of those people. It helped quite a bit that several of them were dancers and I had just come from the dance competition. Saying “Oh yeah, you were the red husky. I remember you twerking all up in the judges’ faces!” is actually a pretty good segue into a conversation. Anyways, regardless of the bizarre adversities that my presence there presented we all had a great time. So I doubt any of them minded. I wish I could’ve kept better track of their names. Oh well, see you next time, “strangers”!
It was rather quiet when I got back to the convention hall. Granted it was a bit late, but that wouldn’t explain all of it. I was kind of getting that subdued vibe again, but that might just be my imagination. It probably was just that I’d been spoiled by being able to stay with Nev’s crew last time around. That’s certainly an easy way to fill the time. So maybe I wasn’t judging the atmosphere fairly. I like to think that I did well on my own though. I spent some time with Violentz Jolt in the lobby. I stopped by because they were in fursuit and sitting very still by themselves. I once encountered someone who fitted that description who turned out to be rather close to losing consciousness and needed help to get back to their room, so I always check on suiters that exhibit a conspicuous lack of movement. It turned out that they had simply figured out that the wall they were up against was a solid concrete load-bearing wall. Thus, it was quite capable of absorbing a noteworthy amount of heat. I begrudge no one in that position their source of a heat sink, so I let them carry on with it until I was sure that seeking refuge from the heat was all they were up to.
My other interesting find in the lobby was an impromptu performer whose work I’d very much admired during the con. Soong Dae had come up with a very entertaining gig for this con. Since the theme was game shows, he decided to make himself the perfect parody of an utterly insane Asian game show host. He had a giant dice that he would challenge people to roll. “A test of honor and a test of luck!” he billed it as, offering appropriately hyperbolic challenges to passerbys as he roamed throughout the hotel. Several times a crowd gathered around wherever he was to watch the spectacle of him giving out fantastic prizes to those who would dare challenge his glorious dice. Of course, the unfavorable outcome of his dice’s wrath was “PUNISHMENT TIMEEERUUH!”, consisting of being bapped with a giant paper fan, and of course presumably dishonoring your ancestors.
This production was hilarious to watch, and so much work went into it that I couldn’t believe it was just the work of some guy who wanted to do something special for the convention. He didn’t even work there! He footed the bill and took on all the effort himself. Naturally I was eager to let him know what a good job he was doing and that I appreciated all he had done. He was profoundly humble in hearing that. Really, he was just trying to prove that there was fun to be had at a furry convention even if you didn’t have a fursuit to wear. I found that he was actually quite astonished by the notoriety he had acquired during the con, and I did my best to assure him that he richly deserved all the praise he had received there. It was great getting to talk to him and hearing what motivated him to do all these things. He was mentioned multiple times during the feedback panel, and even awarded a gift card by the staff for his efforts. So it would seem I was far from the only one to have noticed him.
I got word from Ryoken that he’d managed to retrieve the long-awaited flyers from his place, so I stopped by to pick them up and hang out with his crew some more. Zenel was far more sober this time around, though no less fun. After getting all my promotional materials organized into a somewhat useful format I shuffled those off to my room. After that I poked around a bit, finding little to do. That wasn’t all that unusual in itself, as it was nearly 2:00 AM by that point, but I just didn’t want the day to end. And as signs go, that’s a damn good one.
Sunday:
Mercifully, there was one writing panel left on the last day, so I actually did get a chance to plug the Regional Anthropomorphics Writing Retreat (we’re calling it RAWR because that’s adorable) to its target audience. Also that’s a link because I’m still plugging it. There was actually a rather substantial amount of interest in it, so I may have actually done some good. If any of you aspiring writers are interested in heading out to sunny California this January to learn a thing or two from the pros you should definitely look into it. Anyways, I got to check out the improv workshop with the Unmentionables, which was a blast as always. Seeing things like this is slowly starting to convince me that perhaps I ought to look into joining RPI’s improv comedy group. They seem to think that I have a knack for it and it’s certainly a hell of a lot of fun. I bumped into Redd while I was walking about and so we visited a bit. It was great to see her again. She’d apparently been having a rough time of it lately and had actually told me that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the con this year. It was nice that she was able to at least show her face and say hi to people. Heck, that’s a big part of what I do when I’m in a place where I actually know some folks, so I was happy to help her navigate and make the most of her short visit.
Ryo had assembled a small, possibly intentional gathering out in the atrium where a handful of people were hanging out or doing art or what have you, so I stopped by that thing for a while. Riley Coyote was one of the many who stopped by and he had just the cutest goddamn paws I’d ever seen. He was in the process of making good on his promise to suit pretty much the entire con, so he was burning up by this point. I got him some water since I wasn’t doing much. The straw I gave him actually showed up later on during Free Fox’s cooking panel. It let him sample the soup that Free was making without desuiting, so that was neat. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work for the bacon that came later, but such is life. Now that the challenge is out there though, I’m certain that someone somewhere out there on the internet is going to make consuming bacon through a straw a reality. After that I checked out Furry Feud quickly and then bitched a whole bunch at the feedback panel. I can’t help it. I’m just really good at complaining. The emcee really did seem to appreciate the nice things I said about the dance competition though. I could tell he had worked hard on it.
Somewhere in the course of all this I was informed in an oh-so-timely manner that we’d also be spending Sunday night at the con. Ryoken seemed unconcerned at the logistical challenge that this presented when I complained about it. Though I couldn’t really argue with his reasoning. Here’s an excerpt: “You know, you’re always complaining about how you’re a fish out of water here and you don’t know anyone and yet you managed to get two rooms with practically no notice and you’ve got guys giving you free fudge and inviting you out to eat and whatever. You’ve also been in like a dozen fursuits just because. You’ll be fine. Apparently you can talk your way into anything.” Heh, it actually was kind of noteworthy that I didn’t manage to make it into a suit this convention. At this point that has become downright unusual.
Though Ryoken’s confidence was flattering, I actually was out of clever tricks by that point. Most everyone was leaving on Sunday, so I couldn’t come up with anything. In the moment I didn’t much see the point. I was all ready to head out at the end of the festivities, but then again I don’t own a fursuit. So weighing anchor is a far less labor-intensive process for me. In any case, they ended up getting a cot for me. It wasn’t great but it worked just fine. Really if you can’t sleep standing up at the end of a con then you didn’t con hard enough. I did regret that a little bit though, as I met Bindi in that room but had far too few remaining higher brain functions to interact with her in any meaningful way and probably came off as a little rude.
Anyways, the night pressed on. I got to tag a few people one last time as they trickled out. I spent a lot of time in the lobby with the fursuiters that had gathered there. Rory was putting on a hell of a show out there, with an utterly inconceivable energy level for that hour at the end of the con. His character is quite notable for being the first squeaker that was something other than soul-searingly annoying. The squeaks suited his personality well and were actually quite cute and expressive. He was a real crowd-pleaser and just a joy to watch. That performance definitely deserves a tip of the hat.
I followed Loomy around for a little bit more while he was trying to drum up attendance for that night’s band at the dance. Apparently the dances at RMFC can be a bit poorly attended. Having checked in on them a few times I get the impression that the room is to blame. It’s far too large for the actual dancefloor that they have. It makes it feel kind of empty even if there are a good number of people in there. Anyways, having live performers was nice, but the “goth/witchhouse” style fell pretty flat with me, and many others. I would’ve loved to do some things that night, but the dance and karaoke both had their amps turned up to a debilitating volume. Definitely not what I needed when it was that late. My key didn’t work because the room keys pretty much never work at that stupid place, but I got lucky and caught Nev in the room just as he was leaving. Apparently there was more suiting to be done, and going along with that was a tempting prospect, but I’d done plenty enough wandering and following by then. Bed was a far more compelling option by then.
Monday:
So at the crack of noon-ish when we finally managed to haul out of there, essentially everyone else had already done so. That made for a pretty quiet farewell to the con, but being that we were all dead tired from having enjoyed ourselves so much, that’s really all you can ask in the end. I didn’t feel like I needed much more rest since I’d turned in a lot earlier than my entourage, but after lying down to relax a bit and realizing that “relaxing a bit” had gone on for over three hours I suppose I can admit that I was still pretty tired too. I really should try weighing myself before and after cons in the future. Judging by the way my pants were sliding down at the end of this one I’m starting to think it’s quite accurate to say that these things literally take a lot out of you. Though in the end I can think of nothing else in the world more worth my pound(s) of flesh.
RMFC and Scurrilous Villainy
General | Posted 10 years agoOkay, clearing giant-ass con journals off my page is always nice, and this gives me a chance to remind everyone that I'm going to be at Rocky Mountain Fur Con very shortly. I always make sure to talk about conventions a lot because people always manage to not be aware of these things then miss me while I'm there and that sucks. Anyways, I'll be there and I'm still poking around looking for a room if anyone knows of any opportunities.
Also in the news this week,
incredibleintruder has been doing some very sexy and hilarious farcical stories and has been sticking his friends in them wherever he's able. I was the conniving magnificent bastard out to backstab his way to the top in this most recent one, and it's an absolutely smashing portrayal. It's actually just a tiny bit unsettling what a good Nazi I make. So if you get the chance and you're up for some spoofy hypnotic shenanigans, make sure you check out Ildiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Rack. It's quite certain to be a fun time for all.
Also in the news this week,
incredibleintruder has been doing some very sexy and hilarious farcical stories and has been sticking his friends in them wherever he's able. I was the conniving magnificent bastard out to backstab his way to the top in this most recent one, and it's an absolutely smashing portrayal. It's actually just a tiny bit unsettling what a good Nazi I make. So if you get the chance and you're up for some spoofy hypnotic shenanigans, make sure you check out Ildiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Rack. It's quite certain to be a fun time for all. Anthrocon 2015 Part II: Rise of Marius the Invalid
General | Posted 10 years agoContinued from Part I, just in case you weren't sensing a pattern of some sort.
Sunday:
Thanks to the baffling level of responsibility displayed by my roommates, one I would’ve been overjoyed to be a part of any other time, we all got ourselves around relatively early that day, and I was back out into the world by 10 AM. I knew that this was far too early to start pestering Arc about the day’s big project and there wasn’t much going on in the common areas, so I headed down to see the Funday Pawpet show. I’d never had an affinity for puppets before, but Lion King has always been very insistent that the show is absolutely worth seeing, so I went for it. It was about what I expected, in some ways. Rather poorly attended because some idiot had scheduled it at 10 AM on Sunday, a time that most attendees are unfamiliar with because they are still dead then, but still had some good energy and was pretty entertaining. We got a visit from the upper echelons of house Kage though, which was pretty cool, and their presence didn’t go unnoticed. It was certainly quite an experience to watch a very animated German Shepherd puppet pester Grandma Kage with questions, to which she had only the most charming and folksy of answers. Altogether an entirely worthwhile experience.
Afterwards, I managed to confirm both that Impy was in the Artist’s Alley, and thus temporarily chained down to a particular location, and that Archai was still alive, capable of useful consciousness, and willing to let me lightsaber open his caribou so I could crawl inside and keep warm, insert some joke about smelling bad on the outside, et al. So I got suitably caribou’d and headed out into this big bad world of ours. Now, those of you who read about the last time I used my wondertwin powers to activate the form of a caribou will remember that I did my usual bouncing-off-the-ceiling near-light-speed cocaine bender that I typically do in suit. Partly because that was the only speed I had and partly because HOOVES YOU GUYS, FUCKING SERIOUSLY HOOVES ARE JUST THE GREATEST GODDAMN THING. Anyways, I wanted to try out something new with this outing. It was somewhat at Archai’s urging, I think because he was quite rightly concerned for my health, and partly because in the interim I’d seen the way he plays Jake Caribou. It’s definitely a much more low-key personality. Sort of a chest-out swagger kind of deal with a “Really, this shit again?” attitude and of course with a cartoonish Minnesooota accent. I actually have a pretty good lanky swagger still from the days when I had to wear bigass combat boots that weighed as much as cinder blocks, so it started to look somewhat achievable. I decided to swing for that kind of performance, and apart from moving his heritage to Ireland I think I pulled it off pretty well. We discussed it a bit on our journey, and I think I’d be best suited by quoting Jake directly as he explains.
“Ya see the ‘ting I find nao deese days is that it ‘ent jest a matter ah bein’ on er off eh? There’s ah greedient all along dere in the middle yah? That’s whear ya wanna be fer sommo’ dat magic tah happ’n. Yenno, keep’n moovin it around real smuuth like eh? Just teekin in deh feel of the room and whatnot dere, try’n teh match yer sooroundins wit de way yeh moove an’ be jyratin’ all about an such like, if’n the scenurryo calls fer it, yah?”
If you’re not certain what Jake was saying then you’re not alone. I feel like I lost track of it myself at times, but it really seemed to work from a characterization perspective. I also noticed some things once I actually found myself occasionally standing still and looking around a little. Like when I saw myself in the mirror I couldn’t help but be struck by “Well wouldja lookit dis handsome stranger over here eh?” I really felt that in the moment, and just like that “Would everyone just look at this goddamn majestic son of a bitch over here?” became a part of the character. I couldn’t help it, really. I was just dripping with hardy, natural magnificence and I couldn’t help but share it with everyone. The craziest thing about that though? People fucking loved that! Once I got out of the subdued start that I had and really started laying it on thick everybody thought it was just the greatest thing. I was pulling a bit from the Kage school of conversation. Basically that you should never answer a question with just “yes” or “no”. You should always get at least a sentence out, and a segue into talking about something more is even better. Here’s a sampling:
“Oh why of course ya ken have a phootoo! Make sure ya ghet my good side here.” *snap* “Alright now make sure yah get my other good side like such there.” *snap* “Oh well would ya look at that I jest got good sides on all my sides now don’t I eh?”
“Ya want a picture o’ jest my hooves, eh? Well that’s jest fine, these are my pride and joy right here don’tcha know? Could cut a diamond with these bad boys I tellya. Ya know ya could get a picture ah all o’me too eh? I don’t charge by acreage yehsee? But yah kno mebbe I should eh? I betcha I could fetch a pretty penny for a square foot o’this wouldn’tcha say?”
“Yenno I hope none o’ my admirers here catch me checkin’ out the art show later. They’ve got rules dere about takin’ pictures of the works o’art eh? Wouldn’t wannem gettin’ in trouble fer takin’ a snapshot ah me now would I? Gotta keep this work ah art out in the open where’n folks can appreciate all this rustic natural buety eh?”
“A photo eh? Why of course I’d be happy to oblige there young lady now what can I do ya fer? Handsome and regal or regal and handsome? … Handsome and regal then? Good choice! I’ll letcha see regal and handsome first tho’. Wouln’t wantcha makin’ an uninformed decision there eh?”
I never would’ve guessed it but people just lit up when I started clowning around like that. Even the little kids that were in the lobby. I’d never had terribly good luck with kids and yet I somehow became super approachable once I started spending the whole time bellowing about my unparalleled dazzling radiance. It’s a true testament to the power of fursuiting that it can make being a conceited, narcissistic cockwad into the most adorable goddamn thing you’ve seen all day. Hell, being a caribou somehow made that far more likable than actually being nice to people! If it weren’t for the fact that I would literally die I could just wear a fursuit all the time and never have to be humble again!
In any case, in the course of all that I did pull off my impossible mission. Since I hadn’t discussed this with her, I was worried that Impy would still be nervous about it. Once she saw my badge and my dulcet tones came across her table with “Yeno I heard frum a good friend ah mine that you were lookin’ teh hug a fursootah.” She came right around and wrapped her arms around me. I can say without a doubt that “Oh God it’s so soft this is the best!” is the greatest feedback I ever could’ve asked for. One of a hundred things that made the effort all very much worth it, to be sure. Apparently random passersby weren’t the only ones impressed by my display. Archai was forced to ask “So, you still don’t have a suit then? Because you’re just- I mean, goddamn!” I did confirm later he was trying to say that I’m just too goddamn good at this to not own a suit. Flattering, and I’ll certainly take it under advisement in the future. That adventure did have to end, though for once it was for time reasons and not because my vitals were tanking. Being sociable and engaged with voice and gestures instead of high-flying acrobatics is far less straining, it turns out, and left me still rather functional at the end of it all. Which was quite fortunate, as I had work to do.
We went and grabbed a quick gyro across the street and I headed into the Dealer’s Den to do my time at the Furthe’more booth. When I was planning all this out, the idea of missing hours out of the convention to sit in a chair and sell stuff was unthinkable, even inhumane. It actually wasn’t so bad though. I got to hang out and chat with Dragoneer, who is very much not the unrepentantly vicious demonspawn that some big chunks of the internet seem to think he is. And also there was the simply lovely fact that people would walk by and I could just summon them over to me so that we could chat a bit too. It was a very relaxing time at a point wherein relaxation was in rather short supply. I’ll have to get into this kind of thing more in the future. Allegedly you can get a free con badge out of it if you actually put in the admin on seeing this all through properly. Doing so might even net me the dealer’s badge that I’d need to actually properly do the job. It was kind of funny, after we had finished cleaning up when the den closed, Indigo said “Oh, better not let them see you don’t have a dealer badge.” On the way out. And I was just kind of like “We’re going through the exit. What are they gonna do? Ask me to leave?” Yeah, that’s right. I’m a stone-cold renegade with naught but scorn for your rules. Now excuse me while I wheelie out of this place on my sick chopper.
After that I dropped by the lobby to see what, if anything, was up. I caught up with Sparf a bit there, amazed that I’d managed to go the whole con without seeing him, and after that I figured I’d drop in on the closing ceremonies as they were literally the only thing going on, and also, oddly enough, the last thing going on. We certainly had a hell of a lot of really impressive achievements to review there. It’s wonderful to see everything going so well. Kinda sad to see it all end, as always, but Kage put it quite well. After asking for a show of hands as to who would like the convention to be longer, he started pointing to the people with their hands up and shouting “Aha! Operations director! Vice Chair! Fursuit track lead!” Point taken. The con runs on people, and people run out.
After that I went back to the lobby to see who was still hanging out there. The answer? CatMonkShiro, MothMonarch and Lynx189. The last of whom I had never met before, and he introduced himself with a massage. So yeah, that’s a thing. I desperately needed one at the time, so I went for it, and it was fantastic, actually. I didn’t know I could relax so much while still sitting up. They had to move on before long though, so I did as well, finding Nevir’s crew in good spirits. Ryoken had found something sufficiently caustic to purge his suit of the lifeforms it had accrued over the course of the rest of the con, or at the very least mask their presence for one last shenanigan, perhaps even multiple shenanigans. He had a squeaker installed in his crotch and was adorably, insufferably proud of that particular innovation. That group was going to get pizza though, so I was all about what they were doing. I saw Tatu on the way there. Funnily enough we were both in very similar situations, being tugged along by groups that were going places and would totally leave us behind if we didn’t keep after them. I felt kind of bad about saying hey and running off but it was all I could manage! Sorry, Tatu. Anyways, we got pizza, eventually, and then ate pizza, eventually. We hijacked a bunch of chairs and tables in the back of the Westin and actually had a pretty satisfying sit-down. I got the truly singular experience of watching Ryo eat in suit because it was fuckit O’clock at the end of the con. And all around it was a great way to see those guys off.
I retired to the Zoo, moved back to its proper place now that our lease on the convention hall had expired, and I sat down with (oh Goddammit I am so sick of linking names why do I have so many fucking friends) Aelius, Sirfox, The Gneech, and Indigo, among others. All of whom were arting or at the very least discussing the arting process. I found that I actually fit in very well despite my lack of doing the art. It was a really great way to wind down at the end of the night, with a few breaks to run off and say farewells, among other things. What I had to say on return from such a venture really captures the atmosphere of a con pretty well.
“What was I up to? Well I sat on a piano and led a couple dozen people in a rendition of the theme from Portal, after helping a fox tune his ukulele of course. And then there was that giant balloon with the head of a tiger sticking out of it that was bouncing around in the hallway. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen that.”
We stuck around until they kicked us out of there too. The staff going around closing things down really seemed a lot like they were chasing down a horde of very colorful zombies from place to place, just cropping up somewhere new when they were flushed out of a particular location. I was out in one such location when I figured out that the Toucan I was dancing with was being piloted by Archai. Amusingly enough my first reaction was the exact opposite of excitement. I believe it was something to the effect of “You bought ANOTHER suit? Fucking SERIOUSLY?” I’m so supportive.
I soon came to find out that I had wildly overreacted and Arc was merely in the process of buying another suit, and I got to head back up to the rooms with them to watch the price negotiations with Crux going on. It was actually pretty funny to have the dynamic of both Arc trying to convince me to get a suit and me trying to convince him to stop getting suits. Had this been a sitcom I would’ve ended up outbidding him on it and buying the damn thing myself to resolve this. Fortunately I hadn’t yet lost enough higher brain functions to forget how I’ve been spending the past two years watching my savings account inexorably coast downwards after leaving the navy. It sounded like he was intent on picking up Touc for real, and honestly good for him, I guess. I’m sure he can manage the expense because I’ve seen the goddamn spaceship that he works in. He’s found something that he loves so I guess I can’t really say anything against him doing the hell out of that thing. In any case, it was cruelly late, so of course we wasted another couple hours on philosophical discussions regarding nothing of any great merit before finally deciding we’d had enough and packing it in for the night. Though once again, I suppose it’s better to end on “I’m too exhausted to continue.” than on “Aww, I really wish I’d done this and that other thing.”
Monday: The Festival of Yerfuckinproblem
Right then, the aftermath. This is chronologically dubious, but I’m putting this all in one section because it’s a depressing pain in the ass and I didn’t want it breaking up my con mojo. Now then, I mentioned how I bought a night at the Wyndham Grand to accommodate Marius, but I don’t think I gave the full breadth of what a boneheaded decision that was. It seemed pretty clear to me. It was the only hotel left with reservations available at the con rate, so I went for it. The biggest problem was geographical. I knew there would be distance involved, but I figured I was still young and could handle it. As it turns out, the Doubletree is about two miles away from the convention hall, and the Wyndham is even further away in the opposite direction, and now I had to get my stuff from one hotel to the other. I’d taken this task on early because I knew what a pain in the ass it would be. It was the first thing I did after leaving closing ceremonies. Unfortunately that’s also when they stopped doing shuttle service, so I’d have to drive. Not a big deal, I thought. I’d make it work.
It turns out I’d underestimated the passion with which Pittsburgh sticks to its motto of “If you own a car, FUCK YOU!” Parking is kinda shit most places, but never this bad. There was no goddamn place to park anywhere near the Wyndham Grand, not even for a little while so I could drop off my stuff. The parking garage that was RIGHT UNDER THE GODDAMN BUILDING was half lease only and half for some completely unrelated snooty rich housing development. Protip: anyplace with “Tower” in the name is a snooty rich housing development. Not that they’d inform you you’re not allowed to park there out at street level with some plebian bullshit like a SIGN or whatever. No they wait until you’ve already driven down underground into a narrow causeway and are sitting at the gate like an asshole to tell you that slavering proletariat urchins like yourself aren’t good enough to park here. Stuck up fuckwad wouldn’t even raise the gate so I could turn around. Did they teach goddamn spatial perception in that high school you flunked out of to end up as a parking lot attendant, jackass? It takes ROOM to back around, and we are in a FUCKING HOLE IN THE GROUND. He came by to direct traffic around me after I made it abundantly clear that I cared next to nothing about how many of those snobby tightwads I ran over on my way out.
I wondered aloud how the Wyndham managed to function at such an utter lack of an extremely basic utility. I wondered no more when I saw that they helpfully offered valet parking for $35 a night. Fuck that, fuck you, fuck everything, and fuck the Wyndham Grand. Fuck it right in its fat pretentious suckhole of a face. I went to a garage that was a substantial walk away just to spite them. Karma didn’t care for that, and when I got back to my car to leave the garage I found that I’d missed the sign out front advertising “special event parking rate” for a baseball game that was going on. The “special” rate was $20 for up to 12 hours. Which naturally meant that 45 minutes ALSO cost $20. So fine, whatever. It wasn’t even about the money, it was more about not rewarding those fuckwads for their bullshit scheme. Apparently it was about rewarding some other, sleazier fuckwad for HIS scheme somewhere else. Justice. Goddamn. Served. Having to walk two miles back and forth to the non-sleazy-fuckwad garage by the convention hall was worth every step. And it was a nice walk, really. It’s hard to describe the value of using such a time to collect your thoughts while everything is going to shit all around you, and picking up a lost paw on the sidewalk while doing so. It’s truly a singular experience.
I did sleep though, eventually. That was something that they couldn’t price me out of. So that was good. And even though the cheery weasely bastards at the Wyndham couldn’t ruin my rest, MARIUS sure as hell could! Remember that part in the middle where I finally shook him off and he stopped being my problem for most of the con, yeah that fuckin’ honeymoon ended abruptly. He called me at Seven-thirty-oh-my-God-go-swallow-a-horseshoe-and-fucking-die-you-useless-human-sponge in the morning to let me know that all his roomies had checked out and he was stuck just waiting around in the lobby, which sounded to me like it was none of my concern. So after briefly reviewing with him a new concept called YOUR goddamn problem, I went back to sleep. And then after I woke up of my own volition, had a leisurely shower and some breakfast, I headed down to the lobby to pick him up. The Westin lobby, natch, and of course I came to find that Tweedle Dumb meant the Hampton because he couldn’t be arsed to drag his fat sack of stupid over to the Westin where I can actually park. So I collected him and we were off on our incredible journey again. Oh joy.
A lot of the regret and anxiety I had over the late nights at the con came from the eight hours of road ahead of me, and boy was past-me right, and boy was past-me dumb for picking the fun option. Driving at this level of fatigue is torturous, and dangerous I suppose, but I’m still young enough to be invincible, right? The ride was slightly improved by the fact that Marius had also taken on quite a few late nights, so I had to endure a fair bit less of his consciousness. I’d say I’d gotten some peace and quiet but he sounded like he was half-heartedly trying to dislodge a deflated balloon animal from his sinus cavity. Not loud really, just profoundly unhealthy.
I won’t say Marius never did anything for me though, because his bleariness at one point led him to mistake an episode of Welcome to Nightvale for an actual news broadcast, which was just the entertainment I needed to momentarily stop hating everything about the world. Naps helped with that too. I stopped for two of them just because I didn’t see as I had much other choice. On the second one he wondered what he’d do while I rested because his phone was dead. That was an excellent opportunity for a little refresher course on “YOUR fucking problem”, because if he had any useful goddamn skills like say DRIVING or something then he wouldn’t have to just sit around with his thumb up his ass while I tried to restore my brain to working order. The next round of your-fucking-problem 101 came after the revelation that he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast. That one deserved a Grumpy Cat meme. “You’re starving because you forgot food was a thing? Good.” I was SO done with Marius, long before I ever got him home, which I actually did. I’m not a monster. I even stayed and slept on his couch for a solid hour or so before I said goodbye. Not because I really wanted to spend time there. Much as I wanted to get the hell out of there I wasn’t willing to risk my life on it. The rest did help a lot and I made it home just in time to sleep a whole bunch more.
In the lead-up to the con when I first mentioned the situation with Marius there was a lot of speculation as to what the cost of my mistake in taking on this burden might be. Obviously the toll on my spirit has been incalculable, but looking at the fiscal side of things and comparing it to my normal con expenditures might be an interesting exercise, so I’ll take a swing at it.
Non-Marius expenses:
Room: $95
Food (restaurant): $110
Food (other): $35
Booze: $70
Swag: $23
Badge: $50
Gas: $50
Parking: $36
Total: $469
Marius-related expenses:
Additional Food (other): $14
Additional Room: $171
Additional Parking: $33 (STILL $2 cheaper than valet. Suck it, Wyndham Grand!)
Additional Gas: $43
Paid: -$40
Total: $221
So yeah, a 47% idiot tax is a lot harsher than usual. But then again furries tend to breed a very egregious class of idiot. Certainly worth noting that he managed to cost me more money than he had saved up for the entire trip. Really though, I don’t hold a great deal of malice towards him. Obviously I plan to never interact with him in person again if that can at all be helped, but there’s a reason I still had enough respect for him to not attach a name to all this rage and bile. Ignorance explains a great deal of the stuff he fucked up, and had I the presence of mind to apply a bit more diligence to the room situation I wouldn’t have been hit a fraction as hard by that as I was. He never really struck me as a bad guy, just someone quite unfamiliar with how literally everything in the world works. That hefts a lot of responsibility, financial and otherwise, onto those of us who have actually experienced Earth before in person.
Perhaps though, I might’ve given him the first step he needed to actually acquaint himself with the world of the living. Marius is sure as hell in for a few hard falls along that road, but he may yet make it one day. Sure I hate myself for having indulged him, but I get the feeling this decision is a lot like those late nights. I probably would’ve hated myself for not doing it just as much. Knowing that I was there having fun and along the way I abandoned someone whom I had the chance to allow to do the same just wouldn’t have been right. These events are a unique and wondrous pleasure that I have in my life and they’re something I wouldn’t want to deny to anyone. In the end, I’m glad that I chose the way I did. Far too many people choose the “Remain slightly richer and fuck someone over” path, and we’d live in a far better world if that were not the case.
I guess I’ll close this by pushing back the temporal boundaries a little further. One of the last things I did before animal control chased us out of the Zoo that final night was meet up with Shawshank one more time. I think I’ve mentioned on a previous occasion Nevir’s outstanding commitment to that character. Very slow and ethereal movements and an otherworldly detachment in his communicative gestures and general demeanor. It all comes together into a very genuinely alien experience, which suits the character just brilliantly. And of course he never speaks, that would ground the illusion far too much. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when my interaction with him consisted of him miming a few simple concepts to get a general point across, and then departing with a hug. What I certainly didn’t expect was to have something whispered in my ear as we embraced. “Thanks for the coat. You saved my convention.” That really kind of brought it all together for me.
“I can’t believe I got to hug a fursuiter, that was amazing!”
“You saved my convention.”
“I never would’ve made it here if not for you.”
Hardly minor achievements, if I do say so myself, eh?
You know, I talk a lot about all the interesting people I meet, the things I do with them and the lessons I learn from them. It really is a central part of the whole convention experience. These days though, when I think of how well I get along with people here, and how frequently randos that I just bumped into that one time want to hang out with me again, I like to think that these were all steps on a journey. One that hopefully ends with me becoming one of those friendly, fascinating people that everyone goes to cons to meet.
Here’s hoping.
Sunday:
Thanks to the baffling level of responsibility displayed by my roommates, one I would’ve been overjoyed to be a part of any other time, we all got ourselves around relatively early that day, and I was back out into the world by 10 AM. I knew that this was far too early to start pestering Arc about the day’s big project and there wasn’t much going on in the common areas, so I headed down to see the Funday Pawpet show. I’d never had an affinity for puppets before, but Lion King has always been very insistent that the show is absolutely worth seeing, so I went for it. It was about what I expected, in some ways. Rather poorly attended because some idiot had scheduled it at 10 AM on Sunday, a time that most attendees are unfamiliar with because they are still dead then, but still had some good energy and was pretty entertaining. We got a visit from the upper echelons of house Kage though, which was pretty cool, and their presence didn’t go unnoticed. It was certainly quite an experience to watch a very animated German Shepherd puppet pester Grandma Kage with questions, to which she had only the most charming and folksy of answers. Altogether an entirely worthwhile experience.
Afterwards, I managed to confirm both that Impy was in the Artist’s Alley, and thus temporarily chained down to a particular location, and that Archai was still alive, capable of useful consciousness, and willing to let me lightsaber open his caribou so I could crawl inside and keep warm, insert some joke about smelling bad on the outside, et al. So I got suitably caribou’d and headed out into this big bad world of ours. Now, those of you who read about the last time I used my wondertwin powers to activate the form of a caribou will remember that I did my usual bouncing-off-the-ceiling near-light-speed cocaine bender that I typically do in suit. Partly because that was the only speed I had and partly because HOOVES YOU GUYS, FUCKING SERIOUSLY HOOVES ARE JUST THE GREATEST GODDAMN THING. Anyways, I wanted to try out something new with this outing. It was somewhat at Archai’s urging, I think because he was quite rightly concerned for my health, and partly because in the interim I’d seen the way he plays Jake Caribou. It’s definitely a much more low-key personality. Sort of a chest-out swagger kind of deal with a “Really, this shit again?” attitude and of course with a cartoonish Minnesooota accent. I actually have a pretty good lanky swagger still from the days when I had to wear bigass combat boots that weighed as much as cinder blocks, so it started to look somewhat achievable. I decided to swing for that kind of performance, and apart from moving his heritage to Ireland I think I pulled it off pretty well. We discussed it a bit on our journey, and I think I’d be best suited by quoting Jake directly as he explains.
“Ya see the ‘ting I find nao deese days is that it ‘ent jest a matter ah bein’ on er off eh? There’s ah greedient all along dere in the middle yah? That’s whear ya wanna be fer sommo’ dat magic tah happ’n. Yenno, keep’n moovin it around real smuuth like eh? Just teekin in deh feel of the room and whatnot dere, try’n teh match yer sooroundins wit de way yeh moove an’ be jyratin’ all about an such like, if’n the scenurryo calls fer it, yah?”
If you’re not certain what Jake was saying then you’re not alone. I feel like I lost track of it myself at times, but it really seemed to work from a characterization perspective. I also noticed some things once I actually found myself occasionally standing still and looking around a little. Like when I saw myself in the mirror I couldn’t help but be struck by “Well wouldja lookit dis handsome stranger over here eh?” I really felt that in the moment, and just like that “Would everyone just look at this goddamn majestic son of a bitch over here?” became a part of the character. I couldn’t help it, really. I was just dripping with hardy, natural magnificence and I couldn’t help but share it with everyone. The craziest thing about that though? People fucking loved that! Once I got out of the subdued start that I had and really started laying it on thick everybody thought it was just the greatest thing. I was pulling a bit from the Kage school of conversation. Basically that you should never answer a question with just “yes” or “no”. You should always get at least a sentence out, and a segue into talking about something more is even better. Here’s a sampling:
“Oh why of course ya ken have a phootoo! Make sure ya ghet my good side here.” *snap* “Alright now make sure yah get my other good side like such there.” *snap* “Oh well would ya look at that I jest got good sides on all my sides now don’t I eh?”
“Ya want a picture o’ jest my hooves, eh? Well that’s jest fine, these are my pride and joy right here don’tcha know? Could cut a diamond with these bad boys I tellya. Ya know ya could get a picture ah all o’me too eh? I don’t charge by acreage yehsee? But yah kno mebbe I should eh? I betcha I could fetch a pretty penny for a square foot o’this wouldn’tcha say?”
“Yenno I hope none o’ my admirers here catch me checkin’ out the art show later. They’ve got rules dere about takin’ pictures of the works o’art eh? Wouldn’t wannem gettin’ in trouble fer takin’ a snapshot ah me now would I? Gotta keep this work ah art out in the open where’n folks can appreciate all this rustic natural buety eh?”
“A photo eh? Why of course I’d be happy to oblige there young lady now what can I do ya fer? Handsome and regal or regal and handsome? … Handsome and regal then? Good choice! I’ll letcha see regal and handsome first tho’. Wouln’t wantcha makin’ an uninformed decision there eh?”
I never would’ve guessed it but people just lit up when I started clowning around like that. Even the little kids that were in the lobby. I’d never had terribly good luck with kids and yet I somehow became super approachable once I started spending the whole time bellowing about my unparalleled dazzling radiance. It’s a true testament to the power of fursuiting that it can make being a conceited, narcissistic cockwad into the most adorable goddamn thing you’ve seen all day. Hell, being a caribou somehow made that far more likable than actually being nice to people! If it weren’t for the fact that I would literally die I could just wear a fursuit all the time and never have to be humble again!
In any case, in the course of all that I did pull off my impossible mission. Since I hadn’t discussed this with her, I was worried that Impy would still be nervous about it. Once she saw my badge and my dulcet tones came across her table with “Yeno I heard frum a good friend ah mine that you were lookin’ teh hug a fursootah.” She came right around and wrapped her arms around me. I can say without a doubt that “Oh God it’s so soft this is the best!” is the greatest feedback I ever could’ve asked for. One of a hundred things that made the effort all very much worth it, to be sure. Apparently random passersby weren’t the only ones impressed by my display. Archai was forced to ask “So, you still don’t have a suit then? Because you’re just- I mean, goddamn!” I did confirm later he was trying to say that I’m just too goddamn good at this to not own a suit. Flattering, and I’ll certainly take it under advisement in the future. That adventure did have to end, though for once it was for time reasons and not because my vitals were tanking. Being sociable and engaged with voice and gestures instead of high-flying acrobatics is far less straining, it turns out, and left me still rather functional at the end of it all. Which was quite fortunate, as I had work to do.
We went and grabbed a quick gyro across the street and I headed into the Dealer’s Den to do my time at the Furthe’more booth. When I was planning all this out, the idea of missing hours out of the convention to sit in a chair and sell stuff was unthinkable, even inhumane. It actually wasn’t so bad though. I got to hang out and chat with Dragoneer, who is very much not the unrepentantly vicious demonspawn that some big chunks of the internet seem to think he is. And also there was the simply lovely fact that people would walk by and I could just summon them over to me so that we could chat a bit too. It was a very relaxing time at a point wherein relaxation was in rather short supply. I’ll have to get into this kind of thing more in the future. Allegedly you can get a free con badge out of it if you actually put in the admin on seeing this all through properly. Doing so might even net me the dealer’s badge that I’d need to actually properly do the job. It was kind of funny, after we had finished cleaning up when the den closed, Indigo said “Oh, better not let them see you don’t have a dealer badge.” On the way out. And I was just kind of like “We’re going through the exit. What are they gonna do? Ask me to leave?” Yeah, that’s right. I’m a stone-cold renegade with naught but scorn for your rules. Now excuse me while I wheelie out of this place on my sick chopper.
After that I dropped by the lobby to see what, if anything, was up. I caught up with Sparf a bit there, amazed that I’d managed to go the whole con without seeing him, and after that I figured I’d drop in on the closing ceremonies as they were literally the only thing going on, and also, oddly enough, the last thing going on. We certainly had a hell of a lot of really impressive achievements to review there. It’s wonderful to see everything going so well. Kinda sad to see it all end, as always, but Kage put it quite well. After asking for a show of hands as to who would like the convention to be longer, he started pointing to the people with their hands up and shouting “Aha! Operations director! Vice Chair! Fursuit track lead!” Point taken. The con runs on people, and people run out.
After that I went back to the lobby to see who was still hanging out there. The answer? CatMonkShiro, MothMonarch and Lynx189. The last of whom I had never met before, and he introduced himself with a massage. So yeah, that’s a thing. I desperately needed one at the time, so I went for it, and it was fantastic, actually. I didn’t know I could relax so much while still sitting up. They had to move on before long though, so I did as well, finding Nevir’s crew in good spirits. Ryoken had found something sufficiently caustic to purge his suit of the lifeforms it had accrued over the course of the rest of the con, or at the very least mask their presence for one last shenanigan, perhaps even multiple shenanigans. He had a squeaker installed in his crotch and was adorably, insufferably proud of that particular innovation. That group was going to get pizza though, so I was all about what they were doing. I saw Tatu on the way there. Funnily enough we were both in very similar situations, being tugged along by groups that were going places and would totally leave us behind if we didn’t keep after them. I felt kind of bad about saying hey and running off but it was all I could manage! Sorry, Tatu. Anyways, we got pizza, eventually, and then ate pizza, eventually. We hijacked a bunch of chairs and tables in the back of the Westin and actually had a pretty satisfying sit-down. I got the truly singular experience of watching Ryo eat in suit because it was fuckit O’clock at the end of the con. And all around it was a great way to see those guys off.
I retired to the Zoo, moved back to its proper place now that our lease on the convention hall had expired, and I sat down with (oh Goddammit I am so sick of linking names why do I have so many fucking friends) Aelius, Sirfox, The Gneech, and Indigo, among others. All of whom were arting or at the very least discussing the arting process. I found that I actually fit in very well despite my lack of doing the art. It was a really great way to wind down at the end of the night, with a few breaks to run off and say farewells, among other things. What I had to say on return from such a venture really captures the atmosphere of a con pretty well.
“What was I up to? Well I sat on a piano and led a couple dozen people in a rendition of the theme from Portal, after helping a fox tune his ukulele of course. And then there was that giant balloon with the head of a tiger sticking out of it that was bouncing around in the hallway. Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen that.”
We stuck around until they kicked us out of there too. The staff going around closing things down really seemed a lot like they were chasing down a horde of very colorful zombies from place to place, just cropping up somewhere new when they were flushed out of a particular location. I was out in one such location when I figured out that the Toucan I was dancing with was being piloted by Archai. Amusingly enough my first reaction was the exact opposite of excitement. I believe it was something to the effect of “You bought ANOTHER suit? Fucking SERIOUSLY?” I’m so supportive.
I soon came to find out that I had wildly overreacted and Arc was merely in the process of buying another suit, and I got to head back up to the rooms with them to watch the price negotiations with Crux going on. It was actually pretty funny to have the dynamic of both Arc trying to convince me to get a suit and me trying to convince him to stop getting suits. Had this been a sitcom I would’ve ended up outbidding him on it and buying the damn thing myself to resolve this. Fortunately I hadn’t yet lost enough higher brain functions to forget how I’ve been spending the past two years watching my savings account inexorably coast downwards after leaving the navy. It sounded like he was intent on picking up Touc for real, and honestly good for him, I guess. I’m sure he can manage the expense because I’ve seen the goddamn spaceship that he works in. He’s found something that he loves so I guess I can’t really say anything against him doing the hell out of that thing. In any case, it was cruelly late, so of course we wasted another couple hours on philosophical discussions regarding nothing of any great merit before finally deciding we’d had enough and packing it in for the night. Though once again, I suppose it’s better to end on “I’m too exhausted to continue.” than on “Aww, I really wish I’d done this and that other thing.”
Monday: The Festival of Yerfuckinproblem
Right then, the aftermath. This is chronologically dubious, but I’m putting this all in one section because it’s a depressing pain in the ass and I didn’t want it breaking up my con mojo. Now then, I mentioned how I bought a night at the Wyndham Grand to accommodate Marius, but I don’t think I gave the full breadth of what a boneheaded decision that was. It seemed pretty clear to me. It was the only hotel left with reservations available at the con rate, so I went for it. The biggest problem was geographical. I knew there would be distance involved, but I figured I was still young and could handle it. As it turns out, the Doubletree is about two miles away from the convention hall, and the Wyndham is even further away in the opposite direction, and now I had to get my stuff from one hotel to the other. I’d taken this task on early because I knew what a pain in the ass it would be. It was the first thing I did after leaving closing ceremonies. Unfortunately that’s also when they stopped doing shuttle service, so I’d have to drive. Not a big deal, I thought. I’d make it work.
It turns out I’d underestimated the passion with which Pittsburgh sticks to its motto of “If you own a car, FUCK YOU!” Parking is kinda shit most places, but never this bad. There was no goddamn place to park anywhere near the Wyndham Grand, not even for a little while so I could drop off my stuff. The parking garage that was RIGHT UNDER THE GODDAMN BUILDING was half lease only and half for some completely unrelated snooty rich housing development. Protip: anyplace with “Tower” in the name is a snooty rich housing development. Not that they’d inform you you’re not allowed to park there out at street level with some plebian bullshit like a SIGN or whatever. No they wait until you’ve already driven down underground into a narrow causeway and are sitting at the gate like an asshole to tell you that slavering proletariat urchins like yourself aren’t good enough to park here. Stuck up fuckwad wouldn’t even raise the gate so I could turn around. Did they teach goddamn spatial perception in that high school you flunked out of to end up as a parking lot attendant, jackass? It takes ROOM to back around, and we are in a FUCKING HOLE IN THE GROUND. He came by to direct traffic around me after I made it abundantly clear that I cared next to nothing about how many of those snobby tightwads I ran over on my way out.
I wondered aloud how the Wyndham managed to function at such an utter lack of an extremely basic utility. I wondered no more when I saw that they helpfully offered valet parking for $35 a night. Fuck that, fuck you, fuck everything, and fuck the Wyndham Grand. Fuck it right in its fat pretentious suckhole of a face. I went to a garage that was a substantial walk away just to spite them. Karma didn’t care for that, and when I got back to my car to leave the garage I found that I’d missed the sign out front advertising “special event parking rate” for a baseball game that was going on. The “special” rate was $20 for up to 12 hours. Which naturally meant that 45 minutes ALSO cost $20. So fine, whatever. It wasn’t even about the money, it was more about not rewarding those fuckwads for their bullshit scheme. Apparently it was about rewarding some other, sleazier fuckwad for HIS scheme somewhere else. Justice. Goddamn. Served. Having to walk two miles back and forth to the non-sleazy-fuckwad garage by the convention hall was worth every step. And it was a nice walk, really. It’s hard to describe the value of using such a time to collect your thoughts while everything is going to shit all around you, and picking up a lost paw on the sidewalk while doing so. It’s truly a singular experience.
I did sleep though, eventually. That was something that they couldn’t price me out of. So that was good. And even though the cheery weasely bastards at the Wyndham couldn’t ruin my rest, MARIUS sure as hell could! Remember that part in the middle where I finally shook him off and he stopped being my problem for most of the con, yeah that fuckin’ honeymoon ended abruptly. He called me at Seven-thirty-oh-my-God-go-swallow-a-horseshoe-and-fucking-die-you-useless-human-sponge in the morning to let me know that all his roomies had checked out and he was stuck just waiting around in the lobby, which sounded to me like it was none of my concern. So after briefly reviewing with him a new concept called YOUR goddamn problem, I went back to sleep. And then after I woke up of my own volition, had a leisurely shower and some breakfast, I headed down to the lobby to pick him up. The Westin lobby, natch, and of course I came to find that Tweedle Dumb meant the Hampton because he couldn’t be arsed to drag his fat sack of stupid over to the Westin where I can actually park. So I collected him and we were off on our incredible journey again. Oh joy.
A lot of the regret and anxiety I had over the late nights at the con came from the eight hours of road ahead of me, and boy was past-me right, and boy was past-me dumb for picking the fun option. Driving at this level of fatigue is torturous, and dangerous I suppose, but I’m still young enough to be invincible, right? The ride was slightly improved by the fact that Marius had also taken on quite a few late nights, so I had to endure a fair bit less of his consciousness. I’d say I’d gotten some peace and quiet but he sounded like he was half-heartedly trying to dislodge a deflated balloon animal from his sinus cavity. Not loud really, just profoundly unhealthy.
I won’t say Marius never did anything for me though, because his bleariness at one point led him to mistake an episode of Welcome to Nightvale for an actual news broadcast, which was just the entertainment I needed to momentarily stop hating everything about the world. Naps helped with that too. I stopped for two of them just because I didn’t see as I had much other choice. On the second one he wondered what he’d do while I rested because his phone was dead. That was an excellent opportunity for a little refresher course on “YOUR fucking problem”, because if he had any useful goddamn skills like say DRIVING or something then he wouldn’t have to just sit around with his thumb up his ass while I tried to restore my brain to working order. The next round of your-fucking-problem 101 came after the revelation that he hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast. That one deserved a Grumpy Cat meme. “You’re starving because you forgot food was a thing? Good.” I was SO done with Marius, long before I ever got him home, which I actually did. I’m not a monster. I even stayed and slept on his couch for a solid hour or so before I said goodbye. Not because I really wanted to spend time there. Much as I wanted to get the hell out of there I wasn’t willing to risk my life on it. The rest did help a lot and I made it home just in time to sleep a whole bunch more.
In the lead-up to the con when I first mentioned the situation with Marius there was a lot of speculation as to what the cost of my mistake in taking on this burden might be. Obviously the toll on my spirit has been incalculable, but looking at the fiscal side of things and comparing it to my normal con expenditures might be an interesting exercise, so I’ll take a swing at it.
Non-Marius expenses:
Room: $95
Food (restaurant): $110
Food (other): $35
Booze: $70
Swag: $23
Badge: $50
Gas: $50
Parking: $36
Total: $469
Marius-related expenses:
Additional Food (other): $14
Additional Room: $171
Additional Parking: $33 (STILL $2 cheaper than valet. Suck it, Wyndham Grand!)
Additional Gas: $43
Paid: -$40
Total: $221
So yeah, a 47% idiot tax is a lot harsher than usual. But then again furries tend to breed a very egregious class of idiot. Certainly worth noting that he managed to cost me more money than he had saved up for the entire trip. Really though, I don’t hold a great deal of malice towards him. Obviously I plan to never interact with him in person again if that can at all be helped, but there’s a reason I still had enough respect for him to not attach a name to all this rage and bile. Ignorance explains a great deal of the stuff he fucked up, and had I the presence of mind to apply a bit more diligence to the room situation I wouldn’t have been hit a fraction as hard by that as I was. He never really struck me as a bad guy, just someone quite unfamiliar with how literally everything in the world works. That hefts a lot of responsibility, financial and otherwise, onto those of us who have actually experienced Earth before in person.
Perhaps though, I might’ve given him the first step he needed to actually acquaint himself with the world of the living. Marius is sure as hell in for a few hard falls along that road, but he may yet make it one day. Sure I hate myself for having indulged him, but I get the feeling this decision is a lot like those late nights. I probably would’ve hated myself for not doing it just as much. Knowing that I was there having fun and along the way I abandoned someone whom I had the chance to allow to do the same just wouldn’t have been right. These events are a unique and wondrous pleasure that I have in my life and they’re something I wouldn’t want to deny to anyone. In the end, I’m glad that I chose the way I did. Far too many people choose the “Remain slightly richer and fuck someone over” path, and we’d live in a far better world if that were not the case.
I guess I’ll close this by pushing back the temporal boundaries a little further. One of the last things I did before animal control chased us out of the Zoo that final night was meet up with Shawshank one more time. I think I’ve mentioned on a previous occasion Nevir’s outstanding commitment to that character. Very slow and ethereal movements and an otherworldly detachment in his communicative gestures and general demeanor. It all comes together into a very genuinely alien experience, which suits the character just brilliantly. And of course he never speaks, that would ground the illusion far too much. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when my interaction with him consisted of him miming a few simple concepts to get a general point across, and then departing with a hug. What I certainly didn’t expect was to have something whispered in my ear as we embraced. “Thanks for the coat. You saved my convention.” That really kind of brought it all together for me.
“I can’t believe I got to hug a fursuiter, that was amazing!”
“You saved my convention.”
“I never would’ve made it here if not for you.”
Hardly minor achievements, if I do say so myself, eh?
You know, I talk a lot about all the interesting people I meet, the things I do with them and the lessons I learn from them. It really is a central part of the whole convention experience. These days though, when I think of how well I get along with people here, and how frequently randos that I just bumped into that one time want to hang out with me again, I like to think that these were all steps on a journey. One that hopefully ends with me becoming one of those friendly, fascinating people that everyone goes to cons to meet.
Here’s hoping.
Anthrocon 2015 Part I: Because of course there's two parts
General | Posted 10 years agoSo yeah if you hadn't guessed FurAffinity once again can't handle the true might and breadth of my prose all in one go. Second part will be forthcoming.
Alright, so if you hadn’t heard of the circumstances during the preparation for this con, I’ll summarize them quickly for you. I mentioned a bit of this in a previous journal, so if you haven’t read that I’ll wait. It’s really easy to spare a moment for you because the reading process doesn’t happen in realtime. Subjective time solves a lot of problems, you know? Okay, so I met someone at an Upstate New York Furries meet a few weeks ago who was kind of down on his luck. I’m going to call him Marius, after the penniless loser in Diablo II who managed to fuck up everything for literally the entire human race without ever so much as understanding what was happening or making a real conscious decision. Marius had been working hard on his plans to attend Anthrocon, which would be his first furry convention, and his ride hadn't panned out. He heard where I was from and asked if I could drive him because his place was "on the way". That assertion demonstrated a rather grievous misunderstanding of either maps or the meaning of those words. Stopping by to pick him up would add about six hours to my drive time, so I wasn't terribly enthused about the prospect.
I told him he could stay in my room, but he'd have to find his own way there. He managed to NOT find his own way there, shockingly, so eventually I thought I'd help him out with that too. I can hardly say I'm pressed for time, and if the gas is getting covered I don't have a whole lot else to complain about. That's far too long of a drive to do after a day at the con though, so I had to extend my stay by booking a room for Sunday night, and he agreed to split the cost of that as well. That was still going to be a pain in the ass, but I figured I'd go for it. Marius seemed really excited about this and I'd hate for him to miss it because of dumb logistical things. And maybe it's a little bit because I remember my first convention, which was also Anthrocon. Wherein I also had no idea what I was doing, and I also some things went wrong out of nowhere, whereupon some people I'd never met were happy to help me. So yeah, I decided that I was going to get him to the Greek come hell or highwater. The ensuing weeks merely served to confirm to me a dozen times over what a terrible decision this was.
Marius was fretting about money a lot, saying he only had $180 to pay for rooms and transport, which would be a close shave, certainly, even with how many ways we were splitting the cost of the room. I was willing to be flexible and committed to making this work, so I was fine with just taking whatever he had left to spare at the end and just rolling with it. I later came to find out that this was ALL he had to spare to pay for EVERYTHING. And he was the one giving me funny looks when I screamed at him 46 times about how cons cost a LOT OF MONEY and he should be prepared for this from the outset because I was continually gaining the impression that he failed to understand just how expensive cons are. When I asked what he was going to do for food he just kind of went "Oh... Oh, yeah." as though the fact that he needs food to live hadn't occurred to him until right then. Whatever, it's fine. This is his first rodeo so he hasn't had a chance to learn and he's obviously not going to get it until after he's seen it first-hand. I was still on board with the "whatever's left" approach to payment, and I was even willing to take on the risk that the amount remaining might be $0. This bastard is lucky I saved quite responsibly before leaving the navy.
After waffling back and forth several times about whether or not he'd join me in the group room that I was going to be in for the bulk of the con, which was a pain in the ass because I was a middle-man relaying that to Astrozerk through Croc who were the ones actually holding the reservations, Marius decided that he wasn't going to stay with me. Fine, whatever. There were already like seven people in that room so no one was going to be hurting there. His new arrangement though, had him staying there Sunday night also, so he backed out of that night with me because the room I booked at the Wyndham Grand was too expensive for him. So in effect, I put my wallet on the line again to book a room at the Wyndham solely in order to accommodate him and after he insisted on a double because he didn't want to share a bed he chooses right then to flake on me. Fucking brilliant.
When I tried to be at all assertive in saying that he'd better stay in this room because it's his fault that I'm in this position I got back a long sob story about how broke he is and how he'd really rather spend the time with his boyfriend in the other room. I found the significant other angle to be compelling, so I let it drop. I found out later that he's never met his current boyfriend in person, and I don't know if that makes me more or less pissed off. I mean, yay for them being all romantic and shit meeting for the first time, but fuck man, you're hanging me out to dry for someone you've never even seen in person? Calling someone you've never met "my boyfriend" is the kind of red flag that would've had me bail on this thing had I not already gotten so deep into it, and it was not the only such flag by any means. Anyways, the Wyndham charges you one night's rate and fees if you cancel, meaning that since I only booked one night I had the lovely options of paying $150 to stay in the room or I could just pay $150 to go fuck myself. As such, I ended up staying in the room. The journal discussing this got a handful of responses letting me know how entertaining and well composed it was. This was encouraging, but basically added up to “Oh wow! It’s hilarious how much that sucks for you. Looks like you’re fucked!” Though it is nice to know that I can still be entertaining when all I’m doing is complaining about my problems. Yinzer actually offered some money to help out, which I was astonished and quite flattered by. It was my mistake though, so I should most definitely be the one to pay for it. I’m sure there are far more deserving folks out there. I hope he found one.
Subsequent interactions with Marius were less than encouraging. Even when he's not dropping some new expensive or inconvenient bombshell on me that his capricious little mind has come up with it's nothing but complaints and sob stories that I have no need to hear. Oh, I've always wanted to go to a con but I could never make it work. Oh, I came out to my family and now half of them hate me. Oh, it's so hard never getting to see my boyfriend. Oh, my stepdad is being such a jerk about all this. Oh, my dog died last week and that made me really sad. Goddamn. I'd feel sorry for this kid if I ever got anything from him other than whiny bullshit. What is it about the fandom that attracts broken people and people with no clue how to live their own damn lives? I encounter SO many of them and they're all just so damn needy. I did as I said and supported this trainwreck of a man through the con because it was too late to go back on that promise by the time I figured out what a catastrofuck he was. I knew enough to be careful to distance myself though, especially now that this whole Nantucket Sleighride is over. Though I'm open to the possibility of this guy not being an outright cancer of a human being, I definitely want him to stop being my problem ASAP. And for that I need to push back a little. A lot of these types of people get real clingy when they can smell responsibility on you. Then you'll never get rid of 'em.
Wednesday:
Now then, the actual meeting. His home life was about what I expected from someone with this level of irresponsibility and disconnect from the world. Marius lives in a trailer park and made a point of complaining about how he’s gotten too old to be issued a share of his stepdad’s food stamps. I talked to his stepfather a fair bit. Got to hear about the great, lumbering disaster of a truck out in the driveway, the reason that Marius was unable to get there on his own. I also got to talk for over an hour about his previous three trucks, which he had photos of, and previous two wives, whom there were NOT photos of. Also got to talk about Kenny, who died last year and left all this junk that was lying around the trailer to them. Why is it that broke-ass rednecks always know someone named Kenny?
One of the only things that I was able to fight for from my apparently very limited negotiating position of being the only person who could cart his fat ass to Anthrocon was the ability to spend Wednesday night at his place. That way I’d have a two hour drive followed by a six hour one. (As opposed to the 4.5 hour drive I would’ve required had I sensibly told him to go fuck himself at the outset.) So yeah, I got to spend a little time on a lumpy old couch, the sole fruit of my desperate efforts to make this sinkhole I’d let myself stumble into suck a little less. I really hoped to get us moving early in the morning so that all this nonsense wouldn’t delay me from arriving at the con on time. That, at least, actually worked. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, hauling out at 5:30 to get everything ready. Oh joy.
Thursday:
On the drive, it was actually rather nice to have someone there with me. I usually drive alone, and the time goes very slowly that way. It’s lonely and you have nothing to focus on but your own fatigue and various aches from sitting in one place too long. Now, he certainly wasn’t a positive source of human contact, but I suppose he was a bit better than the accompaniment of nothing more than crushing loneliness. Yay, I guess? We talked about music and a few sundry things. He killed his phone battery going through his playlist, most of which was pretty inoffensive. The fact that he’d only recently discovered Breaking Benjamin was just adorable. It went pretty well downhill from there though. I’m willing to put up with gearheads so long as they’re otherwise alright, but Marius would not shut up about cars. Every ten goddamn minutes it was “Oh look it’s [car model] check out its [obvious features] that one’s got [massive list of extraneous details] isn’t that awesome?” and then of course he looks at me like a lost puppy, desperately wanting me to give a shit, and erroneously expecting that I would. They’re all just cars, dammit. And it’s Pittsburgh so a fair majority of them are trying to kill us. As such, I’m focusing much more carefully on that than their exact litany of design specifications.
Anyways, I managed to haul Marius to the Hampton and take the long-anticipated step of getting him to kindly fuck off so I could get to what I was actually there to do. Despite the various shenanigans of the day I’d managed to make it there in good time. That didn’t actually matter at all though, as the folks I was meant to be meeting to room with at the Doubletree had been eaten by the registration line. They’d had a substantial head start on me, but were still quite far from the front of the line, quite far as in like 150 yards or so. I had no wish to intern myself in that particular prison, so I planned to wait for them on site. Or rather kind of close to the site I suppose, seeing as the Doubletree’s wifi wasn’t public. I covertly snuck over to the Omni to steal their internet for a bit while I waited on my hosts to get their ducks in a row and then… put badges on all of them I guess. Can’t have ducks without ID ya know? It was actually a rather valuable opportunity. Trying to coordinate things at a con mandates that one have an eye on half a dozen social networks at any given time, so a chance to tinker with my computer a bit before really getting into things was welcome.
I managed to connect with ArcRa, a member of that highly exclusive subset of furries that used to be on my ship with me. I thought having lunch with him would be a nice opportunity to catch up with him. And then of course I was informed again and again how badly I’d underestimated that line. A justifiable mistake seeing as I’d never actually witnessed said line in person. Given how long it took them to get through I’m impressed that I couldn’t see the damn thing from the Doubletree. It was more than two hours before I got any contact from the line internees who I was waiting on. The decision to just keep sitting around was painful, especially since it made me miss lunch with Arc, but I really did want to secure a key to the room before I did anything else. I guess I needn’t have bothered, because the keymaster didn’t show up even after the end of registrationgate 2015. Croc was nice enough to get me in there to drop off stuff though, so though my con appeared to be starting with an ever-growing string of disasters it wasn’t a total loss.
The first stop was the Zoo, as it usually is, and I caught up with Arc and eventually Croc there. I joined up in a game of Cards Against Humanity, a statistical inevitability for any convention, which passed the time quite handily. After that I went to pick up my badge, because being the seasoned convention adventurer (conventurer?) that I am I know that the line dies down later in the day and since there are no badge-required events on day zero there’s nothing to be lost by picking it up later. I spent about ten minutes in line, receiving both a badge and a smug sense of self-satisfaction for having accomplished this feat so quickly. On my way back I found LanHao there also, and we ended up collecting a few people together to have dinner at TenPenny. I’m glad that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, because that’s the sort of place that you need to be hungry to eat at. Great food, but it costs enough that you’d damn well better not be leaving anything on your plate. Though I suppose there’s also a shenanigans fee, as in ‘putting up with our shenanigans’. We sat five, and LanHao got a call that two more would be joining us. We got tables moved around, and in a few minutes two other people showed up, shortly followed by the two we were expecting, who brought two more people of their own. For those keeping track, that means the people we added were actually a larger group than the original party, and we ended up with eleven of us. As you can imagine, it took awhile for us to sort out all our orders, especially with new people coming in the whole time. For her part, our waitress was wonderfully patient with all of us, and got everything in front of us and even billed to the correct people. I ordered crab-stuffed flounder because the description had a lot of words in it that I didn’t know and I was feeling adventurous. It was quite tasty, though a bit heavy on the quinoa, which by the way passed largely unchanged into the toilet the next day. How is this stuff supposed to be healthy if my body doesn’t interact with it in any way? Regardless, the meal was an interesting time and took a couple hours, not that I minded. I had a lot of fun talking to all those people. The only one I had so much as heard of before was Kato, but that kind of thing has become standard practice for me at cons. It was good to get a head start on it.
In the course of this I got a text letting me know that all my roommates were in bed already; something that I was baffled and quite pleasantly surprised by. I’m used to trying to sleep and having people stumbling in at 3 AM, tripping over me and acting like I’m the asshole for being in their way. They certainly had a point though. This was hardly the time to go hard, before anything even started, so I wrapped things up and turned in alongside them. I managed to stretch out on the floor and get a good night’s rest to ready myself for the start of the con proper. I found out the next day that I needn’t have bothered with the sleeping bag. Initial estimates of occupation had floated around seven people, so I fully expected floorspace. The actual count ended up at five, so there was a spot in bed waiting for me that I failed to use. Communication problems, another thing that’s par for the course.
Regardless, day one then! That’s Friday for those of you not using the metric calendar. We were all up sort of early thanks to this bizarre and unfamiliar sense of responsibility that pervaded the room. That’s good for me though, since I was on the hook for setting up the Furthe’More booth in the Dealer’s Den. Or I would’ve been, had the paperwork actually been worked out properly. I never managed to get issued a ‘dealer’ or ‘assist’ badge so I wasn’t allowed to go in there. I pinged Sciggles about it a few times and got a resounding “Pfffffff-” as a response. She said she’d call if she needed me and she never did, so I figured all was well and went about my day. Unfortunately the stop in the lobby to attend to those communications attracted Marius, (See? I knew they could smell responsibility.) who also wasn’t up to much that morning and decided that meant he ought to tag along. This left me at lack of an excuse to dispose of him so yeah, we were hanging out again. Just like old times, that I was already trying so hard to forget.
Anyway, I managed to work out meeting up with Impy and Lord Grey before opening ceremonies. It was nice to see those two again. I don’t know if I’m upset that I had the lumbering oaf following me around or glad that I had someone else to diffuse Marius’ oafishness onto for a little while. Marius is one of those people who seems only familiar with human conversation on an academic basis, if even that. It’s more like he heard twisted rumors of it five years ago and is trying to reconstruct the concept from those smeared old memories. Regardless, my actual friends put up with him pretty well and we got to catch up on a few things. One interesting fact I learned was that Impy had never hugged a fursuiter, even though she always really wanted to. None of her friends suit, and she’s kinda shocky about touching people she doesn’t know. I made certain to keep that in mind as I moved on with my con.
Impy and Grey had to beat-feet to the Artist’s Alley to man their table after the ceremonies though, so I was left alone. Or, thanks to Marius, substantially worse than alone. Grappling hooks were in short supply, so I had to be a little more clever about extracting myself from that situation. I knew there was a writing panel coming up, so I made sure to overtly mention how I was going to head out to a boardroom and talk about grammar and shit for like an hour and a half, hoping that Marius would find this boring and go literally anywhere else. I commended myself repeatedly for suppressing my effeminate squeals of delight when he said he’d rather go check out the Dealer’s Den. It took me a minute to look into exactly which writing panel it was that had spared me this fate, but as long as it was the “Get Marius the hell out of my sight” panel I was happy with it. It was characterizations and dialog, actually, which was fine. I’m a beast at characterizations, so I had fun with it. Incidentally, me “having fun with it” is the reason that Ashe greets me with “Oh, this fuckin’ guy.” At all of his panels.
I figured an hour and a half was a sufficient wait time to De-Marius the Dealer’s Den, so I dropped by down there. I usually don’t buy any art or swag, largely as a function of how long it’s been since I’ve had a job. I just go there because it’s a great place to meet people. Particularly if those people are selling art and swag. Those ones you’ll probably never see anywhere else. Boy did that ever work. I came across my biggest fan from Furthe’More, Crux and his better half, BGS. I stopped by Cobalt’s booth and ran into LunarKeys there as well. Keys is another one who greeted my arrival with “Oh goddamn it what are you doing here?” and I recall a farewell of his being “Shut the fuck up. Just shut up forever and I will be happy.” Fo’ real doe, we like best bros forever. For serious.
I was at something of a disadvantage whilst dealing with LunarKeys it seems, as apparently Cobalt had been enthusiastically pushing my account of the previous year’s Anthrocon on just about everyone he knows, so Keys was pretty much sick of me before I even got there. As my long-time readers will recall, last year’s AC report contained the disasteriffic road trip to Wal-Mart that none of us will soon forget. Maybe Keys didn’t like it because I made him the villain of that story. Don’t worry, Keys. The villain is usually a far more interesting character than the hero. Anyways, I was glad to hear that someone was getting something out of listening to me talk about myself all the time in my journals. I was worried that I was doing this just to convince myself that my life is interesting and stave off the slow creeping of madness closing in all around me, or at the very least provide some good context for assembling my psychological profile after the murders start. Speaking of that unspeakable night though, it’s worth noting that both LanHao and LunarKeys extended invitations to Lucius (and of course me, these people love me) for the TF art jam that night. I hope Lucius appreciates how highly my weird friends thought of him.
Friday apparently had one more disaster in store for me though, as I came to find out when I took a break to check on things on my laptop on my way to meet up with some of my other targets. You see I hadn’t done that since the early morning, and of course since we live just a hair’s breadth away from Star Trek, or at least the hyperviolent lens-flare movie version of it, in terms of communications technology, I should’ve known that I would pay for that oversight. During the communications blackout, I got a number of notes asking after my location from TechCoyote, a longtime fan of mine. I’d mentioned my activities in my correspondence that morning and he had just figured out that I, and in fact both of us, were at Anthrocon, at the same time even. By the time I made it online again that evening, he had already left. I had made it up to Archai’s room before we had properly exchanged phone numbers and managed to contact each other directly. I felt kind of dumb visiting Arc to just talk on the phone with someone else the whole time, but apparently he enjoyed that experience immensely. To quote him directly “Listening to just one end of that conversation was almost more than I could handle.” I’m going to take that as confirmation that I’m equally clever and entertaining at all times no matter what I’m doing.
Since this was the first time Tech and I talked with actual face noises into the air there was quite a lot to go over very quickly, but the meat of the conversation was basically him asking why in the hell I wasn’t checking messages. My reasoning was that my phone doesn’t do internet at things so the only way for me to check FA notes is to stop doing fun convention things and go sit in the lobby by myself (Or worse, as I’m also in danger of Marius finding me there). All that rage was cut off with “Oh yeah. That makes sense.” And then of course I asked him who in the hell visits a furry convention for like six hours and then just goes home, to which he responded that his mother had driven him there and she was weirded out by all the furries and wanted to go home. Which made me say “Oh yeah. That makes sense.” So yeah, we’re both good, sensible people who would’ve really liked to meet each other but couldn’t because we just had utterly incompatible lives at that exact moment. So yeah, instead of getting to meet him and hang out a little, I just made his mom think I’m weird. Can’t win ‘em all I guess. We’ll do better next time. At least I managed to entertain both those involved and a couple bystanders with all this. That’s what really matters though, right? That people find my failures amusing?
So disaster number 56 blew a lot of time and I didn’t actually manage to hang out with Archai very much right then. Drank a lot though, and that’s kind of the same thing. I wasn’t too worried because I knew I’d find other chances to chill with him, so I didn’t feel too bad about skipping town to head down to the Transformation art jam. I was really thinking that it would be a simple and quiet affair like it had been other years. Boy was I wrong. I thought they were optimistic by dragging together three tables in the Zoo, but we had them all filled by ten minutes in, and spilled over onto two more before long. Apparently it’s a considerably larger niche than I thought. I got to see Altered, whom it was a privilege to meet for the first time. There was also Splyced and Crayola, both of whom remembered me from the Delaware Fur Bowl and were happy to see me again. I got to chat with them for a while before things happened and the tables got rearranged. I ended up in the company of Bird of Paradise and sprech4, both of whom were very interesting to talk to. The time just flew by sitting there and chatting with them about everything under the sun. It was a quick first encounter, but they both seemed to enjoy my company, so I’ll call that a win. Also someone gave me free orange chicken, so double-win absolutely.
In any case, time wore on and it was soon time for the ultimate can’t-miss, the late-night sexy writing panel. Obviously I won’t go into excess detail there, but it was a ton of fun as always. Just to give an idea of the tenor of the discussion, I’ll give you a few segment titles. “Slang terms and artful names for genitalia”, “this does not bend that way”, “realistically describing sex involving women”, and “things that are not lube”. Yeah, it’s good stuff. I had a lot of fun because I’d gotten pretty schwacked at Archai’s room that afternoon, so by 10:00 my liver was finally pulling into the lead again, making me practically manic with energy. I felt like I could bareknuckle box a grizzly bear, and that attitude was certainly reflected in how I approached these delicate topics. At one point Ashe declared that I had won the panel, which was a first for me. I didn’t know you could win panels, but I was honored all the same. There was someone there with the badge name “Long Trot” whose information I’ve been unable to pin down. He was a Nuke mechanic and was spectacularly unsurprised to hear that I was a Nuke Electronics Technician after hearing all my enthusiasm about what I had to say on the subject of animal people boning each other.
I had invited Bluedude as I always do, but he didn’t manage to show up until the end when we switched over from mere erotic writing to the weird and kinky stuff. It actually was a fair bit more subdued during the latter half than during the supposedly mundane first part. Maybe it’s because Rukis left. She was there with Amon for the first half and was a tremendous addition to the panel as always. I liked having Amon spectating in the back especially. A lot of the times when I said something I could hear Amon’s bangles jingling when he nodded or laughed. I wished I could’ve gotten to talk with him a little afterwards, but it was late and he was tired so I let him be.
So yeah, finished out that noble endeavor in good time. By that I mean like 1 AM, but I was fine with that. No part of “late-night sexy writing panel” is a misnomer. I’d planned to head to bed, but I’d made the earlier mistake of making Archai aware of my existence. As such, I got a text asking if I’d like to join him for whatever it is one does at this ungodly hour of the morning. And then another text saying much the same thing from someone who had stolen Archai’s phone. Though this is typically when my night ends, I agreed to go with them. May as well live it up when I have the chance. I soon came to find that what people do this late at night is typically “get shitfaced and go to the rave.” I don’t know what I expected. I won’t say it wasn’t fun, certainly. Arc runs with a good crew. There was Ciaphas, who was almost creepily in sync with all my pop culture references, even the terribly dated ones. Like, if there’s such a thing as a joke wingman he should have that on his business card. Also in the group was Pookie, whom I called “Awesometail” for all of two days because seriously you guys she had the greatest fucking tail. It wasn’t even like there were crazy articulations or anything to it. It was just a sturdy snow leopard tail, but it had just the right balance and bounce, a really sultry curve, lively swing to the fur as it moved, everything was perfect. I guess the girl attached to it was pretty cool too. She put up with me even whilst wasted and increasingly sleep deprived. She certainly gets points for that. Actually she shared a number of sensibilities with me as well. Quite the group of like minds there. I believe I’ve mentioned before how Archai has a lot of verbal riffs that match up closely with mine. If I haven’t I’ll let you extrapolate based on a little snippet of conversation we had shortly after meeting up when he had some news for me.
“So I’ve got a boyfriend now.”
“That’s pretty gay.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that, by definition it actually is. Woulda thought you might like, be happy for me or maybe mention how it’s odd given that I had a girlfriend last time or something.”
“Nope. Gonna stick with obvious surface observations, thanks.”
“Well okay then.”
That’s the crazy thing about it though, had our roles been reversed, that conversation probably would’ve gone exactly the same way. Anywize, we kept swilling back our Gatorade, which at that point had to be at least 70% rum, as we moved to the beat. I was more stomping on the ground and lurching haphazardly somewhat adjacent to the beat, with the beat occasionally peeking through the venetian blinds to see if I was still out in front of its house, but there actually seemed to be a lot of people there doing that, so I didn’t really feel left out. A rather surreal experience for me that I’d never had before was checking out some of the visualizations that were up on the projectors alongside the DJ’s set. I mean, I know that it’s supposed to be just a bunch of brightly-colored nonsense that makes it so that you take longer to coast down off of all the E or Salvia that you just did, but the fact that such a lengthy montage comes together with such professional editing begs the “things that must have happened” question. I’m just trying to imagine the editing room wherein someone or perhaps even a group of people had to make the serious judgment calls of:
“Okay we’re going to open with hectic digital color-static that makes it look like the HDMI cable isn’t plugged in correctly, then star-wipe to a screensaver of a multicolored cube that endlessly turns inside out. The cube is gonna start spinning really fast and then fly off to the side and a bunch of deer drawn in that real rough style of Regular Show are gonna pop out and start dancing like the Peanuts characters. Then when the bass hits we’ll smash cut to Scooby Doo falling on his face, umm loop that one. Yeah, just loop it a few times, maybe play it backwards during the bridge and then two more loops straight into Carl Sagan talking about gravity on a sailboat, yeah gonna have to spiral warp his face or something during that part to keep things moving along. Alright so after that a flying saucer knocks Sagan off the screen and clears the stage for Spongebob, yep. Spongebob is gonna… not do anything he’ll just be a static image, maybe bounce around a little bit like he’s a kindergarten popsicle stick puppet and then a big spin, spin, spin faster and faster until he fades out into a montage of indecipherable blueprints in varying amounts of transparency all flying in different directions across the screen and cut straight from there into a wireframe animation of a corgi being hit in the face with a Frisbee, yep, loop that a few times, yes, yes! Right there, right at the moment of impact when his head flops around and he falls over we’ll just loop that segment right there for like two minutes just two solid minutes of that golden 700 milliseconds of confused agony on that synthetic dog’s adorable little face, yep a bunch of loops of that then play the whole sequence over again one more time and we’ll ride out on that I can really feel riding out on the corgi whiplash loop.”
So yeah, that’s… a thing. Definitely. In any case, I was all thinged out before long, but fortunately the dance closes at 2:00. I’d never been at a dance all the way until they shut it down before. Of course with how rarely I go to dances that’s not all that surprising. The last dance I was at I was wearing Brinkley and I quite sensibly danced myself into a coma in about 30 minutes. My companions seemed to believe that the night was still young, however, and they wanted to go eat at Primanti Brothers. I’m not certain on the details, but they somehow persuaded me towards their line of thinking. I guess my convictions fade quickly in the wee hours of the morning. I noted that The Super Primanti Bros were located substantially in the opposite direction of my hotel, which itself was a substantial distance from the convention hall. That didn’t sit well with me as I was rather against the idea of a long walk back after my long walk back. I’d heard that there were only three people staying in Archai’s room, so I issued the terribly intimidating ultimatum of “I’ll only go with you to eat if I can sleep with you tonight.” Arc graciously accepted because really, who can say no to that?
In any case, we were soon off on a quest to reach the Flying Primanti Brothers to have a hearty meal with our conservative little group of about 25 people. Not sure where the rest of them came from, but that happened. I was kind of glad for it, actually. Since the Cool Story Bros were located at the end of a three-mile trench walled on either side with sheer cliffs made of disheveled alleyways and urban decay. I know alcohol is supposed to make you feel invincible but I was drinking quite heavily throughout and remained acutely aware of my vulnerability to being stabbed. So yeah, we stopped in and dined for a bit. I nearly asphyxiated Ciaphas with laughter on multiple occasions so I guess we made a good night of it. I had a slick, mushy greasewad of the Venture Bros signature “try-not-to-get-shanked Boulevard” fries, or whatever street they were named after, since I wasn’t feeling too hungry. And I’d point out that none of those descriptors are indictments against the food by the way. That was the most fucking delicious mushy greasewad I’ve ever had. So yeah, after that we worked our way back upriver through the dilapidated infrastructure gauntlet and found our way to bed. A good day in all. It could’ve stood to not end quite so far into tomorrow, but I had fun. Also, Archai follows the definition of “tomorrow” that all computer systems engineers follow, basically meaning “on the other side of whenever I go to sleep next”.
Saturday:
The next day I managed to wake up actually rather close to my normal time, around 8:15. Not that I wanted to, it just happened. That was a bit too close to the start of the Milfurs breakfast for me to consider it a reliable option. That and I was now sick with whatever Archai had been suffering through all the previous day. So if you’ve been keeping up, the short version of that is I forwent the nice bed that I paid for in order to just sleep with some dude that night and I caught a disease as a result. I’m so good at making decisions! And also phrasing things. Anyways, I rehydrated a bit and went back to bed. Despite the ungodly hour at which it’s always scheduled, this marks the first time I’ve missed the Milfurs breakfast. Ah well, casualties of war. I’m sure they’ll understand. Eventually, the lot of us managed to blearily haul out at around 11:00 or so. I ran into Raptor Jesus in the lobby and he came right over to give me a hug and tell me how great it was to see me. Since he called me by name I figured I’d go look up his player to see if we’d met before and I didn’t remember. I found that his secret identity is Scotty The Minotaur, who was not at all familiar to me. I checked around a bit and found two other people who had similar experiences. Tough call on this one. It could be that we’re all walking around with badges that have our names on them. Or perhaps it may simply be that Raptor Jesus is a friend to us all.
Next up I headed down to the Artist’s Alley to cruise for a few more contacts and certainly was not disappointed. I caught ws6transam in suit there. He was also looking for someone so I played seeing-eye human for him for a bit. I got to see Bluedude again, who was gathering a group to go to lunch. Progress on doing so was slow, so I wasn’t too broken up about it when Rekzar yanked me to his side to chat a bit. He was waiting in the interminable purchase line, so I was happy to help him pass the time. Having your friends distract you from your other friends is actually a pretty good description of the convention as a whole, actually. Once I lost track of Bluedude I got a little worried and ran off again, seeing as food was a high priority for me at the time. Bluedude came by again soon enough and all was well. We were banking on a nice restaurant that he knew about, but there was a pretty big line outside, and it takes a while to move a line at a sit down place. The majority agreed upon “Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat” and we went to the Five Guys around the corner. It was another big group of folks who were new to me all heading out to eat together, and again only one familiar name because it pops up a dozen times in my favorites gallery. This time it was SulferDragon. Blue rolls with a good crew as well, so we had a fine time together.
After I got back I headed over to The Gneech’s table to meet up with the Cross Time Café crowd. That’s always a nice opportunity there. Managed to collect together Mooncat, DHLawrence, and McClaw there, so a good showing. Dovetailed nicely into the fursuit parade also. That’s always a wonderful event, a show of force for Anthrocon’s muscle. It’s always strange how there are so many people that I only ever see in the parade. I saw a whole crowd of RadFoxes out there. He’s certainly been busy getting his entourage together. I really had to respect the fox playing the trombone though, that’s some skill there. That plus a guitar wolf and a handful of percussion that I saw here and there might mean this is the start of a very interesting trend.
There was a big change for the parade this year, in that they had a substantial outdoor portion, and I don’t mean a little jaunt along the sidewalk either. They marched everyone straight down Tenth Street. Apparently they’d asked the city planners if they could shut the road down completely to have animal people walk up and down it and they thought that was a great idea. And it’s not like this is some little access sideroad. Tenth Street is a main thoroughfare right at the waterfront, so shutting it down was actually a pretty big deal logistically. Yet somehow, it actually was a great idea. With the parade being outside of controlled convention space, that meant that we could actually attract spectators along the streets. You know, something that a parade pretty much by definition actually has to do. And boy did we ever pull in some spectators. Estimates of the crowd usually were in the range of 5000, which is just insane. I know the businesses love to have us here, for very obvious reasons. We sold Chipotle out of chips, Ben n’ Jerry’s out of ice cream, and Tonic ran out of liquor. Not all that surprising, really. “Tacos and ice cream, then get wasted!” sounds like a pretty good representative schedule of an AC attendee. But far beyond just giving them so much business we force them to close down things, I had no idea that we connected so well with the common people. It was truly an awesome and wonderful thing to see in action. And in saying that I don’t mean the “teenage girl text message” awesome, I mean like the biblical kind of awesome from when the apostles were watching God wreck everything and then had to clean the terror-shit out of their pants and had to write it all down.
I managed to run into AnubisLivess on my way to the parade, so I was able to coordinate meeting up with him at Tonic. I missed him the first time around because we meant to meet in the zoo and I forgot that they hid that in the basement after day zero. That’s a relatively recent and tremendously irritating innovation. Of course it’s one of those things where I don’t really see a solution for it. There’s just so damn many of us that the room in the Westin just can’t handle everyone during the con’s peak. Anyways, I got to Tonic and sat down with Anubis. Y’all know what comes next. I’ve gotta muddle through name-dropping the people who I remember from his crew and point out the one familiar name among them. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we? Alright, in the course of the time spent (and pitchers bought) at tonic, the table played host to some combination of Anubis’ friends PitterPat, Red Dye Number 5, Leefuu, and Mei5683, whom I was watching, as well as fellow watcher, Lexxure. Yeah, so that’s definitely a roster. I found out that if you drink hard enough you earn entries into a raffle. I was the only one who brought a pen and I drank pretty damn hard, so I entered into that thing like four times.
So of course we drank heavily and had lots of fun as is that not the point of this whole grand adventure in the first place? Mei is gender neutral and let us know this so we could keep our pronouns straight, which of course led to most of us fucking it up the vast majority of the time. I’m good about picking the preferred personal pronoun when it’s one or the other, but I struggle with using ‘they’. It’s not grammatically correct in a lot of situations, so I resist using it even if I know it’s a preference, which leads to me forgetting frequently. Fortunately I saved the day with my ethanol-fueled ingenuity by figuring out that “this fuckin’ guy” is gender neutral. It was much easier for me to slip into my vernacular and was somehow less offensive than “she”, so everybody wins! Also Artica showed up and we were all just drunk enough that we thought going downstairs to fanboy all over him would be a good idea. I was last in line for that and I got to watch poor Artica nod politely as everyone explained where he should know them from. I tried to take a little pressure off of him by saying that we’d never really met and there was no way he should know me. And then he’s like “Oh, no. I totally remember you.” Naturally I come back with a tactful and gentlemanly “What? You lying piece of shit, no way! Nobody important knows who I am this is ridiculous.” Did I mention that we’d been drinking a lot? I get the feeling that factored into how that meeting went down.
Anyways, I’d heard that Nevir, Ryoken and Arashiin were nearby, as in “in the building right next to us AKA TenPenny” so I went to stop by those guys. I was planning to check in on them anyways, because that’s yet another crew of cool dudes whom I would kick myself for missing out on. I did have an ulterior motive though. I know that Ryo is cool with bodysnatching, and maybe even Nevir could be talked into it on a special occasion, so I wanted to ask about bumming a ride in one of their suits. That way I could get Impy her long-awaited hug. She knew me and had hugged me a few times before, so if I got furred up I figured she’d be okay with it. Theoretically at least. I thought it was a cool plan. Causality didn’t seem to agree with me though.
Ryoken said that his suit was falling to ribbons, and also sopping wet with raunchy sweat and concentrated scrag-nasty. I may have paraphrased that a little, but it was severe enough that he had retired his suit for the rest of the con. I’m guessing that his fursuit-sized fumigation tent was at home. I wouldn’t have mound, really. Jumping into a sweatsponge is a risk you take when you’re hijacking other peoples’ fluffy critter characters. I may actually rename the practice “sweatjumping”, now that I think of it. It’s just the right combination of badass and disgusting to describe it. Anyways, even if I didn’t care, that still would’ve made for a pretty bad first impression for Impy. So no go there. With Nevir, even if I could find a work around for him being a notable fraction shorter than I am, his suit Shawshank was in an even more catastrophic state of disrepair; dismemberment, in fact. Someone had yanked his tail clean off during the fursuit parade. Nev was understandably distressed by this, especially given that the necessary tools and parts for the reattachment surgery were in Colorado. We discussed a few alternatives and I came up with my trusty labcoat. Shawshank still wouldn’t have a tail, but the coat was long enough to fully cover the axe wound on his butt and make it look like that ensemble was kinda on purpose. He said he’d give it a try, so we went to retrieve it after dinner. Or whatever. It was like 4:30 and we were eating food. Whatever you call that.
Next up was Kage’s Story Hour, a must as always. It was actually so crowded that I couldn’t sit next to anyone I knew, even though I knew a dozen people in attendance. Hell, I didn’t get to sit at all, that’s how popular the event was. It’s pretty insane that we’ve gotten big enough to fill the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom. There are actually quite a few signs of AC beginning to outgrow this venue. The Westin Zoo is too small, the main ballroom is too small, we’ve eaten all of the city’s parking, the Westin sells out completely within a day of opening reservations, and we sell out six other hotels completely by the time the event starts. Talk like that was what got rumors started that the con may have to move, but I never really believed them. Pittsburgh loves us far too much for us to leave now, and it’s quite uncertain that we’d receive such a warm welcome anywhere else.
I’d heard from the legendary Book of Faces that there would be an Upstate New York Furries meetup after the Story Hour so I searched about in the hall for something resembling that, though I was not particularly certain what such a thing resembled. At one point, someone bellowed out “NEW YORK FURMEET OVER HERE!” and by a series of cunning logical deductions I determined the location we were meeting at. The event started with drama, because of course it did. Apparently a bunch of New York City furries were the ones who pushed for the meetup to happen, by which I mean coerced other people to organize it for them. Once we all got together, the NYC furs all either never showed up in the first place or realized that there was no one around even remotely close to their home turf and then just left. At the very least it was briefly amusing to hear them say “Yeah I’m from way upstate, you know, Woodbury?” and we’re all just like “Fucking seriously? You live like an hour from the city. Some of us live an hour from fucking Canada!” It’s actually really nice to see people who have had conversations like that a billion times before. When someone finds out that you’re from New York they ask “Oh, what’s the city like?” and the response is “Fucking five hours away so I don’t go there.”
In any case, good folks. The ones I can remember are Ponk and Hextoler, unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any links for them, so you’re on your own with those guys I guess. It’s a shame I can’t track them, really, as they’re the folks I’m most likely to run into in non-Anthrocon situations. I guess I’ll just have to depend on Facebook for that stuff. Finding that group was really a boon to me. Heh, I also failed to get details for our illustrious event organizer because he gave me a business card, a card that I find only recently is for a business (shocker) but as such does not contain a web handle or FA for the person himself. I’ll have to work harder on that one, as he was trying to recruit me as a dialog editor for a flash game that his studio is working on. Networking is a funny thing that way, I suppose, as Cobalt came in to buy a sandwich a bit later on. I for one, being his friend, and for two, recalling that his degree was in 2D animation, invited him over. Whereupon he got the pitch for the project as well. Could be an exciting opportunity, who knows?
I guess I had fun with those guys, because I spent a hell of a lot of time talking with them. That actually became a concern after a while because I was texting back and forth a lot with Arc about pulling off some possible sweatjumping later. I felt like such a twit telling him to wait just a little bit longer while I wrapped things up at Furnando’s. I knew that I was putting him out even after he’d just agreed to help me. It worked out okay though because the crew there soon wanted to head to Tonic and that made a clean break for me. Having spent most of the afternoon and having drank multiple pitchers at Tonic already I had no real desire to go back there, so I headed out. It was too late by then though, Impy had left the building. She actually seemed rather concerned by my efforts to get in touch with her in person. I was just trying to keep my latest mission a secret and I think I ended up worrying her. Yet one more thing to feel stupid about.
Making this work was just going to be a matter of coordination though. I knew I’d just have to push harder for it the next day, and I could still hang out with Arc that night. I saw Nevir in the hall on my way there. The labcoat appeared to be working out quite well for Shawshank. Not only just covering up the tail carnage but it also really seemed to suit the character. For those uninitiated, a Crux is essentially what would happen if you went to Tim Burton and gave him only the words “terrifying kangaroo” as creature design notes and let him go to town on it, then slapped a two-tone tribal modern art color scheme on the result. So having such a creation wearing a labcoat and silently skulking about the convention hall looking like he’s preparing to conduct some experiments is quite genuinely unsettling, and I think Nev played to that very well. I was happy to see that it worked out for him.
Crew additions for this latest adventure with Archai included but were not limited to Roman Maximilian and Flux. Like most furry adventures, it started off with a big distraction. I wanted to go ditch my backpack before dancing, so I went out to my car. On the way I got a call from Tonic saying that I’d won a prize. All I could think was “Goddammit I already said I don’t want to go back to Tonic!” It was a tough trip too, particularly given that they said I had a time limit. I needn’t have bothered hurrying. As I mentioned, we were in the process of stripping the walls bare and shutting the place down with our rabid, insatiable alcoholism, so there were very few people actually paying attention to the contest stuff. It took me about 15 minutes to even get someone’s attention so I could ask about it. Regardless, I got out of there with a bucket of Sailor Jerry swag and a cool pin with a blinking LED on it that everyone agreed was SUPER annoying. Even the people in the rave where there were strobes in the ceiling and hundreds of lasers lining the walls were like “wow, that pin is like, super distracting.” The return trip was pretty complicated as well, because they closed the half of the convention center that has street level doors for obfuscating contractual reasons, sending everyone through the parking garage on the other side of the street. They vastly underestimated either the complexity of that parking garage, or the capacity for bewilderment of their attendees, because there were a hilarious number of people (okay like four but still) wandering around in that garage. How in the hell do they think a bunch of ravers who are running on fumes and are probably also high are going to navigate that thing? Regardless, my superior sense of direction and accomplished basic literacy skills got me to the correct elevator and I made it back. I even made sure to send up a signal flare for the other weary travelers captured by parking purgatory before I went up.
So yeah, we all got drunk and danced all night to the best song ever etc. Arc even busted a few moves in Jake Caribou, so getting to dance with him was pretty fun. He was only there for a little bit because Arc takes inhuman amounts of time to accomplish even the most sundry of tasks, so it’s a wonder turning into a caribou takes him anything less than a day and a half. (For the record, Arc’s opinion on my opinion on his particular lack of haste is: “Shut yer whore mouth!” Wise words from a wise, if rather slow, man.) In any case the dance was a lot more relaxed now that I’d broken the ice and really let myself get into it. It had worn on me a bit though. I heard from a few other people that they felt like they’d already been through an entire con on Friday, and that’s definitely how I was. So I didn’t have a lot of steam left to go on. I had a pretty good time closing out the dance again, but I was starting to feel like I was getting a bit irascible towards the end.
I’m well aware that I get a fair bit less fun to be around when I’m lacking sleep quite severely. That’s rather distressing at a con as I recall quite vividly that all I bring to the table around there is humor and personability. I know a lot of people like these guys who can run for days on adrenaline, heavy bass, lasers and energy drinks, but I start having a bad time when I don't get sleep. Realistically though, I wouldn't put up with their shit if they weren't great guys. This time they were handing me free liquor all night and took me cool places, so I can't very well say it was torture. Even if it did end in several late... mornings. Really though, if I’d turned down the chance to hang with these guys, I’m sure I would’ve regretted that too. Basically the lesson is that I’ll always find a way to hate myself so I may as well go with the more fun option. Finally, after having a breakfast sandwich at Subway at like three in the morning because why the hell not? I managed to excuse myself at least somewhat gracefully from that particular adventuring party and head back to bed.
Find out the exciting conclusion on the next episode of Dragonball Z etc, etc. Part II is right here
Alright, so if you hadn’t heard of the circumstances during the preparation for this con, I’ll summarize them quickly for you. I mentioned a bit of this in a previous journal, so if you haven’t read that I’ll wait. It’s really easy to spare a moment for you because the reading process doesn’t happen in realtime. Subjective time solves a lot of problems, you know? Okay, so I met someone at an Upstate New York Furries meet a few weeks ago who was kind of down on his luck. I’m going to call him Marius, after the penniless loser in Diablo II who managed to fuck up everything for literally the entire human race without ever so much as understanding what was happening or making a real conscious decision. Marius had been working hard on his plans to attend Anthrocon, which would be his first furry convention, and his ride hadn't panned out. He heard where I was from and asked if I could drive him because his place was "on the way". That assertion demonstrated a rather grievous misunderstanding of either maps or the meaning of those words. Stopping by to pick him up would add about six hours to my drive time, so I wasn't terribly enthused about the prospect.
I told him he could stay in my room, but he'd have to find his own way there. He managed to NOT find his own way there, shockingly, so eventually I thought I'd help him out with that too. I can hardly say I'm pressed for time, and if the gas is getting covered I don't have a whole lot else to complain about. That's far too long of a drive to do after a day at the con though, so I had to extend my stay by booking a room for Sunday night, and he agreed to split the cost of that as well. That was still going to be a pain in the ass, but I figured I'd go for it. Marius seemed really excited about this and I'd hate for him to miss it because of dumb logistical things. And maybe it's a little bit because I remember my first convention, which was also Anthrocon. Wherein I also had no idea what I was doing, and I also some things went wrong out of nowhere, whereupon some people I'd never met were happy to help me. So yeah, I decided that I was going to get him to the Greek come hell or highwater. The ensuing weeks merely served to confirm to me a dozen times over what a terrible decision this was.
Marius was fretting about money a lot, saying he only had $180 to pay for rooms and transport, which would be a close shave, certainly, even with how many ways we were splitting the cost of the room. I was willing to be flexible and committed to making this work, so I was fine with just taking whatever he had left to spare at the end and just rolling with it. I later came to find out that this was ALL he had to spare to pay for EVERYTHING. And he was the one giving me funny looks when I screamed at him 46 times about how cons cost a LOT OF MONEY and he should be prepared for this from the outset because I was continually gaining the impression that he failed to understand just how expensive cons are. When I asked what he was going to do for food he just kind of went "Oh... Oh, yeah." as though the fact that he needs food to live hadn't occurred to him until right then. Whatever, it's fine. This is his first rodeo so he hasn't had a chance to learn and he's obviously not going to get it until after he's seen it first-hand. I was still on board with the "whatever's left" approach to payment, and I was even willing to take on the risk that the amount remaining might be $0. This bastard is lucky I saved quite responsibly before leaving the navy.
After waffling back and forth several times about whether or not he'd join me in the group room that I was going to be in for the bulk of the con, which was a pain in the ass because I was a middle-man relaying that to Astrozerk through Croc who were the ones actually holding the reservations, Marius decided that he wasn't going to stay with me. Fine, whatever. There were already like seven people in that room so no one was going to be hurting there. His new arrangement though, had him staying there Sunday night also, so he backed out of that night with me because the room I booked at the Wyndham Grand was too expensive for him. So in effect, I put my wallet on the line again to book a room at the Wyndham solely in order to accommodate him and after he insisted on a double because he didn't want to share a bed he chooses right then to flake on me. Fucking brilliant.
When I tried to be at all assertive in saying that he'd better stay in this room because it's his fault that I'm in this position I got back a long sob story about how broke he is and how he'd really rather spend the time with his boyfriend in the other room. I found the significant other angle to be compelling, so I let it drop. I found out later that he's never met his current boyfriend in person, and I don't know if that makes me more or less pissed off. I mean, yay for them being all romantic and shit meeting for the first time, but fuck man, you're hanging me out to dry for someone you've never even seen in person? Calling someone you've never met "my boyfriend" is the kind of red flag that would've had me bail on this thing had I not already gotten so deep into it, and it was not the only such flag by any means. Anyways, the Wyndham charges you one night's rate and fees if you cancel, meaning that since I only booked one night I had the lovely options of paying $150 to stay in the room or I could just pay $150 to go fuck myself. As such, I ended up staying in the room. The journal discussing this got a handful of responses letting me know how entertaining and well composed it was. This was encouraging, but basically added up to “Oh wow! It’s hilarious how much that sucks for you. Looks like you’re fucked!” Though it is nice to know that I can still be entertaining when all I’m doing is complaining about my problems. Yinzer actually offered some money to help out, which I was astonished and quite flattered by. It was my mistake though, so I should most definitely be the one to pay for it. I’m sure there are far more deserving folks out there. I hope he found one.
Subsequent interactions with Marius were less than encouraging. Even when he's not dropping some new expensive or inconvenient bombshell on me that his capricious little mind has come up with it's nothing but complaints and sob stories that I have no need to hear. Oh, I've always wanted to go to a con but I could never make it work. Oh, I came out to my family and now half of them hate me. Oh, it's so hard never getting to see my boyfriend. Oh, my stepdad is being such a jerk about all this. Oh, my dog died last week and that made me really sad. Goddamn. I'd feel sorry for this kid if I ever got anything from him other than whiny bullshit. What is it about the fandom that attracts broken people and people with no clue how to live their own damn lives? I encounter SO many of them and they're all just so damn needy. I did as I said and supported this trainwreck of a man through the con because it was too late to go back on that promise by the time I figured out what a catastrofuck he was. I knew enough to be careful to distance myself though, especially now that this whole Nantucket Sleighride is over. Though I'm open to the possibility of this guy not being an outright cancer of a human being, I definitely want him to stop being my problem ASAP. And for that I need to push back a little. A lot of these types of people get real clingy when they can smell responsibility on you. Then you'll never get rid of 'em.
Wednesday:
Now then, the actual meeting. His home life was about what I expected from someone with this level of irresponsibility and disconnect from the world. Marius lives in a trailer park and made a point of complaining about how he’s gotten too old to be issued a share of his stepdad’s food stamps. I talked to his stepfather a fair bit. Got to hear about the great, lumbering disaster of a truck out in the driveway, the reason that Marius was unable to get there on his own. I also got to talk for over an hour about his previous three trucks, which he had photos of, and previous two wives, whom there were NOT photos of. Also got to talk about Kenny, who died last year and left all this junk that was lying around the trailer to them. Why is it that broke-ass rednecks always know someone named Kenny?
One of the only things that I was able to fight for from my apparently very limited negotiating position of being the only person who could cart his fat ass to Anthrocon was the ability to spend Wednesday night at his place. That way I’d have a two hour drive followed by a six hour one. (As opposed to the 4.5 hour drive I would’ve required had I sensibly told him to go fuck himself at the outset.) So yeah, I got to spend a little time on a lumpy old couch, the sole fruit of my desperate efforts to make this sinkhole I’d let myself stumble into suck a little less. I really hoped to get us moving early in the morning so that all this nonsense wouldn’t delay me from arriving at the con on time. That, at least, actually worked. He was like a kid on Christmas morning, hauling out at 5:30 to get everything ready. Oh joy.
Thursday:
On the drive, it was actually rather nice to have someone there with me. I usually drive alone, and the time goes very slowly that way. It’s lonely and you have nothing to focus on but your own fatigue and various aches from sitting in one place too long. Now, he certainly wasn’t a positive source of human contact, but I suppose he was a bit better than the accompaniment of nothing more than crushing loneliness. Yay, I guess? We talked about music and a few sundry things. He killed his phone battery going through his playlist, most of which was pretty inoffensive. The fact that he’d only recently discovered Breaking Benjamin was just adorable. It went pretty well downhill from there though. I’m willing to put up with gearheads so long as they’re otherwise alright, but Marius would not shut up about cars. Every ten goddamn minutes it was “Oh look it’s [car model] check out its [obvious features] that one’s got [massive list of extraneous details] isn’t that awesome?” and then of course he looks at me like a lost puppy, desperately wanting me to give a shit, and erroneously expecting that I would. They’re all just cars, dammit. And it’s Pittsburgh so a fair majority of them are trying to kill us. As such, I’m focusing much more carefully on that than their exact litany of design specifications.
Anyways, I managed to haul Marius to the Hampton and take the long-anticipated step of getting him to kindly fuck off so I could get to what I was actually there to do. Despite the various shenanigans of the day I’d managed to make it there in good time. That didn’t actually matter at all though, as the folks I was meant to be meeting to room with at the Doubletree had been eaten by the registration line. They’d had a substantial head start on me, but were still quite far from the front of the line, quite far as in like 150 yards or so. I had no wish to intern myself in that particular prison, so I planned to wait for them on site. Or rather kind of close to the site I suppose, seeing as the Doubletree’s wifi wasn’t public. I covertly snuck over to the Omni to steal their internet for a bit while I waited on my hosts to get their ducks in a row and then… put badges on all of them I guess. Can’t have ducks without ID ya know? It was actually a rather valuable opportunity. Trying to coordinate things at a con mandates that one have an eye on half a dozen social networks at any given time, so a chance to tinker with my computer a bit before really getting into things was welcome.
I managed to connect with ArcRa, a member of that highly exclusive subset of furries that used to be on my ship with me. I thought having lunch with him would be a nice opportunity to catch up with him. And then of course I was informed again and again how badly I’d underestimated that line. A justifiable mistake seeing as I’d never actually witnessed said line in person. Given how long it took them to get through I’m impressed that I couldn’t see the damn thing from the Doubletree. It was more than two hours before I got any contact from the line internees who I was waiting on. The decision to just keep sitting around was painful, especially since it made me miss lunch with Arc, but I really did want to secure a key to the room before I did anything else. I guess I needn’t have bothered, because the keymaster didn’t show up even after the end of registrationgate 2015. Croc was nice enough to get me in there to drop off stuff though, so though my con appeared to be starting with an ever-growing string of disasters it wasn’t a total loss.
The first stop was the Zoo, as it usually is, and I caught up with Arc and eventually Croc there. I joined up in a game of Cards Against Humanity, a statistical inevitability for any convention, which passed the time quite handily. After that I went to pick up my badge, because being the seasoned convention adventurer (conventurer?) that I am I know that the line dies down later in the day and since there are no badge-required events on day zero there’s nothing to be lost by picking it up later. I spent about ten minutes in line, receiving both a badge and a smug sense of self-satisfaction for having accomplished this feat so quickly. On my way back I found LanHao there also, and we ended up collecting a few people together to have dinner at TenPenny. I’m glad that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, because that’s the sort of place that you need to be hungry to eat at. Great food, but it costs enough that you’d damn well better not be leaving anything on your plate. Though I suppose there’s also a shenanigans fee, as in ‘putting up with our shenanigans’. We sat five, and LanHao got a call that two more would be joining us. We got tables moved around, and in a few minutes two other people showed up, shortly followed by the two we were expecting, who brought two more people of their own. For those keeping track, that means the people we added were actually a larger group than the original party, and we ended up with eleven of us. As you can imagine, it took awhile for us to sort out all our orders, especially with new people coming in the whole time. For her part, our waitress was wonderfully patient with all of us, and got everything in front of us and even billed to the correct people. I ordered crab-stuffed flounder because the description had a lot of words in it that I didn’t know and I was feeling adventurous. It was quite tasty, though a bit heavy on the quinoa, which by the way passed largely unchanged into the toilet the next day. How is this stuff supposed to be healthy if my body doesn’t interact with it in any way? Regardless, the meal was an interesting time and took a couple hours, not that I minded. I had a lot of fun talking to all those people. The only one I had so much as heard of before was Kato, but that kind of thing has become standard practice for me at cons. It was good to get a head start on it.
In the course of this I got a text letting me know that all my roommates were in bed already; something that I was baffled and quite pleasantly surprised by. I’m used to trying to sleep and having people stumbling in at 3 AM, tripping over me and acting like I’m the asshole for being in their way. They certainly had a point though. This was hardly the time to go hard, before anything even started, so I wrapped things up and turned in alongside them. I managed to stretch out on the floor and get a good night’s rest to ready myself for the start of the con proper. I found out the next day that I needn’t have bothered with the sleeping bag. Initial estimates of occupation had floated around seven people, so I fully expected floorspace. The actual count ended up at five, so there was a spot in bed waiting for me that I failed to use. Communication problems, another thing that’s par for the course.
Regardless, day one then! That’s Friday for those of you not using the metric calendar. We were all up sort of early thanks to this bizarre and unfamiliar sense of responsibility that pervaded the room. That’s good for me though, since I was on the hook for setting up the Furthe’More booth in the Dealer’s Den. Or I would’ve been, had the paperwork actually been worked out properly. I never managed to get issued a ‘dealer’ or ‘assist’ badge so I wasn’t allowed to go in there. I pinged Sciggles about it a few times and got a resounding “Pfffffff-” as a response. She said she’d call if she needed me and she never did, so I figured all was well and went about my day. Unfortunately the stop in the lobby to attend to those communications attracted Marius, (See? I knew they could smell responsibility.) who also wasn’t up to much that morning and decided that meant he ought to tag along. This left me at lack of an excuse to dispose of him so yeah, we were hanging out again. Just like old times, that I was already trying so hard to forget.
Anyway, I managed to work out meeting up with Impy and Lord Grey before opening ceremonies. It was nice to see those two again. I don’t know if I’m upset that I had the lumbering oaf following me around or glad that I had someone else to diffuse Marius’ oafishness onto for a little while. Marius is one of those people who seems only familiar with human conversation on an academic basis, if even that. It’s more like he heard twisted rumors of it five years ago and is trying to reconstruct the concept from those smeared old memories. Regardless, my actual friends put up with him pretty well and we got to catch up on a few things. One interesting fact I learned was that Impy had never hugged a fursuiter, even though she always really wanted to. None of her friends suit, and she’s kinda shocky about touching people she doesn’t know. I made certain to keep that in mind as I moved on with my con.
Impy and Grey had to beat-feet to the Artist’s Alley to man their table after the ceremonies though, so I was left alone. Or, thanks to Marius, substantially worse than alone. Grappling hooks were in short supply, so I had to be a little more clever about extracting myself from that situation. I knew there was a writing panel coming up, so I made sure to overtly mention how I was going to head out to a boardroom and talk about grammar and shit for like an hour and a half, hoping that Marius would find this boring and go literally anywhere else. I commended myself repeatedly for suppressing my effeminate squeals of delight when he said he’d rather go check out the Dealer’s Den. It took me a minute to look into exactly which writing panel it was that had spared me this fate, but as long as it was the “Get Marius the hell out of my sight” panel I was happy with it. It was characterizations and dialog, actually, which was fine. I’m a beast at characterizations, so I had fun with it. Incidentally, me “having fun with it” is the reason that Ashe greets me with “Oh, this fuckin’ guy.” At all of his panels.
I figured an hour and a half was a sufficient wait time to De-Marius the Dealer’s Den, so I dropped by down there. I usually don’t buy any art or swag, largely as a function of how long it’s been since I’ve had a job. I just go there because it’s a great place to meet people. Particularly if those people are selling art and swag. Those ones you’ll probably never see anywhere else. Boy did that ever work. I came across my biggest fan from Furthe’More, Crux and his better half, BGS. I stopped by Cobalt’s booth and ran into LunarKeys there as well. Keys is another one who greeted my arrival with “Oh goddamn it what are you doing here?” and I recall a farewell of his being “Shut the fuck up. Just shut up forever and I will be happy.” Fo’ real doe, we like best bros forever. For serious.
I was at something of a disadvantage whilst dealing with LunarKeys it seems, as apparently Cobalt had been enthusiastically pushing my account of the previous year’s Anthrocon on just about everyone he knows, so Keys was pretty much sick of me before I even got there. As my long-time readers will recall, last year’s AC report contained the disasteriffic road trip to Wal-Mart that none of us will soon forget. Maybe Keys didn’t like it because I made him the villain of that story. Don’t worry, Keys. The villain is usually a far more interesting character than the hero. Anyways, I was glad to hear that someone was getting something out of listening to me talk about myself all the time in my journals. I was worried that I was doing this just to convince myself that my life is interesting and stave off the slow creeping of madness closing in all around me, or at the very least provide some good context for assembling my psychological profile after the murders start. Speaking of that unspeakable night though, it’s worth noting that both LanHao and LunarKeys extended invitations to Lucius (and of course me, these people love me) for the TF art jam that night. I hope Lucius appreciates how highly my weird friends thought of him.
Friday apparently had one more disaster in store for me though, as I came to find out when I took a break to check on things on my laptop on my way to meet up with some of my other targets. You see I hadn’t done that since the early morning, and of course since we live just a hair’s breadth away from Star Trek, or at least the hyperviolent lens-flare movie version of it, in terms of communications technology, I should’ve known that I would pay for that oversight. During the communications blackout, I got a number of notes asking after my location from TechCoyote, a longtime fan of mine. I’d mentioned my activities in my correspondence that morning and he had just figured out that I, and in fact both of us, were at Anthrocon, at the same time even. By the time I made it online again that evening, he had already left. I had made it up to Archai’s room before we had properly exchanged phone numbers and managed to contact each other directly. I felt kind of dumb visiting Arc to just talk on the phone with someone else the whole time, but apparently he enjoyed that experience immensely. To quote him directly “Listening to just one end of that conversation was almost more than I could handle.” I’m going to take that as confirmation that I’m equally clever and entertaining at all times no matter what I’m doing.
Since this was the first time Tech and I talked with actual face noises into the air there was quite a lot to go over very quickly, but the meat of the conversation was basically him asking why in the hell I wasn’t checking messages. My reasoning was that my phone doesn’t do internet at things so the only way for me to check FA notes is to stop doing fun convention things and go sit in the lobby by myself (Or worse, as I’m also in danger of Marius finding me there). All that rage was cut off with “Oh yeah. That makes sense.” And then of course I asked him who in the hell visits a furry convention for like six hours and then just goes home, to which he responded that his mother had driven him there and she was weirded out by all the furries and wanted to go home. Which made me say “Oh yeah. That makes sense.” So yeah, we’re both good, sensible people who would’ve really liked to meet each other but couldn’t because we just had utterly incompatible lives at that exact moment. So yeah, instead of getting to meet him and hang out a little, I just made his mom think I’m weird. Can’t win ‘em all I guess. We’ll do better next time. At least I managed to entertain both those involved and a couple bystanders with all this. That’s what really matters though, right? That people find my failures amusing?
So disaster number 56 blew a lot of time and I didn’t actually manage to hang out with Archai very much right then. Drank a lot though, and that’s kind of the same thing. I wasn’t too worried because I knew I’d find other chances to chill with him, so I didn’t feel too bad about skipping town to head down to the Transformation art jam. I was really thinking that it would be a simple and quiet affair like it had been other years. Boy was I wrong. I thought they were optimistic by dragging together three tables in the Zoo, but we had them all filled by ten minutes in, and spilled over onto two more before long. Apparently it’s a considerably larger niche than I thought. I got to see Altered, whom it was a privilege to meet for the first time. There was also Splyced and Crayola, both of whom remembered me from the Delaware Fur Bowl and were happy to see me again. I got to chat with them for a while before things happened and the tables got rearranged. I ended up in the company of Bird of Paradise and sprech4, both of whom were very interesting to talk to. The time just flew by sitting there and chatting with them about everything under the sun. It was a quick first encounter, but they both seemed to enjoy my company, so I’ll call that a win. Also someone gave me free orange chicken, so double-win absolutely.
In any case, time wore on and it was soon time for the ultimate can’t-miss, the late-night sexy writing panel. Obviously I won’t go into excess detail there, but it was a ton of fun as always. Just to give an idea of the tenor of the discussion, I’ll give you a few segment titles. “Slang terms and artful names for genitalia”, “this does not bend that way”, “realistically describing sex involving women”, and “things that are not lube”. Yeah, it’s good stuff. I had a lot of fun because I’d gotten pretty schwacked at Archai’s room that afternoon, so by 10:00 my liver was finally pulling into the lead again, making me practically manic with energy. I felt like I could bareknuckle box a grizzly bear, and that attitude was certainly reflected in how I approached these delicate topics. At one point Ashe declared that I had won the panel, which was a first for me. I didn’t know you could win panels, but I was honored all the same. There was someone there with the badge name “Long Trot” whose information I’ve been unable to pin down. He was a Nuke mechanic and was spectacularly unsurprised to hear that I was a Nuke Electronics Technician after hearing all my enthusiasm about what I had to say on the subject of animal people boning each other.
I had invited Bluedude as I always do, but he didn’t manage to show up until the end when we switched over from mere erotic writing to the weird and kinky stuff. It actually was a fair bit more subdued during the latter half than during the supposedly mundane first part. Maybe it’s because Rukis left. She was there with Amon for the first half and was a tremendous addition to the panel as always. I liked having Amon spectating in the back especially. A lot of the times when I said something I could hear Amon’s bangles jingling when he nodded or laughed. I wished I could’ve gotten to talk with him a little afterwards, but it was late and he was tired so I let him be.
So yeah, finished out that noble endeavor in good time. By that I mean like 1 AM, but I was fine with that. No part of “late-night sexy writing panel” is a misnomer. I’d planned to head to bed, but I’d made the earlier mistake of making Archai aware of my existence. As such, I got a text asking if I’d like to join him for whatever it is one does at this ungodly hour of the morning. And then another text saying much the same thing from someone who had stolen Archai’s phone. Though this is typically when my night ends, I agreed to go with them. May as well live it up when I have the chance. I soon came to find that what people do this late at night is typically “get shitfaced and go to the rave.” I don’t know what I expected. I won’t say it wasn’t fun, certainly. Arc runs with a good crew. There was Ciaphas, who was almost creepily in sync with all my pop culture references, even the terribly dated ones. Like, if there’s such a thing as a joke wingman he should have that on his business card. Also in the group was Pookie, whom I called “Awesometail” for all of two days because seriously you guys she had the greatest fucking tail. It wasn’t even like there were crazy articulations or anything to it. It was just a sturdy snow leopard tail, but it had just the right balance and bounce, a really sultry curve, lively swing to the fur as it moved, everything was perfect. I guess the girl attached to it was pretty cool too. She put up with me even whilst wasted and increasingly sleep deprived. She certainly gets points for that. Actually she shared a number of sensibilities with me as well. Quite the group of like minds there. I believe I’ve mentioned before how Archai has a lot of verbal riffs that match up closely with mine. If I haven’t I’ll let you extrapolate based on a little snippet of conversation we had shortly after meeting up when he had some news for me.
“So I’ve got a boyfriend now.”
“That’s pretty gay.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that, by definition it actually is. Woulda thought you might like, be happy for me or maybe mention how it’s odd given that I had a girlfriend last time or something.”
“Nope. Gonna stick with obvious surface observations, thanks.”
“Well okay then.”
That’s the crazy thing about it though, had our roles been reversed, that conversation probably would’ve gone exactly the same way. Anywize, we kept swilling back our Gatorade, which at that point had to be at least 70% rum, as we moved to the beat. I was more stomping on the ground and lurching haphazardly somewhat adjacent to the beat, with the beat occasionally peeking through the venetian blinds to see if I was still out in front of its house, but there actually seemed to be a lot of people there doing that, so I didn’t really feel left out. A rather surreal experience for me that I’d never had before was checking out some of the visualizations that were up on the projectors alongside the DJ’s set. I mean, I know that it’s supposed to be just a bunch of brightly-colored nonsense that makes it so that you take longer to coast down off of all the E or Salvia that you just did, but the fact that such a lengthy montage comes together with such professional editing begs the “things that must have happened” question. I’m just trying to imagine the editing room wherein someone or perhaps even a group of people had to make the serious judgment calls of:
“Okay we’re going to open with hectic digital color-static that makes it look like the HDMI cable isn’t plugged in correctly, then star-wipe to a screensaver of a multicolored cube that endlessly turns inside out. The cube is gonna start spinning really fast and then fly off to the side and a bunch of deer drawn in that real rough style of Regular Show are gonna pop out and start dancing like the Peanuts characters. Then when the bass hits we’ll smash cut to Scooby Doo falling on his face, umm loop that one. Yeah, just loop it a few times, maybe play it backwards during the bridge and then two more loops straight into Carl Sagan talking about gravity on a sailboat, yeah gonna have to spiral warp his face or something during that part to keep things moving along. Alright so after that a flying saucer knocks Sagan off the screen and clears the stage for Spongebob, yep. Spongebob is gonna… not do anything he’ll just be a static image, maybe bounce around a little bit like he’s a kindergarten popsicle stick puppet and then a big spin, spin, spin faster and faster until he fades out into a montage of indecipherable blueprints in varying amounts of transparency all flying in different directions across the screen and cut straight from there into a wireframe animation of a corgi being hit in the face with a Frisbee, yep, loop that a few times, yes, yes! Right there, right at the moment of impact when his head flops around and he falls over we’ll just loop that segment right there for like two minutes just two solid minutes of that golden 700 milliseconds of confused agony on that synthetic dog’s adorable little face, yep a bunch of loops of that then play the whole sequence over again one more time and we’ll ride out on that I can really feel riding out on the corgi whiplash loop.”
So yeah, that’s… a thing. Definitely. In any case, I was all thinged out before long, but fortunately the dance closes at 2:00. I’d never been at a dance all the way until they shut it down before. Of course with how rarely I go to dances that’s not all that surprising. The last dance I was at I was wearing Brinkley and I quite sensibly danced myself into a coma in about 30 minutes. My companions seemed to believe that the night was still young, however, and they wanted to go eat at Primanti Brothers. I’m not certain on the details, but they somehow persuaded me towards their line of thinking. I guess my convictions fade quickly in the wee hours of the morning. I noted that The Super Primanti Bros were located substantially in the opposite direction of my hotel, which itself was a substantial distance from the convention hall. That didn’t sit well with me as I was rather against the idea of a long walk back after my long walk back. I’d heard that there were only three people staying in Archai’s room, so I issued the terribly intimidating ultimatum of “I’ll only go with you to eat if I can sleep with you tonight.” Arc graciously accepted because really, who can say no to that?
In any case, we were soon off on a quest to reach the Flying Primanti Brothers to have a hearty meal with our conservative little group of about 25 people. Not sure where the rest of them came from, but that happened. I was kind of glad for it, actually. Since the Cool Story Bros were located at the end of a three-mile trench walled on either side with sheer cliffs made of disheveled alleyways and urban decay. I know alcohol is supposed to make you feel invincible but I was drinking quite heavily throughout and remained acutely aware of my vulnerability to being stabbed. So yeah, we stopped in and dined for a bit. I nearly asphyxiated Ciaphas with laughter on multiple occasions so I guess we made a good night of it. I had a slick, mushy greasewad of the Venture Bros signature “try-not-to-get-shanked Boulevard” fries, or whatever street they were named after, since I wasn’t feeling too hungry. And I’d point out that none of those descriptors are indictments against the food by the way. That was the most fucking delicious mushy greasewad I’ve ever had. So yeah, after that we worked our way back upriver through the dilapidated infrastructure gauntlet and found our way to bed. A good day in all. It could’ve stood to not end quite so far into tomorrow, but I had fun. Also, Archai follows the definition of “tomorrow” that all computer systems engineers follow, basically meaning “on the other side of whenever I go to sleep next”.
Saturday:
The next day I managed to wake up actually rather close to my normal time, around 8:15. Not that I wanted to, it just happened. That was a bit too close to the start of the Milfurs breakfast for me to consider it a reliable option. That and I was now sick with whatever Archai had been suffering through all the previous day. So if you’ve been keeping up, the short version of that is I forwent the nice bed that I paid for in order to just sleep with some dude that night and I caught a disease as a result. I’m so good at making decisions! And also phrasing things. Anyways, I rehydrated a bit and went back to bed. Despite the ungodly hour at which it’s always scheduled, this marks the first time I’ve missed the Milfurs breakfast. Ah well, casualties of war. I’m sure they’ll understand. Eventually, the lot of us managed to blearily haul out at around 11:00 or so. I ran into Raptor Jesus in the lobby and he came right over to give me a hug and tell me how great it was to see me. Since he called me by name I figured I’d go look up his player to see if we’d met before and I didn’t remember. I found that his secret identity is Scotty The Minotaur, who was not at all familiar to me. I checked around a bit and found two other people who had similar experiences. Tough call on this one. It could be that we’re all walking around with badges that have our names on them. Or perhaps it may simply be that Raptor Jesus is a friend to us all.
Next up I headed down to the Artist’s Alley to cruise for a few more contacts and certainly was not disappointed. I caught ws6transam in suit there. He was also looking for someone so I played seeing-eye human for him for a bit. I got to see Bluedude again, who was gathering a group to go to lunch. Progress on doing so was slow, so I wasn’t too broken up about it when Rekzar yanked me to his side to chat a bit. He was waiting in the interminable purchase line, so I was happy to help him pass the time. Having your friends distract you from your other friends is actually a pretty good description of the convention as a whole, actually. Once I lost track of Bluedude I got a little worried and ran off again, seeing as food was a high priority for me at the time. Bluedude came by again soon enough and all was well. We were banking on a nice restaurant that he knew about, but there was a pretty big line outside, and it takes a while to move a line at a sit down place. The majority agreed upon “Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat” and we went to the Five Guys around the corner. It was another big group of folks who were new to me all heading out to eat together, and again only one familiar name because it pops up a dozen times in my favorites gallery. This time it was SulferDragon. Blue rolls with a good crew as well, so we had a fine time together.
After I got back I headed over to The Gneech’s table to meet up with the Cross Time Café crowd. That’s always a nice opportunity there. Managed to collect together Mooncat, DHLawrence, and McClaw there, so a good showing. Dovetailed nicely into the fursuit parade also. That’s always a wonderful event, a show of force for Anthrocon’s muscle. It’s always strange how there are so many people that I only ever see in the parade. I saw a whole crowd of RadFoxes out there. He’s certainly been busy getting his entourage together. I really had to respect the fox playing the trombone though, that’s some skill there. That plus a guitar wolf and a handful of percussion that I saw here and there might mean this is the start of a very interesting trend.
There was a big change for the parade this year, in that they had a substantial outdoor portion, and I don’t mean a little jaunt along the sidewalk either. They marched everyone straight down Tenth Street. Apparently they’d asked the city planners if they could shut the road down completely to have animal people walk up and down it and they thought that was a great idea. And it’s not like this is some little access sideroad. Tenth Street is a main thoroughfare right at the waterfront, so shutting it down was actually a pretty big deal logistically. Yet somehow, it actually was a great idea. With the parade being outside of controlled convention space, that meant that we could actually attract spectators along the streets. You know, something that a parade pretty much by definition actually has to do. And boy did we ever pull in some spectators. Estimates of the crowd usually were in the range of 5000, which is just insane. I know the businesses love to have us here, for very obvious reasons. We sold Chipotle out of chips, Ben n’ Jerry’s out of ice cream, and Tonic ran out of liquor. Not all that surprising, really. “Tacos and ice cream, then get wasted!” sounds like a pretty good representative schedule of an AC attendee. But far beyond just giving them so much business we force them to close down things, I had no idea that we connected so well with the common people. It was truly an awesome and wonderful thing to see in action. And in saying that I don’t mean the “teenage girl text message” awesome, I mean like the biblical kind of awesome from when the apostles were watching God wreck everything and then had to clean the terror-shit out of their pants and had to write it all down.
I managed to run into AnubisLivess on my way to the parade, so I was able to coordinate meeting up with him at Tonic. I missed him the first time around because we meant to meet in the zoo and I forgot that they hid that in the basement after day zero. That’s a relatively recent and tremendously irritating innovation. Of course it’s one of those things where I don’t really see a solution for it. There’s just so damn many of us that the room in the Westin just can’t handle everyone during the con’s peak. Anyways, I got to Tonic and sat down with Anubis. Y’all know what comes next. I’ve gotta muddle through name-dropping the people who I remember from his crew and point out the one familiar name among them. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we? Alright, in the course of the time spent (and pitchers bought) at tonic, the table played host to some combination of Anubis’ friends PitterPat, Red Dye Number 5, Leefuu, and Mei5683, whom I was watching, as well as fellow watcher, Lexxure. Yeah, so that’s definitely a roster. I found out that if you drink hard enough you earn entries into a raffle. I was the only one who brought a pen and I drank pretty damn hard, so I entered into that thing like four times.
So of course we drank heavily and had lots of fun as is that not the point of this whole grand adventure in the first place? Mei is gender neutral and let us know this so we could keep our pronouns straight, which of course led to most of us fucking it up the vast majority of the time. I’m good about picking the preferred personal pronoun when it’s one or the other, but I struggle with using ‘they’. It’s not grammatically correct in a lot of situations, so I resist using it even if I know it’s a preference, which leads to me forgetting frequently. Fortunately I saved the day with my ethanol-fueled ingenuity by figuring out that “this fuckin’ guy” is gender neutral. It was much easier for me to slip into my vernacular and was somehow less offensive than “she”, so everybody wins! Also Artica showed up and we were all just drunk enough that we thought going downstairs to fanboy all over him would be a good idea. I was last in line for that and I got to watch poor Artica nod politely as everyone explained where he should know them from. I tried to take a little pressure off of him by saying that we’d never really met and there was no way he should know me. And then he’s like “Oh, no. I totally remember you.” Naturally I come back with a tactful and gentlemanly “What? You lying piece of shit, no way! Nobody important knows who I am this is ridiculous.” Did I mention that we’d been drinking a lot? I get the feeling that factored into how that meeting went down.
Anyways, I’d heard that Nevir, Ryoken and Arashiin were nearby, as in “in the building right next to us AKA TenPenny” so I went to stop by those guys. I was planning to check in on them anyways, because that’s yet another crew of cool dudes whom I would kick myself for missing out on. I did have an ulterior motive though. I know that Ryo is cool with bodysnatching, and maybe even Nevir could be talked into it on a special occasion, so I wanted to ask about bumming a ride in one of their suits. That way I could get Impy her long-awaited hug. She knew me and had hugged me a few times before, so if I got furred up I figured she’d be okay with it. Theoretically at least. I thought it was a cool plan. Causality didn’t seem to agree with me though.
Ryoken said that his suit was falling to ribbons, and also sopping wet with raunchy sweat and concentrated scrag-nasty. I may have paraphrased that a little, but it was severe enough that he had retired his suit for the rest of the con. I’m guessing that his fursuit-sized fumigation tent was at home. I wouldn’t have mound, really. Jumping into a sweatsponge is a risk you take when you’re hijacking other peoples’ fluffy critter characters. I may actually rename the practice “sweatjumping”, now that I think of it. It’s just the right combination of badass and disgusting to describe it. Anyways, even if I didn’t care, that still would’ve made for a pretty bad first impression for Impy. So no go there. With Nevir, even if I could find a work around for him being a notable fraction shorter than I am, his suit Shawshank was in an even more catastrophic state of disrepair; dismemberment, in fact. Someone had yanked his tail clean off during the fursuit parade. Nev was understandably distressed by this, especially given that the necessary tools and parts for the reattachment surgery were in Colorado. We discussed a few alternatives and I came up with my trusty labcoat. Shawshank still wouldn’t have a tail, but the coat was long enough to fully cover the axe wound on his butt and make it look like that ensemble was kinda on purpose. He said he’d give it a try, so we went to retrieve it after dinner. Or whatever. It was like 4:30 and we were eating food. Whatever you call that.
Next up was Kage’s Story Hour, a must as always. It was actually so crowded that I couldn’t sit next to anyone I knew, even though I knew a dozen people in attendance. Hell, I didn’t get to sit at all, that’s how popular the event was. It’s pretty insane that we’ve gotten big enough to fill the Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom. There are actually quite a few signs of AC beginning to outgrow this venue. The Westin Zoo is too small, the main ballroom is too small, we’ve eaten all of the city’s parking, the Westin sells out completely within a day of opening reservations, and we sell out six other hotels completely by the time the event starts. Talk like that was what got rumors started that the con may have to move, but I never really believed them. Pittsburgh loves us far too much for us to leave now, and it’s quite uncertain that we’d receive such a warm welcome anywhere else.
I’d heard from the legendary Book of Faces that there would be an Upstate New York Furries meetup after the Story Hour so I searched about in the hall for something resembling that, though I was not particularly certain what such a thing resembled. At one point, someone bellowed out “NEW YORK FURMEET OVER HERE!” and by a series of cunning logical deductions I determined the location we were meeting at. The event started with drama, because of course it did. Apparently a bunch of New York City furries were the ones who pushed for the meetup to happen, by which I mean coerced other people to organize it for them. Once we all got together, the NYC furs all either never showed up in the first place or realized that there was no one around even remotely close to their home turf and then just left. At the very least it was briefly amusing to hear them say “Yeah I’m from way upstate, you know, Woodbury?” and we’re all just like “Fucking seriously? You live like an hour from the city. Some of us live an hour from fucking Canada!” It’s actually really nice to see people who have had conversations like that a billion times before. When someone finds out that you’re from New York they ask “Oh, what’s the city like?” and the response is “Fucking five hours away so I don’t go there.”
In any case, good folks. The ones I can remember are Ponk and Hextoler, unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any links for them, so you’re on your own with those guys I guess. It’s a shame I can’t track them, really, as they’re the folks I’m most likely to run into in non-Anthrocon situations. I guess I’ll just have to depend on Facebook for that stuff. Finding that group was really a boon to me. Heh, I also failed to get details for our illustrious event organizer because he gave me a business card, a card that I find only recently is for a business (shocker) but as such does not contain a web handle or FA for the person himself. I’ll have to work harder on that one, as he was trying to recruit me as a dialog editor for a flash game that his studio is working on. Networking is a funny thing that way, I suppose, as Cobalt came in to buy a sandwich a bit later on. I for one, being his friend, and for two, recalling that his degree was in 2D animation, invited him over. Whereupon he got the pitch for the project as well. Could be an exciting opportunity, who knows?
I guess I had fun with those guys, because I spent a hell of a lot of time talking with them. That actually became a concern after a while because I was texting back and forth a lot with Arc about pulling off some possible sweatjumping later. I felt like such a twit telling him to wait just a little bit longer while I wrapped things up at Furnando’s. I knew that I was putting him out even after he’d just agreed to help me. It worked out okay though because the crew there soon wanted to head to Tonic and that made a clean break for me. Having spent most of the afternoon and having drank multiple pitchers at Tonic already I had no real desire to go back there, so I headed out. It was too late by then though, Impy had left the building. She actually seemed rather concerned by my efforts to get in touch with her in person. I was just trying to keep my latest mission a secret and I think I ended up worrying her. Yet one more thing to feel stupid about.
Making this work was just going to be a matter of coordination though. I knew I’d just have to push harder for it the next day, and I could still hang out with Arc that night. I saw Nevir in the hall on my way there. The labcoat appeared to be working out quite well for Shawshank. Not only just covering up the tail carnage but it also really seemed to suit the character. For those uninitiated, a Crux is essentially what would happen if you went to Tim Burton and gave him only the words “terrifying kangaroo” as creature design notes and let him go to town on it, then slapped a two-tone tribal modern art color scheme on the result. So having such a creation wearing a labcoat and silently skulking about the convention hall looking like he’s preparing to conduct some experiments is quite genuinely unsettling, and I think Nev played to that very well. I was happy to see that it worked out for him.
Crew additions for this latest adventure with Archai included but were not limited to Roman Maximilian and Flux. Like most furry adventures, it started off with a big distraction. I wanted to go ditch my backpack before dancing, so I went out to my car. On the way I got a call from Tonic saying that I’d won a prize. All I could think was “Goddammit I already said I don’t want to go back to Tonic!” It was a tough trip too, particularly given that they said I had a time limit. I needn’t have bothered hurrying. As I mentioned, we were in the process of stripping the walls bare and shutting the place down with our rabid, insatiable alcoholism, so there were very few people actually paying attention to the contest stuff. It took me about 15 minutes to even get someone’s attention so I could ask about it. Regardless, I got out of there with a bucket of Sailor Jerry swag and a cool pin with a blinking LED on it that everyone agreed was SUPER annoying. Even the people in the rave where there were strobes in the ceiling and hundreds of lasers lining the walls were like “wow, that pin is like, super distracting.” The return trip was pretty complicated as well, because they closed the half of the convention center that has street level doors for obfuscating contractual reasons, sending everyone through the parking garage on the other side of the street. They vastly underestimated either the complexity of that parking garage, or the capacity for bewilderment of their attendees, because there were a hilarious number of people (okay like four but still) wandering around in that garage. How in the hell do they think a bunch of ravers who are running on fumes and are probably also high are going to navigate that thing? Regardless, my superior sense of direction and accomplished basic literacy skills got me to the correct elevator and I made it back. I even made sure to send up a signal flare for the other weary travelers captured by parking purgatory before I went up.
So yeah, we all got drunk and danced all night to the best song ever etc. Arc even busted a few moves in Jake Caribou, so getting to dance with him was pretty fun. He was only there for a little bit because Arc takes inhuman amounts of time to accomplish even the most sundry of tasks, so it’s a wonder turning into a caribou takes him anything less than a day and a half. (For the record, Arc’s opinion on my opinion on his particular lack of haste is: “Shut yer whore mouth!” Wise words from a wise, if rather slow, man.) In any case the dance was a lot more relaxed now that I’d broken the ice and really let myself get into it. It had worn on me a bit though. I heard from a few other people that they felt like they’d already been through an entire con on Friday, and that’s definitely how I was. So I didn’t have a lot of steam left to go on. I had a pretty good time closing out the dance again, but I was starting to feel like I was getting a bit irascible towards the end.
I’m well aware that I get a fair bit less fun to be around when I’m lacking sleep quite severely. That’s rather distressing at a con as I recall quite vividly that all I bring to the table around there is humor and personability. I know a lot of people like these guys who can run for days on adrenaline, heavy bass, lasers and energy drinks, but I start having a bad time when I don't get sleep. Realistically though, I wouldn't put up with their shit if they weren't great guys. This time they were handing me free liquor all night and took me cool places, so I can't very well say it was torture. Even if it did end in several late... mornings. Really though, if I’d turned down the chance to hang with these guys, I’m sure I would’ve regretted that too. Basically the lesson is that I’ll always find a way to hate myself so I may as well go with the more fun option. Finally, after having a breakfast sandwich at Subway at like three in the morning because why the hell not? I managed to excuse myself at least somewhat gracefully from that particular adventuring party and head back to bed.
Find out the exciting conclusion on the next episode of Dragonball Z etc, etc. Part II is right here
Room opening Sunday at AC!
General | Posted 10 years agoOkay, so I've had a friend flake on me. Someone for whom I booked a room at the Wyndham Grand solely in order to accommodate them. And of course now they're out because furries are like that. Anyways, the Wyndham charges you one night's rate and fees if you cancel, meaning that since I only booked one night I can pay $150 to stay in the room or I can pay $150 to go fuck myself. As such, I'm keeping the room. I'd really rather not have to pay for a double by myself though, so if you or someone you know needs space on Sunday night I'd really appreciate some help defraying the cost. My inspiring presence and scintillating conversation will be free of charge. It's a good deal, you guys. Normally that's 45 cents a minute.
As for preferences, I have a lengthy drive ahead so I need to SLEEP. So I'll need it to be quiet and no room parties. Other than that I'm okay with whatever gender and orientation or whatever. Don't care if you're a fursuiter or anything. And I wouldn't mind a group either. As long as I've got at least half a bed left you're welcome to drop in.
As for preferences, I have a lengthy drive ahead so I need to SLEEP. So I'll need it to be quiet and no room parties. Other than that I'm okay with whatever gender and orientation or whatever. Don't care if you're a fursuiter or anything. And I wouldn't mind a group either. As long as I've got at least half a bed left you're welcome to drop in.
DEFB AC RMFC MEME OMG
General | Posted 10 years agoOkay, right up front I'm gonna say that I'm planning on attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con this year but I don't have a room there yet. ryoken said that they'd be able to put me up at his place if need be, but I'd rather not put that burden on him if possible. If anyone's got intel on rooms at the con, do let me know.
Also if I do the right occult magic I might actually be able to make it out to the Delaware Fur Bowl this weekend. I don't know many people out that way, but I hear good things about that event so I'm going to give it a shot. In any case. Here's an infodump about the upcoming Anthrocon 2015!
Where are you staying?
The Doubletree. Ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice.
I live in hotels, tear out the walls.
I have accountants pay for it all.
They say I'm crazy but I have a good time- Oh, sorry. Got a little distracted there.
What day are you getting there?
Thursday.
How are you traveling?
My car. It'll be a long drive because I'm picking up someone.
Who are you rooming with?
crocdragon89, 
astrozerk04, 
arkrados and two other people I've never met. Should be an interesting experience.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone. Well, I'm sure it's possible I'll come across people I won't get along with, but I'll give everyone their fair shake.
How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. There's just so damn many of us! It's like trying to find a needle in a convention hall filled with other needles. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels you might be attending?
Definitely the writing ones and probably the MLP one. Maybe others. I kinda tend to play these things by ear.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy with a goatee. Yeah I know that doesn't really narrow it down, but whatahyah gonna do?
Will you be suiting?
I don't own a suit, and yet I ended up suiting with quite staggering frequency. It's a weird and wonderful thing. Of course that could be said of the fandom in general.
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
I've written things in exchange for art before. If you're into that we could work something out. Giggity.
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2"
Can I talk to you?
I would hope so. My semaphore is pretty rusty, so talking would probably be best.
Can I touch you?
Stop. Hammertime.
Really though I'm okay with that sort of thing for the most part. Just be smart/safe about it and we'll probably be fine.
How can I find you?
My badge is this right here. That's probably the most distinctive thing about me. I might try wearing my blue labcoat, but that makes everyone think I'm Kage. So that might not happen so frequently this con.
Can I visit your room?
Well the room's not just mine. In fact it's only a fraction mine, so I may not be the one to ask.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! "Free" is my favorite flavor!
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests.
How long are you going?
Thursday to Monday
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor. It's looking like the Dealers' Den is going to have a lot of people that I want to meet there, so I'll spend some time doing that.
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
Sure! Just don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online.
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, cure diabetes, see some cool shows and stuff, figure out how to turn water into gasoline, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
ryoken said that they'd be able to put me up at his place if need be, but I'd rather not put that burden on him if possible. If anyone's got intel on rooms at the con, do let me know.Also if I do the right occult magic I might actually be able to make it out to the Delaware Fur Bowl this weekend. I don't know many people out that way, but I hear good things about that event so I'm going to give it a shot. In any case. Here's an infodump about the upcoming Anthrocon 2015!
Where are you staying?
The Doubletree. Ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice.
I live in hotels, tear out the walls.
I have accountants pay for it all.
They say I'm crazy but I have a good time- Oh, sorry. Got a little distracted there.
What day are you getting there?
Thursday.
How are you traveling?
My car. It'll be a long drive because I'm picking up someone.
Who are you rooming with?
crocdragon89, 
astrozerk04, 
arkrados and two other people I've never met. Should be an interesting experience.Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone. Well, I'm sure it's possible I'll come across people I won't get along with, but I'll give everyone their fair shake.
How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. There's just so damn many of us! It's like trying to find a needle in a convention hall filled with other needles. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels you might be attending?
Definitely the writing ones and probably the MLP one. Maybe others. I kinda tend to play these things by ear.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy with a goatee. Yeah I know that doesn't really narrow it down, but whatahyah gonna do?
Will you be suiting?
I don't own a suit, and yet I ended up suiting with quite staggering frequency. It's a weird and wonderful thing. Of course that could be said of the fandom in general.
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
I've written things in exchange for art before. If you're into that we could work something out. Giggity.
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2"
Can I talk to you?
I would hope so. My semaphore is pretty rusty, so talking would probably be best.
Can I touch you?
Stop. Hammertime.
Really though I'm okay with that sort of thing for the most part. Just be smart/safe about it and we'll probably be fine.
How can I find you?
My badge is this right here. That's probably the most distinctive thing about me. I might try wearing my blue labcoat, but that makes everyone think I'm Kage. So that might not happen so frequently this con.
Can I visit your room?
Well the room's not just mine. In fact it's only a fraction mine, so I may not be the one to ask.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! "Free" is my favorite flavor!
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests.
How long are you going?
Thursday to Monday
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor. It's looking like the Dealers' Den is going to have a lot of people that I want to meet there, so I'll spend some time doing that.
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
Sure! Just don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online.
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, cure diabetes, see some cool shows and stuff, figure out how to turn water into gasoline, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
Furthe'More 2015: I have no idea what I'm doing
General | Posted 10 years agoOkay, I've put this one off for a long time. Partly because I've been busy and partly because "I don't remember anything due to sleep deprivation" doesn't really make for a very interesting con report. Anyways, as you may or may not be aware, this was my first time working at a con as an official staff member. I didn't think I had any special knack for this, but a lot of these folks seemed to think I did, so I'll take their word for it. The long drive kept me from showing up on scene any too early Thursday, but it was still kinda quiet when I got there so I feel like I didn't miss too much. When I got there it seemed like the major project was in operations. All of the convention supplies had been unloaded there into a certain arrangement. I believe that the industry term is "a bigass pile". Digging through it was a bewildering process, but I could at least count and identify things. By the time I stumbled out of ops there was at least a radio pile, a registration pile, a programming pile, and the like. It was a lot of digging, but it really needed to be done. After that, people started asking for stuff, so the piles started shrinking. That was encouraging. Still pretty quiet that night though. I managed to get settled in and get some rest without a lot of trouble.
Since I'd had the rare chance to sleep actual normal human hours, I was up pretty early the next morning. I made it to ops around 8:00, confusing Kiba, who knew that I had very little reason for being there. Having been somewhat in this position before last year, I knew it wouldn't be long before my purpose there became clear. Not even ten minutes later, Protocollie kicks in the door saying "I need all the hands we have down in main events right now or we are fucked!" So apparently I was in ops to... fix whatever that was. He was really looking for volunteers, but it was far too early for any of them to be around. In any case, the AV crew had some difficulty with getting access to the main events room, and also with how the electric power infrastructure had been set up in there. Both of these things had cost precious time, so a lot of things had to be assembled very quickly in order for main events to start up on time. Proto was struggling with the curtains when I got there. They were too thin and too long to serve the purpose we needed. I came up with a solution that mostly involved folding them in half lengthwise and throwing a bunch of binder clips we stole from the artshow at them until they resembled a stage. It was a clever idea, sure, but Proto treated me like I was Jesus the whole rest of the time I was working with him. Well it was more like John The Baptist by the end but he had a lot on his mind. I was there all morning and the prep ran straight into opening ceremonies, which I also ended up being in because of reasons. It turned out that Sparf and I both had Aperture Science labcoats, so we did this whole Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense thing to introduce the theme. That was pretty cool. I like to think that it didn't look like something we came up with in the 20 minutes before we went up on stage.
After that it was on to my first writing panel. Or rather I should say, the first one I've ever hosted. Beginning Writing seemed like a good fit for me since that was where I was at, pretty much. I got the expected scoffs when I mentioned that I wasn't published, especially being up there next to The Gneech and Friday Donnelly, both authors of some note. (Being listed as just "Friday" in the conbook caused no small amount of scheduling confusion.) That was a rocky start for me, but I think they respected my sincerity and the audience warmed up to me through the course of the discussion. That early tension soon vanished and we all had a great time. Some of them even wanted to write down my FA and watch me, which was very encouraging. The second panel was just a little bit after that one. It was, sensibly enough, Intermediate Writing. In which we swapped out Friday for Phil Geusz, who has been doing furry writing since before it was even called that, so he was fun to work with. Very insightful as well. He knows a great deal about the philosophical mindset that gets an author the best results. You can tell he's had a lot of time to think about this stuff.
I helped Sparf out with the talent show auditions, evaluating all the various acts and judging them with an iron fist. Fortunately my iron fist missed completely and they all made the cut. After that it was a few rounds of that classic game of "Take the thing from where it is to where it needs to be", which is quite reliably entertaining. It was useful for getting down the layout of the new digs down at the Tyson's Corner Sheraton. The venue is quite spacious, but the layout gets kind of confusing with hallways looping back on each other, "express" staircases that skip floors, and a few floorplan choices that I don't think are allowed for by Euclidean geometry. At least it made my list of fetch quests more interesting. I also got to slowly cultivate lots of cheatcodes for working with the labyrinth. Knowing about the service corridors and hidden elevators kinda makes you feel like a secret agent. And if Furthe’More was the spy flick’s setting, then I was heavily involved in the business of trafficking in MacGuffins and key plot devices.
If it sounds a bit like I was just wandering around kind of doing whatever like I had no real job, that's because that's exactly what happened. It has been a tumultuous time since my conscription into this organization, so do allow me a moment to try and put it all into words. Since last year, the con has moved south somewhat, and I got out of the Navy and moved quite far north. This left me with about a six hour drive to the con. Had I not answered the call to arms, I might not have even attended this year. One thing that I made clear when I signed on was that I was happy to work at the con itself, but I certainly wasn't going to drive 12 hours just to attend a planning meeting. Since "wander around and do whatever" was also my MO when I was volunteering last year, I worked with security, registration, programming, operations, main events, among others. Just about everyone, actually. Everywhere I helped out they seemed impressed with my work. So at these planning meetings that I wasn't around for, when the question came up as to where I was going to work, four different departments claimed me.
It would seem that a proper resolution was never reached on that and I just kind of ended up as "Sir not appearing in this film" at the end of the credits. That works fine for me, as it let me continue to do my wherever-you-need-more-hands freelancing shtick, which I actually think is a lot of fun. I get to work with lots of different people and it's very satisfying to just be wherever I'm needed most. I'm doing approximately ALL the things, so it never gets boring. I'm also not really accountable to anyone, so I'm free to decide to end the evening by coasting down with something low pressure like helping out in the game room. "Oh what's that? You need someone to help teach people Pandemic? By playing Pandemic for an hour and a half? Yeah, I think I can take that bullet." I hear that we've created a "staff pool" to have available in order to just throw people at whatever needs people the most at the time, and I think that's where I'll end up next year. It's essentially what I was doing already, just with some oversight and communications to make better use of my time. In any case, that was Friday. At least as much of it as I can remember.
Saturday started with a fire alarm, or maybe two. I'm not sure. There were four in total over the course of the con and I won't speak to the details too much. They all kind of run together for me at this point. Only one of them was definitively our fault though, so it's all good. Honestly I think that's a furry convention rite of passage. You're not a real con until you have a couple fire alarms. Those actually went pretty well. I expected to be on a wild goose chase the whole morning, despite not having seen anyone with a goose character the whole con. It's actually pretty easy to move furries around if you've got the knack for it. You've just gotta shout "Wanna go for a walk? You wanna go outside?" and get them all psyched-up first. Then it's pretty easy to get them out the door en masse. Regardless, the herding experience was useful, as the fursuit parade was next up. Being a signpost to keep the parade from wandering into a bathroom or whatever isn't the most satisfying job, but it's a prime spot to see the amazing Technicolor march go by. We had a really good turnout there and it was a lot of fun as always.
After that I was running errands for programming and soon became trapped there. Something we started doing this year was establishing a room for "Programming Operations". It's useful and a pretty cool idea to have a centralized location for coordinating things and handling supplies and stuff. I do hope we continue doing that. The problem with it was that all our programming staff bailed out, so Programming Ops ended up pretty much being a little box for Sparf to slowly go insane in. As such it didn't surprise me that I ended up minding the shop for quite some time while he tended other things. Fortunately my time there was mostly uneventful. That's about the best you can hope for, because when you're in charge people only come to you with problems, and very seldom to tell you what an awesome job you're doing. It helped a lot having one of my old friends stop by. ArcRa is a member of that very small but wonderful overlap between people I know from the navy and furries. He brought along Eyen and we caught up on things and chatted a lot. I had considered visiting Norfolk since I was somewhat close, but according to his report there's practically no one that I knew all that well left in the Tidewater area. So that's kind of a bummer. In any case, I held out in Programming Ops for a couple hours without anything catching on fire, so I'll call that an accomplishment.
From there I dropped in at one of the rich/important people dinners in the evening to get something to eat. I sat down with Raltz whom I recognized from FurryCon. He apparently also recognized me, because he stopped in the middle of the conversation he was having to shout "This guy! Yeah, this asshole right here!" Apparently my exploits at the Dominion tournament were not the sort of thing that was easily forgotten. It was kind of funny to learn that around five or six other people had done two cons in two weekends just as I had. Many of them staffed one of the cons, but only one. It's popularly agreed upon that staffing two cons in a row is a great way to run yourself straight into the ground. Hanging out with him and his crew led back into the game room, where I got to try out the Fluxx board game. Certainly an interesting one there, though still rather experimental. I also got to meet CruxVV, a member of that even smaller and more awesome subset, people who are fans of my work online. I'm always ecstatic to meet someone who likes my work, so that really made my night.
That put me in a good mood for the legendary Late Night Adult Writing Panels. I'd been anticipating those with no small amount of fervor, as they're always a hell of a lot of fun. This one was with Ianus and Friday. The latter of which brought (and shared) some Bold Rock hard cider, for which he is now my greatest friend in all the universe forever. Seriously, I don’t think I adequately conveyed how much of a hero he is for that, and I devoted about five minutes trying to bring that point across. From that wondrous start, the discussion just kept getting better and better from there. I loved the energy that people brought to this one. There were also quite a few women there, which adds a lot to the content and lends us a fair deal of credibility when we have that check available to us.
It's hard to stick to writing sometimes because people can get pretty passionate and opinionated when we talk about sex in very detailed ways. We actually managed to work in a lot of tolerance and sex-positive stuff as we went along, so that felt good. Having two newcomers to the panel at the head led to some meandering that might not have been the most productive thing in the world, but overall it was quite a rewarding experience. We went all the way from 10PM to 2AM when they asked us to leave. I always call that the sign of a successful panel. Nobody wants it to end! I probably should've wanted it to end a little more though. That late night really cost me and I started to feel the hit from all this... whatever it was I was doing. I also had a little trouble sleeping because my room had the big 'Sheraton' letters mounted in front of the window, filling the place with an eerie red glow. Demonic auras aside, I still managed to crash pretty hard right then.
I was up pretty late Sunday morning, but it was quite mercifully quiet then. I gathered myself as best I was able and shuffled through the day. I got to hang out some with Bluepaw and Flyinfox to chat about old times. Or new times, given that I'd never met Flyinfox before. There were some housekeeping things to take care of here and there, but things slowed down pretty quickly. A big part of that was the charity auction and closing ceremonies both taking about 46 hours. During the third act of the auction I drove Raltz' crew to Wendy's for a bite just because I was bored by then. The closing ceremonies were fun though. Kit Drago made the gaff heard round the world in the course of his speech he accidentally declared himself chairman of Anthrocon. The crowd really loved that one. I even ran off to go get my labcoat and anoint him with it on stage. It was a touching moment, really. Be sure to follow #KageKon on the Twitter.
Things actually remained pretty slow after closing ceremonies went down. I'd expected a big teardown push, and there kinda was one for things that really needed to happen right then, but for the most part everyone came to the consensus that it was nearly 10:00 and we could deal with this shit tomorrow. As it was, I caught up with people and talked some more as they tried (and often failed repeatedly) to leave. The better half of Crux, BGS, was out there on the dancefloor trying to throw down as hard as he could without killing himself, and looked to be succeeding. With the dancing part, not the dancing-assisted suicide part. That would suck. I also had to break from the conversation at one point and race across the lobby to tackle two small dogs which, anywhere else, would've been a rather unusual occurrence. As it was I slid pretty nonchalantly into and out of that task. I actually didn't expect to nab them as quickly as I did. I kinda just thought it would be fun to chase them. Got them both in just 20 yards or so though. Maybe I missed my true calling. Anyways, I talked, I drank, I danced, I got to witness Matthew Ebel's batshit insane Victorian horse costume. It was good times. Hell it had to be the time of my life. That was all that would keep me out of bed at that point.
So Monday was when that slow night came back to bite us. Our volunteers tapered off and left us with a lot fewer hands to handle the monumental stuff-moving challenge that lay ahead. It was pretty much a solid day of pushing around heavy things. Not great. I'm glad I studied hard and got into a field where neither customer service nor the pushing of heavy things feature prominently. Both of those are very draining. That effort was broken up by a meal that got comp'd by the hotel, one of those rare, positive surprises. I should hang out with Kiba more often. She clearly holds the leash in dealings with the venue, and apparently being leash-adjacent has perks. And after a whole bunch more work I was pretty hungry again, fortunately it was about that time that Drago took us all out to a place that he described only as "a meat faucet". It was called Texas de Brazil and for those of you not familiar with Brazilian barbeque let me give you a rundown. The waiters walk around with the rotisserie skewers that the meat was cooked on, ever ready to shave off meat onto someone's plate. You have a little sign that says "no meat" or "yes meat", and you just go to town on it. That's a great way to end a day. It was a wonderful place. It really took the sting out of the fact that we spent all of Monday working at it before we finally had everything loaded onto the truck. I really must thank Chassie for her help in breaking up that monotony. She was one of the fugitives that I corralled earlier, a really sweet little Corgi that Irime belongs to. We got along just famously and both wore each other thin playing while we waited for Kit to get things in order.
In the course of my labors though, I hadn't really managed to plan much beyond finishing the job. I had a vague idea in my head of just stumbling in a general homeward direction and stopping at a Super 8 or whatever if I couldn't make it. At a reasonable time that might've been workable, but given that we'd worked pretty well into the night that wasn't looking like such a great idea anymore. Kit said that he'd much rather I spend the night with him and Irime, and I would also much rather I do that. So there was very little debate on it. I was struck by how well they take care of all us worker bees in the course of all this. I didn't pay for food once the whole time I was there, and everyone really banded together to make sure it all came out alright in the end. When Matt's flight was cancelled, Serval was up late into the night making sure that he had a place to sleep too. That kind of stuff was going on all over the place. It was a really great team and I had a fantastic time working with them. Here's hoping that I'll be a bigger part of this next year when we all actually have some idea of exactly what it is I'm doing there. That'll be nice.
By Tuesday morning it was just myself, Kit and Irime still in the neigborhood, so I managed to be the last man standing without at any point ever really intending to. Yay? Anyway, as I was driving to breakfast (which Kit also paid for because ya just can't stop these people) Honey I'm Good by Andy Grammer came on the radio. I think I'm adding that one to my playlist because it's a really great song and it very well encapsulated how I felt right then. Not so much the turning down solicitations from women part in the actual lyrics, really. I didn't have THAT good of a weekend. But just the general feel of it synched up so perfectly with the state the con left me in. This was a hell of a thing, and I was proud to be part of it. So, with a few fond farewells I was on my way home. Well, after picking up two six packs of Bold Rock first. Must remember my priorities after all.
Since I'd had the rare chance to sleep actual normal human hours, I was up pretty early the next morning. I made it to ops around 8:00, confusing Kiba, who knew that I had very little reason for being there. Having been somewhat in this position before last year, I knew it wouldn't be long before my purpose there became clear. Not even ten minutes later, Protocollie kicks in the door saying "I need all the hands we have down in main events right now or we are fucked!" So apparently I was in ops to... fix whatever that was. He was really looking for volunteers, but it was far too early for any of them to be around. In any case, the AV crew had some difficulty with getting access to the main events room, and also with how the electric power infrastructure had been set up in there. Both of these things had cost precious time, so a lot of things had to be assembled very quickly in order for main events to start up on time. Proto was struggling with the curtains when I got there. They were too thin and too long to serve the purpose we needed. I came up with a solution that mostly involved folding them in half lengthwise and throwing a bunch of binder clips we stole from the artshow at them until they resembled a stage. It was a clever idea, sure, but Proto treated me like I was Jesus the whole rest of the time I was working with him. Well it was more like John The Baptist by the end but he had a lot on his mind. I was there all morning and the prep ran straight into opening ceremonies, which I also ended up being in because of reasons. It turned out that Sparf and I both had Aperture Science labcoats, so we did this whole Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense thing to introduce the theme. That was pretty cool. I like to think that it didn't look like something we came up with in the 20 minutes before we went up on stage.
After that it was on to my first writing panel. Or rather I should say, the first one I've ever hosted. Beginning Writing seemed like a good fit for me since that was where I was at, pretty much. I got the expected scoffs when I mentioned that I wasn't published, especially being up there next to The Gneech and Friday Donnelly, both authors of some note. (Being listed as just "Friday" in the conbook caused no small amount of scheduling confusion.) That was a rocky start for me, but I think they respected my sincerity and the audience warmed up to me through the course of the discussion. That early tension soon vanished and we all had a great time. Some of them even wanted to write down my FA and watch me, which was very encouraging. The second panel was just a little bit after that one. It was, sensibly enough, Intermediate Writing. In which we swapped out Friday for Phil Geusz, who has been doing furry writing since before it was even called that, so he was fun to work with. Very insightful as well. He knows a great deal about the philosophical mindset that gets an author the best results. You can tell he's had a lot of time to think about this stuff.
I helped Sparf out with the talent show auditions, evaluating all the various acts and judging them with an iron fist. Fortunately my iron fist missed completely and they all made the cut. After that it was a few rounds of that classic game of "Take the thing from where it is to where it needs to be", which is quite reliably entertaining. It was useful for getting down the layout of the new digs down at the Tyson's Corner Sheraton. The venue is quite spacious, but the layout gets kind of confusing with hallways looping back on each other, "express" staircases that skip floors, and a few floorplan choices that I don't think are allowed for by Euclidean geometry. At least it made my list of fetch quests more interesting. I also got to slowly cultivate lots of cheatcodes for working with the labyrinth. Knowing about the service corridors and hidden elevators kinda makes you feel like a secret agent. And if Furthe’More was the spy flick’s setting, then I was heavily involved in the business of trafficking in MacGuffins and key plot devices.
If it sounds a bit like I was just wandering around kind of doing whatever like I had no real job, that's because that's exactly what happened. It has been a tumultuous time since my conscription into this organization, so do allow me a moment to try and put it all into words. Since last year, the con has moved south somewhat, and I got out of the Navy and moved quite far north. This left me with about a six hour drive to the con. Had I not answered the call to arms, I might not have even attended this year. One thing that I made clear when I signed on was that I was happy to work at the con itself, but I certainly wasn't going to drive 12 hours just to attend a planning meeting. Since "wander around and do whatever" was also my MO when I was volunteering last year, I worked with security, registration, programming, operations, main events, among others. Just about everyone, actually. Everywhere I helped out they seemed impressed with my work. So at these planning meetings that I wasn't around for, when the question came up as to where I was going to work, four different departments claimed me.
It would seem that a proper resolution was never reached on that and I just kind of ended up as "Sir not appearing in this film" at the end of the credits. That works fine for me, as it let me continue to do my wherever-you-need-more-hands freelancing shtick, which I actually think is a lot of fun. I get to work with lots of different people and it's very satisfying to just be wherever I'm needed most. I'm doing approximately ALL the things, so it never gets boring. I'm also not really accountable to anyone, so I'm free to decide to end the evening by coasting down with something low pressure like helping out in the game room. "Oh what's that? You need someone to help teach people Pandemic? By playing Pandemic for an hour and a half? Yeah, I think I can take that bullet." I hear that we've created a "staff pool" to have available in order to just throw people at whatever needs people the most at the time, and I think that's where I'll end up next year. It's essentially what I was doing already, just with some oversight and communications to make better use of my time. In any case, that was Friday. At least as much of it as I can remember.
Saturday started with a fire alarm, or maybe two. I'm not sure. There were four in total over the course of the con and I won't speak to the details too much. They all kind of run together for me at this point. Only one of them was definitively our fault though, so it's all good. Honestly I think that's a furry convention rite of passage. You're not a real con until you have a couple fire alarms. Those actually went pretty well. I expected to be on a wild goose chase the whole morning, despite not having seen anyone with a goose character the whole con. It's actually pretty easy to move furries around if you've got the knack for it. You've just gotta shout "Wanna go for a walk? You wanna go outside?" and get them all psyched-up first. Then it's pretty easy to get them out the door en masse. Regardless, the herding experience was useful, as the fursuit parade was next up. Being a signpost to keep the parade from wandering into a bathroom or whatever isn't the most satisfying job, but it's a prime spot to see the amazing Technicolor march go by. We had a really good turnout there and it was a lot of fun as always.
After that I was running errands for programming and soon became trapped there. Something we started doing this year was establishing a room for "Programming Operations". It's useful and a pretty cool idea to have a centralized location for coordinating things and handling supplies and stuff. I do hope we continue doing that. The problem with it was that all our programming staff bailed out, so Programming Ops ended up pretty much being a little box for Sparf to slowly go insane in. As such it didn't surprise me that I ended up minding the shop for quite some time while he tended other things. Fortunately my time there was mostly uneventful. That's about the best you can hope for, because when you're in charge people only come to you with problems, and very seldom to tell you what an awesome job you're doing. It helped a lot having one of my old friends stop by. ArcRa is a member of that very small but wonderful overlap between people I know from the navy and furries. He brought along Eyen and we caught up on things and chatted a lot. I had considered visiting Norfolk since I was somewhat close, but according to his report there's practically no one that I knew all that well left in the Tidewater area. So that's kind of a bummer. In any case, I held out in Programming Ops for a couple hours without anything catching on fire, so I'll call that an accomplishment.
From there I dropped in at one of the rich/important people dinners in the evening to get something to eat. I sat down with Raltz whom I recognized from FurryCon. He apparently also recognized me, because he stopped in the middle of the conversation he was having to shout "This guy! Yeah, this asshole right here!" Apparently my exploits at the Dominion tournament were not the sort of thing that was easily forgotten. It was kind of funny to learn that around five or six other people had done two cons in two weekends just as I had. Many of them staffed one of the cons, but only one. It's popularly agreed upon that staffing two cons in a row is a great way to run yourself straight into the ground. Hanging out with him and his crew led back into the game room, where I got to try out the Fluxx board game. Certainly an interesting one there, though still rather experimental. I also got to meet CruxVV, a member of that even smaller and more awesome subset, people who are fans of my work online. I'm always ecstatic to meet someone who likes my work, so that really made my night.
That put me in a good mood for the legendary Late Night Adult Writing Panels. I'd been anticipating those with no small amount of fervor, as they're always a hell of a lot of fun. This one was with Ianus and Friday. The latter of which brought (and shared) some Bold Rock hard cider, for which he is now my greatest friend in all the universe forever. Seriously, I don’t think I adequately conveyed how much of a hero he is for that, and I devoted about five minutes trying to bring that point across. From that wondrous start, the discussion just kept getting better and better from there. I loved the energy that people brought to this one. There were also quite a few women there, which adds a lot to the content and lends us a fair deal of credibility when we have that check available to us.
It's hard to stick to writing sometimes because people can get pretty passionate and opinionated when we talk about sex in very detailed ways. We actually managed to work in a lot of tolerance and sex-positive stuff as we went along, so that felt good. Having two newcomers to the panel at the head led to some meandering that might not have been the most productive thing in the world, but overall it was quite a rewarding experience. We went all the way from 10PM to 2AM when they asked us to leave. I always call that the sign of a successful panel. Nobody wants it to end! I probably should've wanted it to end a little more though. That late night really cost me and I started to feel the hit from all this... whatever it was I was doing. I also had a little trouble sleeping because my room had the big 'Sheraton' letters mounted in front of the window, filling the place with an eerie red glow. Demonic auras aside, I still managed to crash pretty hard right then.
I was up pretty late Sunday morning, but it was quite mercifully quiet then. I gathered myself as best I was able and shuffled through the day. I got to hang out some with Bluepaw and Flyinfox to chat about old times. Or new times, given that I'd never met Flyinfox before. There were some housekeeping things to take care of here and there, but things slowed down pretty quickly. A big part of that was the charity auction and closing ceremonies both taking about 46 hours. During the third act of the auction I drove Raltz' crew to Wendy's for a bite just because I was bored by then. The closing ceremonies were fun though. Kit Drago made the gaff heard round the world in the course of his speech he accidentally declared himself chairman of Anthrocon. The crowd really loved that one. I even ran off to go get my labcoat and anoint him with it on stage. It was a touching moment, really. Be sure to follow #KageKon on the Twitter.
Things actually remained pretty slow after closing ceremonies went down. I'd expected a big teardown push, and there kinda was one for things that really needed to happen right then, but for the most part everyone came to the consensus that it was nearly 10:00 and we could deal with this shit tomorrow. As it was, I caught up with people and talked some more as they tried (and often failed repeatedly) to leave. The better half of Crux, BGS, was out there on the dancefloor trying to throw down as hard as he could without killing himself, and looked to be succeeding. With the dancing part, not the dancing-assisted suicide part. That would suck. I also had to break from the conversation at one point and race across the lobby to tackle two small dogs which, anywhere else, would've been a rather unusual occurrence. As it was I slid pretty nonchalantly into and out of that task. I actually didn't expect to nab them as quickly as I did. I kinda just thought it would be fun to chase them. Got them both in just 20 yards or so though. Maybe I missed my true calling. Anyways, I talked, I drank, I danced, I got to witness Matthew Ebel's batshit insane Victorian horse costume. It was good times. Hell it had to be the time of my life. That was all that would keep me out of bed at that point.
So Monday was when that slow night came back to bite us. Our volunteers tapered off and left us with a lot fewer hands to handle the monumental stuff-moving challenge that lay ahead. It was pretty much a solid day of pushing around heavy things. Not great. I'm glad I studied hard and got into a field where neither customer service nor the pushing of heavy things feature prominently. Both of those are very draining. That effort was broken up by a meal that got comp'd by the hotel, one of those rare, positive surprises. I should hang out with Kiba more often. She clearly holds the leash in dealings with the venue, and apparently being leash-adjacent has perks. And after a whole bunch more work I was pretty hungry again, fortunately it was about that time that Drago took us all out to a place that he described only as "a meat faucet". It was called Texas de Brazil and for those of you not familiar with Brazilian barbeque let me give you a rundown. The waiters walk around with the rotisserie skewers that the meat was cooked on, ever ready to shave off meat onto someone's plate. You have a little sign that says "no meat" or "yes meat", and you just go to town on it. That's a great way to end a day. It was a wonderful place. It really took the sting out of the fact that we spent all of Monday working at it before we finally had everything loaded onto the truck. I really must thank Chassie for her help in breaking up that monotony. She was one of the fugitives that I corralled earlier, a really sweet little Corgi that Irime belongs to. We got along just famously and both wore each other thin playing while we waited for Kit to get things in order.
In the course of my labors though, I hadn't really managed to plan much beyond finishing the job. I had a vague idea in my head of just stumbling in a general homeward direction and stopping at a Super 8 or whatever if I couldn't make it. At a reasonable time that might've been workable, but given that we'd worked pretty well into the night that wasn't looking like such a great idea anymore. Kit said that he'd much rather I spend the night with him and Irime, and I would also much rather I do that. So there was very little debate on it. I was struck by how well they take care of all us worker bees in the course of all this. I didn't pay for food once the whole time I was there, and everyone really banded together to make sure it all came out alright in the end. When Matt's flight was cancelled, Serval was up late into the night making sure that he had a place to sleep too. That kind of stuff was going on all over the place. It was a really great team and I had a fantastic time working with them. Here's hoping that I'll be a bigger part of this next year when we all actually have some idea of exactly what it is I'm doing there. That'll be nice.
By Tuesday morning it was just myself, Kit and Irime still in the neigborhood, so I managed to be the last man standing without at any point ever really intending to. Yay? Anyway, as I was driving to breakfast (which Kit also paid for because ya just can't stop these people) Honey I'm Good by Andy Grammer came on the radio. I think I'm adding that one to my playlist because it's a really great song and it very well encapsulated how I felt right then. Not so much the turning down solicitations from women part in the actual lyrics, really. I didn't have THAT good of a weekend. But just the general feel of it synched up so perfectly with the state the con left me in. This was a hell of a thing, and I was proud to be part of it. So, with a few fond farewells I was on my way home. Well, after picking up two six packs of Bold Rock first. Must remember my priorities after all.
Furry Con: the Little Convention that Could
General | Posted 10 years agoWell, I’m leaving for Furthe’More tomorrow, so I’d better jam this report in fast. The short of it is that Furry Con is totally awesome and you should not only go to it in the future but also buy a time machine so that you can have already gone to it before.
Alright, as I may or may not have mentioned, the very creatively-named FurryCon happened right about the time school ended and it was conveniently just across the way in Rochester, so I made the convention part of my trip home. It was a tight fit in terms of schedule, but I couldn't very well pass up a con this close to home. I got a somewhat late start but it remained technically morning when I left campus. I expected that the con would've gained some momentum by the time I got there around 4 PM. Turns out I wasn't quite right about that. There was unquestionably a con going on at the time but the place remained eerily quiet. It was straight-up awkward being in the dealers' den because I was the only customer there. I'm pretty good about unusual social scenarios, but that vacuum of silence while a couple of the vendors try to plead to me with their eyes to buy some of their silicone horse penises was a little too much to bear. The first panel I went to ended up as a failure to launch without any word, but I just assumed I missed something with my being late to the party. The pattern became pretty clear though when I went to the next one and was the only audience member. There was just no one at the con even all the way at the end of the first day. It felt tragic to me, as this was a very nice venue and everything seemed to be in order with the setup and all. It felt kind of like a zombie movie, with that unnerving sense that this place should really have a whole hell of a lot more people in it.
Anyways, there was a late arrival who doubled the size of the viewing audience midway through the panel. I got to see some of the other side of my usual social shenanigans at cons when he decided that we were friends after chatting with me for a couple minutes. Hixbi Fox was a really lucky find, as day one was shaping up to be a real downer at first. With little else demanding my attention, I tailed Hixbi around as he attended to various things around the place. He seemed extraordinarily busy for someone operating out of a post-apocalyptic desolate afterscape. Apparently he was a big player in the Game of Con Chairs, an integral part of the convention's theme. When I heard about it I thought that having a whole con themed around Game of Thrones was uncannily specific, perhaps even unreasonably so, especially because that theme persists from year to year. I got to learn a lot about the mechanism of the game as I watched Hix do his thing. It's actually pretty interesting. Just about everything people usually do at a con (other than you know, room parties, drinking, and/or making out) is worth points towards the victory of your house. So you track panel attendance, spending at the Dealers' Den, participation in contests and games, and tally it all up. The victorious house has the chance to elevate one of their members to be the honorary con chair. I thought it was pretty cool now that I knew what it was all about. Hix seemed to be focused on one particular aspect of the competition, the War Room. There was a big map of Westeros splayed out on the table and the different factions were engaged in a turf war using a sort of 'Risk' mixed with 'Settlers of Cataan' resource management and combat game. Apparently there was a lot to it, as it was running the houses' leadership ragged.
After all the battle lines were properly drawn, we went back to Hixbi's room where he had still more work to do. I came to learn that he was a DJ, a real one though, not in the "I have a really killer setlist on my iPod so I'm totally a DJ" kind of way that you hear from everyone all the time. He had a pretty high-end setup, and I came to learn that he was good enough at using it to become musical guest of honor. That made it a little more clear as to why he seemed to have quite a lot on his plate. It was actually pretty cool watching him work. The mark of a real DJ is that they actually do mix their own music together instead of just playing recordings the whole time, and that's a pretty interesting process. The rotating phasors that he'd use to make sure that the beats of two tracks lined up properly were actually quite similar to the synchroscope that I'd previously used to parallel two AC sources onto the same distribution bus. I guess it's a pretty similar concept when you think about it. Also up in the room watching the magic happen were his friends, Tatu and Swiss Cheese, whom I also got to hang out with quite a bit. I tailed them all for a bit and later on things wound down, if you could ever say they'd been wound up in the first place, and I called it an early night.
Since I'd gotten a quick indoctrination to 'the Game' I figured I'd take the chance to learn it properly. Fortunately there was a panel for just such a thing on Saturday morning. Unfortunately it was also one of those panels that fell over and exploded on the launchpad, so I had to just wander around for a bit more. I checked in at the gaming room, something I don't usually do but I figured I might as well. I got to join in on Chrononauts, a very clever time-travel themed card game that I got into rather quickly. It's kind of fun to be planning things out and saying "Okay, I can fix this, all I need to do is assassinate Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, then un-assassinate JFK, and make sure that the Hindenburg doesn't launch due to a forecast of bad weather." As you might expect, crippling temporal paradoxes are quite common in that game. The fursuit parade that afternoon was far better populated than I thought it would be. Apparently we've tapped a small but rather high-enthusiasm demographic with this one. What crowd had gathered that day all vanished right before the parade, making me worry that it was going to be nothing but a token attendance as well. It turned out that everyone disappeared before the parade to be in the parade, so that was pretty much the best way that could’ve gone. I saw more people in the parade than I think I saw at any other location at any time during the con. And so of course that made for quite a good time.
After that I got into the Super Smash Bros tournament and won second somehow, which was a pleasant surprise to say the least. Up next was a delightful romp called “Why I Hate the Fandom”. I was on the fence about it because listening to one person complain gets old really fast. I was so glad to find out that that wasn’t the format. It was actually a round-table sort of discussion wherein each person gets their chance to take the floor and answer the titular question. It was a lot of fun hearing all those different voices and getting to connect with people, very cathartic and engaging. It’s really great to know that there are people who feel the same way you do. It’s very isolating when there’s something that really pisses you off and you think that it’s just you that it really bothers.
They definitely picked the right panel to host next to the free booze though. Group complaining is a great activity for when you’re hammered. Oh also there was totally free booze. I was skeptical when I’d heard that was an offering. I didn’t know that furries could survive in an environment where free liquor was being offered. I always thought that if that were the case they’d drink enough to reach their flashpoint and blow the whole place up. In my conception of the world, the fact that all furries are broke as hell was the only thing that kept them from amassing enough alcohol to reach critical mass. Apparently they made it work here though. I noted that the free drinks were limited to frozen drinks only, which I thought was clever. There are a couple noteworthy hard caps on how fast you can pound down a slush drink. Ice cream headaches will cut through even the strongest buzz and let you know to take it easy. They’d probably just mix them light, I thought, and give people a way to have fun without destroying themselves. Yes, I had a number of misconceptions about how this was handled before I tried one of these drinks. Turns out they had so much rum in them that they wouldn’t even freeze properly. I don’t know the exact proportions, but you’ve gotta hit it pretty hard before the freezing point of the water drops below the capabilities of the slushie machine. They were fucking delicious too, it was a match made in heaven. Naturally I made it through about 1.7 of those things before I had to go lie down. I wasn’t really all that drunk, but I’d put them down fast enough that I got very close to throwing up. So yeah, the slushies were very clearly not to be trifled with. And also free. I don’t think I can stress enough how buckfuck insane it was that free drinks were a thing. Not only that it happened, but that it happened without punching a hole in spacetime.
There were a few more panels later that night, but by then I’d gotten together with Tatu’s crew, namely Smidget and Battsaults. We’d had an extremely unlikely encounter with the Blue Angels, who were actually really excited to hang out with us. For those of you who are wondering, yes, it was the real Blue Angels, the professional performance fighter pilots. They were in town for an airshow and thought that the crazy animal people looked like the most fun they’d seen all week. We took tons of photos and showed them around the place. A few of them even got day-passes so that they could see all of the convention spaces, as if we’d really turn away such honored guests.
The wedding that was there got some damned interesting photos for their cherished memories box. Very few others can boast cartoon animal people AND fighter pilots in the same photoshoot. We got a very drunk game of Cards Against Humanity going eventually. It was a lot of fun despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that most of us had only half a heartbeat’s worth of attention span and were physically incapable of lowering our voices by then. I forget what it was exactly, but one of the cards that I played made the captain who was in our game just throw up his hands and run off. I’m not sure if that’s an achievement necessarily, because their willingness to put up with all our weird bullshit was what made hanging out with them so fun. Still a fun night though. I didn’t feel like I drank a lot, but I woke up with a phone in my pocket that didn’t belong to me, so I guess what I did drink got the job done. I don’t know if you’ve ever started the day bewildered by an unfamiliar ringtone coming from your pants and stumbling over to them to figure out what the hell is going on, but it’s really not a bad way to be.
First up on Sunday was the Dominion tournament. That’s a really cool deck-building, territory-gathering game that I’ve been a fan of for a really long time. I don’t see it too often, so I was really excited to see a tournament for it. We had a lot of fun playing, even though I kind of dicked up the last round with a really exploitative combo with one of the new cards from the expansion. Ah well, you do what you’ve gotta do though. It netted me first place. I actually stuck around and did a bunch more tabletop games to make up for the misery I put them through. Pretty good times all around. There was an Atari tournament that I knew I’d have pretty much no skill at, but it’s hilarious to watch games be played on a 30 year old console. The struggle is a lot of fun, even though of course most the games are objectively crap. It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for games. I got booted out of that competition in the first round, but still had lots of fun.
They had a talent/variety show thing that brought a lot of interesting stuff to the stage. Fun fursuit shenanigans I had expected, but I had no idea that the fandom had ties to so many talented animators. In all I got quite a lot done for an event that got off to such a slow start. I like to think that all the winnings I contributed at the end of the day helped the cause of my house’s bid for the throne, but I didn’t get to stick around for the results of the game. Still, I’ll call it time well spent. I actually was disappointed to say goodbye to everyone and leave as early as I did, and I think that’s a good sign. I hadn’t planned to leave until Monday, but my mom had called and told me that they’d like to have me for ceremonies and the parade on Memorial Day. That’s an early morning engagement, so I had to cut a fair amount of time from the end. I’ve been a part of the ceremonial firing squad with my American Legion post for a little while now, and I think that’s been a very worthy use of my time. I had a fair deal of contempt for all of my time that had been wasted by military nonsense, but this the kind of ceremonial stuff that I can really get behind.
So, final thoughts on FurryCon then. I know that I complained a lot, and yeah, there were a lot of things about this experience that gave me an objectively negative impression. There was a general lack of enthusiasm and motivation that I picked up on. Half a dozen panels that I’d meant to go to never materialized, and it was really tough to find people to hang out with and fill in the time. Realistically though, absolutely none of those are the fault of the convention itself. The tragedy that I found here was that FurryCon has everything that a great convention needs, with the exception of an audience. All throughout it I saw a very hardworking and attentive staff, all of whom clearly wanted very badly for this to work and for us to have fun. The Con Game itself was basically a plea saying “Please! Come out and do all these fun things we set up for you! Help us make this con come alive!” You got nice, tangible rewards for just showing up and being a part of the con. Those tournaments that I won? I actually got medals for those. Honest to God medals hanging from ribbons around my neck. I had to put them away after awhile because the jingling was driving me insane. They had free booze at the dance and a full service bar if you didn’t like the slushies. The movie lounge was right next to a dazzling array of free snacks and drinks. They even made hot dogs, chili and nachos and real, substantial food, also for free! There was a pool party with a barbeque outside that was totally great AND ALSO FREE. I don’t think I paid for any food the whole time I was there. It was glorious how accommodating these people were. Any one of these things would’ve been a laughable impossibility at any other convention, and yet they had it all. There’s nothing you could’ve asked of these poor, hard-working people that they hadn’t already provided. It is just heartwrenching to me to see an event that’s so good be so poorly attended.
I’m having to grasp at straws to explain the as-always-unnerving and baffling lack of people. Could be the area. Lots of cons are either the only game in town or are in a location where there are literally ten million people within an hour’s drive. I don’t think that Rochester is that desolate though. The ease with which I came across the ‘Upstate New York Furries’ group suggests that there’s a market there. Maybe it’s the advertising. It’s a relatively new con, tracing its roots all the way back to 2012. I’ve observed cold-start problems like that working with Furthe’More. People who lived in Baltimore had no idea that it was going on the first year. Now that FTM has gotten itself established and the name is out there that convention is spreading like kudzu. We were worried that moving the con would stifle our audience, but the numbers that we’re seeing just in preregistration are so much larger than we anticipated it’s starting to create cramps in our budget. So yeah, notoriety could be the problem, I guess. I’ve lived a stone’s throw away from Furry Con and I only heard about it recently.
It seems like a catch-22 of the world we live in, really. The con’s size is what keeps it from growing. No one comes and does all the fun stuff they have, so no one hears about it. Attendance is low so they can’t leverage for better rates on the rooms to attract more attendance. I don’t think that a convention can endure very long with this kind of half-assed constituency, even if the staff is out there moving heaven and earth to make it happen. So if you want my ultimate takeaway from the con, I don’t want you to go to it. I NEED you to go to it. I need you to come and just validate all the earnest, thankless work these people are doing just to see someone come and have some fun. I need you to stop this wonderful little place where they’re doing absolutely everything right from going all to pieces just because of some stupid market forces bullshit. I need you to prove that something like this really can exist, and by extension, validate that we might just live in some kind of a just and righteous world.
I liked it, is what I’m saying.
Alright, as I may or may not have mentioned, the very creatively-named FurryCon happened right about the time school ended and it was conveniently just across the way in Rochester, so I made the convention part of my trip home. It was a tight fit in terms of schedule, but I couldn't very well pass up a con this close to home. I got a somewhat late start but it remained technically morning when I left campus. I expected that the con would've gained some momentum by the time I got there around 4 PM. Turns out I wasn't quite right about that. There was unquestionably a con going on at the time but the place remained eerily quiet. It was straight-up awkward being in the dealers' den because I was the only customer there. I'm pretty good about unusual social scenarios, but that vacuum of silence while a couple of the vendors try to plead to me with their eyes to buy some of their silicone horse penises was a little too much to bear. The first panel I went to ended up as a failure to launch without any word, but I just assumed I missed something with my being late to the party. The pattern became pretty clear though when I went to the next one and was the only audience member. There was just no one at the con even all the way at the end of the first day. It felt tragic to me, as this was a very nice venue and everything seemed to be in order with the setup and all. It felt kind of like a zombie movie, with that unnerving sense that this place should really have a whole hell of a lot more people in it.
Anyways, there was a late arrival who doubled the size of the viewing audience midway through the panel. I got to see some of the other side of my usual social shenanigans at cons when he decided that we were friends after chatting with me for a couple minutes. Hixbi Fox was a really lucky find, as day one was shaping up to be a real downer at first. With little else demanding my attention, I tailed Hixbi around as he attended to various things around the place. He seemed extraordinarily busy for someone operating out of a post-apocalyptic desolate afterscape. Apparently he was a big player in the Game of Con Chairs, an integral part of the convention's theme. When I heard about it I thought that having a whole con themed around Game of Thrones was uncannily specific, perhaps even unreasonably so, especially because that theme persists from year to year. I got to learn a lot about the mechanism of the game as I watched Hix do his thing. It's actually pretty interesting. Just about everything people usually do at a con (other than you know, room parties, drinking, and/or making out) is worth points towards the victory of your house. So you track panel attendance, spending at the Dealers' Den, participation in contests and games, and tally it all up. The victorious house has the chance to elevate one of their members to be the honorary con chair. I thought it was pretty cool now that I knew what it was all about. Hix seemed to be focused on one particular aspect of the competition, the War Room. There was a big map of Westeros splayed out on the table and the different factions were engaged in a turf war using a sort of 'Risk' mixed with 'Settlers of Cataan' resource management and combat game. Apparently there was a lot to it, as it was running the houses' leadership ragged.
After all the battle lines were properly drawn, we went back to Hixbi's room where he had still more work to do. I came to learn that he was a DJ, a real one though, not in the "I have a really killer setlist on my iPod so I'm totally a DJ" kind of way that you hear from everyone all the time. He had a pretty high-end setup, and I came to learn that he was good enough at using it to become musical guest of honor. That made it a little more clear as to why he seemed to have quite a lot on his plate. It was actually pretty cool watching him work. The mark of a real DJ is that they actually do mix their own music together instead of just playing recordings the whole time, and that's a pretty interesting process. The rotating phasors that he'd use to make sure that the beats of two tracks lined up properly were actually quite similar to the synchroscope that I'd previously used to parallel two AC sources onto the same distribution bus. I guess it's a pretty similar concept when you think about it. Also up in the room watching the magic happen were his friends, Tatu and Swiss Cheese, whom I also got to hang out with quite a bit. I tailed them all for a bit and later on things wound down, if you could ever say they'd been wound up in the first place, and I called it an early night.
Since I'd gotten a quick indoctrination to 'the Game' I figured I'd take the chance to learn it properly. Fortunately there was a panel for just such a thing on Saturday morning. Unfortunately it was also one of those panels that fell over and exploded on the launchpad, so I had to just wander around for a bit more. I checked in at the gaming room, something I don't usually do but I figured I might as well. I got to join in on Chrononauts, a very clever time-travel themed card game that I got into rather quickly. It's kind of fun to be planning things out and saying "Okay, I can fix this, all I need to do is assassinate Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, then un-assassinate JFK, and make sure that the Hindenburg doesn't launch due to a forecast of bad weather." As you might expect, crippling temporal paradoxes are quite common in that game. The fursuit parade that afternoon was far better populated than I thought it would be. Apparently we've tapped a small but rather high-enthusiasm demographic with this one. What crowd had gathered that day all vanished right before the parade, making me worry that it was going to be nothing but a token attendance as well. It turned out that everyone disappeared before the parade to be in the parade, so that was pretty much the best way that could’ve gone. I saw more people in the parade than I think I saw at any other location at any time during the con. And so of course that made for quite a good time.
After that I got into the Super Smash Bros tournament and won second somehow, which was a pleasant surprise to say the least. Up next was a delightful romp called “Why I Hate the Fandom”. I was on the fence about it because listening to one person complain gets old really fast. I was so glad to find out that that wasn’t the format. It was actually a round-table sort of discussion wherein each person gets their chance to take the floor and answer the titular question. It was a lot of fun hearing all those different voices and getting to connect with people, very cathartic and engaging. It’s really great to know that there are people who feel the same way you do. It’s very isolating when there’s something that really pisses you off and you think that it’s just you that it really bothers.
They definitely picked the right panel to host next to the free booze though. Group complaining is a great activity for when you’re hammered. Oh also there was totally free booze. I was skeptical when I’d heard that was an offering. I didn’t know that furries could survive in an environment where free liquor was being offered. I always thought that if that were the case they’d drink enough to reach their flashpoint and blow the whole place up. In my conception of the world, the fact that all furries are broke as hell was the only thing that kept them from amassing enough alcohol to reach critical mass. Apparently they made it work here though. I noted that the free drinks were limited to frozen drinks only, which I thought was clever. There are a couple noteworthy hard caps on how fast you can pound down a slush drink. Ice cream headaches will cut through even the strongest buzz and let you know to take it easy. They’d probably just mix them light, I thought, and give people a way to have fun without destroying themselves. Yes, I had a number of misconceptions about how this was handled before I tried one of these drinks. Turns out they had so much rum in them that they wouldn’t even freeze properly. I don’t know the exact proportions, but you’ve gotta hit it pretty hard before the freezing point of the water drops below the capabilities of the slushie machine. They were fucking delicious too, it was a match made in heaven. Naturally I made it through about 1.7 of those things before I had to go lie down. I wasn’t really all that drunk, but I’d put them down fast enough that I got very close to throwing up. So yeah, the slushies were very clearly not to be trifled with. And also free. I don’t think I can stress enough how buckfuck insane it was that free drinks were a thing. Not only that it happened, but that it happened without punching a hole in spacetime.
There were a few more panels later that night, but by then I’d gotten together with Tatu’s crew, namely Smidget and Battsaults. We’d had an extremely unlikely encounter with the Blue Angels, who were actually really excited to hang out with us. For those of you who are wondering, yes, it was the real Blue Angels, the professional performance fighter pilots. They were in town for an airshow and thought that the crazy animal people looked like the most fun they’d seen all week. We took tons of photos and showed them around the place. A few of them even got day-passes so that they could see all of the convention spaces, as if we’d really turn away such honored guests.
The wedding that was there got some damned interesting photos for their cherished memories box. Very few others can boast cartoon animal people AND fighter pilots in the same photoshoot. We got a very drunk game of Cards Against Humanity going eventually. It was a lot of fun despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that most of us had only half a heartbeat’s worth of attention span and were physically incapable of lowering our voices by then. I forget what it was exactly, but one of the cards that I played made the captain who was in our game just throw up his hands and run off. I’m not sure if that’s an achievement necessarily, because their willingness to put up with all our weird bullshit was what made hanging out with them so fun. Still a fun night though. I didn’t feel like I drank a lot, but I woke up with a phone in my pocket that didn’t belong to me, so I guess what I did drink got the job done. I don’t know if you’ve ever started the day bewildered by an unfamiliar ringtone coming from your pants and stumbling over to them to figure out what the hell is going on, but it’s really not a bad way to be.
First up on Sunday was the Dominion tournament. That’s a really cool deck-building, territory-gathering game that I’ve been a fan of for a really long time. I don’t see it too often, so I was really excited to see a tournament for it. We had a lot of fun playing, even though I kind of dicked up the last round with a really exploitative combo with one of the new cards from the expansion. Ah well, you do what you’ve gotta do though. It netted me first place. I actually stuck around and did a bunch more tabletop games to make up for the misery I put them through. Pretty good times all around. There was an Atari tournament that I knew I’d have pretty much no skill at, but it’s hilarious to watch games be played on a 30 year old console. The struggle is a lot of fun, even though of course most the games are objectively crap. It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for games. I got booted out of that competition in the first round, but still had lots of fun.
They had a talent/variety show thing that brought a lot of interesting stuff to the stage. Fun fursuit shenanigans I had expected, but I had no idea that the fandom had ties to so many talented animators. In all I got quite a lot done for an event that got off to such a slow start. I like to think that all the winnings I contributed at the end of the day helped the cause of my house’s bid for the throne, but I didn’t get to stick around for the results of the game. Still, I’ll call it time well spent. I actually was disappointed to say goodbye to everyone and leave as early as I did, and I think that’s a good sign. I hadn’t planned to leave until Monday, but my mom had called and told me that they’d like to have me for ceremonies and the parade on Memorial Day. That’s an early morning engagement, so I had to cut a fair amount of time from the end. I’ve been a part of the ceremonial firing squad with my American Legion post for a little while now, and I think that’s been a very worthy use of my time. I had a fair deal of contempt for all of my time that had been wasted by military nonsense, but this the kind of ceremonial stuff that I can really get behind.
So, final thoughts on FurryCon then. I know that I complained a lot, and yeah, there were a lot of things about this experience that gave me an objectively negative impression. There was a general lack of enthusiasm and motivation that I picked up on. Half a dozen panels that I’d meant to go to never materialized, and it was really tough to find people to hang out with and fill in the time. Realistically though, absolutely none of those are the fault of the convention itself. The tragedy that I found here was that FurryCon has everything that a great convention needs, with the exception of an audience. All throughout it I saw a very hardworking and attentive staff, all of whom clearly wanted very badly for this to work and for us to have fun. The Con Game itself was basically a plea saying “Please! Come out and do all these fun things we set up for you! Help us make this con come alive!” You got nice, tangible rewards for just showing up and being a part of the con. Those tournaments that I won? I actually got medals for those. Honest to God medals hanging from ribbons around my neck. I had to put them away after awhile because the jingling was driving me insane. They had free booze at the dance and a full service bar if you didn’t like the slushies. The movie lounge was right next to a dazzling array of free snacks and drinks. They even made hot dogs, chili and nachos and real, substantial food, also for free! There was a pool party with a barbeque outside that was totally great AND ALSO FREE. I don’t think I paid for any food the whole time I was there. It was glorious how accommodating these people were. Any one of these things would’ve been a laughable impossibility at any other convention, and yet they had it all. There’s nothing you could’ve asked of these poor, hard-working people that they hadn’t already provided. It is just heartwrenching to me to see an event that’s so good be so poorly attended.
I’m having to grasp at straws to explain the as-always-unnerving and baffling lack of people. Could be the area. Lots of cons are either the only game in town or are in a location where there are literally ten million people within an hour’s drive. I don’t think that Rochester is that desolate though. The ease with which I came across the ‘Upstate New York Furries’ group suggests that there’s a market there. Maybe it’s the advertising. It’s a relatively new con, tracing its roots all the way back to 2012. I’ve observed cold-start problems like that working with Furthe’More. People who lived in Baltimore had no idea that it was going on the first year. Now that FTM has gotten itself established and the name is out there that convention is spreading like kudzu. We were worried that moving the con would stifle our audience, but the numbers that we’re seeing just in preregistration are so much larger than we anticipated it’s starting to create cramps in our budget. So yeah, notoriety could be the problem, I guess. I’ve lived a stone’s throw away from Furry Con and I only heard about it recently.
It seems like a catch-22 of the world we live in, really. The con’s size is what keeps it from growing. No one comes and does all the fun stuff they have, so no one hears about it. Attendance is low so they can’t leverage for better rates on the rooms to attract more attendance. I don’t think that a convention can endure very long with this kind of half-assed constituency, even if the staff is out there moving heaven and earth to make it happen. So if you want my ultimate takeaway from the con, I don’t want you to go to it. I NEED you to go to it. I need you to come and just validate all the earnest, thankless work these people are doing just to see someone come and have some fun. I need you to stop this wonderful little place where they’re doing absolutely everything right from going all to pieces just because of some stupid market forces bullshit. I need you to prove that something like this really can exist, and by extension, validate that we might just live in some kind of a just and righteous world.
I liked it, is what I’m saying.
On the road again: Furry Con and Furthe'More
General | Posted 10 years agoWell, it's looking like creatively-named "FurryCon" is going to be happening right after finals end, meaning that I ought to be able to attend. As usual this realization has happened long after any useful prospects at roomshares have dried up, but I'm used to that. I'll still have a go at it. It sounds like a fun time and I could hardly overlook a con so close to home. I'm not gonna do full con memes for either of these because I honestly know hardly anything about my plans at present, also because most of the other details are unchanged from pretty much any of my other award-winning con memes, and because if anyone is planning to meet me just by happenstance then having a few vague personal details will hardly help. I've learned that the hard way many times.
Also up on the docket is the considerably-further-from-home Furthe'More. I wouldn't have considered going ordinarily, seeing as the con has moved a bit south and I have moved very far north since last time, but they moved it to the summer and kidnapped me into their staff, so I guess this is actually happening. Have at thee, young raven-crested con! I've been tapped by the writing track to host a couple panels. It'll be my first time doing such a thing, so that'll be quite interesting I'm sure. Be sure to stop by them if you're in attendance. I'll be doing the beginner and intermediate writing panels, and probably also the adult and kinky writing panels if I can spare the precious sleep time. I'll try really hard to make it. Those panels are always so much fun.
Also up on the docket is the considerably-further-from-home Furthe'More. I wouldn't have considered going ordinarily, seeing as the con has moved a bit south and I have moved very far north since last time, but they moved it to the summer and kidnapped me into their staff, so I guess this is actually happening. Have at thee, young raven-crested con! I've been tapped by the writing track to host a couple panels. It'll be my first time doing such a thing, so that'll be quite interesting I'm sure. Be sure to stop by them if you're in attendance. I'll be doing the beginner and intermediate writing panels, and probably also the adult and kinky writing panels if I can spare the precious sleep time. I'll try really hard to make it. Those panels are always so much fun.
Con report of record-breaking brevity
General | Posted 11 years agoAlright. So I went to Genericon this weekend. As the name suggests, Genericon is a themeless, sci-fi, gaming, anime, general-nerd-stuff convention. Or as they bill it, a "multigenre gathering". I don't exactly hear lots of chatter about it, but it's literally across the street so it would've been kind of dumb for me to not go. This is going to baffle and astonish a lot of you long-time readers, but I actually don't have a whole lot to say about this one. It was a strange experience, really. A lot of my interests were represented there, but it didn't really feel like my scene. Maybe I've gotten spoiled by furry conventions. Furry is a nerdy, niche interest, to be sure. It is inarguably among the most fanatical, nerdiest and nichiest, but there's one big defining difference about the general population of a con. Furries are hyperobsessive nerds that also happen to be extremely high energy, outgoing and wildly social. That's pretty much the polar-opposite setting of the typical, generic nerds that Genericon attracts. It made for a very different atmosphere that I didn't really feel at home in. Hitting up random groups of people you've never met doesn't really work here. And it wasn't like I had other options. Interest among actual students here is pretty lackluster, and I don't even have that many close friends who attend college here anyway. The events didn't really strike a chord with me either. The schedule was plastered wall-to-wall with anime stuff, with several rooms being dedicated 24 hours exclusively to it. I've seen one anime that I really liked and a whole bunch that were pretty disappointing, especially after I'd hear from half a dozen people that they were the best thing Japan had ever created and they would change my life. So that was a swing and a miss on one of the con's main themes.
Still, I managed to make it work out okay. I got to go see some improv comedy performances that were pretty good, and do a workshop on the same subject. I gave a quick shoutout to
butterscotchbunny97 and 
elbi when I saw them there. I wasn't expecting too many furries, but there were maybe six or eight that were readily apparent. I played a few games that passed the time pretty well, even if I never did really connect with anyone I was playing with. It was a good way to fill an afternoon in the end. What really made it worth the price of admission though, was that I actually did manage to stumble across some key common interests. There was a panel on furries wherein I actually ended up answering a lot of the questions that came up. Good thing I brought my labcoat to lend credibility to my conclusions. Over the course of the con I managed to gather contact information for both the upstate furries group and the capital district bronies group, both of which are things that exist which I could potentially attend the meetings of. So I've got high hopes for that. It was definitely worth getting off my ass and wandering around a bit for. Here's hoping that works out.
Still, I managed to make it work out okay. I got to go see some improv comedy performances that were pretty good, and do a workshop on the same subject. I gave a quick shoutout to
butterscotchbunny97 and 
elbi when I saw them there. I wasn't expecting too many furries, but there were maybe six or eight that were readily apparent. I played a few games that passed the time pretty well, even if I never did really connect with anyone I was playing with. It was a good way to fill an afternoon in the end. What really made it worth the price of admission though, was that I actually did manage to stumble across some key common interests. There was a panel on furries wherein I actually ended up answering a lot of the questions that came up. Good thing I brought my labcoat to lend credibility to my conclusions. Over the course of the con I managed to gather contact information for both the upstate furries group and the capital district bronies group, both of which are things that exist which I could potentially attend the meetings of. So I've got high hopes for that. It was definitely worth getting off my ass and wandering around a bit for. Here's hoping that works out.Genericon: Every bit as good as the brand-name conventions
General | Posted 11 years agoThis is more of a 'get the giant-ass con journal to stop cluttering up my userpage' measure than anything else, but sometimes interesting stuff happens when I mention things like this. In any case, I'm going to be attending Genericon this weekend. Anyone else planning on being there? It would be totally sweet if I managed to find someone from 'round these parts there. Let me know if you'll be in the neighborhood!
Conther Furfusion 2015 Part II: Even more Confursing
General | Posted 11 years agoOkay then, we now return you to our previously scheduled furry convention report already in progress. Be sure to catch up on the start of this adventure if you haven't already and/or actually care about how I got to this convention.
Further Confusion was kind of tough to draw a bead on. Having never been to California before, I had precious few contacts in the area. FC is mostly bay-area furs, though it’s not like some other cons where being unable to travel very far and it being the only con in the Seattle area are the only reasons for attending. For FC the overwhelming proportion of locals is merely a function of that area somehow getting all of the furries ever, edging out the travelers just by overwhelming force of coincidence. Many of the people who travel to get here are simply trying to extract money from the endeavor, though I suppose that California has a long history of travelers from the east trying to extract money from it. The bay is still a goldmine though, in a figurative sense. From what I can see, it’s saturated with lucrative tech-sector jobs thanks to the overwhelming influence of Silicon Valley. And if you can’t get one of those fancier jobs, I’m sure there would be some money to be made in scavenging the refuse from companies that are well known for throwing out perfectly good server stacks. I’m probably going to mention that another half a dozen times or so because it’s just blowing my goddamn mind. I once spent several days of arduous labor troubleshooting and repairing a circuit card which I confirmed to be slightly older than me and these guys are going around just throwing out entire practically new processor arrays like it ain’t no thang.
I may or may not have mentioned that my discovering the convenient location of Archai’s domicile and the potential utility of that fact was a very recent revelation. And now I’ve mentioned it for certain. Hah! Take that, undefined quantum superposition! In any case, I was very glad for his presence there at the con. Now that I’ve got a solid amount of experience, I’m pretty comfortable doing my own thing a lot of the time. Being a stranger in a strange land at FC though, it felt a lot like I was back at AC 2012, scrambling about without any knowledge of whether or not I was going in the right direction. As such, I really did have need of a best friend at this con. Someone that I knew I could come back to check in with every once in a while, and who could let me know what the fuck if the status of the what being fuck or not ever came into question, as it sometimes does.
Archai being local was extremely helpful, as I got a base of operations, transportation, and a wise Sherpa guide out of the deal. That last one was a helpful reference for when I came upon aspects of the west coast experience that baffled me. When I say that things about the place confused me to no end, bear in mind the very significant detail that I came to this place at great expense to meet the people who draw my porn and to play with the adults who dress up in cartoon animal costumes as a hobby, and Cali still managed to come up with practices and behaviors that I found to be weird and nonsensical even given my own purpose there. I’m not sure what Arc got out of our arrangement, necessarily, other than the chance to enrich his life via the influence of my magnanimous presence. Which, to be fair, is far more valuable than all the fancy new soon-to-be-refuse server stacks that money can buy.
Friday started with a liquid breakfast, which is not such a bad thing as it sounds. I’ve been trying out Soylent, which is the all-in-one nutritionally perfect beverage that science fiction has always promised us. Or at least it purports to be. It actually performed quite admirably at FC. Forgetting to eat at cons is a big problem for me. My only saving grace is how going out to eat is very common among the people I'm hanging out with. If I didn't have so many people around reminding me that food is a thing that I need I'd probably hit the floor before recalling that on my own. This fancy nutrient sludge makes a perfect con breakfast, really. Breakfast is really hard to coordinate with other people because everyone stumbles blearily out of bed over a very wide range of different times, and God help you if your text message asking about food wakes someone up. So yeah, shuffling to the fridge to grab and chug a vaguely food-like liquid first thing in the morning is actually a pretty good way to start the day under the circumstances. I've realized that getting up after a profoundly late night and thinking "Ah fuck I need to jam something in my face that will induce temporary not-dying and I need to do it right goddamn now because I have to go do ALL the things all day" is the perfect mindset to be in when trying to drink the stuff.
FC was quite light on events, it seemed, but socializing heavily at cons has become a thing for me of late. So I got no shortage of chances to try that out. One of the end results of my self-imposed immersion therapy for social awkwardness is that I now feel pretty much okay with walking up to people I’ve never met and saying “Hi, I’m from the internet! We should hang out.” The status of the people in question feeling pretty much okay with that is kind of hit-or-miss, as you might expect, but it works WAY more often than you’d think, a majority of the time, actually. It worked great with Felekar, and half a dozen other people whose names I can’t remember. The thing about having random encounters comprise the bulk of your social interaction is that details get lost quickly. My memory is largely associative, so if I’m only barely starting to form a picture of people it’s kind of difficult to get anything to stick in regards to them. At the end of the day you end up with this kind of thing: “I actually don’t remember how I came to be in the company of these guys, but they seem pretty cool and we’re going to get pizza. Want to come?” It’s worth noting that despite the sparse schedule, I went to bed at about 2 AM every day of the con. So I certainly found ways to fill the time, even if I can’t remember what all of them actually were because I wasn’t performing proper brain maintenance during that period.
The first event that I went to was Friday afternoon. It was called ‘Save the Cat’ and was based on the book by the same name. That book has been basically the bible of screenwriting for the last 25 years or so. You can blame it for the fact that cinema has taken “foreshadowing” to mean “if you don’t give away the ending of your movie as quickly as possible you’re doing it wrong” and for the way all movies appear to be becoming more and more similar to each other such that they appear to be approaching some sort of singularity wherein the coming Orwellian dystopia will contain only one movie that has been determined to be the ideal pinnacle of filmmaking such that no further movies are necessary. In any case, a book doesn’t gain that kind of reputation by being entirely worthless. There were a lot of insightful points brought up. It’s astonishing how specifically you can pigeonhole so many aspects of the writing and storytelling processes. It makes the act of creation seem so rigid and sterile to think of it in the clinical terms that the book presents. Really though, it’s useful to know the rules that everyone else is playing by, and if you’re trying to appeal to an audience, it’s helpful to know what they’re going to be looking for. Thinking about the process in such terms can help you organize your thoughts and get everything in order. Though it’s quite a romanticized image, just sitting down with some blank paper and expecting everything to just come to you by providence is kind of irresponsible if you really think about it.
Friday night was mostly spent hanging out with Arc has he bounced around the convention wearing Brinkley, his border collie. Just following a suiter around isn’t necessarily a way to paint the town red, but it actually worked out okay. I had my labcoat on and did my best to remain as unflappable as I could, no matter what Brinkley’s antics were at the time. It made for a nice Abbot and Costello sort of angle with me serving as the reserved, low-energy foil to his cocaine-addled excitement torpedo. I think it made for a good performance.
“Would you like the ball?”
“Aw mugawed! Yes I wouldverymuchliketheballyesyesyesyes!”
“I’m not yet convinced. I don’t think you’re quite serious about this ball.”
“NOOOOO! You have to pick me, Ineedtheball Ihavetohaveityoudon’tunderstandit’sSOOOOimportant!”
“Hmm, you do make a compelling argument. Let me take a quick straw poll and see if anyone else wants the ball more than you.”
Et al.
The labcoat actually performed quite well at this con. I’m not sure if they’re rarer in the west or something, but I never saw anyone else with one and a LOT of people noticed mine. A whole lot of different reactions too. I had to work on my Kage impression because so many people expected me to have one. I can see that though. Drunk, close cut hair, directionless rambling, labcoat, what could I be doing besides cosplaying as the Good Doctor Conway himself? Lots of people walked by singing a few bars of the Portal song to get me to join in. Good thing I know the whole thing. Thanks, Rock Band! There was a suiter with a big plushie Companion Cube that wanted a picture with me. Somewhere out there there’s video of me being interviewed about a recent zombie outbreak. A security guard asked me if my research was responsible for all the weird animal people. In an elevator I heard this snippet of a phone conversation immediately after getting on. “Hey, you know how the new suit is going to have a labcoat? We totally need to sew an Aperture Laboratories logo onto it. That would be the coolest fucking thing.” So yeah, slam dunk on that one. The Bay definitely knows how to science.
After we put the dog to bed, we headed up to the party floor. That’s not normally a place that I’d go, but once again FC was kinda short on alternatives. The whole fourth floor of the hotel had the floor covered in plastic, so that’s a whole bunch of “knowing your audience” points to the Marriot. The BLFC room managed to attract quite a crowd. It was a little difficult to navigate, but it seemed like a nice place. They had quite a few good drinks there. Unfortunately they were quite secretive about the mixes, so I didn’t really learn anything useful from it. I do wish the biggest little con was better timed, as I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that it’s a great time. I saw CasidheVixen there at the bulufkuh room, which was a treat. Both because he’s a great guy, and did me the honor of being familiar with my work and recognizing me. That’s always an unexpected honor. Despite my gregariousness at cons, the power of my celebrity doesn’t broadcast very far.
A group of Klingons also hosted a party room, so that was our next stop. It was funny to hear that a few years ago a bunch of navy guys had shamed them by drinking them dry. Heh, they’ve gotta remember that they may drink to have fun, but the navy does it professionally. The Klingon room was nice because they had access to a balcony. That meant lots more room and a chance to enjoy the beautiful California weather. Everyone kept talking about how cold it was, but they were all hilariously wrong. I met up with AceFox and a few other friends out there and got to have a great time with them. Ace went to the bathroom, so naturally I stole his head and paws while he was gone. I was enjoying those quite thoroughly with those assembled. Arc came back from getting more drinks and spent much effort in trying to figure out what drugs I had taken while he was gone. In his words:
“Okay, when I left you’d had like two drinks and you were standing there quietly. Now you’re bouncing off the walls, you’re all over these people, you just punched that guy in the nuts and you’re just completely out of control. What the heck is going on?”
So yeah, having even just part of a fursuit makes something of a noteworthy change in my personality. I snapped right back once Ace came to reclaim his accessories. I’d forgotten that Arc had never seen me do any fursuiting before. Apparently it’s quite a trip to see that happen for the first time. In any case, we called it a night not long after that, but of course the con was just getting started.
This is quite unusual for me given my apparently-obsessive attention to detail, but be damned if I can’t remember what I did Saturday morning. It wasn’t like everything dissolved into a nauseous blur with the assistance of all like four drinks from the previous night. I’ve never gotten blackout drunk and I’m pretty sure I have far too weak of a stomach to pull that off regardless. I think it’s just a matter of the fact that I always use events as a landmark to pin together these accounts after the fact, and Saturday had absolutely fuck all of interest until the fursuit parade in the afternoon. Meaning that until then everything is kind of uncharted territory.
My recall on this con isn’t as sharp as usual, likely because I think this is the most severe sleep deprivation I’ve ever had at a convention. That exceeds even AC, wherein I often find myself literally running from one event to another to try and jam everything in. I’d say it’s mainly a matter of my finding an excuse to stay out stupid late every single night and the fact that the time difference was stopping me from sleeping late in the morning. So yeah, most of my days started with going to bed at two and then waking up at 8ish thinking “Goddamnit everyone else is still asleep and there isn’t anything to do for another three hours. Fuck you, circadian rhythms!”
Speaking of the oppressive conditions that I suffered, have I mentioned how dry it is there? It’s kinda freaky, actually. I don’t remember Texas being anywhere near this dry, and where I was in the Big T was considerably further from any oceans. It was probably about the same absolute humidity as it was back home, but it was about 60 degrees most of the time, which made the dryness devastating. I got sidelined with nosebleeds on more than one occasion. Usually during the “why in God’s name am I awake right now” part of my day, so it wasn’t a huge burden. Still though, dangerous lack of water around those parts. You’d almost think that we were bordering on some sort of desert region or other. Good thing we’re in America though, where tap water is a clean and ludicrously plentiful resource. That’s what let me draw up two inches of water in the bathtub just to see what would happen. I left it there and it had evaporated down to a little ring around the drain by nightfall. That is just… not natural.
Speaking of unnatural things that happen in California, the first event on Saturday that was actually worth turning out to (or remembering, apparently) was the fursuit parade. I always go to those because it really is quite a show, and there is an unnerving preponderance of fursuiters (hundreds, easily) that I’ll only ever see in the parade. I don’t know what they’re here to do if they just want to show off their suit the one time and keep all these fantastic creations in the closet the rest of the time, but whatever. I’m still happy to see them out there. Big props to that critter who was in the parade blasting Maroon 5’s “Animals” out of his boom box. Point one because that is the absolute best song choice for this event ever. Not only is it thematically appropriate for obvious reasons and a totally bitchin’ song, if you listen to the lyrics even somewhat closely you’ll note that while they are predominantly harmless nonsense they’re sometimes intensely sexual in somewhat deviant ways, so yeah, great representation of the audience. Point two came from him using an actual full-size shoulder-mounted music bazooka from the 90s. Yeah, I know that these days they make Bluetooth speakers that cost $1.29 and are the size of my uncle’s pacemaker. I’ll start giving a fuck about them when they stop sounding like a pennywhistle being played by an asthmatic possum at the bottom of a well.
I suppose that I could go into exhaustive detail about the parade. Hell I can go into exhaustive detail about pretty much anything and make it somewhat readable, but you wouldn’t really get much out of hearing about the parade secondhand. Everybody goes by too fast to catch any names, and even I’m not good enough to make just a simple verbal description of the event at all compelling. “Tennis-ball-colored saber-toothed tiger wearing a polka-dot vest” really just sounds like I’m just stringing together random words to fill time. It’s all about the spectacle. Me trying to describe this in text would be like trying to describe a David Copperfield act in text.
“Yep. The Eiffel Tower disappeared. … I don’t know, it’s just fucking gone! Deal with it.”
Speaking of the third paragraph in a row that I’ve started with “speaking of”, let’s move to the next brain landmark. That would have to be the writing panel by the title of “The First Fifteen Seconds”. This was one that I really wanted to get to because it’s a very critical concept in the process of one’s getting published. When your work hits the desk of a slush pile editor, their goal is not to find the next great American novel. Their goal is to be done reviewing the slush pile as quickly as possible because they have 200 submissions on the table in front of them. This means that for most of the things they find on the table, they’ll flip through a couple hundred words. If you fail to impress them in that time, you get pushed off the desk back into obscurity.
My writing does have a tendency to cold-start because of the way I build momentum in the exposition. Even this narrative, you’ll notice, meanderingly stumbled out of the gate with a bunch of irreverent minutiae about travel, and likely excessive vocabulary as well, seeing as I just managed to put “irreverent” and “minutiae” right goddamn next to each other. That kind of thing can be lethal when trying to get something published, so hashing all that kind of stuff out with a few experienced authors was useful. Judging by their accounts, getting published is a profoundly miserable process. I wouldn’t worry about it too much though. Extrapolating from my present pace, I won’t have a completed manuscript to publish for another 20-odd years.
After that I had errands and commerce and such. The Dealers’ Den could best be described as a gently circulating slow motion stampede. Much of the room was shoulder-to-shoulder crowds and navigation was quite a challenge. I was thinking it was just an opening rush, but the people who have been to this con many times before said that was about typical and it would only get worse. Apparently it’s quite common for the den there to just get exponentially more crowded all day long until closing time when they break out the riot gas. Laaaaame. Fortunately though I was under very little time pressure vis-à-vis, having nothing else going on for a long-ass time. I managed to get my cargo delivered to Sidian okay. Apparently she’d heard from a number of people who met the description that she was asking after, so maybe by the end of the con she was simply awash in exotic sweets. I do hope that the diabetic coma won’t interfere with her work. I never really got the chance to ask if that ended up being the case, since after completing my delivery and every point from there on I found myself in the position of obstructing people who were trying to give Sidian money, a spot I work very hard to never be in. None of these guys come to my job and step all over my toes while I’m trying to get shit done. I feel they deserve the same courtesy.
I also visited SummerCat at the Neon Phoenix booth. I said that I’d stop in and say hi, and indeed I did. I managed to pick up a copy of Anthropomorphic’s Review Magazine, which is as yet my only publishing credit. That made it immensely valuable to me, though it looked not to be the case for most everyone else in attendance. I doubt we’ll be seeing any more issues of that. In somewhat less depressing news from the Phoenix, they were doing a brisk trade in Furry Fuel, their furry-themed energy drink. Naturally my metabolism was plenty out-of-sorts by then so I didn’t have any interest in the stuff. Still, Hoshi Kitsunuki, the artist for the can design, was there hawking the drinks and I guess technically promoting her work. We got to talking and I somehow became an impromptu sales associate for a while there. People trust a guy in a labcoat, y’know? They sold out of their concoction by Sunday, so I’ll call that a job well done. It was in my temporary apprenticeship there that Reese Tora came by and we got to chat a bit. Quite a bit of luck just coming across him like that. I’m always glad for a chance to see someone from the Cross Time Café though.
That evening Archai’s curiosity got the better of him and he got it into his head that he ought to test out just exactly how much my demeanor changes when I’m properly dressed for an occasion such as this. Naturally I was ecstatic for the opportunity. I had fallen in love with the new caribou character he had acquired recently and I campaigned passionately for the chance to take the wheel on him. It took a little while, but we finally arrived at an amenable compromise.
“I just don’t feel comfortable sending you out unsupervised in Jake.”
“Unsupervised? Who said anything about unsupervised? You damn well better not send me anywhere unsupervised, I have not the slightest idea what I’m doing!”
“Ah, well that’s different then.”
“You have a herding animal at your disposal. Grab him, and as Neil Patrick Harris would say ‘Let’s suit up’!”
And indeed we did. And it was glorious. Jake Caribou is one majestic son of a bitch and looking in the mirror made me feel inadequate just by the sheer brilliance of my reflection. I would’ve never guessed this, but hooves are just the best, you guys. Seriously, they are the BEST. Like… one time I called a small, family-owned pizza shop in the city to find out their hours. At the end of the call, kind of as a joke, I asked “So, how is your pizza there?” He in his classic, emphatic New Yorker accent, forcefully stated “Iz da fuckin’ best.” Before ardently slamming down the phone to punish me for having the hubris to ask such a stupid question. THAT is how “the best” having hooves is. Oh my God. If you want a good sense of my demeanor, it was pretty much like this. So yeah, hooves. That’s a thing. That caribou have. And that I got to wear. Carbon fiber too, not even the stock model!
Anyways, part of Archai’s concern was that the suit had been pretty popular using its previous name ‘Lou Caribou’, under the piloting of Soki. He was worried about the snags that the character’s former celebrity had caused. Heh, well of the five suits I’ve ever worn, it’s pretty much an even split between women and gay men for their actual owners, all of whom were quite popular. This was actually kind of a step down in terms of potential awkwardness due to reputation. What with Soki being known as rather reserved and not particularly inclined towards touchy-feely stuff, and his being, as Archai put it “stoutly and emphatically straight”. So yeah, I stayed pretty light on my hooves with such a light burden of publicity to bear. Yeah, a dozen or so people thought I was Soki. Who cares? I have HOOVES goddamnit! Even I don’t give a fuck who I am!
I actually did get to meet Soki during my adventure. He was wearing his latest and greatest caribou as it happened, giving a lot of people a reason to doubletake. I was baffled by how the Jake suit could be so short on me given that its original owner looked like he had his dramatic entrances punctuated by that heavy low-brass orchestral sting that they use in movie trailers to let you know that a massive radioactive something-or-other is about to totally waste your city. Yeah, you know the one. Soki possesses an imposing frame is what I’m saying. That’s what made it so distressing that I’d not yet been enlightened to certain aspects of his personality before our impromptu meeting. Namely that he doesn’t particularly care for bodysnatchers that he just met climbing all over him with only the barest provocation. Yeah, I overdid that. And also everything, but I overdid that one thing in particular. I’m really glad that my face was covered by an artifice for which Soki had a good deal of reverence. The outward caribou face was probably all that kept the inner stupid human face from being punched resoundingly at least once. Even though Archai had his expressions similarly disguised, I still picked up a pretty strong “See? This is exactly the kind of shit that I was worried about.” Vibe from him. Oops.
Oh well. Nobody got hurt. To my utter astonishment, really. Though I did come to recall my earlier complaints about Jake being a bit too short for me, specifically vertically in the torso. The effects of the constriction in areas wherein I conduct little side projects like breathing and pumping blood to my head were lost on me whilst I was out among my adoring public. Okay well it was somebody’s adoring public I didn’t care much for the details. Anyways, once that zipper cut loose I became acutely aware of the significantly higher pressure setting to which my cervical vascular system had been adjusted whilst it was under constriction. With obstacles to its passage removed, there was a wild stampede of fluids up into my brain, the likes of which my fatigued and dehydrated gray matter was unprepared for. It took a lot of sitting very still and some improvised yoga exercises to mitigate the pain and resolve the dispute plaguing my circulatory system. “Okay heart, I know that you and my brain have had your differences, but you need to stop trying to make him squirt out through my ears. My brain has passed precious few hydrostatic pressure tests and I am in no mood to find out exactly where the limit lies.”
So yeah. The hangover associated with Jake Caribou is kind of lame, but I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the experience. A fact that did not escape the notice of the border collie that had been kindly shepherding through the experience. A few unvarnished quotes, as best I can recall them through the miasma of brain damage that I was sustaining at the time:
“That is easily the second-highest energy level I’ve ever seen Jake at, and I only say that because Soki used to do the dance competition wearing him.”
“Yeah, you were prancing like a motherfucker out there. That was really impressive.”
“You know, it’s okay to touch the ground every once in a while. There’s no need to be airborne the entire time.”
“It’s a lot easier for people to interact with you if you… stop, every so often. Or ever. If you go streaking past them at near light speed to the point where they can barely see you then they’re not going to be able to engage with you very well.”
“Seriously though, we need to get you suited up as a dog, because it is painfully obvious that no matter what suit you put on, your energy level defaults straight to ‘dog’ the entire time.”
He makes a good point. Were I dressed as a border collie then spending the entire time bouncing off the ceiling and slathering everyone I see with euphoric affection would be completely normal behavior. I’m pretty sure that “near light speed” and “dog” are comparable velocities. The fact that Jake tried to murder me for offending his previous helmsmen would also seem to push me in that direction. In any case, needless to say I was quite done for the night by then. I poked around and chatted for a bit, but intense aerobic training whilst being slowly strangled will really take a lot out of you. I tried to drop in on the room party that Artica was hosting at the Hilton, but I was there nigh on two minutes when the place got shut down because of noise. Well, you know what they say. The party don’t stop ‘till I walk in.
So, Sunday morning then. I managed to drag myself out of bed (after sleeping from 2 to 6 and then 8 to 11) in time to attend the Egyptology panel. Sleepy John claims that he was there even though I saw no evidence of this. Although assuming that Sleepy John is around at any given time is usually a pretty fair guess. After I finished learning all about the pantheon in which my preferred mask spends his summers, I actually exchanged enough info with SJ for the two of us to encounter one another. There was a whole hell of a lot of nothing going on by then, but we were both hungry so we went to eat a thing.
I feel as though he got a profoundly disappointing experience at the con since he only showed up for Sunday. That day was the most barren in terms of events so far, and the art show had closed by then too. He said that he showed up pretty much exclusively to see me, which was flattering but also a little bit troubling. I do have a pretty winning personality, but I’d hardly say I’d recommend a long trip just to come experience it. I can send all of this schmooze through the internet pretty well for most purposes. It kind of makes me wish I had something more to offer him in terms of conversation and witty asides. I’m not always this entertaining when I’m bereft of the chance to proofread my remarks, and I was pretty burned out by then. I think that the persistent lack of sleep and water was showing. Could just be social fatigue too. Sticking my neck out there for every Tom, Dick, and Furry I come across just because there isn’t shit else to do really will wear on you after a while.
I think I also underestimated the challenge there. Coming up with a good, fresh topic of conversation is easy when it’s somebody new. I could mention literally anything about myself and it would be news to them. Great place to start too. I really like talking about me and damned if talking about me isn’t a tremendously interesting subject. That leaves me in a tough spot though, when I run into someone I’ve never met who I’ve extensively internetted at and thus already has all the important details and quite a bit more besides. That’s kind of an unsettling scenario when you really think about it. Maybe that’s why it felt kind of off.
Really though, I do wish he’d shown up during the earlier part of the con when things were happening and I still had all my most useful brain cells available to me. As it stood I kind of felt like I was putting him out. He came out just to see me, bought me lunch and gave me an adorable stick figure Anubis drawing. And here the best I could do in return was remain mostly conscious and struggle to string words together. I do hate to disappoint but this con really did shred me up after a couple days. Still, chances to meet other Café denizens are quite rare, so I’ll take any that I can get, even if they do pop up under less than ideal circumstances. It was good to see you, Sleepy John.
I poked around a bit after lunch, not really having much direction to move in. I managed to come across Catmonk Shiro, Moth Monarch and a bunch of the other folks I saw at the Transformation Art Jam at AC. It was nice to have a good crowd and a spot to chill out for a bit. I got to play a card game called ‘Love Letter’ for a few rounds. I never did figure out why it was called that, but I did figure out that it should really be called “Goddamnit!”. It has some frustrating game mechanics is what I’m saying.
In any case, the long amount of time that I spent sitting there, coupled with the lack of competing events and incessant pressure from my friends to get a fursuit led me to attend the “My First Fursuit” panel, because that previously unfathomable scenario is becoming a distinct possibility for me now and what the hell else was I going to do? Turns out that panel was critically mislabeled in the conbook description, because it was a fursuit construction panel, and not a fursuit operation panel as I’d been led to believe. Still, useful stuff to know, I guess. Though actually constructing anything is pretty much beyond me. Not only is suitcraft a highly-specialized field that takes a tremendous amount of time and materials to get good at, I’m starting a fair bit lower than most on that front. I’ve never been any good at building things. If I already have a thing and it doesn’t go, by God I’ll make it go, but I’m sure as hell not going to start with no things and end up with any more than zero things.
After that adventure was the ‘FC Unleashed’ variety show, wherein they grabbed a bunch of people who claimed to have talents and threw them up on stage in front of a live audience. Yeah, pretty good architecture to start with. I thought it was worth a look. The crowd was a hoot in itself. Whenever there was a lull you’d get some call going out. Some nonsense word or sound or meme that came from the back and got echoed all around the room. The “mine!” from the Finding Nemo seagulls was a popular one. References to anime and Youtube series were also up there, as well as dozens of other pop culture viscera. When sound problems kept coming up, the seagulls began calling “Mic, mic, mic?” It got to the point where someone from stage crew would show up to fiddle with the thing just based on the pestering of the seagulls alone. It actually shortened the turnaround time between acts considerably. The whole disasco (I guess I smeared together disaster and fiasco) that was our audience is really the best demonstration that I can come up with of what would happen if the internet were actually just a room full of people. Everyone takes their turn parroting meaningless nonsense, and yet somehow we find a way to make that entertaining and useful.
Lots of class acts up there on the stage, as I expected. I really liked how the host changed fursuits three times during the course of it. That was a cool idea. A duet saw one singer propose to the other during a performance of A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. That’s a hell of a finale. There was also a wolf-suited guitarist that had the most stunningly perfect rolling, gravely voice, both for his character and for the song. He did a spectacular rendition of, what else? Sam the Sham’s Hey There Little Red Riding Hood. I’ve never particularly cared for that song or style of music, but you can’t hear someone commit to something with their very soul and completely nail a song harder than anything has ever been nailed and not respect it tremendously.
Next up after that was more fursuiting. Archai had this dangerously saccharine chibi dragon called Sesame, who is about the size of a VW Beetle, that he wanted to try out, and I asked if I could play the herder this time. Normally I wouldn’t impose, but I was totally out of things to do and I wanted to test his assertion that being a dog was my destiny. He agreed, likely because he could really use some support in the giant plushie he was climbing into. The Sesame suit is off-the-charts cute, but lacks both hands and a fire escape. Meaning he can’t get out of the thing or really do much of anything unassisted. That pushed Brinkley into a more helper dog than herder dog role, but I think that he can handle it. Yes Brinkley can do it, yes he can. He’s a good boy. Yes he is. Oh-yes-he-is.
Anyways, I’d been suited up for about two thirds of a second when I realized that Arc was totally, devastatingly right about dogs. Brinkley just slid right on without a hitch, and he had tremendous freedom of movement. I’m confident that I could’ve held my own against any surprise ninja ambush while wearing him. The head was well-sized and quite forgiving as well. I couldn’t get over how smoothly that went. The next thing I couldn’t get over was how adorable his paws were, and how adorable his face was, and this adorable bandanna that he wears and awmughawd Ihavenocharacteristicsthataren’tadorableBRAWHAROWARGH! So yeah, it was nice. I kinda liked it. Arc had a tighter grip on the leash this time around, which is good, as I likely would’ve been out running through the streets had he not reigned me in every so often. Leading off with: “Okay, breathe a little slower. We haven’t even done anything yet.”
Sesame was a big crowd favorite, and for good reason. I’ve never seen anything quite like her. I guess I’m glad for the fact that there was someone pulling some of the attention off me, as I most certainly didn’t need any reason to get any more psyched up. At one point I learned, courtesy of Nevermint’s sergal Ravenholm, that it doesn’t matter how playful and energetic you are, taunting zombies is not a good use of your time. Great show by him though. Four stars, would get eaten again. It’s amazing to see some of these guys in action, particularly when you’re among them. Whether it’s conveying a ravenous desire for the flesh of the living, or just a hunger for some delicious pancakes, there’s always someone doing something interesting out there. Sesame’s “doing something interesting” was pretty much “existing out in public”, which to be honest was still quite a feat given the complications of the suit.
We made it to the headless lounge in short order, or perhaps I should say I headed there because I was burning out again. I found Ace there and got to chat for a bit. He was impressed with my fursuiting, going so far as to say I was a better performer than him. I don’t know as I’d go that far, but I certainly put more into it. Still, it means a lot to hear that from the guy that introduced me to fursuiting. I got some more advice from Archai when he came in to cool down. Very useful stuff, actually. My comical insanity makes for a pretty entertaining disaster whenever I fursuit, but I’m pretty thin on the “actually knowing what I’m doing” end of things. That might be what makes me stand out in a crowd. Most everyone else knows that they shouldn’t do all the stupid crap I do in suit because they know it’ll have them heading back to their room on their hands and knees in 45 minutes. In any case, that was probably the first occasion on which I’ve ever received fursuiting advice beyond “Calm down, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Though I suppose he also did say that often. I really need to get to work on actually developing particular characters. It doesn’t really matter what suit I’m in at the time, the character I most resemble is probably Gir from Invader Zim.
Arc asked if I wanted to hit the dancefloor. That’s something I’m always reluctant to do and that night was no exception. Usually when I “hit the dancefloor” it’s with my face, multiple times. Of course, Brinkley really liked the idea of going out on the dance and he didn’t check with me before running off to do that. So, dancing it was. I’ve never had anything resembling skill, or even competence really, at dancing, but any moron can dance in a fursuit. And by God I wasn’t just any moron, I was a dynamic, super-high-energy moron with nothing to lose. I danced my tail off. Not literally of course, Brinkley is quite well put together. Obviously I wasn’t long at that, but I had a really great time. At one point my paw slipped and broke me out of my rhythm, juxtaposing two very important realizations. “Whoa, this floor is kinda slippery-Ahh! Also I NEEDOXYGENTOLIVEBLURGURURRRR…” Key factor to remain aware of, that. I bailed out to the headless lounge again, wherein I was showered with compliments about my dancing, oddly enough. Way too many of them for it to have been sarcastic or ironic, too. So yeah, apparently somewhere in the midst of that perpetual stumble I was doing out there, some people were entertained. I’ll call that a win.
The other thing that I won was the endurance test, apparently. An equally baffling and unexpected victory, to be sure. Arc tapped out and we went back to his room to retire our respective characters for the night. To my astonishment, I came out of Brinkley very much not entirely destroyed. I could still think and move around on my own power and various other auxiliary functions that I often just wrote off as a loss after suiting. I was astonished by the time as well. We’d been fuzzed up for about two hours at that point, easily one of my longer excursions. I guess Arc’s sage tutelage was paying dividends already. I looked at the late hour and asked Arc about our plans for the immediate future.
“We’re going to meet up with some of my friends from work and get totally sozzled with them.”
“Okay. No problem with that. Great plan, actually. I was speaking more of the slightly less immediate future. Like, tomorrow morning at 11, also known as eight hours from now, when the nice folks at the San Jose Hilton will ask that I leave the premises.”
Turns out Arc had a suitable plan for that too. He had reservations for Monday night, and were I in his position I would’ve used that opportunity to continue to be unconscious straight through into Tuesday before packing up to leave. He was a bit more ambitious about it though. Apparently we were to spend the night in San Francisco and then have the morning to explore that lovely city. It sounded good to me. Since I had a plan, I forged ahead with the getting drunk part of it that, quite sensibly, formed step one.
I never would’ve expected to so quickly be presented with an even furrier workplace than Ryoken and Nevir’s print shop, but one stood before me that night. I was running into Arc’s friends from work constantly throughout the con, and got a chance to drink with three more of them that night. They kept the place quite well stocked, so even my finicky palate was able to find a few things that it really enjoyed. Now then, there is a certain culmination of critical details that merit repeating at this juncture. I mentioned how me forgetting to eat at cons was a thing, and also that California has murderously dry air, thus I was having great difficulty keeping any appreciable amount of water in my body, and how I was recently dressed up in a rather poorly ventilated border collie costume for like, a really long time just before this adventure. To this set of factors I then added a big shelf bristling with liquor. So yeah, the thing that I learned was, if you really want to save money on your alcohol budget then all you’ve gotta do is not eat for most of the day, head out to a desert, then wrap yourself in shag carpet and do intense crossfit for like two hours. You will get drunk immediately as soon as you’re in the same room as some booze and it will be amazing.
Seriously though, I blazed up the BAC meter at nearly the speed of dog, to the point where responsible people were telling me to lay off by like two drinks in. Good thing I still had Arc there to stop my enthusiasm from consuming and ultimately destroying me, as it had threatened to do on many occasions before. Still though, despite (perhaps because of) having been drinking at warp 7 the whole time it was a pretty good night. I had a lot of fun hanging out with those guys and just kind of coasting down off the high I had from snorting a few too many lines of Brinkley. Important process, that.
That was the first night that I actually slept quite soundly, and late into the day as well. Turns out that depriving your body of literally all of its most basic survival needs all at once is a great sleep aid. Of course, the one night that I slept well would have to be the night wherein I had a very good reason to get up that next day. Not because things were going on at the con, quite the opposite of that. Monday was as dead as the wit in this analogy for an extremely dead thing. No, the alarm I’d set on my phone reminded me of the ticking clock that would soon brand me as a trespasser in my room, so I had to set about fixing that. Being that I lacked the crippling hangover I had expected, packing proceeded apace and I actually got out of there in quite good time. Arc offered up his room as a place to stash my stuff temporarily, such that I would be free to… well, not do much of anything, actually. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I had run into a shortage of things to do. So the sensible thing to do is take that concept and mention the sweet merciful fuck out of it right now.
I’ve had a lot of philosophical differences with FC, and despite its being a predominantly good con, this one really got to me. I heard one person laud “Oh I like FC so much more because it’s so long. Anthrocon is nowhere near long enough.” Alright, first thing you got wrong, person who I didn’t stop to argue with because we are clearly polar-opposite human beings and would as such have absolutely nothing productive to say to each other, is your ridiculous assertion that Anthrocon is too short. AC is already at its absolute maximum survivable length, and making it any longer would be criminally irresponsible. If you feel like you need more con still at the end of Anthrocon then you clearly didn’t Anthrocon hard enough. Never in my life have I mocked someone for being a little bitch and not partying hard enough, but that is the only possible explanation for this perception of yours existing.
Secondly, AC packs about five days’ worth of events into three days, making for a non-stop thrill-ride of everything you’ve ever secretly (or openly) wanted to do in your life. They don’t take two days’ worth of events and stretch them out over four days to make what would’ve been a nice quick weekend con into a sparse, lethargic and unnecessarily padded Hobbit trilogy slog, and Anthrocon sure as hell doesn’t just push the dead dog back a day in order to claim that their con is an extra day long while adding absolutely nothing to the experience in so doing. That’s essentially all FC did with Monday, just delay the official end of the con until Monday night so that they could go to it on the calendar and stick a victory flag in that day. Yeah, the con was technically still “going on”, but the art show had closed the previous morning, the marketplace, dealers’ den and atrium had closed the previous night and there were FOUR events scheduled the entire day, and with that assessment I’m being very charitable in assigning needlefelting the title of “event”.
The content Monday was nothing that you couldn’t accomplish by simply loitering in a hotel with a sufficiently large group. Tacking on a bullshit extra day stuffed with packing peanuts and lingering disappointment does not make you better than Anthrocon! Yes, come to FC’s vaunted bonus day! Sit around in lobbies, wander around the convention hall wondering why it seems like anyone with any common sense has gone home! Experience the hollow disappointment of knowing that you’re prolonging the suffering of this shambling zombie convention that is being kept on its feet against its will! Eat out with friends, find some new friends and go out to eat with them! Find still more entirely random people because you’re desperate for companionship in the cold emptiness that remains in the con-void that you remain trapped in! Then go out to eat with them even though you just ate an hour ago because you’ve got fuck all else to do! C’mahn! It’ll be “fun”!
There, now that was rather passionate and opinionated, so let me temper it a bit by saying that in no way do I find that particular sin unforgiveable. I still managed to have some fun that day just by virtue of there being enough furries around that the volumetric fun density was still rather significantly above average around there. Really it’s just that the experience was insulting more than anything else. It certainly could be an East Coast/West Coast thing. I know there are quite a few venerable pastimes of the west which any self-respecting New Yorker would greet with “Quit wasting my fuckin’ time, hippie!” For all I know most locals were frothing with glee at the prospect of digging into the vast preponderance of sawdust and month-old macaroons that Monday was stuffed with to keep its thin veneer of legitimacy from collapsing in on itself. Really though, I think a lot of the things that I continued bewilderingly crashing into like a poorly-mapped zone border at the edge of the game’s map were just artifacts of the fact that this con was not for me. For a long time FC was a local gathering and it only rose to national attention because of how large it became and, presumably, because they are good at things.
Even going out to eat with a group of people and not eating anything was surprisingly fun. It’s kind of nice to get the whole restaurant social atmosphere without all that messy and inconvenient eating nonsense getting in the way of it. The group that Archai assembled for that excursion seemed to get along with me pretty well. Half of them asked me for my twitter handle, something that had been requested of me probably a dozen times that con. It’s flattering because people I’ve known on the order of minutes are saying they’d really like to hear every little thought that pops into my head, narcissistically broadcast out onto the net for their consumption, and it’s a little embarrassing because I still lack one of those. I guess that’s the silicon valley spirit talking there.
In addition to the matter of buying a fursuit, the decision of whether or not I ought to join all of these twits in their twitterpating is another matter upon which my resolve is being persistently worn down by those I associate with at furry cons. I know a good handful of people that have twitter as their only reliably-checked means of communication, and it seems like a pretty effective means of keeping my finger on the pulse of my various social circles at conventions.
Arc pointed out that the Twitters can be hacked upon such as to twitificate to archaic telegraphs like the one that I carry with me in my pocket. I’d never even considered the idea of trying to read all of this interstellar sub-space comm-traffic off of the tickertape that my machine puts out, but apparently it can be done. I don’t much fancy the idea of my phone just bursting at the seams at all times with all the random irreverent nonsense that twitter seems to run on, though. The only reason that I can leave my phone on when I go to bed or during lecture is that I have no friends and so no one is ever trying to contact me during those times. Presumably there’s some way to stick a binder clip on Twitter’s beak during times I don’t particularly need to hear from it, such as literally any other time besides when I’m attending a convention. I may have to look into that. Realistically I don’t even have to Twit any actual words. I can just use it to keep up with the furry fandom’s many Joneses and have an actual response when people want to use it to keep in contact with me, which very much is a thing that I want, regardless of my general distain for the Twitverse in general.
Later in the afternoon I did the whole handler/geneticist-showcasing-his-latest-creations thing and followed around Arc and one of his friends as they did the whole fursuiting/imitating-a-grievous-research-ethics-violation thing. Not something I’d ideally like to fill a huge chunk of a day with. Watching other people have fun in a mostly-empty convention hall wears thin quickly, but as discussed before, I had nothing else to do and thanks to my eviction that morning, nowhere else to go. Still managed to have good times, and found free brownies that were crazy good, bigass chunks of chocolate and the whole deal. Made me think that they weren’t free, or intended for me, but them’s the breaks when you leave your refreshment tables unattended. After Arc got out of his fur and dried out a bit, we did a few runs to throw gear into the back of that armored personnel carrier that brought it here and ran it all back to his place.
Now, I’d selected a return flight on Tuesday with the intent of leaving some time to explore San Francisco a bit before coming back home. This was before I knew about the secret day they had added to the end of the con after they’d constructed it in the back room from defunct engine parts and old milk crates. I figured that such a trip would be a wash now thanks to the extra delay. Apparently I underestimated Archai’s desire to display that lovely city to me, as he spent the evening working tirelessly to move heaven and Earth to jam a little San Francisco into my remaining time.
He found me a spot at his friend’s place actually in the city so that we could sleep there and already be where we needed to be at daybreak. For the life of me I can’t remember my host’s name from there, but you know, huge sea of new faces, myriad different forms of brain damage, etc. We’ve been through this before. The logistical snag about it was that it seemed as though a half dozen or so other people had also claimed a spot to stay there for the night. As such the location was critically short on trivial things like sleeping space and blankets. On the trip over, Archai was explaining to me that one of the last-resort plans they had in place was for some of us to sleep in fursuits for warmth. I had high hopes for a trip in which the worst-case scenario was THE MOST AWESOME IDEA I’VE EVER HEARD.
Not quite the stellar performance as that lead in had set me up for, but I was okay with anything by then. At about 3 in the morning we ended up in a basement walk-in closet that I’m sure charged rent comparable to the five-bedroom house I rented in Portsmouth. It was in one of those bars-on-the-windows, your-car-will-almost-certainly-be-broken-into areas that I normally associate with the neighborhoods bordering naval shipyards. We might’ve actually been close to one for all I know. I was paying very little attention by then. We spent a fair amount of time shuffling about and getting all of the furry flophouse’s denizens in order for the night. I never stepped on anyone, which was really my only goal as far as hospitality was concerned.
I’m certain that the other guests that night gained an awful impression of me, as I was far beyond my limit of exhaustion. Once again, it was untenably late and I had my throttle set at “Anthrocon: power through three days and then collapse into your own grave” not at “Further Confusion: make sure you leave enough gas to coast through the extraneous day distended off of the end of this con like a cancerous protuberance”. I felt kind of bad because I was technically a guest during all my surly shamblings about that place. Arc said that he hoped the conditions would be alright, but they were far from my worst sleeping arrangements ever. They might make the top 5 narrowly, but I could manage it. Hell, right then I probably could’ve slept pretty well if my accommodations were just a trash can with an ornery raccoon in it. I’m sure that I could’ve befriended and/or strangled any rodent guests as necessary to get some rest if that was the case. The only really irredeemable thing about the room was that they were running a dehumidifier. Remember how the desert air was slowly mummifying me over the weekend? Yeah, that thing was still a thing. Don’t get me wrong I don’t really blame anyone for it. That’s an absolutely brilliant way to dry out a fursuit, but I still woke up in quite a bad mood based on the fact that it felt like I’d spent the whole night trying to breathe a handful of broken glass.
It took us a little while to get moving out of there in the morning. Can’t fathom why… But in any case my tour of the lovely city of whatever-San-Fran-is-the-city-of was somewhat abbreviated. I’d say Arc was more disappointed than I was. I’m not usually much for sightseeing. I’m usually more of a sightdoer, and there wasn’t really time for that. We got to head down to the beach and walk there for a bit. That’s always a favorite stop of mine. My passion for beachfronts and the ocean was one of the things that pushed me into the navy, wherein I was continually disappointed by how few beach-and-ocean-related things were actually involved in the job. It is a pretty city. Combine that with the almost creepily ideal weather in most of the state and I can see why it costs about as much to live there for three weeks as it does to get open heart surgery. That sort of stuff is valuable, and rightly so. We got to traverse the Golden Gate because I’m pretty sure that’s legally required for visitors. The overlook point near there was quite stunning, definitely worth a stop. Spots like that are another fascinating artifact of California’s “hey let’s just plop these mountains right next to the ocean” geographical stratagem. It’s quite a sight to see.
The issue of food came up, because apparently I did still need regular reminders of its existence. Time was running short though, so I opted for something near the airport instead of the much more culturally steeped food trucks along the boardwalk or under the freeway overpass or wherever it was they were. In-N-Out Burger sounded like a great idea to me. Anyone I’ve met who has so much as flown over California at low altitude has been stark raving mad about In-N-Out. I’m pretty sure that any one of them would’ve murdered me in cold blood if it meant they could have another double-double from that place. I pretty much have to try it when the hype is that cartoonishly exaggerated.
The place certainly was doing a brisk business when we got there. I saw a guy holding a whole potato back there, the purpose of which I couldn’t fathom until I saw him cutting it into fries, right then, in front of me, seconds before they went into the fryer. That’s a clear sign of a foodery that is very much not fucking around. Arc told me about the “animal style” cheatcode on the secret menu which, apart from being quite thematically appropriate, means that your burger comes slathered in thousand island dressing and grilled onions. Of course I ordered it like that. Why isn’t all food available like that? When my order got to me, it turned out that they’d taken me up on making ALL of the things animal style and had animaled up my fries as well. Not that I could complain. They were pretty damn good. In the end, it was an above-average fast food joint that seemed to actually give a couple fucks in an age where that is quite rare, but it fell well short of the orgiastic praise that I’ve been mired in by essentially everyone who’s even familiar with the place. Ah well, it got the job done and I was close enough to the airport to not have to worry about the time any more. I’ll call it a win.
Apparently my worry was justified, as the lines at the airport were quite substantial, and very poorly organized. I wasted a lot of precious time trying to figure out which rat-maze led to the unwashed proletariat line, as it was thoroughly lost among the several dozen different levels of super-air-plus-double-chocolatey-fudge-coated-ultra-platinum-mega-bonus-enhanced-gluten-free-magical-partybus lines. I was toting some substantial quantities of sand from the beach around in my shoes at that time, which I got to muse upon while I moved slowly through the queue. I didn’t feel right taking it so far away from its home, so I managed to surreptitiously upend my shoes and shake them a bit when they had to be inspected by security. Hey, that’s how it works, man. You make me take off my shoes, I get sand all over your airport. Thug life.
Going coast to coast is quite a long ways, even with the advantage of metal wings and not having to worry about trying to ford a river or any of my party members contracting cholera. I actually got out my laptop and drained the battery all the way down using it during the flight, mostly working on this dramatic account of my travels that you now see before you. Usually I don’t bother with it, but as I mentioned, I had a long way to go and I lacked the diversion of stopping to shoot some buffalo or trade with the natives. I connected at Midway, an airport I’d never been to before. For those not in the loop it’s better known as “that one that’s not O’Hare.” It was a nice place and it seemed well run, but in the end fuck them for not having free wifi. It is the future now goddamn it! Infinity free internets should fall from the sky everywhere I go!
Now for the second leg of the journey, recall once again, again, the humidity deficits that I encountered during this particular incredible journey. Now adding in the night that I spent in a slightly more uncomfortable version of a dairy processing plant’s desiccating room immediately followed by the still drier air and repeated rapid changes in pressure associated with prolonged flight and it all basically adds up to a gigantic suckerpunch to all of the delicate repair work that my platelets had been doing on my abused, crusty sinus cavity that weekend. Protip you guys, if you’re going to start spewing blood from your nose, do it NOT on an airplane. It freaks them out a little bit. However, if you have your heart set on high-altitude nasal hemorrhaging, Southwest is not a bad choice. They keep up their lighthearted and congenial nature even through the worst of times, and that made it kind of bearable.
“Yes sir, what can I do for- ah, you’re bleeding. Excellent use of the call button, sir. You wouldn’t believe what frivolous things people press them for. Come with me and we’ll get you taken care of.”
Once they got me up to the front of the plane they got a little more serious as they did a fair deal of what I’m pretty sure was treatment for shock. I think they interpreted my calm (from having had this happen a hundred times before) and lethargy (from doing all of the everything and irresponsibly abusing my body) for symptoms of it. That was nice of them, but unnecessary. I suppose I can’t blame them though. It pays to fail conservatively with someone in your care who may or may not be in the process of dying horribly. It got us into an earlier landing spot so… yay fragile capillaries I guess. The mood lightened a fair bit when I told them that it was from overexerting myself practicing my telekinesis. They actually mentioned that when they got on the announcing circuit to tell everyone that I was going to live. The best was: “Alright everyone, we’ll be landing in Rochester in about ten minutes, provided our friend up here hasn’t succeeded in teleporting it to another location.”
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In a completely unanticipated twist, FA has once again proven unable to handle all of the mad crazy words I be spittin' atcha. I'm appending the rest in a comment, as it hardly merits a part three.
Further Confusion was kind of tough to draw a bead on. Having never been to California before, I had precious few contacts in the area. FC is mostly bay-area furs, though it’s not like some other cons where being unable to travel very far and it being the only con in the Seattle area are the only reasons for attending. For FC the overwhelming proportion of locals is merely a function of that area somehow getting all of the furries ever, edging out the travelers just by overwhelming force of coincidence. Many of the people who travel to get here are simply trying to extract money from the endeavor, though I suppose that California has a long history of travelers from the east trying to extract money from it. The bay is still a goldmine though, in a figurative sense. From what I can see, it’s saturated with lucrative tech-sector jobs thanks to the overwhelming influence of Silicon Valley. And if you can’t get one of those fancier jobs, I’m sure there would be some money to be made in scavenging the refuse from companies that are well known for throwing out perfectly good server stacks. I’m probably going to mention that another half a dozen times or so because it’s just blowing my goddamn mind. I once spent several days of arduous labor troubleshooting and repairing a circuit card which I confirmed to be slightly older than me and these guys are going around just throwing out entire practically new processor arrays like it ain’t no thang.
I may or may not have mentioned that my discovering the convenient location of Archai’s domicile and the potential utility of that fact was a very recent revelation. And now I’ve mentioned it for certain. Hah! Take that, undefined quantum superposition! In any case, I was very glad for his presence there at the con. Now that I’ve got a solid amount of experience, I’m pretty comfortable doing my own thing a lot of the time. Being a stranger in a strange land at FC though, it felt a lot like I was back at AC 2012, scrambling about without any knowledge of whether or not I was going in the right direction. As such, I really did have need of a best friend at this con. Someone that I knew I could come back to check in with every once in a while, and who could let me know what the fuck if the status of the what being fuck or not ever came into question, as it sometimes does.
Archai being local was extremely helpful, as I got a base of operations, transportation, and a wise Sherpa guide out of the deal. That last one was a helpful reference for when I came upon aspects of the west coast experience that baffled me. When I say that things about the place confused me to no end, bear in mind the very significant detail that I came to this place at great expense to meet the people who draw my porn and to play with the adults who dress up in cartoon animal costumes as a hobby, and Cali still managed to come up with practices and behaviors that I found to be weird and nonsensical even given my own purpose there. I’m not sure what Arc got out of our arrangement, necessarily, other than the chance to enrich his life via the influence of my magnanimous presence. Which, to be fair, is far more valuable than all the fancy new soon-to-be-refuse server stacks that money can buy.
Friday started with a liquid breakfast, which is not such a bad thing as it sounds. I’ve been trying out Soylent, which is the all-in-one nutritionally perfect beverage that science fiction has always promised us. Or at least it purports to be. It actually performed quite admirably at FC. Forgetting to eat at cons is a big problem for me. My only saving grace is how going out to eat is very common among the people I'm hanging out with. If I didn't have so many people around reminding me that food is a thing that I need I'd probably hit the floor before recalling that on my own. This fancy nutrient sludge makes a perfect con breakfast, really. Breakfast is really hard to coordinate with other people because everyone stumbles blearily out of bed over a very wide range of different times, and God help you if your text message asking about food wakes someone up. So yeah, shuffling to the fridge to grab and chug a vaguely food-like liquid first thing in the morning is actually a pretty good way to start the day under the circumstances. I've realized that getting up after a profoundly late night and thinking "Ah fuck I need to jam something in my face that will induce temporary not-dying and I need to do it right goddamn now because I have to go do ALL the things all day" is the perfect mindset to be in when trying to drink the stuff.
FC was quite light on events, it seemed, but socializing heavily at cons has become a thing for me of late. So I got no shortage of chances to try that out. One of the end results of my self-imposed immersion therapy for social awkwardness is that I now feel pretty much okay with walking up to people I’ve never met and saying “Hi, I’m from the internet! We should hang out.” The status of the people in question feeling pretty much okay with that is kind of hit-or-miss, as you might expect, but it works WAY more often than you’d think, a majority of the time, actually. It worked great with Felekar, and half a dozen other people whose names I can’t remember. The thing about having random encounters comprise the bulk of your social interaction is that details get lost quickly. My memory is largely associative, so if I’m only barely starting to form a picture of people it’s kind of difficult to get anything to stick in regards to them. At the end of the day you end up with this kind of thing: “I actually don’t remember how I came to be in the company of these guys, but they seem pretty cool and we’re going to get pizza. Want to come?” It’s worth noting that despite the sparse schedule, I went to bed at about 2 AM every day of the con. So I certainly found ways to fill the time, even if I can’t remember what all of them actually were because I wasn’t performing proper brain maintenance during that period.
The first event that I went to was Friday afternoon. It was called ‘Save the Cat’ and was based on the book by the same name. That book has been basically the bible of screenwriting for the last 25 years or so. You can blame it for the fact that cinema has taken “foreshadowing” to mean “if you don’t give away the ending of your movie as quickly as possible you’re doing it wrong” and for the way all movies appear to be becoming more and more similar to each other such that they appear to be approaching some sort of singularity wherein the coming Orwellian dystopia will contain only one movie that has been determined to be the ideal pinnacle of filmmaking such that no further movies are necessary. In any case, a book doesn’t gain that kind of reputation by being entirely worthless. There were a lot of insightful points brought up. It’s astonishing how specifically you can pigeonhole so many aspects of the writing and storytelling processes. It makes the act of creation seem so rigid and sterile to think of it in the clinical terms that the book presents. Really though, it’s useful to know the rules that everyone else is playing by, and if you’re trying to appeal to an audience, it’s helpful to know what they’re going to be looking for. Thinking about the process in such terms can help you organize your thoughts and get everything in order. Though it’s quite a romanticized image, just sitting down with some blank paper and expecting everything to just come to you by providence is kind of irresponsible if you really think about it.
Friday night was mostly spent hanging out with Arc has he bounced around the convention wearing Brinkley, his border collie. Just following a suiter around isn’t necessarily a way to paint the town red, but it actually worked out okay. I had my labcoat on and did my best to remain as unflappable as I could, no matter what Brinkley’s antics were at the time. It made for a nice Abbot and Costello sort of angle with me serving as the reserved, low-energy foil to his cocaine-addled excitement torpedo. I think it made for a good performance.
“Would you like the ball?”
“Aw mugawed! Yes I wouldverymuchliketheballyesyesyesyes!”
“I’m not yet convinced. I don’t think you’re quite serious about this ball.”
“NOOOOO! You have to pick me, Ineedtheball Ihavetohaveityoudon’tunderstandit’sSOOOOimportant!”
“Hmm, you do make a compelling argument. Let me take a quick straw poll and see if anyone else wants the ball more than you.”
Et al.
The labcoat actually performed quite well at this con. I’m not sure if they’re rarer in the west or something, but I never saw anyone else with one and a LOT of people noticed mine. A whole lot of different reactions too. I had to work on my Kage impression because so many people expected me to have one. I can see that though. Drunk, close cut hair, directionless rambling, labcoat, what could I be doing besides cosplaying as the Good Doctor Conway himself? Lots of people walked by singing a few bars of the Portal song to get me to join in. Good thing I know the whole thing. Thanks, Rock Band! There was a suiter with a big plushie Companion Cube that wanted a picture with me. Somewhere out there there’s video of me being interviewed about a recent zombie outbreak. A security guard asked me if my research was responsible for all the weird animal people. In an elevator I heard this snippet of a phone conversation immediately after getting on. “Hey, you know how the new suit is going to have a labcoat? We totally need to sew an Aperture Laboratories logo onto it. That would be the coolest fucking thing.” So yeah, slam dunk on that one. The Bay definitely knows how to science.
After we put the dog to bed, we headed up to the party floor. That’s not normally a place that I’d go, but once again FC was kinda short on alternatives. The whole fourth floor of the hotel had the floor covered in plastic, so that’s a whole bunch of “knowing your audience” points to the Marriot. The BLFC room managed to attract quite a crowd. It was a little difficult to navigate, but it seemed like a nice place. They had quite a few good drinks there. Unfortunately they were quite secretive about the mixes, so I didn’t really learn anything useful from it. I do wish the biggest little con was better timed, as I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that it’s a great time. I saw CasidheVixen there at the bulufkuh room, which was a treat. Both because he’s a great guy, and did me the honor of being familiar with my work and recognizing me. That’s always an unexpected honor. Despite my gregariousness at cons, the power of my celebrity doesn’t broadcast very far.
A group of Klingons also hosted a party room, so that was our next stop. It was funny to hear that a few years ago a bunch of navy guys had shamed them by drinking them dry. Heh, they’ve gotta remember that they may drink to have fun, but the navy does it professionally. The Klingon room was nice because they had access to a balcony. That meant lots more room and a chance to enjoy the beautiful California weather. Everyone kept talking about how cold it was, but they were all hilariously wrong. I met up with AceFox and a few other friends out there and got to have a great time with them. Ace went to the bathroom, so naturally I stole his head and paws while he was gone. I was enjoying those quite thoroughly with those assembled. Arc came back from getting more drinks and spent much effort in trying to figure out what drugs I had taken while he was gone. In his words:
“Okay, when I left you’d had like two drinks and you were standing there quietly. Now you’re bouncing off the walls, you’re all over these people, you just punched that guy in the nuts and you’re just completely out of control. What the heck is going on?”
So yeah, having even just part of a fursuit makes something of a noteworthy change in my personality. I snapped right back once Ace came to reclaim his accessories. I’d forgotten that Arc had never seen me do any fursuiting before. Apparently it’s quite a trip to see that happen for the first time. In any case, we called it a night not long after that, but of course the con was just getting started.
This is quite unusual for me given my apparently-obsessive attention to detail, but be damned if I can’t remember what I did Saturday morning. It wasn’t like everything dissolved into a nauseous blur with the assistance of all like four drinks from the previous night. I’ve never gotten blackout drunk and I’m pretty sure I have far too weak of a stomach to pull that off regardless. I think it’s just a matter of the fact that I always use events as a landmark to pin together these accounts after the fact, and Saturday had absolutely fuck all of interest until the fursuit parade in the afternoon. Meaning that until then everything is kind of uncharted territory.
My recall on this con isn’t as sharp as usual, likely because I think this is the most severe sleep deprivation I’ve ever had at a convention. That exceeds even AC, wherein I often find myself literally running from one event to another to try and jam everything in. I’d say it’s mainly a matter of my finding an excuse to stay out stupid late every single night and the fact that the time difference was stopping me from sleeping late in the morning. So yeah, most of my days started with going to bed at two and then waking up at 8ish thinking “Goddamnit everyone else is still asleep and there isn’t anything to do for another three hours. Fuck you, circadian rhythms!”
Speaking of the oppressive conditions that I suffered, have I mentioned how dry it is there? It’s kinda freaky, actually. I don’t remember Texas being anywhere near this dry, and where I was in the Big T was considerably further from any oceans. It was probably about the same absolute humidity as it was back home, but it was about 60 degrees most of the time, which made the dryness devastating. I got sidelined with nosebleeds on more than one occasion. Usually during the “why in God’s name am I awake right now” part of my day, so it wasn’t a huge burden. Still though, dangerous lack of water around those parts. You’d almost think that we were bordering on some sort of desert region or other. Good thing we’re in America though, where tap water is a clean and ludicrously plentiful resource. That’s what let me draw up two inches of water in the bathtub just to see what would happen. I left it there and it had evaporated down to a little ring around the drain by nightfall. That is just… not natural.
Speaking of unnatural things that happen in California, the first event on Saturday that was actually worth turning out to (or remembering, apparently) was the fursuit parade. I always go to those because it really is quite a show, and there is an unnerving preponderance of fursuiters (hundreds, easily) that I’ll only ever see in the parade. I don’t know what they’re here to do if they just want to show off their suit the one time and keep all these fantastic creations in the closet the rest of the time, but whatever. I’m still happy to see them out there. Big props to that critter who was in the parade blasting Maroon 5’s “Animals” out of his boom box. Point one because that is the absolute best song choice for this event ever. Not only is it thematically appropriate for obvious reasons and a totally bitchin’ song, if you listen to the lyrics even somewhat closely you’ll note that while they are predominantly harmless nonsense they’re sometimes intensely sexual in somewhat deviant ways, so yeah, great representation of the audience. Point two came from him using an actual full-size shoulder-mounted music bazooka from the 90s. Yeah, I know that these days they make Bluetooth speakers that cost $1.29 and are the size of my uncle’s pacemaker. I’ll start giving a fuck about them when they stop sounding like a pennywhistle being played by an asthmatic possum at the bottom of a well.
I suppose that I could go into exhaustive detail about the parade. Hell I can go into exhaustive detail about pretty much anything and make it somewhat readable, but you wouldn’t really get much out of hearing about the parade secondhand. Everybody goes by too fast to catch any names, and even I’m not good enough to make just a simple verbal description of the event at all compelling. “Tennis-ball-colored saber-toothed tiger wearing a polka-dot vest” really just sounds like I’m just stringing together random words to fill time. It’s all about the spectacle. Me trying to describe this in text would be like trying to describe a David Copperfield act in text.
“Yep. The Eiffel Tower disappeared. … I don’t know, it’s just fucking gone! Deal with it.”
Speaking of the third paragraph in a row that I’ve started with “speaking of”, let’s move to the next brain landmark. That would have to be the writing panel by the title of “The First Fifteen Seconds”. This was one that I really wanted to get to because it’s a very critical concept in the process of one’s getting published. When your work hits the desk of a slush pile editor, their goal is not to find the next great American novel. Their goal is to be done reviewing the slush pile as quickly as possible because they have 200 submissions on the table in front of them. This means that for most of the things they find on the table, they’ll flip through a couple hundred words. If you fail to impress them in that time, you get pushed off the desk back into obscurity.
My writing does have a tendency to cold-start because of the way I build momentum in the exposition. Even this narrative, you’ll notice, meanderingly stumbled out of the gate with a bunch of irreverent minutiae about travel, and likely excessive vocabulary as well, seeing as I just managed to put “irreverent” and “minutiae” right goddamn next to each other. That kind of thing can be lethal when trying to get something published, so hashing all that kind of stuff out with a few experienced authors was useful. Judging by their accounts, getting published is a profoundly miserable process. I wouldn’t worry about it too much though. Extrapolating from my present pace, I won’t have a completed manuscript to publish for another 20-odd years.
After that I had errands and commerce and such. The Dealers’ Den could best be described as a gently circulating slow motion stampede. Much of the room was shoulder-to-shoulder crowds and navigation was quite a challenge. I was thinking it was just an opening rush, but the people who have been to this con many times before said that was about typical and it would only get worse. Apparently it’s quite common for the den there to just get exponentially more crowded all day long until closing time when they break out the riot gas. Laaaaame. Fortunately though I was under very little time pressure vis-à-vis, having nothing else going on for a long-ass time. I managed to get my cargo delivered to Sidian okay. Apparently she’d heard from a number of people who met the description that she was asking after, so maybe by the end of the con she was simply awash in exotic sweets. I do hope that the diabetic coma won’t interfere with her work. I never really got the chance to ask if that ended up being the case, since after completing my delivery and every point from there on I found myself in the position of obstructing people who were trying to give Sidian money, a spot I work very hard to never be in. None of these guys come to my job and step all over my toes while I’m trying to get shit done. I feel they deserve the same courtesy.
I also visited SummerCat at the Neon Phoenix booth. I said that I’d stop in and say hi, and indeed I did. I managed to pick up a copy of Anthropomorphic’s Review Magazine, which is as yet my only publishing credit. That made it immensely valuable to me, though it looked not to be the case for most everyone else in attendance. I doubt we’ll be seeing any more issues of that. In somewhat less depressing news from the Phoenix, they were doing a brisk trade in Furry Fuel, their furry-themed energy drink. Naturally my metabolism was plenty out-of-sorts by then so I didn’t have any interest in the stuff. Still, Hoshi Kitsunuki, the artist for the can design, was there hawking the drinks and I guess technically promoting her work. We got to talking and I somehow became an impromptu sales associate for a while there. People trust a guy in a labcoat, y’know? They sold out of their concoction by Sunday, so I’ll call that a job well done. It was in my temporary apprenticeship there that Reese Tora came by and we got to chat a bit. Quite a bit of luck just coming across him like that. I’m always glad for a chance to see someone from the Cross Time Café though.
That evening Archai’s curiosity got the better of him and he got it into his head that he ought to test out just exactly how much my demeanor changes when I’m properly dressed for an occasion such as this. Naturally I was ecstatic for the opportunity. I had fallen in love with the new caribou character he had acquired recently and I campaigned passionately for the chance to take the wheel on him. It took a little while, but we finally arrived at an amenable compromise.
“I just don’t feel comfortable sending you out unsupervised in Jake.”
“Unsupervised? Who said anything about unsupervised? You damn well better not send me anywhere unsupervised, I have not the slightest idea what I’m doing!”
“Ah, well that’s different then.”
“You have a herding animal at your disposal. Grab him, and as Neil Patrick Harris would say ‘Let’s suit up’!”
And indeed we did. And it was glorious. Jake Caribou is one majestic son of a bitch and looking in the mirror made me feel inadequate just by the sheer brilliance of my reflection. I would’ve never guessed this, but hooves are just the best, you guys. Seriously, they are the BEST. Like… one time I called a small, family-owned pizza shop in the city to find out their hours. At the end of the call, kind of as a joke, I asked “So, how is your pizza there?” He in his classic, emphatic New Yorker accent, forcefully stated “Iz da fuckin’ best.” Before ardently slamming down the phone to punish me for having the hubris to ask such a stupid question. THAT is how “the best” having hooves is. Oh my God. If you want a good sense of my demeanor, it was pretty much like this. So yeah, hooves. That’s a thing. That caribou have. And that I got to wear. Carbon fiber too, not even the stock model!
Anyways, part of Archai’s concern was that the suit had been pretty popular using its previous name ‘Lou Caribou’, under the piloting of Soki. He was worried about the snags that the character’s former celebrity had caused. Heh, well of the five suits I’ve ever worn, it’s pretty much an even split between women and gay men for their actual owners, all of whom were quite popular. This was actually kind of a step down in terms of potential awkwardness due to reputation. What with Soki being known as rather reserved and not particularly inclined towards touchy-feely stuff, and his being, as Archai put it “stoutly and emphatically straight”. So yeah, I stayed pretty light on my hooves with such a light burden of publicity to bear. Yeah, a dozen or so people thought I was Soki. Who cares? I have HOOVES goddamnit! Even I don’t give a fuck who I am!
I actually did get to meet Soki during my adventure. He was wearing his latest and greatest caribou as it happened, giving a lot of people a reason to doubletake. I was baffled by how the Jake suit could be so short on me given that its original owner looked like he had his dramatic entrances punctuated by that heavy low-brass orchestral sting that they use in movie trailers to let you know that a massive radioactive something-or-other is about to totally waste your city. Yeah, you know the one. Soki possesses an imposing frame is what I’m saying. That’s what made it so distressing that I’d not yet been enlightened to certain aspects of his personality before our impromptu meeting. Namely that he doesn’t particularly care for bodysnatchers that he just met climbing all over him with only the barest provocation. Yeah, I overdid that. And also everything, but I overdid that one thing in particular. I’m really glad that my face was covered by an artifice for which Soki had a good deal of reverence. The outward caribou face was probably all that kept the inner stupid human face from being punched resoundingly at least once. Even though Archai had his expressions similarly disguised, I still picked up a pretty strong “See? This is exactly the kind of shit that I was worried about.” Vibe from him. Oops.
Oh well. Nobody got hurt. To my utter astonishment, really. Though I did come to recall my earlier complaints about Jake being a bit too short for me, specifically vertically in the torso. The effects of the constriction in areas wherein I conduct little side projects like breathing and pumping blood to my head were lost on me whilst I was out among my adoring public. Okay well it was somebody’s adoring public I didn’t care much for the details. Anyways, once that zipper cut loose I became acutely aware of the significantly higher pressure setting to which my cervical vascular system had been adjusted whilst it was under constriction. With obstacles to its passage removed, there was a wild stampede of fluids up into my brain, the likes of which my fatigued and dehydrated gray matter was unprepared for. It took a lot of sitting very still and some improvised yoga exercises to mitigate the pain and resolve the dispute plaguing my circulatory system. “Okay heart, I know that you and my brain have had your differences, but you need to stop trying to make him squirt out through my ears. My brain has passed precious few hydrostatic pressure tests and I am in no mood to find out exactly where the limit lies.”
So yeah. The hangover associated with Jake Caribou is kind of lame, but I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the experience. A fact that did not escape the notice of the border collie that had been kindly shepherding through the experience. A few unvarnished quotes, as best I can recall them through the miasma of brain damage that I was sustaining at the time:
“That is easily the second-highest energy level I’ve ever seen Jake at, and I only say that because Soki used to do the dance competition wearing him.”
“Yeah, you were prancing like a motherfucker out there. That was really impressive.”
“You know, it’s okay to touch the ground every once in a while. There’s no need to be airborne the entire time.”
“It’s a lot easier for people to interact with you if you… stop, every so often. Or ever. If you go streaking past them at near light speed to the point where they can barely see you then they’re not going to be able to engage with you very well.”
“Seriously though, we need to get you suited up as a dog, because it is painfully obvious that no matter what suit you put on, your energy level defaults straight to ‘dog’ the entire time.”
He makes a good point. Were I dressed as a border collie then spending the entire time bouncing off the ceiling and slathering everyone I see with euphoric affection would be completely normal behavior. I’m pretty sure that “near light speed” and “dog” are comparable velocities. The fact that Jake tried to murder me for offending his previous helmsmen would also seem to push me in that direction. In any case, needless to say I was quite done for the night by then. I poked around and chatted for a bit, but intense aerobic training whilst being slowly strangled will really take a lot out of you. I tried to drop in on the room party that Artica was hosting at the Hilton, but I was there nigh on two minutes when the place got shut down because of noise. Well, you know what they say. The party don’t stop ‘till I walk in.
So, Sunday morning then. I managed to drag myself out of bed (after sleeping from 2 to 6 and then 8 to 11) in time to attend the Egyptology panel. Sleepy John claims that he was there even though I saw no evidence of this. Although assuming that Sleepy John is around at any given time is usually a pretty fair guess. After I finished learning all about the pantheon in which my preferred mask spends his summers, I actually exchanged enough info with SJ for the two of us to encounter one another. There was a whole hell of a lot of nothing going on by then, but we were both hungry so we went to eat a thing.
I feel as though he got a profoundly disappointing experience at the con since he only showed up for Sunday. That day was the most barren in terms of events so far, and the art show had closed by then too. He said that he showed up pretty much exclusively to see me, which was flattering but also a little bit troubling. I do have a pretty winning personality, but I’d hardly say I’d recommend a long trip just to come experience it. I can send all of this schmooze through the internet pretty well for most purposes. It kind of makes me wish I had something more to offer him in terms of conversation and witty asides. I’m not always this entertaining when I’m bereft of the chance to proofread my remarks, and I was pretty burned out by then. I think that the persistent lack of sleep and water was showing. Could just be social fatigue too. Sticking my neck out there for every Tom, Dick, and Furry I come across just because there isn’t shit else to do really will wear on you after a while.
I think I also underestimated the challenge there. Coming up with a good, fresh topic of conversation is easy when it’s somebody new. I could mention literally anything about myself and it would be news to them. Great place to start too. I really like talking about me and damned if talking about me isn’t a tremendously interesting subject. That leaves me in a tough spot though, when I run into someone I’ve never met who I’ve extensively internetted at and thus already has all the important details and quite a bit more besides. That’s kind of an unsettling scenario when you really think about it. Maybe that’s why it felt kind of off.
Really though, I do wish he’d shown up during the earlier part of the con when things were happening and I still had all my most useful brain cells available to me. As it stood I kind of felt like I was putting him out. He came out just to see me, bought me lunch and gave me an adorable stick figure Anubis drawing. And here the best I could do in return was remain mostly conscious and struggle to string words together. I do hate to disappoint but this con really did shred me up after a couple days. Still, chances to meet other Café denizens are quite rare, so I’ll take any that I can get, even if they do pop up under less than ideal circumstances. It was good to see you, Sleepy John.
I poked around a bit after lunch, not really having much direction to move in. I managed to come across Catmonk Shiro, Moth Monarch and a bunch of the other folks I saw at the Transformation Art Jam at AC. It was nice to have a good crowd and a spot to chill out for a bit. I got to play a card game called ‘Love Letter’ for a few rounds. I never did figure out why it was called that, but I did figure out that it should really be called “Goddamnit!”. It has some frustrating game mechanics is what I’m saying.
In any case, the long amount of time that I spent sitting there, coupled with the lack of competing events and incessant pressure from my friends to get a fursuit led me to attend the “My First Fursuit” panel, because that previously unfathomable scenario is becoming a distinct possibility for me now and what the hell else was I going to do? Turns out that panel was critically mislabeled in the conbook description, because it was a fursuit construction panel, and not a fursuit operation panel as I’d been led to believe. Still, useful stuff to know, I guess. Though actually constructing anything is pretty much beyond me. Not only is suitcraft a highly-specialized field that takes a tremendous amount of time and materials to get good at, I’m starting a fair bit lower than most on that front. I’ve never been any good at building things. If I already have a thing and it doesn’t go, by God I’ll make it go, but I’m sure as hell not going to start with no things and end up with any more than zero things.
After that adventure was the ‘FC Unleashed’ variety show, wherein they grabbed a bunch of people who claimed to have talents and threw them up on stage in front of a live audience. Yeah, pretty good architecture to start with. I thought it was worth a look. The crowd was a hoot in itself. Whenever there was a lull you’d get some call going out. Some nonsense word or sound or meme that came from the back and got echoed all around the room. The “mine!” from the Finding Nemo seagulls was a popular one. References to anime and Youtube series were also up there, as well as dozens of other pop culture viscera. When sound problems kept coming up, the seagulls began calling “Mic, mic, mic?” It got to the point where someone from stage crew would show up to fiddle with the thing just based on the pestering of the seagulls alone. It actually shortened the turnaround time between acts considerably. The whole disasco (I guess I smeared together disaster and fiasco) that was our audience is really the best demonstration that I can come up with of what would happen if the internet were actually just a room full of people. Everyone takes their turn parroting meaningless nonsense, and yet somehow we find a way to make that entertaining and useful.
Lots of class acts up there on the stage, as I expected. I really liked how the host changed fursuits three times during the course of it. That was a cool idea. A duet saw one singer propose to the other during a performance of A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. That’s a hell of a finale. There was also a wolf-suited guitarist that had the most stunningly perfect rolling, gravely voice, both for his character and for the song. He did a spectacular rendition of, what else? Sam the Sham’s Hey There Little Red Riding Hood. I’ve never particularly cared for that song or style of music, but you can’t hear someone commit to something with their very soul and completely nail a song harder than anything has ever been nailed and not respect it tremendously.
Next up after that was more fursuiting. Archai had this dangerously saccharine chibi dragon called Sesame, who is about the size of a VW Beetle, that he wanted to try out, and I asked if I could play the herder this time. Normally I wouldn’t impose, but I was totally out of things to do and I wanted to test his assertion that being a dog was my destiny. He agreed, likely because he could really use some support in the giant plushie he was climbing into. The Sesame suit is off-the-charts cute, but lacks both hands and a fire escape. Meaning he can’t get out of the thing or really do much of anything unassisted. That pushed Brinkley into a more helper dog than herder dog role, but I think that he can handle it. Yes Brinkley can do it, yes he can. He’s a good boy. Yes he is. Oh-yes-he-is.
Anyways, I’d been suited up for about two thirds of a second when I realized that Arc was totally, devastatingly right about dogs. Brinkley just slid right on without a hitch, and he had tremendous freedom of movement. I’m confident that I could’ve held my own against any surprise ninja ambush while wearing him. The head was well-sized and quite forgiving as well. I couldn’t get over how smoothly that went. The next thing I couldn’t get over was how adorable his paws were, and how adorable his face was, and this adorable bandanna that he wears and awmughawd Ihavenocharacteristicsthataren’tadorableBRAWHAROWARGH! So yeah, it was nice. I kinda liked it. Arc had a tighter grip on the leash this time around, which is good, as I likely would’ve been out running through the streets had he not reigned me in every so often. Leading off with: “Okay, breathe a little slower. We haven’t even done anything yet.”
Sesame was a big crowd favorite, and for good reason. I’ve never seen anything quite like her. I guess I’m glad for the fact that there was someone pulling some of the attention off me, as I most certainly didn’t need any reason to get any more psyched up. At one point I learned, courtesy of Nevermint’s sergal Ravenholm, that it doesn’t matter how playful and energetic you are, taunting zombies is not a good use of your time. Great show by him though. Four stars, would get eaten again. It’s amazing to see some of these guys in action, particularly when you’re among them. Whether it’s conveying a ravenous desire for the flesh of the living, or just a hunger for some delicious pancakes, there’s always someone doing something interesting out there. Sesame’s “doing something interesting” was pretty much “existing out in public”, which to be honest was still quite a feat given the complications of the suit.
We made it to the headless lounge in short order, or perhaps I should say I headed there because I was burning out again. I found Ace there and got to chat for a bit. He was impressed with my fursuiting, going so far as to say I was a better performer than him. I don’t know as I’d go that far, but I certainly put more into it. Still, it means a lot to hear that from the guy that introduced me to fursuiting. I got some more advice from Archai when he came in to cool down. Very useful stuff, actually. My comical insanity makes for a pretty entertaining disaster whenever I fursuit, but I’m pretty thin on the “actually knowing what I’m doing” end of things. That might be what makes me stand out in a crowd. Most everyone else knows that they shouldn’t do all the stupid crap I do in suit because they know it’ll have them heading back to their room on their hands and knees in 45 minutes. In any case, that was probably the first occasion on which I’ve ever received fursuiting advice beyond “Calm down, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Though I suppose he also did say that often. I really need to get to work on actually developing particular characters. It doesn’t really matter what suit I’m in at the time, the character I most resemble is probably Gir from Invader Zim.
Arc asked if I wanted to hit the dancefloor. That’s something I’m always reluctant to do and that night was no exception. Usually when I “hit the dancefloor” it’s with my face, multiple times. Of course, Brinkley really liked the idea of going out on the dance and he didn’t check with me before running off to do that. So, dancing it was. I’ve never had anything resembling skill, or even competence really, at dancing, but any moron can dance in a fursuit. And by God I wasn’t just any moron, I was a dynamic, super-high-energy moron with nothing to lose. I danced my tail off. Not literally of course, Brinkley is quite well put together. Obviously I wasn’t long at that, but I had a really great time. At one point my paw slipped and broke me out of my rhythm, juxtaposing two very important realizations. “Whoa, this floor is kinda slippery-Ahh! Also I NEEDOXYGENTOLIVEBLURGURURRRR…” Key factor to remain aware of, that. I bailed out to the headless lounge again, wherein I was showered with compliments about my dancing, oddly enough. Way too many of them for it to have been sarcastic or ironic, too. So yeah, apparently somewhere in the midst of that perpetual stumble I was doing out there, some people were entertained. I’ll call that a win.
The other thing that I won was the endurance test, apparently. An equally baffling and unexpected victory, to be sure. Arc tapped out and we went back to his room to retire our respective characters for the night. To my astonishment, I came out of Brinkley very much not entirely destroyed. I could still think and move around on my own power and various other auxiliary functions that I often just wrote off as a loss after suiting. I was astonished by the time as well. We’d been fuzzed up for about two hours at that point, easily one of my longer excursions. I guess Arc’s sage tutelage was paying dividends already. I looked at the late hour and asked Arc about our plans for the immediate future.
“We’re going to meet up with some of my friends from work and get totally sozzled with them.”
“Okay. No problem with that. Great plan, actually. I was speaking more of the slightly less immediate future. Like, tomorrow morning at 11, also known as eight hours from now, when the nice folks at the San Jose Hilton will ask that I leave the premises.”
Turns out Arc had a suitable plan for that too. He had reservations for Monday night, and were I in his position I would’ve used that opportunity to continue to be unconscious straight through into Tuesday before packing up to leave. He was a bit more ambitious about it though. Apparently we were to spend the night in San Francisco and then have the morning to explore that lovely city. It sounded good to me. Since I had a plan, I forged ahead with the getting drunk part of it that, quite sensibly, formed step one.
I never would’ve expected to so quickly be presented with an even furrier workplace than Ryoken and Nevir’s print shop, but one stood before me that night. I was running into Arc’s friends from work constantly throughout the con, and got a chance to drink with three more of them that night. They kept the place quite well stocked, so even my finicky palate was able to find a few things that it really enjoyed. Now then, there is a certain culmination of critical details that merit repeating at this juncture. I mentioned how me forgetting to eat at cons was a thing, and also that California has murderously dry air, thus I was having great difficulty keeping any appreciable amount of water in my body, and how I was recently dressed up in a rather poorly ventilated border collie costume for like, a really long time just before this adventure. To this set of factors I then added a big shelf bristling with liquor. So yeah, the thing that I learned was, if you really want to save money on your alcohol budget then all you’ve gotta do is not eat for most of the day, head out to a desert, then wrap yourself in shag carpet and do intense crossfit for like two hours. You will get drunk immediately as soon as you’re in the same room as some booze and it will be amazing.
Seriously though, I blazed up the BAC meter at nearly the speed of dog, to the point where responsible people were telling me to lay off by like two drinks in. Good thing I still had Arc there to stop my enthusiasm from consuming and ultimately destroying me, as it had threatened to do on many occasions before. Still though, despite (perhaps because of) having been drinking at warp 7 the whole time it was a pretty good night. I had a lot of fun hanging out with those guys and just kind of coasting down off the high I had from snorting a few too many lines of Brinkley. Important process, that.
That was the first night that I actually slept quite soundly, and late into the day as well. Turns out that depriving your body of literally all of its most basic survival needs all at once is a great sleep aid. Of course, the one night that I slept well would have to be the night wherein I had a very good reason to get up that next day. Not because things were going on at the con, quite the opposite of that. Monday was as dead as the wit in this analogy for an extremely dead thing. No, the alarm I’d set on my phone reminded me of the ticking clock that would soon brand me as a trespasser in my room, so I had to set about fixing that. Being that I lacked the crippling hangover I had expected, packing proceeded apace and I actually got out of there in quite good time. Arc offered up his room as a place to stash my stuff temporarily, such that I would be free to… well, not do much of anything, actually. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I had run into a shortage of things to do. So the sensible thing to do is take that concept and mention the sweet merciful fuck out of it right now.
I’ve had a lot of philosophical differences with FC, and despite its being a predominantly good con, this one really got to me. I heard one person laud “Oh I like FC so much more because it’s so long. Anthrocon is nowhere near long enough.” Alright, first thing you got wrong, person who I didn’t stop to argue with because we are clearly polar-opposite human beings and would as such have absolutely nothing productive to say to each other, is your ridiculous assertion that Anthrocon is too short. AC is already at its absolute maximum survivable length, and making it any longer would be criminally irresponsible. If you feel like you need more con still at the end of Anthrocon then you clearly didn’t Anthrocon hard enough. Never in my life have I mocked someone for being a little bitch and not partying hard enough, but that is the only possible explanation for this perception of yours existing.
Secondly, AC packs about five days’ worth of events into three days, making for a non-stop thrill-ride of everything you’ve ever secretly (or openly) wanted to do in your life. They don’t take two days’ worth of events and stretch them out over four days to make what would’ve been a nice quick weekend con into a sparse, lethargic and unnecessarily padded Hobbit trilogy slog, and Anthrocon sure as hell doesn’t just push the dead dog back a day in order to claim that their con is an extra day long while adding absolutely nothing to the experience in so doing. That’s essentially all FC did with Monday, just delay the official end of the con until Monday night so that they could go to it on the calendar and stick a victory flag in that day. Yeah, the con was technically still “going on”, but the art show had closed the previous morning, the marketplace, dealers’ den and atrium had closed the previous night and there were FOUR events scheduled the entire day, and with that assessment I’m being very charitable in assigning needlefelting the title of “event”.
The content Monday was nothing that you couldn’t accomplish by simply loitering in a hotel with a sufficiently large group. Tacking on a bullshit extra day stuffed with packing peanuts and lingering disappointment does not make you better than Anthrocon! Yes, come to FC’s vaunted bonus day! Sit around in lobbies, wander around the convention hall wondering why it seems like anyone with any common sense has gone home! Experience the hollow disappointment of knowing that you’re prolonging the suffering of this shambling zombie convention that is being kept on its feet against its will! Eat out with friends, find some new friends and go out to eat with them! Find still more entirely random people because you’re desperate for companionship in the cold emptiness that remains in the con-void that you remain trapped in! Then go out to eat with them even though you just ate an hour ago because you’ve got fuck all else to do! C’mahn! It’ll be “fun”!
There, now that was rather passionate and opinionated, so let me temper it a bit by saying that in no way do I find that particular sin unforgiveable. I still managed to have some fun that day just by virtue of there being enough furries around that the volumetric fun density was still rather significantly above average around there. Really it’s just that the experience was insulting more than anything else. It certainly could be an East Coast/West Coast thing. I know there are quite a few venerable pastimes of the west which any self-respecting New Yorker would greet with “Quit wasting my fuckin’ time, hippie!” For all I know most locals were frothing with glee at the prospect of digging into the vast preponderance of sawdust and month-old macaroons that Monday was stuffed with to keep its thin veneer of legitimacy from collapsing in on itself. Really though, I think a lot of the things that I continued bewilderingly crashing into like a poorly-mapped zone border at the edge of the game’s map were just artifacts of the fact that this con was not for me. For a long time FC was a local gathering and it only rose to national attention because of how large it became and, presumably, because they are good at things.
Even going out to eat with a group of people and not eating anything was surprisingly fun. It’s kind of nice to get the whole restaurant social atmosphere without all that messy and inconvenient eating nonsense getting in the way of it. The group that Archai assembled for that excursion seemed to get along with me pretty well. Half of them asked me for my twitter handle, something that had been requested of me probably a dozen times that con. It’s flattering because people I’ve known on the order of minutes are saying they’d really like to hear every little thought that pops into my head, narcissistically broadcast out onto the net for their consumption, and it’s a little embarrassing because I still lack one of those. I guess that’s the silicon valley spirit talking there.
In addition to the matter of buying a fursuit, the decision of whether or not I ought to join all of these twits in their twitterpating is another matter upon which my resolve is being persistently worn down by those I associate with at furry cons. I know a good handful of people that have twitter as their only reliably-checked means of communication, and it seems like a pretty effective means of keeping my finger on the pulse of my various social circles at conventions.
Arc pointed out that the Twitters can be hacked upon such as to twitificate to archaic telegraphs like the one that I carry with me in my pocket. I’d never even considered the idea of trying to read all of this interstellar sub-space comm-traffic off of the tickertape that my machine puts out, but apparently it can be done. I don’t much fancy the idea of my phone just bursting at the seams at all times with all the random irreverent nonsense that twitter seems to run on, though. The only reason that I can leave my phone on when I go to bed or during lecture is that I have no friends and so no one is ever trying to contact me during those times. Presumably there’s some way to stick a binder clip on Twitter’s beak during times I don’t particularly need to hear from it, such as literally any other time besides when I’m attending a convention. I may have to look into that. Realistically I don’t even have to Twit any actual words. I can just use it to keep up with the furry fandom’s many Joneses and have an actual response when people want to use it to keep in contact with me, which very much is a thing that I want, regardless of my general distain for the Twitverse in general.
Later in the afternoon I did the whole handler/geneticist-showcasing-his-latest-creations thing and followed around Arc and one of his friends as they did the whole fursuiting/imitating-a-grievous-research-ethics-violation thing. Not something I’d ideally like to fill a huge chunk of a day with. Watching other people have fun in a mostly-empty convention hall wears thin quickly, but as discussed before, I had nothing else to do and thanks to my eviction that morning, nowhere else to go. Still managed to have good times, and found free brownies that were crazy good, bigass chunks of chocolate and the whole deal. Made me think that they weren’t free, or intended for me, but them’s the breaks when you leave your refreshment tables unattended. After Arc got out of his fur and dried out a bit, we did a few runs to throw gear into the back of that armored personnel carrier that brought it here and ran it all back to his place.
Now, I’d selected a return flight on Tuesday with the intent of leaving some time to explore San Francisco a bit before coming back home. This was before I knew about the secret day they had added to the end of the con after they’d constructed it in the back room from defunct engine parts and old milk crates. I figured that such a trip would be a wash now thanks to the extra delay. Apparently I underestimated Archai’s desire to display that lovely city to me, as he spent the evening working tirelessly to move heaven and Earth to jam a little San Francisco into my remaining time.
He found me a spot at his friend’s place actually in the city so that we could sleep there and already be where we needed to be at daybreak. For the life of me I can’t remember my host’s name from there, but you know, huge sea of new faces, myriad different forms of brain damage, etc. We’ve been through this before. The logistical snag about it was that it seemed as though a half dozen or so other people had also claimed a spot to stay there for the night. As such the location was critically short on trivial things like sleeping space and blankets. On the trip over, Archai was explaining to me that one of the last-resort plans they had in place was for some of us to sleep in fursuits for warmth. I had high hopes for a trip in which the worst-case scenario was THE MOST AWESOME IDEA I’VE EVER HEARD.
Not quite the stellar performance as that lead in had set me up for, but I was okay with anything by then. At about 3 in the morning we ended up in a basement walk-in closet that I’m sure charged rent comparable to the five-bedroom house I rented in Portsmouth. It was in one of those bars-on-the-windows, your-car-will-almost-certainly-be-broken-into areas that I normally associate with the neighborhoods bordering naval shipyards. We might’ve actually been close to one for all I know. I was paying very little attention by then. We spent a fair amount of time shuffling about and getting all of the furry flophouse’s denizens in order for the night. I never stepped on anyone, which was really my only goal as far as hospitality was concerned.
I’m certain that the other guests that night gained an awful impression of me, as I was far beyond my limit of exhaustion. Once again, it was untenably late and I had my throttle set at “Anthrocon: power through three days and then collapse into your own grave” not at “Further Confusion: make sure you leave enough gas to coast through the extraneous day distended off of the end of this con like a cancerous protuberance”. I felt kind of bad because I was technically a guest during all my surly shamblings about that place. Arc said that he hoped the conditions would be alright, but they were far from my worst sleeping arrangements ever. They might make the top 5 narrowly, but I could manage it. Hell, right then I probably could’ve slept pretty well if my accommodations were just a trash can with an ornery raccoon in it. I’m sure that I could’ve befriended and/or strangled any rodent guests as necessary to get some rest if that was the case. The only really irredeemable thing about the room was that they were running a dehumidifier. Remember how the desert air was slowly mummifying me over the weekend? Yeah, that thing was still a thing. Don’t get me wrong I don’t really blame anyone for it. That’s an absolutely brilliant way to dry out a fursuit, but I still woke up in quite a bad mood based on the fact that it felt like I’d spent the whole night trying to breathe a handful of broken glass.
It took us a little while to get moving out of there in the morning. Can’t fathom why… But in any case my tour of the lovely city of whatever-San-Fran-is-the-city-of was somewhat abbreviated. I’d say Arc was more disappointed than I was. I’m not usually much for sightseeing. I’m usually more of a sightdoer, and there wasn’t really time for that. We got to head down to the beach and walk there for a bit. That’s always a favorite stop of mine. My passion for beachfronts and the ocean was one of the things that pushed me into the navy, wherein I was continually disappointed by how few beach-and-ocean-related things were actually involved in the job. It is a pretty city. Combine that with the almost creepily ideal weather in most of the state and I can see why it costs about as much to live there for three weeks as it does to get open heart surgery. That sort of stuff is valuable, and rightly so. We got to traverse the Golden Gate because I’m pretty sure that’s legally required for visitors. The overlook point near there was quite stunning, definitely worth a stop. Spots like that are another fascinating artifact of California’s “hey let’s just plop these mountains right next to the ocean” geographical stratagem. It’s quite a sight to see.
The issue of food came up, because apparently I did still need regular reminders of its existence. Time was running short though, so I opted for something near the airport instead of the much more culturally steeped food trucks along the boardwalk or under the freeway overpass or wherever it was they were. In-N-Out Burger sounded like a great idea to me. Anyone I’ve met who has so much as flown over California at low altitude has been stark raving mad about In-N-Out. I’m pretty sure that any one of them would’ve murdered me in cold blood if it meant they could have another double-double from that place. I pretty much have to try it when the hype is that cartoonishly exaggerated.
The place certainly was doing a brisk business when we got there. I saw a guy holding a whole potato back there, the purpose of which I couldn’t fathom until I saw him cutting it into fries, right then, in front of me, seconds before they went into the fryer. That’s a clear sign of a foodery that is very much not fucking around. Arc told me about the “animal style” cheatcode on the secret menu which, apart from being quite thematically appropriate, means that your burger comes slathered in thousand island dressing and grilled onions. Of course I ordered it like that. Why isn’t all food available like that? When my order got to me, it turned out that they’d taken me up on making ALL of the things animal style and had animaled up my fries as well. Not that I could complain. They were pretty damn good. In the end, it was an above-average fast food joint that seemed to actually give a couple fucks in an age where that is quite rare, but it fell well short of the orgiastic praise that I’ve been mired in by essentially everyone who’s even familiar with the place. Ah well, it got the job done and I was close enough to the airport to not have to worry about the time any more. I’ll call it a win.
Apparently my worry was justified, as the lines at the airport were quite substantial, and very poorly organized. I wasted a lot of precious time trying to figure out which rat-maze led to the unwashed proletariat line, as it was thoroughly lost among the several dozen different levels of super-air-plus-double-chocolatey-fudge-coated-ultra-platinum-mega-bonus-enhanced-gluten-free-magical-partybus lines. I was toting some substantial quantities of sand from the beach around in my shoes at that time, which I got to muse upon while I moved slowly through the queue. I didn’t feel right taking it so far away from its home, so I managed to surreptitiously upend my shoes and shake them a bit when they had to be inspected by security. Hey, that’s how it works, man. You make me take off my shoes, I get sand all over your airport. Thug life.
Going coast to coast is quite a long ways, even with the advantage of metal wings and not having to worry about trying to ford a river or any of my party members contracting cholera. I actually got out my laptop and drained the battery all the way down using it during the flight, mostly working on this dramatic account of my travels that you now see before you. Usually I don’t bother with it, but as I mentioned, I had a long way to go and I lacked the diversion of stopping to shoot some buffalo or trade with the natives. I connected at Midway, an airport I’d never been to before. For those not in the loop it’s better known as “that one that’s not O’Hare.” It was a nice place and it seemed well run, but in the end fuck them for not having free wifi. It is the future now goddamn it! Infinity free internets should fall from the sky everywhere I go!
Now for the second leg of the journey, recall once again, again, the humidity deficits that I encountered during this particular incredible journey. Now adding in the night that I spent in a slightly more uncomfortable version of a dairy processing plant’s desiccating room immediately followed by the still drier air and repeated rapid changes in pressure associated with prolonged flight and it all basically adds up to a gigantic suckerpunch to all of the delicate repair work that my platelets had been doing on my abused, crusty sinus cavity that weekend. Protip you guys, if you’re going to start spewing blood from your nose, do it NOT on an airplane. It freaks them out a little bit. However, if you have your heart set on high-altitude nasal hemorrhaging, Southwest is not a bad choice. They keep up their lighthearted and congenial nature even through the worst of times, and that made it kind of bearable.
“Yes sir, what can I do for- ah, you’re bleeding. Excellent use of the call button, sir. You wouldn’t believe what frivolous things people press them for. Come with me and we’ll get you taken care of.”
Once they got me up to the front of the plane they got a little more serious as they did a fair deal of what I’m pretty sure was treatment for shock. I think they interpreted my calm (from having had this happen a hundred times before) and lethargy (from doing all of the everything and irresponsibly abusing my body) for symptoms of it. That was nice of them, but unnecessary. I suppose I can’t blame them though. It pays to fail conservatively with someone in your care who may or may not be in the process of dying horribly. It got us into an earlier landing spot so… yay fragile capillaries I guess. The mood lightened a fair bit when I told them that it was from overexerting myself practicing my telekinesis. They actually mentioned that when they got on the announcing circuit to tell everyone that I was going to live. The best was: “Alright everyone, we’ll be landing in Rochester in about ten minutes, provided our friend up here hasn’t succeeded in teleporting it to another location.”
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In a completely unanticipated twist, FA has once again proven unable to handle all of the mad crazy words I be spittin' atcha. I'm appending the rest in a comment, as it hardly merits a part three.
The Highly Anticipated FC 2015 Report Part I
General | Posted 11 years agoOkay so, time again to talk about the times I had whilst I was doing all the things. Strap in kids, cuz it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!
My first impression of the Charlotte airport was "Are these real trees? Indoors? These are actual fucking trees." I walked past several rows of them on my trek between concourses. Or should I say my two treks between concourses, which leads me to my second impression of the Charlotte airport. When I got to the gate that was on my ticket and found a very-much-not-mine flight there I asked the attendant at the counter what was up with that, in so many words, and she told me "Oh, the flight to Denver is boarding now in concourse C." Ah concourse C, I remember it well. Almost as if I were there 20 minutes ago when I started walking here. So yeah, I asked her to let them know I was on my way and weaved through the domesticated flora back from whence I came. They actually did hold the plane for me a little bit, which was kind of cool because I barely had to wait for takeoff at all.
Once I got on, I found that the seat number on my boarding pass was also wrong, because someone was already in that seat. Way to drop the fucking ball, US Air. That was remedied quickly enough though, with the inspired suggestion of a nearby flight attendant. "How about you sit in the only unoccupied seat on the plane?" Clever, I like it! Now, just when I thought I was done with my boarding pass being wrong at things, the 1:39 arrival time came and went, with no signs of Denver. I managed to get my geriatric flip-phone to hoarsely bellow a few text messages at the ground in order to express my confusion to Ryoken, who was trying to pick me up. Apparently crazy-old phones are actually better at doing that than fancy new ones somehow. Ryo was confused by the fact that I was communicating at him via text while airborne and not utilizing satellites or quantum entanglement or some nationwide data network with a varying number of Gs.
The message I sent him at 2:00 sums it up pretty well. "No updates from capt. yet, can't help but notice how very much still in the air this plane is though." Anyways, I got to the ground somehow at around 2:15 and met up with him. Naturally, Ryo had to just drop me off at his house and get back to work immediately. I misunderestimated the significance of the fact that each of the many denizens of the humble mountain abode that I was seeking shelter at are all such job-having mofos, for this meant that I often ended up alone there for several hours a day until everybody starts to punch out and let the next coyote and roadrunner take over the shift. (I’m surprised there isn’t actually a coyote there. It's a very canine household.) That sort of runs counter to the intended nature of a "visit" as I understand the concept, but whatevs. There was food on the wireless and internet in the fridge, so I was content with the accommodations.
So in review, a list of my impressions in descending order of first-ness:
Indoor trees? Wat.
Concourse C? Bitch I will choke you until your eyes fall out.
Yeah, they held this plane just for me. I'm kind of a big deal.
Not a big enough deal that I get my own seat though.
The arrival board says 1:39 too? Oh good, so they didn't lie to just me.
Also this conversation:
"Woah, 3:00 already?"
"Woah, 3:00 again?"
It's size is the most striking thing about the Denver airport. It's not everywhere that needs a train to get between concourses. Of course some places that really should have one don't. It struck me as quite well-designed in terms of functionality at least. A lot of airports (Cincinnati, Charlotte, Cleveland) are just a big long cavalcade of ohsweetmotherofgodgetthefuckoutofmyway. Here the course was pretty clear most of the way. In the subway terminal stop, disembarking and embarking happen on opposite sides of the train, so you don't have people going in opposite directions through the same door. There are double-escalators where needed to keep people moving. I was very impressed with how quickly they can put through such a crowd. In fact I breezed through the place so quickly that I never really took much notice of the aesthetic of the place. I had a lot of other things on my mind by then, though, what with pretty much everything having gone wrong with the Charlotte-Denver leg. Also the pilot told us that Denver is on Central time which confused the hell out of me because I made the foolish assumption that he knows what he's talking about. The bird that was in the terminal seemed to like the place though.
So, turns out that my timing was quite fortuitous in this adventure into the mile-high city. This weekend was host to not one, but two furry get-togethers. The first was a sketch night that Nevir and Ryoken were hosting. For obvious reasons I feel at least a little left out at such events. They form a rather stark reminder of how strangely antisocial writing is as a means of self-expression. There’s a reason that a lot of history’s best writing has been done in isolation, cabins at Walden Pond and whatnot. It’s not really something that you can do with a crowd. Still, I’ve never let that stop me before. I guess I can consider these a convention warmup, as it’s a very similar scenario. “Hey, here’s 30 furries you’ve never met. Have at thee!”
To their credit, my hosts had a nice venue for the gathering and provided well for us. They’ve got a really nice place here and I’m always glad for their hospitality. Sure it was a little awkward getting past that outsider vibe, but I managed alright and I got to talk to a lot of really cool folks. As usual there were far too many to retain any names, but I enjoyed it a great deal nonetheless. I actually had a number of things in common with a good handful of the guests. It’s kind of startling how Denver attracts prior navy people. Perhaps they’re seeking to get as far away from the ocean as is physically possible. I understand the feeling. I staked out a spot on the couch, which of course made me a target for the fursuiters in attendance. I sat with or underneath all of them at one time or another, and all of them at once that one time. Good stuff.
The second party was about the same number of people, just in a smaller venue. How fortunate that this crowd seems to have very few qualms about personal space, as that gathering was pretty much a matter of ARMUGHOREDEVERYONEISINEVERYONESWAYALLTHETIMEHALP. Still, plenty of drinks and good talk so I certainly can’t complain. There was lots of hard cider at both venues too, which I was excited about beyond compare. I must’ve tried half a dozen different ones and there were still some I missed. It’s a small thing, but it was a really nice to not feel like I’m weird for not liking beer once in a while. Honestly furries are really good at making me feel like I’m the most average, responsible and well-adjusted person in the room in all sorts of ways. There actually were a couple familiar faces at this one, and not just the people I’d met the night before. I got to chat with Vincent and a couple others from the improv outfit that I’d had so much fun with at RMFC, so that was cool. Quite an assortment there on the dining table too. Sketchbooks? Yep. Boxes of doughnuts? Hell yes. Hookah? Check. Complex and sinister device that’s probably also drug-related? Totally. DC motor-generator rig of indeterminate purpose? Yeah, got one of those too.
Just as I was starting to wind down a bit, Ryoken asked if I’d like to try out his suit for a little while. He got the same response that I give to everyone when they ask me that question. Outwardly, a sheepish admission that might be nice. Inwardly, incoherent girlish screeching of excitement. Soon enough, I was dressed up like such and ready to take on the world. The really fun part was actually the same thing that had made these events so difficult up until that point, the fact that most everyone knew Ryoken but had never met me. That presented me with the chance to freak out a lot of people, however briefly. The slightly taller and entirely lacking in impulse control version of Ryoken was a big hit, I think. Nevir was included in the group of people that were stymied by our cunning subterfuge, though he was more excited than freaked out. He spent a fair amount of time in suit too, so that meant that excited was his only setting. That’s kind of how suiting is.
I knew that actually talking would give me away, even though Ryoken does it all the time when he’s at the helm. Still, that’s what caused a lot of people to figure out my clever ruse. Apparently I use a very distinct “language” when I’m making adorable doggy noises as compared to the native host of this particular blue spottypup. Still, it made for a lot of fun candid-camera sort of moments when people saw Ryoken (player) and Ryoken (character) in the same room. Come to think of it I’ve never actually seen him and Batman in the same room. Conspiracy! Half Life Three confirmed! Anyways, I think Ryoken (player) enjoyed that part just as much as I did. He said that he’d give me a quick turn with the suit, but he never asked for it back, probably because I was acting like he’d have to pry it from my clammy, still slightly twitching hands. Either he knew that he couldn’t possibly stop the fluffy blue streak that I had turned into the entire time, or he noted that I was pretty much soaking it through with sweat and he didn’t want any part of that. That was more fun than I can even enumerate, but Ryoken has a pretty heavy pile to his fur. Must be his winter coat.
I don’t necessarily blame him for not wanting Ryoken (character) back right away. Jumping into someone else’s sweat isn’t a chance that I’d be chomping at the bit for. Actually scratch that, I’ve jumped into sweaty suits before but that’s just because I’ve literally never turned down an opportunity to suit. It’s different on Ryo’s end when he has the option of just airing the thing out and having a suit that doesn’t feel like a soggy sponge. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to go outside. That might’ve staved off the crash that I went through at the end. When viewed more objectively, that result would’ve been obvious. Seeing as my MO there was “Hey, I’m just barely getting used to this new altitude and timezone, I should definitely get drunk, wrap myself in carpet and wrestle with people!”
So yeah, when Ryoken said that it was time to go, once again it was outside: “Aww, do we have to?” Inside: “Oh thank God I can barely move or breathe”. I managed to swap back to my human suit, which now felt no less difficult to operate than the husky one was. I got some water and repeatedly cursed the fact that there was only diet air available as I tried to gather my wits for the upcoming stumble to the car. The shaking and numbness in my fingers concerned me a fair bit, but I’m pretty sure that was just an altitude/exertion/dehydration thing and not severe brain damage. It let me know that I really brought my A game though, and that’s a good feeling. Nevir said that I “definitely had the right energy level” for the character, which is a pretty high bar, as I believe “husky” ranks slightly above “on fire” on the energy level spectrum. In any case, I survived intact and was actually rather glad that Sunday was a quiet day. I don’t think I’ve run myself into the ground like that in a long time. It’s a good thing once in awhile.
Ryoken (player) and his crew are actually quite skilled in suitcraft, and he asked me if I’d like one of my own, as so many have before him. That has become a steadily more tempting prospect as time goes on. My enjoyment of the suiting experiences that I’ve had is undeniable. My excuse has always been that I don’t know what I’d do with it. I don’t have a local furry group anymore now that I’ve moved back to New York. The much more forgiving schedule of college life has made me able to attend a whole lot more cons though. Further Confusion will be my tenth one. That makes it kind of a wash I guess. Still, there’s a lot of uncertainty there. This needs to be something that I’m very certain about. I’m sure they’ll still be there whenever I make up my mind. Although, if free fursuiting opportunities keep falling from the sky like this I may never have to. This is the fourth such opportunity that I’ve had, and each one was equally mind blowing. I have a great passion for words and I work with them often, but I still find it difficult to express how meaningful that is to me. Fursuits are a considerable capital investment, and obviously have a great deal of personal attachment associated with them. That someone would trust me with such a thing is a truly awesome responsibility, one that I am quite proud of having lived up to each time. Granted, I was about as insane and rambunctious as I’ve ever been when I was in Ryoken’s suit, but neither of us (character nor pilot) was damaged beyond repair, so I’ll still call it a win.
After the events of the weekend, I started to realize that I had fallen into the trap that I often do, of spending all my time and effort on travel plans, and none on event plans. At RMFC, 2Gryphon offered to have me over for dinner one night, which I agreed would be a nice idea, not realizing that I’d be back in Denver again so soon. I took him up on it, but when I finally did hear back from him I found that had fallen through. He was attending Confurgence in Australia that weekend, so he was literally as far away from Denver as it’s possible for someone to be. That was about the only thing I legitimately tried to plan and that tanked about as hard as such a simple request like that can, aside from 2 being killed by meteors or something. Aside from that strikeout and some casual Googling I didn’t really put a whole lot of thought into what I’d be doing in Denver, and I sort of paid for that. I often forget that even normal-people jobs can burn up a lot of time, so I ended up just kind of hanging around for much of the intervening days. Which granted I sometimes need if I’m recovering from some insane heavily-insulated gauntlet that I just put myself through, so that’s not so bad.
In any case, I was in such a doldrum when Sidian mentioned an errand for someone near Boulder who was headed to FC. I fit that strikingly specific set of characteristics and had some time on my hands, so I went for it. She wanted a particular candy from an import shop there that was hard to find anywhere else. Sounded like a worthy cause to me. It proved to be remarkably difficult to schedule, but Ryoken still managed to brave the biting cold and choking fog to drag me out there. It was a very diverse little shop that had a wealth of interesting things, many of which I hadn’t seen since my days abroad. I’ll probably stop in there again whenever I’m in the neighborhood next. Which apparently happens far more frequently than I usually anticipate.
Later on, Ryoken showed me around his workplace, which was an interesting little jaunt. His habit of frequently producing inventive and high-quality prints to commemorate various occasions of note would clue-in the average observer to the fact that Ryoken works with Nevir at a pretty capable print shop, with some noteworthy furry presence in the staff, no less. Critters comprise a majority of the workers there from what I saw. I suppose it’s not that unreasonable of a prospect, it was just something that had never occurred to me before. Little did I know that it was about to occur to me again, but more on that later.
In any case, my time in Denver soon drew to a close. Nevir kindly ferried me to the airport and I took to the skies again for the next leg of my adventure. That one went by pretty quickly, both because I’d done the bulk of the travel just getting to Denver, and because flying into Las Vegas is quite a scenic approach, making the time go by a bit faster. Lots of interesting country out there, and of course Lake Meade is quite a sight from above. The Vegas airport is bristling with slot machines because of-course-it-is, but is no more difficult to navigate as a result. I breezed into San Jose without further trouble and got in contact with Archai. He said that he’d be picking me up in a Subaru sport coupe, which were three words I’d never heard assembled like that before. I was dubious about the existence of a vehicle matching that description, but such a creature soon presented itself and I got in.
I never would’ve guessed that Arc would be a car guy, but that Subaru BRZ is most assuredly a car guy’s car, and not just because it has a meaningless code for a model name. The first thing he wanted to do was show it (and California) off. I certainly wasn’t about to stop him. Fortunately the displaying of those two crowning achievements dovetail nicely into each other, and we ended up making a lengthy, scenic circuit around the bay, during which Archai was keen to show off the car’s handling on the winding mountain roads. It’s an impressive beast, really. Never once did it seem to at all lose touch with the road, something that really ought to have happened on some of those tight inside turns. Even at highway speed it maintains its death-grip on the pavement, making slowing down to take an exit ramp a mere formality. It was a pretty cool experience that is in some ways more straightforward than the operation of a normal car. You stop wondering “how are we ever going to make that turn?” because the answer is always “you turn the steering wheel and then the car goes that way.”
There was a lot of beautiful country to take in while we were out and about. I’m from a somewhat mountainous area, but the Appalachians kind of trail off out my way, and they’ve had all of the interesting features ground off by glaciers. California’s surreal perpetual warmth apparently has its roots in the Pleistocene age, because this landscape clearly has not seen that particular exfoliating treatment anytime recently. Having such rough-and-tumble mountainous turf run straight into the ocean is also an interesting effect. A lot of the bay area is like that, and it can make the clouds do some crazy things. Even the gentlest ocean breeze will hit the mountains hard and ramp up off them, doing death-defying kick-flips in the air over the city as it disgorges its moisture quite dramatically. That’s probably a big part of why the rest of the state is so dry. It’s also really cool to see the lights coming on at sunset. It looks like the people all just flowed downhill like water and settled in the lowlands, with all the jagged mountain faces remaining strikingly undisturbed but for the winding little roads constructed more with “not falling off the mountain” in mind than driveability.
In any case, the sunlight soon waned and we headed out to that night’s furry gathering. I say “that night’s” because nearly every day on the calendar has a furry gathering of some sort happening in that place. Through whatever obscure machinations of fate, the bay area has obtained a baffling preponderance of furries. Just ALL the furries, all up in your business, and dozens of other businesses besides. Hell, they’ve gotta work somewhere. You can’t even swing a cat without realizing that the cat is actually a person dressed up as a cat and swinging them about by the tail would go extremely poorly for you. I’m pretty sure that this convention debuted with the tagline “Further Confusion: There’s so goddamn many of us that we kind of have to start our own convention”. Yeah, furry gathering then. So once again, huge influx of people I’ve never met, talk all night and have tons of fun getting to know them, rinse and repeat.
From there it was on to Arc’s pad, wherein I promptly tripped over a voluminous hoard of fursuits worthy of an extremely adorable Croesus. Arc’s persistent desire to pick up a new suit recently went critical mass all over his face, resulting in a sudden population explosion in his closet. He’s got five outfits/characters at present, which I knew would bring on untold logistical complications, but also untold amounts of awesome. And really that sums up a whole lot of furry experiences. Expensive and extremely complicated but also the most fun you’ll ever have. Arc had some errands to run the next day, which he seemed to feel guilty about, being that I was guest-starring in the movie of his life for a while. I told him to forge ahead with them. It wasn’t too long ago that I was in a position wherein work came first, second, third and pretty much every other spot in the top ten, so I’d hardly criticize people for having a similar mindset. As a handy bonus, these errands let me follow my gracious host into the secret caves where they keep the internet.
Arc works with IT in ways that I probably couldn’t accurately describe, but fixing whatever widget was giving him trouble that day involved diving into some impressive arrays of server stacks. He seemed concerned that all the security might rattle me. Though it was an impressive display what with biometrics and whatnot, I noted a distinct lack of guns and/or authorization to use them, so “intimidated” would certainly be the wrong word to use to describe my reaction. The computer cave was undoubtedly worth a visit though. Having spent so long in steerage aboard a cold-war-era ship, I’d nearly forgotten that the rest of the world is moving apace rather than struggling to keep up with the march of progress. It’s crazy to have worked on the same gear for a whole tour and then hear “oh yeah, these server drawers are like 18 months old, meaning they’re outdated enough that they’re effectively useless.” That’s pretty nuts. If that’s common practice, we wouldn’t need Cyberdyne to lift a finger to hasten the apocalypse. Skynet could just spontaneously assemble itself in a landfill from all of the pristine hardware that we’re just tossing out left and right, still in perfect working order. Of course then I see the new Star Trek-level computing wizardry that they replaced that junkheap with. The whole stack now no bigger than a breadbox. Crazy stuff. I was so close to the cutting edge that I nearly lost a couple fingers in there.
Naturally the logical follow-up to the future of computer science would be the history of it. Next up was a trip to the Computer History Museum. I felt a lot more at home there, since most of the gear that I know and love most assuredly belongs in a museum. I think that we contract out to that place for spare parts every so often. The server stacks at his work were kind of intimidating, since while Archai most assuredly knows what he’s talking about I mostly wing it and power-cycle things when they’re acting funny. The trip down Random Access Memory Lane (I’ll take ‘Technological Before and After for $1600, Alex!) was nice though, and it let me narrow down exactly when my beloved reactor control instrumentation came from. Turns out it’s mostly from 1978-1983. Wave of the future, everybody! Go fightin’ Versa Module Europa bus architecture! It makes me wonder how useful all that experience working with those systems will actually be when the time comes to start looking for a regular civilian job set in the present day. Being so far behind is pretty crippling in technical and engineering fields. Still, that didn’t make the place any less fun to visit.
I got to see the famous Babbage Difference Engine. I didn’t even know we had one of those in America. We got there just in time to see the demonstration. This monstrosity is undoubtedly the most clockpunk thing ever to exist. The idea of a mechanical system that can perform logarithms and other sophisticated functions certainly sounds like a fantasy. The thing works like gangbusters though. Sure, its responses differ from those in an Excel spreadsheet, but that’s because this bizarre seussian contraption actually operates at a far greater degree of precision than the computer program. It’s actually quite startling how advanced all these old machines can be. Punchcard readers seem hilariously antiquated, but what they actually can do is still pretty impressive. Sorting, alphabetizing, processing and organizing information in many of the ways that we still do is all well within their repertoire. All this even though they’re decades old. I doubt that your iRectangle-of-varying-size will still be chugging along in three years, let alone thirty. All of this stuff seems so distant and ancient, but it still bears mentioning that the depth and breadth of the vast majority of this meteoric advancement just barely exceeds the scope of my lifetime. The acceleration of progress in this field is pretty dramatic. I guess that’s where the now-junk servers come from that barely had the chance to gather a coat of dust before being rendered obsolete.
Though it really didn’t seem like there was a whole lot to it, the museum was apparently quite the distraction. We were in the place until they closed without even noticing the intervening time. It was still relatively early in the evening, but I knew that it would take Arc some time to muster his platoon before we could head out, so I elected for departure with deliberate speed. It did indeed take quite a push to get the whole menagerie presentable, but just as with everything having to do with fursuiting, there’s a certain whimsicality to the process that makes even some very unreasonable amounts of it quite bearable. From there, we loaded up everything into the back of a constellation-class heavy cruiser, also known as a GMC Yukon XL, and headed out into the wilds. Quite a short drive, actually, so we made it to the convention in good time.
Once again the girth of my throbbing, meaty prose has caused FurAffinity to choke. To get the actual con part of this con report, tune in tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion! Or just click on the words "thrilling conclusion", you know, whatevs.
My first impression of the Charlotte airport was "Are these real trees? Indoors? These are actual fucking trees." I walked past several rows of them on my trek between concourses. Or should I say my two treks between concourses, which leads me to my second impression of the Charlotte airport. When I got to the gate that was on my ticket and found a very-much-not-mine flight there I asked the attendant at the counter what was up with that, in so many words, and she told me "Oh, the flight to Denver is boarding now in concourse C." Ah concourse C, I remember it well. Almost as if I were there 20 minutes ago when I started walking here. So yeah, I asked her to let them know I was on my way and weaved through the domesticated flora back from whence I came. They actually did hold the plane for me a little bit, which was kind of cool because I barely had to wait for takeoff at all.
Once I got on, I found that the seat number on my boarding pass was also wrong, because someone was already in that seat. Way to drop the fucking ball, US Air. That was remedied quickly enough though, with the inspired suggestion of a nearby flight attendant. "How about you sit in the only unoccupied seat on the plane?" Clever, I like it! Now, just when I thought I was done with my boarding pass being wrong at things, the 1:39 arrival time came and went, with no signs of Denver. I managed to get my geriatric flip-phone to hoarsely bellow a few text messages at the ground in order to express my confusion to Ryoken, who was trying to pick me up. Apparently crazy-old phones are actually better at doing that than fancy new ones somehow. Ryo was confused by the fact that I was communicating at him via text while airborne and not utilizing satellites or quantum entanglement or some nationwide data network with a varying number of Gs.
The message I sent him at 2:00 sums it up pretty well. "No updates from capt. yet, can't help but notice how very much still in the air this plane is though." Anyways, I got to the ground somehow at around 2:15 and met up with him. Naturally, Ryo had to just drop me off at his house and get back to work immediately. I misunderestimated the significance of the fact that each of the many denizens of the humble mountain abode that I was seeking shelter at are all such job-having mofos, for this meant that I often ended up alone there for several hours a day until everybody starts to punch out and let the next coyote and roadrunner take over the shift. (I’m surprised there isn’t actually a coyote there. It's a very canine household.) That sort of runs counter to the intended nature of a "visit" as I understand the concept, but whatevs. There was food on the wireless and internet in the fridge, so I was content with the accommodations.
So in review, a list of my impressions in descending order of first-ness:
Indoor trees? Wat.
Concourse C? Bitch I will choke you until your eyes fall out.
Yeah, they held this plane just for me. I'm kind of a big deal.
Not a big enough deal that I get my own seat though.
The arrival board says 1:39 too? Oh good, so they didn't lie to just me.
Also this conversation:
"Woah, 3:00 already?"
"Woah, 3:00 again?"
It's size is the most striking thing about the Denver airport. It's not everywhere that needs a train to get between concourses. Of course some places that really should have one don't. It struck me as quite well-designed in terms of functionality at least. A lot of airports (Cincinnati, Charlotte, Cleveland) are just a big long cavalcade of ohsweetmotherofgodgetthefuckoutofmyway. Here the course was pretty clear most of the way. In the subway terminal stop, disembarking and embarking happen on opposite sides of the train, so you don't have people going in opposite directions through the same door. There are double-escalators where needed to keep people moving. I was very impressed with how quickly they can put through such a crowd. In fact I breezed through the place so quickly that I never really took much notice of the aesthetic of the place. I had a lot of other things on my mind by then, though, what with pretty much everything having gone wrong with the Charlotte-Denver leg. Also the pilot told us that Denver is on Central time which confused the hell out of me because I made the foolish assumption that he knows what he's talking about. The bird that was in the terminal seemed to like the place though.
So, turns out that my timing was quite fortuitous in this adventure into the mile-high city. This weekend was host to not one, but two furry get-togethers. The first was a sketch night that Nevir and Ryoken were hosting. For obvious reasons I feel at least a little left out at such events. They form a rather stark reminder of how strangely antisocial writing is as a means of self-expression. There’s a reason that a lot of history’s best writing has been done in isolation, cabins at Walden Pond and whatnot. It’s not really something that you can do with a crowd. Still, I’ve never let that stop me before. I guess I can consider these a convention warmup, as it’s a very similar scenario. “Hey, here’s 30 furries you’ve never met. Have at thee!”
To their credit, my hosts had a nice venue for the gathering and provided well for us. They’ve got a really nice place here and I’m always glad for their hospitality. Sure it was a little awkward getting past that outsider vibe, but I managed alright and I got to talk to a lot of really cool folks. As usual there were far too many to retain any names, but I enjoyed it a great deal nonetheless. I actually had a number of things in common with a good handful of the guests. It’s kind of startling how Denver attracts prior navy people. Perhaps they’re seeking to get as far away from the ocean as is physically possible. I understand the feeling. I staked out a spot on the couch, which of course made me a target for the fursuiters in attendance. I sat with or underneath all of them at one time or another, and all of them at once that one time. Good stuff.
The second party was about the same number of people, just in a smaller venue. How fortunate that this crowd seems to have very few qualms about personal space, as that gathering was pretty much a matter of ARMUGHOREDEVERYONEISINEVERYONESWAYALLTHETIMEHALP. Still, plenty of drinks and good talk so I certainly can’t complain. There was lots of hard cider at both venues too, which I was excited about beyond compare. I must’ve tried half a dozen different ones and there were still some I missed. It’s a small thing, but it was a really nice to not feel like I’m weird for not liking beer once in a while. Honestly furries are really good at making me feel like I’m the most average, responsible and well-adjusted person in the room in all sorts of ways. There actually were a couple familiar faces at this one, and not just the people I’d met the night before. I got to chat with Vincent and a couple others from the improv outfit that I’d had so much fun with at RMFC, so that was cool. Quite an assortment there on the dining table too. Sketchbooks? Yep. Boxes of doughnuts? Hell yes. Hookah? Check. Complex and sinister device that’s probably also drug-related? Totally. DC motor-generator rig of indeterminate purpose? Yeah, got one of those too.
Just as I was starting to wind down a bit, Ryoken asked if I’d like to try out his suit for a little while. He got the same response that I give to everyone when they ask me that question. Outwardly, a sheepish admission that might be nice. Inwardly, incoherent girlish screeching of excitement. Soon enough, I was dressed up like such and ready to take on the world. The really fun part was actually the same thing that had made these events so difficult up until that point, the fact that most everyone knew Ryoken but had never met me. That presented me with the chance to freak out a lot of people, however briefly. The slightly taller and entirely lacking in impulse control version of Ryoken was a big hit, I think. Nevir was included in the group of people that were stymied by our cunning subterfuge, though he was more excited than freaked out. He spent a fair amount of time in suit too, so that meant that excited was his only setting. That’s kind of how suiting is.
I knew that actually talking would give me away, even though Ryoken does it all the time when he’s at the helm. Still, that’s what caused a lot of people to figure out my clever ruse. Apparently I use a very distinct “language” when I’m making adorable doggy noises as compared to the native host of this particular blue spottypup. Still, it made for a lot of fun candid-camera sort of moments when people saw Ryoken (player) and Ryoken (character) in the same room. Come to think of it I’ve never actually seen him and Batman in the same room. Conspiracy! Half Life Three confirmed! Anyways, I think Ryoken (player) enjoyed that part just as much as I did. He said that he’d give me a quick turn with the suit, but he never asked for it back, probably because I was acting like he’d have to pry it from my clammy, still slightly twitching hands. Either he knew that he couldn’t possibly stop the fluffy blue streak that I had turned into the entire time, or he noted that I was pretty much soaking it through with sweat and he didn’t want any part of that. That was more fun than I can even enumerate, but Ryoken has a pretty heavy pile to his fur. Must be his winter coat.
I don’t necessarily blame him for not wanting Ryoken (character) back right away. Jumping into someone else’s sweat isn’t a chance that I’d be chomping at the bit for. Actually scratch that, I’ve jumped into sweaty suits before but that’s just because I’ve literally never turned down an opportunity to suit. It’s different on Ryo’s end when he has the option of just airing the thing out and having a suit that doesn’t feel like a soggy sponge. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to go outside. That might’ve staved off the crash that I went through at the end. When viewed more objectively, that result would’ve been obvious. Seeing as my MO there was “Hey, I’m just barely getting used to this new altitude and timezone, I should definitely get drunk, wrap myself in carpet and wrestle with people!”
So yeah, when Ryoken said that it was time to go, once again it was outside: “Aww, do we have to?” Inside: “Oh thank God I can barely move or breathe”. I managed to swap back to my human suit, which now felt no less difficult to operate than the husky one was. I got some water and repeatedly cursed the fact that there was only diet air available as I tried to gather my wits for the upcoming stumble to the car. The shaking and numbness in my fingers concerned me a fair bit, but I’m pretty sure that was just an altitude/exertion/dehydration thing and not severe brain damage. It let me know that I really brought my A game though, and that’s a good feeling. Nevir said that I “definitely had the right energy level” for the character, which is a pretty high bar, as I believe “husky” ranks slightly above “on fire” on the energy level spectrum. In any case, I survived intact and was actually rather glad that Sunday was a quiet day. I don’t think I’ve run myself into the ground like that in a long time. It’s a good thing once in awhile.
Ryoken (player) and his crew are actually quite skilled in suitcraft, and he asked me if I’d like one of my own, as so many have before him. That has become a steadily more tempting prospect as time goes on. My enjoyment of the suiting experiences that I’ve had is undeniable. My excuse has always been that I don’t know what I’d do with it. I don’t have a local furry group anymore now that I’ve moved back to New York. The much more forgiving schedule of college life has made me able to attend a whole lot more cons though. Further Confusion will be my tenth one. That makes it kind of a wash I guess. Still, there’s a lot of uncertainty there. This needs to be something that I’m very certain about. I’m sure they’ll still be there whenever I make up my mind. Although, if free fursuiting opportunities keep falling from the sky like this I may never have to. This is the fourth such opportunity that I’ve had, and each one was equally mind blowing. I have a great passion for words and I work with them often, but I still find it difficult to express how meaningful that is to me. Fursuits are a considerable capital investment, and obviously have a great deal of personal attachment associated with them. That someone would trust me with such a thing is a truly awesome responsibility, one that I am quite proud of having lived up to each time. Granted, I was about as insane and rambunctious as I’ve ever been when I was in Ryoken’s suit, but neither of us (character nor pilot) was damaged beyond repair, so I’ll still call it a win.
After the events of the weekend, I started to realize that I had fallen into the trap that I often do, of spending all my time and effort on travel plans, and none on event plans. At RMFC, 2Gryphon offered to have me over for dinner one night, which I agreed would be a nice idea, not realizing that I’d be back in Denver again so soon. I took him up on it, but when I finally did hear back from him I found that had fallen through. He was attending Confurgence in Australia that weekend, so he was literally as far away from Denver as it’s possible for someone to be. That was about the only thing I legitimately tried to plan and that tanked about as hard as such a simple request like that can, aside from 2 being killed by meteors or something. Aside from that strikeout and some casual Googling I didn’t really put a whole lot of thought into what I’d be doing in Denver, and I sort of paid for that. I often forget that even normal-people jobs can burn up a lot of time, so I ended up just kind of hanging around for much of the intervening days. Which granted I sometimes need if I’m recovering from some insane heavily-insulated gauntlet that I just put myself through, so that’s not so bad.
In any case, I was in such a doldrum when Sidian mentioned an errand for someone near Boulder who was headed to FC. I fit that strikingly specific set of characteristics and had some time on my hands, so I went for it. She wanted a particular candy from an import shop there that was hard to find anywhere else. Sounded like a worthy cause to me. It proved to be remarkably difficult to schedule, but Ryoken still managed to brave the biting cold and choking fog to drag me out there. It was a very diverse little shop that had a wealth of interesting things, many of which I hadn’t seen since my days abroad. I’ll probably stop in there again whenever I’m in the neighborhood next. Which apparently happens far more frequently than I usually anticipate.
Later on, Ryoken showed me around his workplace, which was an interesting little jaunt. His habit of frequently producing inventive and high-quality prints to commemorate various occasions of note would clue-in the average observer to the fact that Ryoken works with Nevir at a pretty capable print shop, with some noteworthy furry presence in the staff, no less. Critters comprise a majority of the workers there from what I saw. I suppose it’s not that unreasonable of a prospect, it was just something that had never occurred to me before. Little did I know that it was about to occur to me again, but more on that later.
In any case, my time in Denver soon drew to a close. Nevir kindly ferried me to the airport and I took to the skies again for the next leg of my adventure. That one went by pretty quickly, both because I’d done the bulk of the travel just getting to Denver, and because flying into Las Vegas is quite a scenic approach, making the time go by a bit faster. Lots of interesting country out there, and of course Lake Meade is quite a sight from above. The Vegas airport is bristling with slot machines because of-course-it-is, but is no more difficult to navigate as a result. I breezed into San Jose without further trouble and got in contact with Archai. He said that he’d be picking me up in a Subaru sport coupe, which were three words I’d never heard assembled like that before. I was dubious about the existence of a vehicle matching that description, but such a creature soon presented itself and I got in.
I never would’ve guessed that Arc would be a car guy, but that Subaru BRZ is most assuredly a car guy’s car, and not just because it has a meaningless code for a model name. The first thing he wanted to do was show it (and California) off. I certainly wasn’t about to stop him. Fortunately the displaying of those two crowning achievements dovetail nicely into each other, and we ended up making a lengthy, scenic circuit around the bay, during which Archai was keen to show off the car’s handling on the winding mountain roads. It’s an impressive beast, really. Never once did it seem to at all lose touch with the road, something that really ought to have happened on some of those tight inside turns. Even at highway speed it maintains its death-grip on the pavement, making slowing down to take an exit ramp a mere formality. It was a pretty cool experience that is in some ways more straightforward than the operation of a normal car. You stop wondering “how are we ever going to make that turn?” because the answer is always “you turn the steering wheel and then the car goes that way.”
There was a lot of beautiful country to take in while we were out and about. I’m from a somewhat mountainous area, but the Appalachians kind of trail off out my way, and they’ve had all of the interesting features ground off by glaciers. California’s surreal perpetual warmth apparently has its roots in the Pleistocene age, because this landscape clearly has not seen that particular exfoliating treatment anytime recently. Having such rough-and-tumble mountainous turf run straight into the ocean is also an interesting effect. A lot of the bay area is like that, and it can make the clouds do some crazy things. Even the gentlest ocean breeze will hit the mountains hard and ramp up off them, doing death-defying kick-flips in the air over the city as it disgorges its moisture quite dramatically. That’s probably a big part of why the rest of the state is so dry. It’s also really cool to see the lights coming on at sunset. It looks like the people all just flowed downhill like water and settled in the lowlands, with all the jagged mountain faces remaining strikingly undisturbed but for the winding little roads constructed more with “not falling off the mountain” in mind than driveability.
In any case, the sunlight soon waned and we headed out to that night’s furry gathering. I say “that night’s” because nearly every day on the calendar has a furry gathering of some sort happening in that place. Through whatever obscure machinations of fate, the bay area has obtained a baffling preponderance of furries. Just ALL the furries, all up in your business, and dozens of other businesses besides. Hell, they’ve gotta work somewhere. You can’t even swing a cat without realizing that the cat is actually a person dressed up as a cat and swinging them about by the tail would go extremely poorly for you. I’m pretty sure that this convention debuted with the tagline “Further Confusion: There’s so goddamn many of us that we kind of have to start our own convention”. Yeah, furry gathering then. So once again, huge influx of people I’ve never met, talk all night and have tons of fun getting to know them, rinse and repeat.
From there it was on to Arc’s pad, wherein I promptly tripped over a voluminous hoard of fursuits worthy of an extremely adorable Croesus. Arc’s persistent desire to pick up a new suit recently went critical mass all over his face, resulting in a sudden population explosion in his closet. He’s got five outfits/characters at present, which I knew would bring on untold logistical complications, but also untold amounts of awesome. And really that sums up a whole lot of furry experiences. Expensive and extremely complicated but also the most fun you’ll ever have. Arc had some errands to run the next day, which he seemed to feel guilty about, being that I was guest-starring in the movie of his life for a while. I told him to forge ahead with them. It wasn’t too long ago that I was in a position wherein work came first, second, third and pretty much every other spot in the top ten, so I’d hardly criticize people for having a similar mindset. As a handy bonus, these errands let me follow my gracious host into the secret caves where they keep the internet.
Arc works with IT in ways that I probably couldn’t accurately describe, but fixing whatever widget was giving him trouble that day involved diving into some impressive arrays of server stacks. He seemed concerned that all the security might rattle me. Though it was an impressive display what with biometrics and whatnot, I noted a distinct lack of guns and/or authorization to use them, so “intimidated” would certainly be the wrong word to use to describe my reaction. The computer cave was undoubtedly worth a visit though. Having spent so long in steerage aboard a cold-war-era ship, I’d nearly forgotten that the rest of the world is moving apace rather than struggling to keep up with the march of progress. It’s crazy to have worked on the same gear for a whole tour and then hear “oh yeah, these server drawers are like 18 months old, meaning they’re outdated enough that they’re effectively useless.” That’s pretty nuts. If that’s common practice, we wouldn’t need Cyberdyne to lift a finger to hasten the apocalypse. Skynet could just spontaneously assemble itself in a landfill from all of the pristine hardware that we’re just tossing out left and right, still in perfect working order. Of course then I see the new Star Trek-level computing wizardry that they replaced that junkheap with. The whole stack now no bigger than a breadbox. Crazy stuff. I was so close to the cutting edge that I nearly lost a couple fingers in there.
Naturally the logical follow-up to the future of computer science would be the history of it. Next up was a trip to the Computer History Museum. I felt a lot more at home there, since most of the gear that I know and love most assuredly belongs in a museum. I think that we contract out to that place for spare parts every so often. The server stacks at his work were kind of intimidating, since while Archai most assuredly knows what he’s talking about I mostly wing it and power-cycle things when they’re acting funny. The trip down Random Access Memory Lane (I’ll take ‘Technological Before and After for $1600, Alex!) was nice though, and it let me narrow down exactly when my beloved reactor control instrumentation came from. Turns out it’s mostly from 1978-1983. Wave of the future, everybody! Go fightin’ Versa Module Europa bus architecture! It makes me wonder how useful all that experience working with those systems will actually be when the time comes to start looking for a regular civilian job set in the present day. Being so far behind is pretty crippling in technical and engineering fields. Still, that didn’t make the place any less fun to visit.
I got to see the famous Babbage Difference Engine. I didn’t even know we had one of those in America. We got there just in time to see the demonstration. This monstrosity is undoubtedly the most clockpunk thing ever to exist. The idea of a mechanical system that can perform logarithms and other sophisticated functions certainly sounds like a fantasy. The thing works like gangbusters though. Sure, its responses differ from those in an Excel spreadsheet, but that’s because this bizarre seussian contraption actually operates at a far greater degree of precision than the computer program. It’s actually quite startling how advanced all these old machines can be. Punchcard readers seem hilariously antiquated, but what they actually can do is still pretty impressive. Sorting, alphabetizing, processing and organizing information in many of the ways that we still do is all well within their repertoire. All this even though they’re decades old. I doubt that your iRectangle-of-varying-size will still be chugging along in three years, let alone thirty. All of this stuff seems so distant and ancient, but it still bears mentioning that the depth and breadth of the vast majority of this meteoric advancement just barely exceeds the scope of my lifetime. The acceleration of progress in this field is pretty dramatic. I guess that’s where the now-junk servers come from that barely had the chance to gather a coat of dust before being rendered obsolete.
Though it really didn’t seem like there was a whole lot to it, the museum was apparently quite the distraction. We were in the place until they closed without even noticing the intervening time. It was still relatively early in the evening, but I knew that it would take Arc some time to muster his platoon before we could head out, so I elected for departure with deliberate speed. It did indeed take quite a push to get the whole menagerie presentable, but just as with everything having to do with fursuiting, there’s a certain whimsicality to the process that makes even some very unreasonable amounts of it quite bearable. From there, we loaded up everything into the back of a constellation-class heavy cruiser, also known as a GMC Yukon XL, and headed out into the wilds. Quite a short drive, actually, so we made it to the convention in good time.
Once again the girth of my throbbing, meaty prose has caused FurAffinity to choke. To get the actual con part of this con report, tune in tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion! Or just click on the words "thrilling conclusion", you know, whatevs.
Further Confusion 2015: A thing I'm somehow able to do
General | Posted 11 years agoI may as well strike up a journal for this one, seeing as I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I'm going. I have an extremely generous Christmas break that this con just so happens to fit into. It cuts it a little close on the tail end, but I can see myself managing this.
No hits on anyone with open rooms, so I might be going this one alone, which has a lot of benefits, honestly. So I'm not too broken up about that. Normally I like to get in the day before the con starts to have a good night's rest, but with even con-rate rooms starting at $134 a night that's quite an expense to take on for the sake of convenience. nevir and ryoken are on board with me dropping in on them for awhile. So that'll make the travel a lot easier and maybe even make showing up on day 1 feasible. I'm so glad they live at the biggest airport hub in all of the boxy, mountain states, and are willing to put up with me for awhile. Naturally my old trick of chucking the whole "con hotels" label and just searching nearby turned up a $99 a night listing a whole 400 yards from the convention center. And with most places, not using the con rate lets me apply a AAA or government employee discount. That should make that aspect a little more manageable.
Fortunately, I have a generous amount of time ahead of me to work logistics for this. More details as they become available. I hope to see some of you guys there!
No hits on anyone with open rooms, so I might be going this one alone, which has a lot of benefits, honestly. So I'm not too broken up about that. Normally I like to get in the day before the con starts to have a good night's rest, but with even con-rate rooms starting at $134 a night that's quite an expense to take on for the sake of convenience.
nevir and ryoken are on board with me dropping in on them for awhile. So that'll make the travel a lot easier and maybe even make showing up on day 1 feasible. I'm so glad they live at the biggest airport hub in all of the boxy, mountain states, and are willing to put up with me for awhile. Naturally my old trick of chucking the whole "con hotels" label and just searching nearby turned up a $99 a night listing a whole 400 yards from the convention center. And with most places, not using the con rate lets me apply a AAA or government employee discount. That should make that aspect a little more manageable.Fortunately, I have a generous amount of time ahead of me to work logistics for this. More details as they become available. I hope to see some of you guys there!
Post-Furpocalypse
General | Posted 11 years agoAh yes. Time once again to regale my adoring public with tales of my blind and ill-advised stumblings through the weird and wild world of the furry subculture. I'm not certain why these remain so popular. It's not often fun to listen to someone who clearly has no idea what they're doing broadcast all their mistakes, but I've carved out my niche so I guess I'd best sit in it. The process is a lot simpler these days what with my rich Uncle Sam still paying my bills, but no longer holding my leash. I finished the day's classes and exerted myself mightily pushing the thought of the upcoming Statistics exam the following week out of my head. From there I just had to throw my duffel bag into the car, lie to everyone about where I was going and drive off into the sunset. Of course thanks to my foolish and anachronistic commitment to actually attending all of my classes here the sun had already vacated its position by the time I was off on my incredible journey, but that's neither here nor there.
My departure time did concern me somewhat though. I've learned from experience that late on a Friday afternoon ("prevening" I believe is the more accurate term) is the point at which the roads surrounding the capital district are overrun by slavering hordes of road warriors who fear neither God nor man, nor the concrete walls on either side of them that they seem intent on intimidating with the sheer ferocity of their navigational tactics. Fortunately though, no portion of this particular swarm of angry hornets is intent on traveling to Connecticut, so I went largely unmolested on my drive and arrived at ground zero of the Furpocalypse relatively unmolested. Whether I'd stay unmolested once there was another matter entirely, but that's par for the course in this environment.
The convention hotel had sold out long before I thought to dig up a place to lay my head for this. So my first stop was to check in at a nearby Super 8 that was doing its damndest to imitate the dormitory environment that I had become recently accustomed to. Archaic heating system, comically small floorplan, shower that alternates between "deathray" and "liquid nitrogen", thin walls with the other rooms filled with kids in their early 20s doing everything but sleep in their rooms... yeah, if they'd had some pest control problems they would've had the whole package. Very homely. Anyways, I headed out to the actual con without delay. Too bad I'd already missed the bulk of Friday's events. Still, it was where I came here to be, so I'd best be there, for better or for worse. I got in just under the wire for registration, which was a great convenience. The guy issuing my badge said that he recognized me. I was intrigued since that's not an accusation that I get terribly often. Apparently he's going to be my boss when Furthe'More next comes around. I don't envy him that. Many great men have cringed at the idea of being made responsible for me. Of course the average con staff is made up almost entirely of maverick renegades with naught but scorn for any sort of structure or authority. Perhaps I'd fit right in. Only time will tell.
I managed to catch the tail end of a fursuit wedding between Halla and Logarth after I made it into the con proper. Quite a whimsical and uplifting occasion, to be sure. I'm glad that I took the time to stop by. Shocker was that it was a woman and a man marrying each other, as the ancient legends speak of. Nice to get a little reminder that I'm not the only one, no matter the statistics and assumptions at play. The only remaining event that held any interest for me that day was the trivia competition. I'd never been to anything like that at a con, so I figured I'd have a go at it. I signed on with the first team that said they were taking newcomers, as is the way with all prudent and responsible decisions. We took on the challenge with great enthusiasm. It was pretty competitive for awhile. I was on top of a lot of the questions due to my skills with the science and some niche interests. They got a bit too much into dated pop culture references though and we started flagging. Still, furries make pretty much anything fun, and I had a great time the whole way through. After that I was turned loose to wander this level of the maze without an objective or any form of structure. It often doesn't feel productive, but it's worth doing, I've found. I did my standard thing of hitting up a few artists that I recognized by their FA names. Some like that and some don't, but I still feel I ought to give out the requisite props when I find someone that does some good work. Mostly indeterminate reactions, really, but it was far too early to call it a night.
I astonish myself quite regularly with how gregarious I become when I'm at a con, but I still feel like I need a starting point. That was the problem here. Furpocalypse is a small and pseudo-new convention, so I knew essentially no one that was there. Even in a social pinball machine environment like a convention, I still tend to feel like I need an in with people in order to really make a proper connection without it being awkward or disruptive. It doesn't have to be much of one though. I grabbed onto K2 with basically the premise of "Hey, person I've met once ever who barely remembers me! We should hang out!" Astonishingly enough that actually worked and I soon had someone to talk to, a number of someones, actually. K2 was in full suit still, and so eventually she struck out into the world to do whatever popular people who actually have friends do when they're off being well-known and... happy or whatever. She did drop a couple nice people in my lap on her way out though. I got to talking with Sparky and Donovan and that actually went on for quite awhile. Charming folks, really. We got to sit and have it out about anything under the sun. NomCrunch came by and I invited him over to join in as well. It was nice to have a chance to slow down a bit and get things straightened out as we chatted. I hit them up for a bit of witty banter a number of times throughout the con and had quite a good time doing so. It's really easy to get along with people in a high-energy environment like that where everyone's having so much fun, and I'm quite grateful for that.
I knew that weekend cons tend to load up Saturday quite heavily, so I turned in early that night. I've learned many times that being the man in the room with the most working higher brain functions is often quite a lot of fun, so Friday night was a good opportunity for me to pull ahead early in that department. Plus I still haven't broken my habit of waking up rather early. At this rate I may never do so. Next semester's class schedule is pretty heavily front-loaded as well. In any case, I was awake the next morning in plenty of good time for Saturday Morning Cartoons, an event that seems to pop up at every con these days. Not that I mind. There usually isn't a damn thing happening from 8 to 10 in the morning, and you often find a lot of like-minded people there, since getting up early is a litmus test for a lot of different personality traits. Then of course there are the people who hadn't been to bed yet from the previous day, which as I mentioned before, are an entirely different kind of fun. So, once the nostalgia breakfast was over I thought I'd try out the hookah panel. I've known a lot of people who are into that, so I figured I'd get the lowdown on the tech since there was still not much else going on. That one was going pretty smoothly and seemed interesting enough, but then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Yes, in what has apparently become something of a tradition, there was a fire alarm. So, surprise trip outside for everyone! It’s quite a sight to see several dozen cosplayers and suiters being shuffled off the premises just ahead of a haggard mob who were obviously just awakened by this event. It was about 10:30 by then, so I had a rapidly dwindling measure of sympathy for those who were still cringing at the stark and merciless light of day. I felt like I was being overly pessimistic when I threw my heavy coat in the car before leaving, but soon had it, and my smug sense of superiority, to keep me warm as we all waited around in the parking lot for the all-clear to come through. It was an astonishingly well-organized affair, with the crowd being easily nudged about and directed away from whatever emergency operations were going on. "Responsible" and "cooperative" are not often words that furries find themselves exemplifying. In fact some of the charm of the movement lies in a general lack of those things.
This particular evacuation was smooth as butter, though. The fire department was baffled when they got the report of a fire at a hotel filled with furries and arrived to find the place looking like anything other than a warzone. I mean, we did call the event "Furpocalypse". That would seem to be a pretty clear statement of intent when looked at objectively. They arrived though, to find the hotel in perfect order, and in fact, not on fire. Not even a little. There was a sensor in a little-used staff bathroom that was either faulty or responding to someone's nicotine habit in that area, and so none of this particular adventure was even our fault. Pleasant surprises all around that morning. Clearly the hands of fate wanted me out of the hookah panel, so I elected to forage for food in lieu of returning to it. I knew that I'd have to make a point of it, as I often stop feeling hungry for days at a time when I go to a con. There's just too much going on to worry about petty trivialities like the basic necessities of life. I probably ate maybe three actual meals that whole weekend, and that was the result of some not-insignificant application of willpower. I'd really hate to be one of those guys that just runs on fumes until they crash out, but I understand their predicament a little better with every con I attend.
Next up was an interesting event put on by Joe Strike, an alligator who has taken it upon himself to chronicle the furry experience from an insider’s perspective, sort of like a certain amateur writer that we all know and love. I really liked the premise of this panel and I knew that I had to attend. It was called "I'm not the only one!" and really the title says it all. It's about that one story that every furry has when they discovered the maelstrom of cartoon animals and dangerously stifling costumes that they are presently swept up in. Joe did the panel as research for a book that he's writing called Furry Nation. It's about the furry fandom's origins and development through the past couple decades. His publisher said that there ought to be more testimonials and personal stories from the furries themselves in the book, so he set out to collect some. Clever framing device that he used to gather all these data points, too. That "I'm not the only one" story is a very seminal and defining moment for one's personal experience with the fandom, and judging by the attendance at the panel, it's a tail (HAH!) that plenty of people were willing to tell; myself included, of course. I was trying to collect a few remarks together that I thought might be useful, but then the phrasing of Joe's question threw me off a little.
"What was the gateway drug that first got you into the fandom?"
And then of course, with the tape rolling and everything, I bowed to a very destructive instinct of mine that I doubt I'll ever break myself of. I said exactly what I was thinking.
"What got me hooked on this? Oh, porn! No doubt."
I thought an opener like that would place me in something of an awkward position whilst delivering the amplifying details of my response, but my candor actually earned applause from those assembled. Quite an encouraging response from something that I went a bit out on a limb to say. Joe seemed very interested in my response and he made certain to get my name and my blessing to use the content of my response, so I guess we'd better look out for the release of that book. The occasion of my words first appearing in print for real may happen a lot sooner than I thought it would.
After the panel, chaos theory managed to bring me into the company of Baron Von Jackal just in time for us to get some good seats for the fursuit parade. He's someone who was recommended to me by a friend, and for obvious reasons we have a couple things in common, so I pinged him on FA when I found out that he was there at the con. Good thing I have the blue labcoat to make me stand out in the crowd a little or that probably wouldn't have gone so smoothly. For once it fit the theme, even. "Department of Research and Advancement" definitely sounds like something that ought to just be bursting with labcoats, so that was nice. In any case, I sat with the Baron and his girl JulySporkyFox, and anyone else who happened to come by. In the course of the fursuit parade we managed to give out over six pounds of candy to the people coming by us. Quite an impressive feat given that our customers prevailingly lacked either thumbs or pockets, occasionally both, resulting in a rather suspect capacity to hold candy.
There was a lull before the dance competition, and I was having fun with the crew that had amassed at our table in the zoo, so I hung around there for quite some time. I guess my inactivity had angered some of the vengeful spirits that Hallow's Day (Well it's after Hallow's Eve. That makes sense, right?) had stirred up. As I sat at the table and mound my own business, I found a ceiling tile in my lap all of a sudden. A rather startling change given that the atrium where the zoo is has ceilings that are about 30 feet up. Had the table I was sitting at not bravely interceded into the missile's trajectory I might have had a very different take on the experience. As it was I just had a handful of ancient drop ceiling detritus and hopefully-not-asbestos to clean off me and all was well. Once again, wearing a labcoat proved exceedingly practical in this scenario. I think it freaked out the other people at the table a lot more than it did me. They ran off to get maintenance and kept asking if I was going to be okay, to which I could only respond "Uh, yeah. It missed. Had it not missed, you would know."
The staff that came by knocked down a couple other loose tiles with disturbing ease to try and stop this sort of thing from happening again. That ceiling did look to be in a state of noteworthy disrepair. I’m forced to wonder if they let us have the con here because they’re in a particularly desperate financial state. There was even the shift manager was there on damage control duty. I could tell that she was worried about me making this a big problem for them, but I had no intention of making a big fuss over it. If I'd actually been staying at the hotel I might've weaseled my way through that process to get comp'd a night or two, but as it was I didn't see any need to press the issue. I'm not the kind of jackass that demands a cash settlement for my "suffering and emotional duress" if any little thing goes wrong. Now granted, I would've been all up in their business if the metal brackets on that thing had lacerated my wrist, as they came within inches of doing. That didn't happen though, so it's all good. Still, it motivated me to seek shelter in the main ballroom where, conveniently enough, the dance competition was being held. It was a blast, as always. I can't even name names as there were just so many amazing performers. I'm always awed by the talent and dedication that's on display there. I've never been much a fan of dancing in most any theater, but I'm tremendously grateful that someone prompted me to check out a dance competition once. These days I never miss them! Like I said, furries make everything fun.
Next up was a character development panel hosted by IronGut. Characterizations and dialogue have always been some of my strong points, so it’s not like that aspect of my writing really needs work. Astute observers will note that much of my work is character-driven. Sometimes even just taking the form of simply reviewing the events that occur in the course of a trip taken by a certain particularly dashing and gregarious leading role. Still, the panel was about developing OC's and fursonas as well, which I thought to be plenty interesting enough to merit my attention. I got there about halfway through, but I got involved in the discussion there quite easily. Everyone had a story to tell, obviously, because we gathered a bunch of storytellers together in the same room, but it all went very smoothly and made for an energetic and supportive atmosphere as we all exchanged ideas and advice. The co-host there was Lurdanjo, the former half of a dynamic duo that includes Libra, an artist I've held in high esteem for some time. They appeared to be on a tight schedule, but I made time to do the fanboy thing before they ran off and made sure to keep an eye out for them as I went about my business during the rest of the con.
We ended up running way long in time, always a good sign. Fortunately the thing that we ran into next was another writing panel, so there wasn't really any need for either party to chase the other off with sticks. Lago, the new helmsman, took over without a hitch, and we started to share the different projects that we were working on. Most of them took the form of "I've got this silly thing I'm working on that's not really worth much" followed immediately by everyone loving it. Very nice atmosphere to work in. My turn to talk about my work wasn't quite like that. Oh, it wasn't that people weren't supportive, it was that I knew that what I had was good and I couldn't wait to tell them all about it. Not as much of a Cinderella story, really. More like: "I'm awesome. What I write is awesome. Here, let me tell you about it." Which is just as good at getting the point across, and it showcases my well-known senese of humility.
The night ended, as it often does, with some improv comedy. Xiris was kinda drunk and really looked like she didn't want to be there, but she loosened up a but as the night went on. The energy for that event really comes from the room anyways, so it went pretty well. I came up with some good stuff and had a ton of fun like usual. Nothing quite like making an ass of yourself in front of a crowd. Hell, that could be a summary of a whole lot of furry activities. Once I had finally run out of events, and out of Saturday, I wandered the convention floor some more. I ran into Diezel and caught up with him a bit. He'd hit the 'Diezel fuel' pretty hard by then, so he was quite fun for awhile, but soon the cold forced me back inside, where I found my dear friends that I'd just met for the first time the day prior. We talked for a long time, the conversation gathering and losing participants at intervals as public gatherings are wont to do. Among those to pass within my purview, Balloonpup and Tanek made enough of an impression on me that their names stuck with me, so congrats guys! You're memorable! The general tone of the night (morning) is best summarized by a certain particular exchange on the occasion of Daylight Savings:
"Hey, the clocks just reset back to 1AM!"
"Does that mean the bar is open again?"
"Dunno. We should check."
In any case, I survived that somehow and got to bed at some unholy hour that I don't recall. (un)fortunately the worst/best of it was over by then. I still managed to get it together at 10 on Sunday for Joe Strike's next panel wherein he presented some of his other findings about the history of anthropomorphism and furry culture. Fascinating stuff, really. Lots of highly sexualized ads from Europe feature furry characters. I guess it's no wonder that furry is big over there too. The wealth of information that he had really made me want to buy his book when it comes out, which I suppose was the point. Well played, reptile.
The fursuit games were a lot of fun, though in some ways they were victims of their own popularity. There were a lot of fursuiters in a relatively confined space, which complicated the already rather precarious business of conducting sports with teams composed entirely of mascots. Musical chairs was really more of a conga line with how tightly packed everyone was. Though I was really impressed with how they managed to make that loop into a figure-eight criss-crossing in middle without sparking a potentially lethal calamity. Against all odds everyone was fine at the end of the game, and even allegedly had quite a bit of fun.
After that, straight back to writing because that's what I do. Kjorteo had a lot of useful advice to share, useful enough that it attracted Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the previous day and I got to chat with them some more. There was some very interesting content both in the panel and in the interactions that followed. Apparently Libra's meteoric rise to his present state of internet celebrity and ability to monetize furry art was due in large part to the managerial skill and devious, cutthroat business acumen of his new master/talent promoter, Lurdanjo. I could see why that synergy made such a big difference when I talked to them. I know that Libra has talent just leaking out of his ears, that's the whole reason that I wanted to meet him, but he's a much more subdued personality than his popularity demands. Enter the new cornerman, Lurdanjo, a writer with all the passion, drive and cunning that I've come to associate with the craft. They make a hell of a pair together. They're going places, I know it.
Soon enough, we moved our conversation to the next writing panel. It was about worldbuilding, but with an interesting twist. It went beyond even just the setting, and actually started with the design of the planet itself. We could've kept Randall Munroe busy for a year and a half with all the What If scenarios we were trying out in there. It was fascinating stuff, and there were quite a few of us that brought some real-science muscle to the table to fill out the discussion. I'd been complemented a few times on my technical acumen at various points during the con, and all I could say was "Well of course I do lots of science. Do you think that they let just anybody have a labcoat?" I and the Wondertwins with me were engaged enough that we even sat down with Kyroraz and Tsune Shikoi afterwords to have at that subject a bit more. Kyro actually said that he'd meant to get into settings and more small-scale stuff as the panel progressed, but there was such enthusiasm for all the early planetary design stuff that before he could broach the next subject he'd already used up 150% of his time and people were there to kick us out. Too much enthusiasm for the topic? Unacceptable. Kyro, get on that!
That really was a fun crew to chat with though. There's just so much to talk about that you can't help but follow up on such things. Lurdanjo is a big fan of Artificial Intelligence. Really big. It's practically the first thing that you'll learn about him when you meet him. So that drove the conversation in some really interesting directions. To call him a lover of AIs is an understatement. He actually seems pretty sore at the lack of friendly, helpful AIs in science fiction. Someone at the panel heard that and did exactly what I was going to do and recommended Freefall to him. Such a shame I didn't have a chance to follow up with that guy after the panel. Meeting another Freefall fan just by providence is an astronomically rare event. I ought not let it slip through my fingers again. In any case, Lurdanjo had trouble getting past how stupid Helix is, which I suppose I understand. He's almost unsettlingly serious about AI, so I can see how the opening tone of the comic would push him away from it. I'm probably going to keep pushing it on him though. Anyone who's this passionate about building brains needs to read Freefall. He's a pretty sharp writer too, so maybe some of that desire on my part is just my wanting to see what he'd think of Donna. I think he'd be really impressed. That's my legendary humility talking again, I suppose.
After that there was a gap in the schedule, which was fortunate as that was about the time I realized that I had lost my notes. My labcoat earned itself a lot of points this con, and then lost nearly all of them with its unreliable pockets. That little memo pad that I had in there contained a lot of the collected knowledge I'd gained from all these writing panels I keep finding myself in, as well as just about anything else I thought was worthy of remembering. Quite a distressing loss to be sure. Retracing one's steps at a furry con is a tall order, but I really needed my notes. How in the hell am I supposed to do science without notes? No luck. I didn't have much hope for it regardless. If it had gone missing in the maelstrom that was the con hotel, there probably wasn't much hope for it. I did have the sense to check back at the Super 8 though, where it actually had turned up in the lobby and they had it at the front desk. And as I savored my tiny but insurmountably meaningful victory, I realized that it was time for closing ceremonies.
Judging by the stats I heard them throw around, I'd say that Furpocalypse is here to stay. They seem to be really on top of their game, and even with the burden of a somewhat messy reboot hanging over the con they put on a really great show. They saved their best innovation for last though. For their Dead Dog, they just buy a bunch of pizza and drinks and have a social in the ballroom. That's a fantastic idea! One of the problems with a weekend con is that they tend to burn out really fast at the end. Even with by apparent superpower for acquiring new contacts in a place where I know absolutely no one, I tend to run out of familiar faces very quickly at the end of the weekend. Having a place for people to meet one last time before everyone takes off is very useful. I managed to follow up with just about everyone before everyone had to run. I managed to find plenty enough people to keep me going late into the night before I made my own escape. There's a whole bunch of work that didn't get done in my absence, but I had a TON of fun. Five stars. Would buy again. That being said, I find a lot of my work still strangely not getting done still, even though I’ve been at my computer for hours. I suppose I should get on that instead of talking in fine detail about all the not-work I've been doing.
My departure time did concern me somewhat though. I've learned from experience that late on a Friday afternoon ("prevening" I believe is the more accurate term) is the point at which the roads surrounding the capital district are overrun by slavering hordes of road warriors who fear neither God nor man, nor the concrete walls on either side of them that they seem intent on intimidating with the sheer ferocity of their navigational tactics. Fortunately though, no portion of this particular swarm of angry hornets is intent on traveling to Connecticut, so I went largely unmolested on my drive and arrived at ground zero of the Furpocalypse relatively unmolested. Whether I'd stay unmolested once there was another matter entirely, but that's par for the course in this environment.
The convention hotel had sold out long before I thought to dig up a place to lay my head for this. So my first stop was to check in at a nearby Super 8 that was doing its damndest to imitate the dormitory environment that I had become recently accustomed to. Archaic heating system, comically small floorplan, shower that alternates between "deathray" and "liquid nitrogen", thin walls with the other rooms filled with kids in their early 20s doing everything but sleep in their rooms... yeah, if they'd had some pest control problems they would've had the whole package. Very homely. Anyways, I headed out to the actual con without delay. Too bad I'd already missed the bulk of Friday's events. Still, it was where I came here to be, so I'd best be there, for better or for worse. I got in just under the wire for registration, which was a great convenience. The guy issuing my badge said that he recognized me. I was intrigued since that's not an accusation that I get terribly often. Apparently he's going to be my boss when Furthe'More next comes around. I don't envy him that. Many great men have cringed at the idea of being made responsible for me. Of course the average con staff is made up almost entirely of maverick renegades with naught but scorn for any sort of structure or authority. Perhaps I'd fit right in. Only time will tell.
I managed to catch the tail end of a fursuit wedding between Halla and Logarth after I made it into the con proper. Quite a whimsical and uplifting occasion, to be sure. I'm glad that I took the time to stop by. Shocker was that it was a woman and a man marrying each other, as the ancient legends speak of. Nice to get a little reminder that I'm not the only one, no matter the statistics and assumptions at play. The only remaining event that held any interest for me that day was the trivia competition. I'd never been to anything like that at a con, so I figured I'd have a go at it. I signed on with the first team that said they were taking newcomers, as is the way with all prudent and responsible decisions. We took on the challenge with great enthusiasm. It was pretty competitive for awhile. I was on top of a lot of the questions due to my skills with the science and some niche interests. They got a bit too much into dated pop culture references though and we started flagging. Still, furries make pretty much anything fun, and I had a great time the whole way through. After that I was turned loose to wander this level of the maze without an objective or any form of structure. It often doesn't feel productive, but it's worth doing, I've found. I did my standard thing of hitting up a few artists that I recognized by their FA names. Some like that and some don't, but I still feel I ought to give out the requisite props when I find someone that does some good work. Mostly indeterminate reactions, really, but it was far too early to call it a night.
I astonish myself quite regularly with how gregarious I become when I'm at a con, but I still feel like I need a starting point. That was the problem here. Furpocalypse is a small and pseudo-new convention, so I knew essentially no one that was there. Even in a social pinball machine environment like a convention, I still tend to feel like I need an in with people in order to really make a proper connection without it being awkward or disruptive. It doesn't have to be much of one though. I grabbed onto K2 with basically the premise of "Hey, person I've met once ever who barely remembers me! We should hang out!" Astonishingly enough that actually worked and I soon had someone to talk to, a number of someones, actually. K2 was in full suit still, and so eventually she struck out into the world to do whatever popular people who actually have friends do when they're off being well-known and... happy or whatever. She did drop a couple nice people in my lap on her way out though. I got to talking with Sparky and Donovan and that actually went on for quite awhile. Charming folks, really. We got to sit and have it out about anything under the sun. NomCrunch came by and I invited him over to join in as well. It was nice to have a chance to slow down a bit and get things straightened out as we chatted. I hit them up for a bit of witty banter a number of times throughout the con and had quite a good time doing so. It's really easy to get along with people in a high-energy environment like that where everyone's having so much fun, and I'm quite grateful for that.
I knew that weekend cons tend to load up Saturday quite heavily, so I turned in early that night. I've learned many times that being the man in the room with the most working higher brain functions is often quite a lot of fun, so Friday night was a good opportunity for me to pull ahead early in that department. Plus I still haven't broken my habit of waking up rather early. At this rate I may never do so. Next semester's class schedule is pretty heavily front-loaded as well. In any case, I was awake the next morning in plenty of good time for Saturday Morning Cartoons, an event that seems to pop up at every con these days. Not that I mind. There usually isn't a damn thing happening from 8 to 10 in the morning, and you often find a lot of like-minded people there, since getting up early is a litmus test for a lot of different personality traits. Then of course there are the people who hadn't been to bed yet from the previous day, which as I mentioned before, are an entirely different kind of fun. So, once the nostalgia breakfast was over I thought I'd try out the hookah panel. I've known a lot of people who are into that, so I figured I'd get the lowdown on the tech since there was still not much else going on. That one was going pretty smoothly and seemed interesting enough, but then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Yes, in what has apparently become something of a tradition, there was a fire alarm. So, surprise trip outside for everyone! It’s quite a sight to see several dozen cosplayers and suiters being shuffled off the premises just ahead of a haggard mob who were obviously just awakened by this event. It was about 10:30 by then, so I had a rapidly dwindling measure of sympathy for those who were still cringing at the stark and merciless light of day. I felt like I was being overly pessimistic when I threw my heavy coat in the car before leaving, but soon had it, and my smug sense of superiority, to keep me warm as we all waited around in the parking lot for the all-clear to come through. It was an astonishingly well-organized affair, with the crowd being easily nudged about and directed away from whatever emergency operations were going on. "Responsible" and "cooperative" are not often words that furries find themselves exemplifying. In fact some of the charm of the movement lies in a general lack of those things.
This particular evacuation was smooth as butter, though. The fire department was baffled when they got the report of a fire at a hotel filled with furries and arrived to find the place looking like anything other than a warzone. I mean, we did call the event "Furpocalypse". That would seem to be a pretty clear statement of intent when looked at objectively. They arrived though, to find the hotel in perfect order, and in fact, not on fire. Not even a little. There was a sensor in a little-used staff bathroom that was either faulty or responding to someone's nicotine habit in that area, and so none of this particular adventure was even our fault. Pleasant surprises all around that morning. Clearly the hands of fate wanted me out of the hookah panel, so I elected to forage for food in lieu of returning to it. I knew that I'd have to make a point of it, as I often stop feeling hungry for days at a time when I go to a con. There's just too much going on to worry about petty trivialities like the basic necessities of life. I probably ate maybe three actual meals that whole weekend, and that was the result of some not-insignificant application of willpower. I'd really hate to be one of those guys that just runs on fumes until they crash out, but I understand their predicament a little better with every con I attend.
Next up was an interesting event put on by Joe Strike, an alligator who has taken it upon himself to chronicle the furry experience from an insider’s perspective, sort of like a certain amateur writer that we all know and love. I really liked the premise of this panel and I knew that I had to attend. It was called "I'm not the only one!" and really the title says it all. It's about that one story that every furry has when they discovered the maelstrom of cartoon animals and dangerously stifling costumes that they are presently swept up in. Joe did the panel as research for a book that he's writing called Furry Nation. It's about the furry fandom's origins and development through the past couple decades. His publisher said that there ought to be more testimonials and personal stories from the furries themselves in the book, so he set out to collect some. Clever framing device that he used to gather all these data points, too. That "I'm not the only one" story is a very seminal and defining moment for one's personal experience with the fandom, and judging by the attendance at the panel, it's a tail (HAH!) that plenty of people were willing to tell; myself included, of course. I was trying to collect a few remarks together that I thought might be useful, but then the phrasing of Joe's question threw me off a little.
"What was the gateway drug that first got you into the fandom?"
And then of course, with the tape rolling and everything, I bowed to a very destructive instinct of mine that I doubt I'll ever break myself of. I said exactly what I was thinking.
"What got me hooked on this? Oh, porn! No doubt."
I thought an opener like that would place me in something of an awkward position whilst delivering the amplifying details of my response, but my candor actually earned applause from those assembled. Quite an encouraging response from something that I went a bit out on a limb to say. Joe seemed very interested in my response and he made certain to get my name and my blessing to use the content of my response, so I guess we'd better look out for the release of that book. The occasion of my words first appearing in print for real may happen a lot sooner than I thought it would.
After the panel, chaos theory managed to bring me into the company of Baron Von Jackal just in time for us to get some good seats for the fursuit parade. He's someone who was recommended to me by a friend, and for obvious reasons we have a couple things in common, so I pinged him on FA when I found out that he was there at the con. Good thing I have the blue labcoat to make me stand out in the crowd a little or that probably wouldn't have gone so smoothly. For once it fit the theme, even. "Department of Research and Advancement" definitely sounds like something that ought to just be bursting with labcoats, so that was nice. In any case, I sat with the Baron and his girl JulySporkyFox, and anyone else who happened to come by. In the course of the fursuit parade we managed to give out over six pounds of candy to the people coming by us. Quite an impressive feat given that our customers prevailingly lacked either thumbs or pockets, occasionally both, resulting in a rather suspect capacity to hold candy.
There was a lull before the dance competition, and I was having fun with the crew that had amassed at our table in the zoo, so I hung around there for quite some time. I guess my inactivity had angered some of the vengeful spirits that Hallow's Day (Well it's after Hallow's Eve. That makes sense, right?) had stirred up. As I sat at the table and mound my own business, I found a ceiling tile in my lap all of a sudden. A rather startling change given that the atrium where the zoo is has ceilings that are about 30 feet up. Had the table I was sitting at not bravely interceded into the missile's trajectory I might have had a very different take on the experience. As it was I just had a handful of ancient drop ceiling detritus and hopefully-not-asbestos to clean off me and all was well. Once again, wearing a labcoat proved exceedingly practical in this scenario. I think it freaked out the other people at the table a lot more than it did me. They ran off to get maintenance and kept asking if I was going to be okay, to which I could only respond "Uh, yeah. It missed. Had it not missed, you would know."
The staff that came by knocked down a couple other loose tiles with disturbing ease to try and stop this sort of thing from happening again. That ceiling did look to be in a state of noteworthy disrepair. I’m forced to wonder if they let us have the con here because they’re in a particularly desperate financial state. There was even the shift manager was there on damage control duty. I could tell that she was worried about me making this a big problem for them, but I had no intention of making a big fuss over it. If I'd actually been staying at the hotel I might've weaseled my way through that process to get comp'd a night or two, but as it was I didn't see any need to press the issue. I'm not the kind of jackass that demands a cash settlement for my "suffering and emotional duress" if any little thing goes wrong. Now granted, I would've been all up in their business if the metal brackets on that thing had lacerated my wrist, as they came within inches of doing. That didn't happen though, so it's all good. Still, it motivated me to seek shelter in the main ballroom where, conveniently enough, the dance competition was being held. It was a blast, as always. I can't even name names as there were just so many amazing performers. I'm always awed by the talent and dedication that's on display there. I've never been much a fan of dancing in most any theater, but I'm tremendously grateful that someone prompted me to check out a dance competition once. These days I never miss them! Like I said, furries make everything fun.
Next up was a character development panel hosted by IronGut. Characterizations and dialogue have always been some of my strong points, so it’s not like that aspect of my writing really needs work. Astute observers will note that much of my work is character-driven. Sometimes even just taking the form of simply reviewing the events that occur in the course of a trip taken by a certain particularly dashing and gregarious leading role. Still, the panel was about developing OC's and fursonas as well, which I thought to be plenty interesting enough to merit my attention. I got there about halfway through, but I got involved in the discussion there quite easily. Everyone had a story to tell, obviously, because we gathered a bunch of storytellers together in the same room, but it all went very smoothly and made for an energetic and supportive atmosphere as we all exchanged ideas and advice. The co-host there was Lurdanjo, the former half of a dynamic duo that includes Libra, an artist I've held in high esteem for some time. They appeared to be on a tight schedule, but I made time to do the fanboy thing before they ran off and made sure to keep an eye out for them as I went about my business during the rest of the con.
We ended up running way long in time, always a good sign. Fortunately the thing that we ran into next was another writing panel, so there wasn't really any need for either party to chase the other off with sticks. Lago, the new helmsman, took over without a hitch, and we started to share the different projects that we were working on. Most of them took the form of "I've got this silly thing I'm working on that's not really worth much" followed immediately by everyone loving it. Very nice atmosphere to work in. My turn to talk about my work wasn't quite like that. Oh, it wasn't that people weren't supportive, it was that I knew that what I had was good and I couldn't wait to tell them all about it. Not as much of a Cinderella story, really. More like: "I'm awesome. What I write is awesome. Here, let me tell you about it." Which is just as good at getting the point across, and it showcases my well-known senese of humility.
The night ended, as it often does, with some improv comedy. Xiris was kinda drunk and really looked like she didn't want to be there, but she loosened up a but as the night went on. The energy for that event really comes from the room anyways, so it went pretty well. I came up with some good stuff and had a ton of fun like usual. Nothing quite like making an ass of yourself in front of a crowd. Hell, that could be a summary of a whole lot of furry activities. Once I had finally run out of events, and out of Saturday, I wandered the convention floor some more. I ran into Diezel and caught up with him a bit. He'd hit the 'Diezel fuel' pretty hard by then, so he was quite fun for awhile, but soon the cold forced me back inside, where I found my dear friends that I'd just met for the first time the day prior. We talked for a long time, the conversation gathering and losing participants at intervals as public gatherings are wont to do. Among those to pass within my purview, Balloonpup and Tanek made enough of an impression on me that their names stuck with me, so congrats guys! You're memorable! The general tone of the night (morning) is best summarized by a certain particular exchange on the occasion of Daylight Savings:
"Hey, the clocks just reset back to 1AM!"
"Does that mean the bar is open again?"
"Dunno. We should check."
In any case, I survived that somehow and got to bed at some unholy hour that I don't recall. (un)fortunately the worst/best of it was over by then. I still managed to get it together at 10 on Sunday for Joe Strike's next panel wherein he presented some of his other findings about the history of anthropomorphism and furry culture. Fascinating stuff, really. Lots of highly sexualized ads from Europe feature furry characters. I guess it's no wonder that furry is big over there too. The wealth of information that he had really made me want to buy his book when it comes out, which I suppose was the point. Well played, reptile.
The fursuit games were a lot of fun, though in some ways they were victims of their own popularity. There were a lot of fursuiters in a relatively confined space, which complicated the already rather precarious business of conducting sports with teams composed entirely of mascots. Musical chairs was really more of a conga line with how tightly packed everyone was. Though I was really impressed with how they managed to make that loop into a figure-eight criss-crossing in middle without sparking a potentially lethal calamity. Against all odds everyone was fine at the end of the game, and even allegedly had quite a bit of fun.
After that, straight back to writing because that's what I do. Kjorteo had a lot of useful advice to share, useful enough that it attracted Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the previous day and I got to chat with them some more. There was some very interesting content both in the panel and in the interactions that followed. Apparently Libra's meteoric rise to his present state of internet celebrity and ability to monetize furry art was due in large part to the managerial skill and devious, cutthroat business acumen of his new master/talent promoter, Lurdanjo. I could see why that synergy made such a big difference when I talked to them. I know that Libra has talent just leaking out of his ears, that's the whole reason that I wanted to meet him, but he's a much more subdued personality than his popularity demands. Enter the new cornerman, Lurdanjo, a writer with all the passion, drive and cunning that I've come to associate with the craft. They make a hell of a pair together. They're going places, I know it.
Soon enough, we moved our conversation to the next writing panel. It was about worldbuilding, but with an interesting twist. It went beyond even just the setting, and actually started with the design of the planet itself. We could've kept Randall Munroe busy for a year and a half with all the What If scenarios we were trying out in there. It was fascinating stuff, and there were quite a few of us that brought some real-science muscle to the table to fill out the discussion. I'd been complemented a few times on my technical acumen at various points during the con, and all I could say was "Well of course I do lots of science. Do you think that they let just anybody have a labcoat?" I and the Wondertwins with me were engaged enough that we even sat down with Kyroraz and Tsune Shikoi afterwords to have at that subject a bit more. Kyro actually said that he'd meant to get into settings and more small-scale stuff as the panel progressed, but there was such enthusiasm for all the early planetary design stuff that before he could broach the next subject he'd already used up 150% of his time and people were there to kick us out. Too much enthusiasm for the topic? Unacceptable. Kyro, get on that!
That really was a fun crew to chat with though. There's just so much to talk about that you can't help but follow up on such things. Lurdanjo is a big fan of Artificial Intelligence. Really big. It's practically the first thing that you'll learn about him when you meet him. So that drove the conversation in some really interesting directions. To call him a lover of AIs is an understatement. He actually seems pretty sore at the lack of friendly, helpful AIs in science fiction. Someone at the panel heard that and did exactly what I was going to do and recommended Freefall to him. Such a shame I didn't have a chance to follow up with that guy after the panel. Meeting another Freefall fan just by providence is an astronomically rare event. I ought not let it slip through my fingers again. In any case, Lurdanjo had trouble getting past how stupid Helix is, which I suppose I understand. He's almost unsettlingly serious about AI, so I can see how the opening tone of the comic would push him away from it. I'm probably going to keep pushing it on him though. Anyone who's this passionate about building brains needs to read Freefall. He's a pretty sharp writer too, so maybe some of that desire on my part is just my wanting to see what he'd think of Donna. I think he'd be really impressed. That's my legendary humility talking again, I suppose.
After that there was a gap in the schedule, which was fortunate as that was about the time I realized that I had lost my notes. My labcoat earned itself a lot of points this con, and then lost nearly all of them with its unreliable pockets. That little memo pad that I had in there contained a lot of the collected knowledge I'd gained from all these writing panels I keep finding myself in, as well as just about anything else I thought was worthy of remembering. Quite a distressing loss to be sure. Retracing one's steps at a furry con is a tall order, but I really needed my notes. How in the hell am I supposed to do science without notes? No luck. I didn't have much hope for it regardless. If it had gone missing in the maelstrom that was the con hotel, there probably wasn't much hope for it. I did have the sense to check back at the Super 8 though, where it actually had turned up in the lobby and they had it at the front desk. And as I savored my tiny but insurmountably meaningful victory, I realized that it was time for closing ceremonies.
Judging by the stats I heard them throw around, I'd say that Furpocalypse is here to stay. They seem to be really on top of their game, and even with the burden of a somewhat messy reboot hanging over the con they put on a really great show. They saved their best innovation for last though. For their Dead Dog, they just buy a bunch of pizza and drinks and have a social in the ballroom. That's a fantastic idea! One of the problems with a weekend con is that they tend to burn out really fast at the end. Even with by apparent superpower for acquiring new contacts in a place where I know absolutely no one, I tend to run out of familiar faces very quickly at the end of the weekend. Having a place for people to meet one last time before everyone takes off is very useful. I managed to follow up with just about everyone before everyone had to run. I managed to find plenty enough people to keep me going late into the night before I made my own escape. There's a whole bunch of work that didn't get done in my absence, but I had a TON of fun. Five stars. Would buy again. That being said, I find a lot of my work still strangely not getting done still, even though I’ve been at my computer for hours. I suppose I should get on that instead of talking in fine detail about all the not-work I've been doing.
Furpocalypse Now
General | Posted 11 years agoOkay, I don't have much to say, but the giant-ass RMFC journal has been exploding my userpage for long enough. I recently found out that Furpocalypse is a thing that exists. I realized shortly after that that I'm actually within just a couple hours of Cromwell, Connecticut, so this one actually has a chance of being somewhat feasible. I have no idea what my schedule is going to look like for the tail end of October, but I'll see what I can do about freeing that weekend up. With luck, pretty soon this space will be filled with one of those me-me things that the kids are into these days, which will outline my plans for attending the convention.
RMFC Journal Part II: Rocky Mountain Higher
General | Posted 11 years agoWell, I hooked a substantial audience of mostly people who were actually there and already know what happened with part I. So that brings us to the thrilling conclusion. If you read the first half you know that I had just arrived at the con when I ran out of space in my journal. And if you didn't read the first journal then you're a poopyhead for skipping ahead to the good part.
Thanks to a shuffling of rooms and other arrangements that I never even fully grasped in the first place, much less retained well enough to reproduce here, my problem of where to lay my head had been solved just slightly in advance of my arrival. It ended up that there was an opening in Nevir and Ryoken’s room. When we discussed it, Nevir asked if I’d be okay with sharing a bed with a girl. Okay? That’s great! Way better than my typical convention sleeping arrangement. I’d yet to meet this girl, but the wondertwins there seem to attract some pretty good people, so I was pretty optimistic. Well, on her arrival, Redd Pandafox most certainly did not disappoint. I suppose her general bearing can be best summarized simply by the few moments that we spent getting her to the room.
“I’m totally not a Brony though,” she asserts, slamming the doors of her car, both of which were covered by a sprawling, five-foot Rainbow Dash decal, as she hands me a hamper containing a Rainbow Dash hooded bathrobe.
Her next assertion was the still-more-questionable, the claim of “I packed light.” As we filled a luggage cart to the point of crushing its own wheels with her supplies, four fursuits and entire suitcase full of booze. Yeah, she came prepared. At least it was easy to direct our caravan to the room. I just had to find the door that had our names and likenesses hanging from the door handle.
After apparently making a very good first impression on her over the ensuing 20 minutes, I helped her get together the Ocean’s Eleven crack team of various animals that we had packed into the baggage cart. She was very enthusiastic about her latest addition to the menagerie, a male deer-fox combination that looked teddy-bear-cute and extremely well-crafted. She speculated idly on which of her remaining characters might fit me, and we shortly got to testing that out. A red panda called Pocket was a good fit for me, and she was a good karmic balance given that Redd was also running with a gender-deceptive choice. This was obviously an opportunity that blindsided and thoroughly overwhelmed me, so in my staggering state of shock I pretty much just threw on the head, tail and paws over whatever I happened to be wearing at the time, making a right mockery out of what I’m sure is a very treasured character of Redd’s. I really will have to give more careful consideration to this sort of thing in the future. The last way I want to react to such generosity is with inconsiderate disrespect like that. I went out there wearing shorts. Shorts, in a fursuit! What the hell is wrong with me?
Regardless, suiting was a blast, as it always is. Having the precious Pocket Panda’s proper player presiding at the occasion was a unique opportunity for both of us, I think. Redd really seemed to appreciate what I brought to the character, so I do hope that I earned some redemption in that respect. I didn’t do anything special, necessarily. Followed my crew around, danced, socialized and generally did silly furry things. Nevir had counseled me about the altitude and the fact that it would necessitate an adjustment period. I hadn’t noticed it at all until I wrapped my head in carpet and started doing aerobic workouts. Funny how limited oxygen will put a harsh cap on such activities. Also, I’d swear that this elevation puts us measurably closer to the sun, as it was just beastly outside. I had this confirmed later when I looked at the UV index. It was an 11, which I didn’t know was possible. In any case, in spite of my rapidly-increasing recovery times, I like to think that Pocket Panda and I did her momma proud.
Pocket has a strange knack for public relations, I found. I was walking through the hotel and I noticed Ryoken amidst a small group talking adamantly. Not an uncommon occurrence with him, really, but I thought that I’d check in on the action. It turned out that it was one of those bewildered “just what the heck is going on here?” conversations that pop up on occasion when furries overlap with the general public. I rather enjoy such things, and people who will actually engage in a conversation to obtain this information are somewhat few and far between, so I joined in. Ryoken eventually ran off to satiate his short attention span with other activities, so I was carrying the conversation for a little while until Kota showed up to join in as well. We talked about everything under the sun, for far longer than I ever thought I could discuss such things.
My inquisitor for this little exchange was a middle-aged gentleman in a pastel polo shirt and khaki shorts named Jamie. Either vacationing or retired by the look of him. He kind of looked like the bald guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm. In any case, he was fascinated by the scene taking place before him, and I did my best to explain it all to him. A lot of the questions that he wanted answered are things that vary widely from person to person, and I did my best to bring that across; describing the general trends that I’d observed and going over my own situation in detail. The one that he kept coming back to was “What do you all get out of this?” an interesting query that I’d never heard phrased quite that way before. I admire him in the way he made me dig deep and really get to the heart of the reasoning behind why we were all doing whatever it was we were doing.
He apologized again and again for taking up so much of my time, but I really could think of no better use for it. So many people judge furries out of hand without ever even speaking to one of us in person, so I really treasure those few people that undertake the effort to ask these questions, get to know us and generate some truly informed opinions. That’s a rare opportunity, and I could hardly allow it to go to waste. I don’t often have the occasion to put these things into words, but that’s a really fun experience, to be honest. I mean, everybody loves talking about something they love. There were a few questions that I didn’t have answers for, some of which stuck with me. When it came up that I don’t tell my parents what I do here and he asked why, I was kind of stumped. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a particularly good reason.
Lots of people have extremely good reasons for keeping this sort of thing under wraps, like parents who would disown them or cut them off from the money they’re using for college if they found out. Still others have parents who attend with them, or at the very least support this particular oddball enthusiasm. I’m somewhere in the middle, I think. My parents would most likely think that this is just another weird thing that I do and not really look into it too much. It’s a lot less of a big deal what they think of my actions now that I’ve gained some independence. Well, I had independence for awhile there. That kind of evaporated when I left my job at the navy to go back to college. Now that I’m living with them during the summer I can’t really claim that they’re not involved in my life anymore. Maybe that’s where some of that pressure comes from. Ironically, I think it has a lot to do with my fear of doing for my parents what I so easily do with strangers, explaining exactly what the heck is up with all this furry stuff. I’ve always had a very good relationship with my parents, and I never realized what a rare and precious thing that was until I got out into the world a little bit and heard a lot of the much more tragic stories of my contemporaries. I guess that’s why I value it so much now, and I’m wary of anything that could potentially put a strain on that relationship. This certainly isn’t a secret that I plan to take to my grave, but it’s something that I really ought to wait for the right time to talk about.
In any case, we spent a long time indeed doing our little chat. It was half-past tomorrow by the time we ran out of things to talk about. Jamie started off really distressed about not being able to see my face as we talked. At the end, I offered him the chance to come with me to the headless lounge so that he could have that chance. He actually declined, saying that he felt he knew me plenty well now and no longer felt the need to see my face. That really felt like progress to me. Making a complete stranger feel comfortable talking to someone in a cartoon animal costume is a pretty tall order. It’s nice to know that I rose to the challenge in that respect. I had my success confirmed by an onlooker of this little production. SketchyWolf mentioned a few times that he was very impressed with the way that I represented the fandom. I’m glad that I did well. This is one of those scenarios wherein I don’t even claim to know what I’m doing, and yet I seemed to have a pretty good handle on it, and I really enjoyed the experience.
After a little cooldown with Kota in the headless lounge I headed back up to the room. It was undeniably bedtime by then. For the first and only time that con, I actually got to bed at a time sort of close to that of my roommates. Everyone was in bed already, so I kept the lights off and was as quiet as I could be while navigating the cluttered minefield of fursuit debris on my way to the bed. Sleep is really important to me, so I try to do what I can to not deny it to others. I didn’t realize what a rarity that was until I talked to Redd the next day. Apparently it just blew her mind that I’d actually think to quietly slip into bed and do my best not to wake her. Great to know that I’m such a gentleman, apparently. So yeah, as con sleeping arrangements go, this one was all aces in my book. Not that the competition in that respect was terribly fierce.
I’ve yet to fully break myself of the habit of waking up early, and at this rate I may never succeed at doing so. That’s a big part of why I like to get to bed at a sort of reasonable hour at cons. Waking early is an encumbrance for the most part, but I figured that I may as well take advantage of it. What really got me out of bed that morning was that the recipient of my lecture the previous night had invited me to breakfast, should I manage to rouse myself in time for the early bird special. I was only a little bit late, actually, but still managed to miss him. This still left me in a good spot for registration though, so everything has got a silver lining I suppose. On-site registration was actually not a disaster, which speaks very well for how the con is run. 2 Gryphon was also prowling about the venue at that unholy hour. It took a little bit for me to work up the nerve to approach him, but as the first familiar face I’d seen at this convention I could hardly let this opportunity pass. I should’ve gotten a picture with him. I could’ve titled it ‘Photo 1, of 2’.
When I finally did get the chance to sit down to talk to 2, too, I was reminded of what a fool I’d been for hesitating. Despite his somewhat abrasive (if we’re being charitable) stage persona, he’s actually quite personable if you can catch him in his natural habitat. He talked a great deal about his disappointment with living in California, and how he had high hopes about becoming local to RMFC. He and his betrothed have moved to Colorado Springs just recently and he seemed pretty excited about it. I really enjoyed the chance to sit and talk with him for awhile. Like so many furry luminaries, he’s a great conversationalist and always has an interesting perspective to share. It really was a great way to start the day. Maybe I’m starting to understand some of the insufferable smugness that morning people exhibit all the time.
First up was easily the most efficient opening ceremony I’ve ever been to. We got through special guests, announcements, introductions, statistics and embarrassing the charity people all in the space of about five or ten minutes, and I was on my way once more. Normally I wouldn’t go for this sort of thing, but the early timeslots were sparse and I really didn’t like how I knew absolutely no one here. I really liked the idea of going to a meet and greet, and the singles one was the only such event that I actually fit into the demographic for. It was about what I expected, that is to say, mostly gay men, but it was still a fun time and I got a few laughs with the dossier I used when it came my time to introduce myself.
“Hi, I go by Bucephalus around these parts but you can call me Beau because I’m entirely aware of how ridiculous and unpronounceable my name is. I’m from just outside Rochester New York though I can’t say I’d recommend being from there if you’re in the market for a place to be born. A year ago I completed my tour in the Navy and before you ask, yes, there are a decent amount of gay people there and no, nowhere nearly as many as there are at a furry convention. Since then Uncle Sam has been signing some pretty big checks in order to let me pursue my degree in nuclear engineering, so thanks a bunch sucker- I mean taxpayers! My fursona is a jackal, but I’m wearing this red panda tail because, well look at it! It’s awesome!”
So yeah, not a lot to be said for that one, but it was still a lot of fun. The tail that I was wearing was one that Redd generously loaned me. It was a massive and voluptuous red panda tail that I immediately fell in love with. It had to be four feet long at least, a fluffy and wonderfully audacious creation that I wore pretty much the whole con. After the singles meet-and-greet was the only writing panel I managed to make it to this con. It was decent, but once again I’m spoiled by the cons with highly developed writing tracks like… all of the other ones I’ve ever been to. This one was a lot less structured, with it basically being a single author who wanted to talk about writing for a little while, and so we did. There’s nothing wrong with something simple like that, really. It’s always nice to hear someone else’s perspective, especially on something as diverse and subjective as writing.
In any case, next up was the dance competition which was… quite disappointing actually. Mostly forgivable things, but just so many of them piled up as to make the overall experience profoundly average. The place had some bad visibility because it lacked a stage. That would’ve been a huge issue if the place had had a bigger crowd, but as such it was only a moderate imposition to find a good vantage point. Now that I think about it Anthrocon is the only place I’ve been that could manage a stage for the dance competition, so maybe that’s harder to pull off than I think it is. I’ve been spoiled by that Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom, I suppose. They had to change technical directors at the last second, and that most certainly showed. Not knowing what song to play, not being able to get the files to work, lots of problems on the technical end. “Oh, the file got corrupted.” Seriously? What year is this? I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. It’s been years since I’ve had a file just give me the finger and irretrievably stop working out of the blue. Computers are better than that now.
After the whole system went down they just ended up playing the tracks on a cell phone through the headphone jack with a fraction of the signal strength needed to drive the amps. It was a tinny, disappointing sound whose most prevalent tone was transistor saturation clipping. The emcee was also brand new, so I’ll forgive him a certain amount of performance anxiety. He also had the great misfortune of experiencing these difficulties in front of 2, who pretty much ran him out of town on a rail for it. They also ran short on time, prompting that ever-disastrous decision to cut out the judges’ commentary. It’s so hard to watch someone put in a great effort and do an awesome job to be answered only with “Yeah that was nice, get off the stage.” Perhaps if time needed to be saved it would’ve been prudent to have some prelims, or at the very least auditions? They pulled in some pretty good talent, but there were people in that competition who very literally couldn’t keep their head on their shoulders during the dance. Nothing against the novices, but we could’ve streamlined this production a lot by screening some of them out.
Right after that was Purry Fictionary, also known as Furry Pictionary, also known as “I can’t understand this motherfucker.” Or alternatively as “I can’t understand this, motherfucker!” The difficulty was that this hotel featured a large and expansive atrium right in the middle. It was a really nice room, but it was absolutely vacuous and just ate up any sort of sound that was produced. You can’t overcome bad acoustics with good intentions, nor can you use a speaker the size of a car battery to be heard in a room the size of a battleship. I gave it a sporting chance, but I quickly tired of having no idea what was going on. Fortunately, that event overlapped with one called Fur Your Entertainment that I was keen on attending, so I was able to slip out in the middle of the frantic sketchfest. FYE was a show put on by a local improv group called the Unmentionables. They put on a really good show that left everyone wanting more. Great games, great creativity and energy, I was a really big fan of these guys.
Friday night was sort of quiet. A bit more prowling around and socializing, a few games of Fluxx in the tabletop room and things like that. A quiet night was fine with me though. I knew that I’d need my sleep because the middle day of a weekend con is always the crazy one. Judging by the schedule this one was no exception. Everyone really put programming in a bind because they only requested Saturday slots for their panels and events, making for an incomparably dense day then. I had run out of ideas and energy, so I was planning to make an early night of it, in hopes of better surviving tomorrow. I really should’ve known better.
I got in an hour or so of sleep, which honestly made that whole effort worth it. I was later, predictably, roused by Redd coming in and parading past me the half-dozen or so followers she’d accrued during her adventures that day. She’d brought them by to sample her fantastically well-stocked bar, and to get a little cooldown break, as many of them were fursuiters like herself. She apologized profusely for disturbing me, which I appreciated, though I really didn’t mind all that much. By now I know what I’m getting into when I get into a roomshare at a convention. I bore it with what grace I could muster, and I’ll admit that it actually was kind of fun to have the party come to me. Redd had left the head of her new Fox-Deer suit on the bed, and so naturally I wore that for most of the exchange. Wearing a fursuit head in bed was oddly soothing, though I can’t fathom why.
Eventually the chaos moved on and I had to give Redd her head back so she and her entourage could return to whatever shenanigan that they had been in the middle of before their break. To her credit though, I went more or less undisturbed for the rest of the night. Largely coincidence, but I’ll give her the benefit of assuming that she was being considerate. Really though, the change was that Ryoken had to run home to do laundry and run other such sundry errands, so there was a space for her in the other bed with Nevir. An arrangement that she actually didn’t know was new until the next morning. As I mentioned, I dazzled her quite effectively with what a gentlemen I had been that first night. When the truth came to light, it actually seemed like quite a shock to her.
“Oh that was you next to me last night?”
“It was. Though fortunately we are in a context wherein not remembering who you just slept with doesn’t actually carry any negative connotations.”
“No, I mean, I just thought that it was Nevir. You were so respectful and quiet I never would’ve guessed it was you.”
“There was a compliment in there somewhere, I know it.”
“Well, it’s just not what I would’ve expected. You know… thank you though. That was nice.”
My assumption that first night had been that she’d just want to be left alone so that she could sleep, since I apparently project my own desires onto people I don’t know very well. I kept to myself as best I was able and I thought that it was a pretty equitable arrangement. Once the subject was broached on Saturday morning though, Redd mentioned that her comfort zone was much smaller than the one I had afforded her, so I needn’t have bothered. That was a relief, certainly. I knew that I’d need sleep by the end of the big busy day, so having a better timeshare arrangement worked out in advance was of some comfort to me.
The thing that dragged us out of bed Saturday “morning” was the fursuit parade, which I was actually a part of because Pocket was still happy to host me for the day. The parade struck me as another badly mishandled event, much like the dance. For one, the staging was in the atrium, which is hot and, as I mentioned, extremely difficult to hear anything in. That’s a pretty big deal when you’ve got a handful of handlers trying to herd a couple hundred fursuiters through a cluttered space into a photograph-shaped cluster. The route was short, and yet still managed to obstruct access to all hotel rooms and the headless lounge. So when you finished the parade, you were essentially trapped in the hot, cluttered, crowded atrium. So I really hope you didn’t burn yourself out on the parade because you’re just fucked if you need someplace to go.
This sounds a lot like complaining, but that’s just the rote, analytical portion of my brain that records everything to tell stories about it later talking. I had a blast and wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I used the crazy long tail this time because I had pretty much committed myself to never taking it off. And of course I pranced and loped energetically all across the hotel as I made my way through the parade route. I was actually somewhat relieved that the route was short by the end, as I managed to overheat quite spectacularly from my antics during the parade. It’s always so much fun to go around in suit. I thought that suiting as a female character would be awkward, but I really enjoyed it. I suppose the whole point of suiting is to dress and act like someone else, so it’s even more exhilarating when you get to act like someone way more else than usual. Pocket was a lot of fun, and I do hope that I get the chance to meet her again in the future.
After a noteworthy recovery phase, I thought that I’d try out the nutrition panel. FreeFox, RMFC’s resident gourmet chef, (no seriously that used to be his job) was having an open discussion about all things healthy. Nutrition is one of those subjects that I don’t necessarily find keenly interesting, but could nonetheless talk about all day long. I thought that it would be a nice panel to visit as I do find myself doing a lot of cooking for one these days, which is difficult to do whilst still turning up anything that looks like it was actually meant to sustain human life. I didn’t really learn too much on that front, but it was still a good way to spend an hour. I did learn about a dozen things that you can do with avocadoes, and that they are perhaps the best thing to happen to nutrition literally since sliced bread.
The next show was “The Amazing Pickles” in which the titular Pickles dazzles you with something that could not inaccurately be called magic. There were few actual magic tricks to be had, but the show was thick with dark comedy and some spontaneous slapstick that I just couldn’t help but love. It’s an effort that you respect just due to the sheer balls of pulling something like that off. It was like when Splat did “I’m a Little Teapot” in the dance competition. Sure it wasn’t good, but one has to admit that they could never pull off something like that. Incidentally, did you know that song has a second verse? Yeah, that’s a thing. Also apparently you can dance to it.
2’s set was up next, so of course I had to see that. He always puts on a great show, and his “origin of furries” bit was tremendously clever. I thought it was great, but it apparently wasn’t enough to keep Redd terribly engaged, as she spent much of the production asleep on my lap. Poor thing, she’d been having a hard day, I’m sure. After the show I had the chance to hang around a bit and talk to the star, as well as the star-adjacent Toast the Rabbit. I’d met him before more than two years ago, but held out little hope that I’d stick in the memory of someone so popular.
“Oh yeah! You were one of the two navy guys from Anthrocon. Of course I remember you!”
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”
So there ya have it, folks. I actually, verifiably existed at some point. Even though it wasn’t long before those two had to run, it was really nice to hear that I’d made an impression on at least one of them. Of course I had places to be as well, the 18+ version of fursuit charades, namely. It was a great idea. The hundred or so people that turned out for it certainly seemed to think so. This was another fumble though, unfortunately. Small, hot room with a few dozen fursuiters and three times that many spectators, wherein we have to keep the door shut because of the evil, deviant goings-on within. Yeah, no potential for problems there at all. Adding to the oppressive atmosphere was the no-camera rule. Now, I very much understand the necessity for that rule, I simply take issue with the way it was enforced. Posting a sign or indicating it in the pocket schedule would’ve been perfectly sufficient, I think. Perhaps have the guard at the door who was checking IDs remind people about that restriction. Pretty much anything would’ve been preferable to having the host of the event yell “If I see anyone with a camera out I’ll have them removed from the con!” every five minutes, followed by the inevitable audience dogpile on anyone absent-minded enough to check their text messages or facebook status or whatever on a phone containing a camera (read: all of them). It all made for a generally unpleasant experience, so I left.
This time I didn’t have a backup plan, but after a little poking around, I saw Toast and 2 at the bar, so I sat with them and had a drink. Other visitors dominated the conversation, but it was still a nice time. The pair were taking a break from the casino set up in the atrium. Toast was talking about how he’d gotten burned out on it and had just given away his chips to a passerby. I wondered aloud at how long one had to hang out with those guys before I got a couple hundred dollars in poker chips. As it turns out, the answer was about 34 minutes. 2 was bought another free drink by an admirer from down the bar, and given that he was just drinking vodka on the rocks he knew he’d be there for awhile. He surrendered his chips to me in good time, which was a nice surprise. Honestly I would’ve much preferred to stay and drink with him, but 2 had given me an ultimatum to make the most of his winnings, so I took off once I finished my drink.
“Alright guys, I’m done drinking. Now I’ve gotta go gamble.”
Man, furry cons are awesome!
Now then, the reason that the $700 worth of chips that just got dropped in my hands weren’t really such a big deal was that they actually weren’t worth anything in cash. It was a charity event and the fact that it was being played for a prize drawing was what made setting up an impromptu casino right in the middle of the atrium actually somewhat legal. $100 in chips bought you a raffle ticket, so there was still some incentive to play. I was pretty late to the game, so I only got in about 15 hands of blackjack, but that was fine by me. I picked blackjack because that’s about the only game wherein I have some reliable assurance that I won’t rapidly hemorrhage money all over the table, and that was actually somewhat true. I ended the night $125 ahead, though that was pretty much all due to the fact that I heard the “last hand” announcement so I bet $200 on that hand. In any case, I won nothing at the raffle so nothing ventured, nothing gained, it seems.
The Unmentionables had their own 18+ panel in the same location as the preceding disaster. I worried a bit about that, but I figured that they could pull it together. And pull it together they did, with an unexpected burst of brilliance in the form of:
“Hey, this room sucks. Let’s go get a bigger one.”
And indeed we did! We got a nice fancy conference room thing that’s called an “Amphitheater” so that you’ll pay more money to reserve it. It had risers with desks so that everyone had lots of space and could see well. I took advantage of the shuffle to get a seat right in front, which let me get involved in the action a little. They took a lot of my suggestions when such things were called for, and my snarky outbursts were welcomed the majority of the time. It was a great time for all involved. Some of the con bigwigs dropped by towards the end, I guess because they’d run out of things to supervise by then and had nowhere else to go. Later on they told us that at karaoke nearby they try to get as many people as they can to sing Bohemian Rhapsody at the end of the night. Literally everyone was up for that, so we flooded the room and just moshed it out to one of Queen’s greatest hits. Great way to end the night, but of course the night couldn’t actually end then. Hell, it was still today! What kind of night ends then?
Ace had finally arrived by then, having been delayed by a flat tire as he was driving to the con. I’m glad that I got to see him again, and this time on a level playing field wherein neither of us knew anyone that was there. Of course Ace knew a few people because he knows everyone ever forever, but that made things run a little smoother than when we were at the party. He was also mostly coherent, which also helps with most aspects of social interaction.
Ace had brought more of what had nearly killed him at the party, some kind of Swedish version of Everclear that I’m pretty sure he needed a HAZMAT clearance to cross state lines with. It was one of those “you can’t even taste the alcohol” things in mixers, allegedly. Every time anyone has said that to me it has been an outright lie because I can pretty much always taste the alcohol in everything. That’s why I drink mostly cocktails with near-lethal amounts of sugar in them. This fancy foreign one though, actually came pretty close though. I had a cup of it cut about half with Mellow Yellow and sure I could taste it, but I never would’ve guessed that there was something you could use to run a diesel engine mixed in there. Ace was really impressed with how I’d handled that. He was looking at me like he expected me to burst into flames after the three drinks I’d had with him. The secret is a fresh liver. Not drinking yourself stupid all day leaves you much better able to fight off the lighter fluid that you’re offered at the end of the night, and it certainly beats trying to steal a liver off someone else. Lots of people seem extremely attached to theirs, despite how unrepentantly they abuse them.
This time I beat my roommates back to the room by a much narrower margin. So I guess you could say that I was getting into the groove of things. When she came to bed Redd mentioned that I needn’t give her a million miles of personal space and leave her completely alone the entire night, so we hashed that arrangement out a little better. I made such a good impression on her that she was completely comfortable with me getting pretty darn close. She said that cuddling a little was okay, and I liked that idea too, so off we went. ‘A little’ turned into ‘the entire night’ with very little provocation, but she didn’t seem to mind. I really enjoyed that. Having the chance to wrap your arms around a cute girl all night isn’t an opportunity that I’ve gotten often, or ever before in my life for that matter, so I really enjoyed that. I’ve written in fiction a few times about how nice it is to sleep with your arms wrapped around someone else, because it suited the story and I hear nice things about it, but it’s nice to not have to take that on faith anymore. Honestly I think that just in the gap between midnight and 2 AM I very nicely encapsulated the whole con experience. Laugh and have tons of fun with total strangers, meet old friends, drink a lot, stay up late, cuddle. Yeah, that’s a furry con in a nutshell!
Our new sleeping arrangement worked so well that it took a great deal of time to extricate myself from it. I didn’t want to spend the whole day lying in bed snuggling. Well, actually I did, but I knew that wasn’t feasible. I managed to blearily stumble into the furry statistics panel Sunday morning. This one was a place where the guys from [Adjective][Species] pore over all the results of the furry surveys (furveys, natch) that have been collected over the years to see if all the things that people say about furries are true, or just as often, find out things about furries that no one says at all! The panel was called ‘Exploring The Fandom Through Data’, which of course led me to find no end of amusement in the fact that the host is a dead ringer for Brent Spiner. Kinda sounds a little bit like him, too.
Childish humor aside, the panel actually was quite interesting. The data doesn’t support that everyone in the fandom is a gay, male, broke, antisocial loaner who lives in his mom’s basement. The statistics in most categories actually follow the bell curve in most places pretty consistently. The most pronounced bias after gender (still overwhelmingly male, that’s undeniable) and age (the fandom is still young. Give it time), seems to be the species-bias in favor of doggies, with greater than half of respondents being some form of canine. Even the one that I receive oh so many examples of, the bias that most people in the fandom are anything-other-than-straight, wasn’t entirely accurate. The question on the subject actually showed an almost perfectly even distribution across the Kinsey scale. Granted that’s considerably more gay than the general populace, but it’s a fair bit short of the idea that everyone is a rainbow-shitting leg-humping horndog, which is the impression you’d get from spending 20 minutes at a furry convention. The fandom attracts such… unique personalities, it’s easy to see how it could suffer from a severe vocal minority distortion when trying to draw conclusions just from observation, so it’s interesting to see what shakes out in the end when anonymous, impartial numbers are turned against the quandary of the fandom.
Later on I found the fursuit games in full swing. They suffered from the sound-eating nature of the atrium as well, but fursuiters trying to accomplish any coherent task is pretty reliably entertaining in any event. It wasn’t long though, before I wandered off towards something more interesting. FreeFox was back, this time with a full blown cooking show where he actually had food and heat in front of him on the table and was combining them in fascinating ways. I normally wouldn’t have given such an event too much thought. Actual cooking is quite beyond me, but I really did like his style when I saw him earlier and Sunday was pretty thin on events, so I went for it. This was the sort of event that would’ve been a total drag if not for the fact that furries were putting it on. When you really know your audience you can make just about anything fun. Granted, most of it was sexual double-entendres, but I never said those weren’t fun! I actually did learn a couple interesting things about cooking. I’m unlikely to employ them ever, but they’ll at the very least add a little spark to my small-talk in the near future.
Conveniently enough, the Town Hall Meeting and closing ceremonies were in the same location as the cooking show, so I just had to loiter long enough for the rest of my evening to come together all around me. The meeting was the bitch box for con feedback, which if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably guessed that I took liberal advantage of and if you haven’t been paying attention then WAKE THE HELL UP I’m doing a thing here. Now, just because I raised my hand to complain about eight times that doesn’t necessarily mean that I thought the con was bad. I’m just really good at complaining and I apparently have a very detailed memory for stuff like this. I didn’t go there to skewer the staff and make them feel bad for their many faults. I just knew that if no one told them about these problems they’d never get fixed. So I’ll include the same disclaimer here that I did with my feedback at the con. I went through a lot to get to this con, as you well know because I just told you about it, and I would call that time and expense quite well spent. I most certainly plan on heading to Rocky Mountain Fur Con again in the future. The vast majority of the problems that I noted were pretty much just growing pains from moving to a new venue this year. I certainly won’t fault them for that, because the new hotel they have is a fantastic con space, and besides the little snafus related to the transition scramble, it was overwhelmingly well run.
The closing ceremonies were smooth and efficient, mirroring the opening ones, and then it was over. Except for screw that this is SO not over. I got word through the grapevine that The Unmentionables were doing an improv workshop where they revealed all of the dark and terrible secrets behind their wild success. It was really just a collection of the games and exercises that they use to hone their thinking-on-their-feet skills. It’s all about recall and being able to come up with something quickly, and not being afraid to say something stupid. It’s more balls than talent, really. The worst thing that can happen is you clam up and come up with nothing. At the end we did a bunch of open-participation games like the ones that they do in their shows and that was an absolute blast. Thanks to three days’ worth of con I took no time at all to loosen up and really get into it. I got a lot of laughs and a handful of people complimented me on my performance afterwards.
After that I bounced around a bit to various contacts here and there, seeing what was going on. I got to see Nevir trying out Shawshank, a fascinating crux suit. He was really into it, by which I mean creepy as all hell. He wandered through a dark abandoned room at one point, and when I went in there after him I found that there were motion sensing lights in there. Shawshank didn’t trigger them because he clearly has no soul. I figured it was best to let Nevir be weird and terrifying in peace, so I wandered off after awhile. Once again I knew it was far too early to try and go to bed, but I did head back to the room for a little breather. Redd was there, and she brought along a friend of hers, one of the improv performers. His name was Rune… something. Damn, I’ve been so good with names so far. Anyways, he took the opportunity to let me know what a great job I did at their events. He actually asked me if I’d like to join The Unmentionables, which was quite flattering. I asked him if he’d like to move them about 1500 miles closer to me and he seemed reluctant to accept my terms. Ah well, missed opportunities. Such is life.
Earlier I mentioned to Redd how the jacket I wore with her fursuit (the only thing I had with me that had long sleeves) looked kind of stupid and didn’t really work with the suit. I also got the nice white tip of her awesome panda tail dirty oh God I ruined all of Redd’s nice things whydoessheputupwithme? Anyways, when she agreed that the black jacket didn’t really work with the suit and said “Don’t worry, I’ll find you a better one.” I never thought for a second that she was being serious. Well, I came to find out that she was indeed picking up another fursuit head, for which I was afforded the incomparable privilege of breaking it in. The lucky newcomer was a stately Doberman that there actually isn’t a name for yet. We were just calling him ‘Grumpy’ for the moment.
Anyways, Redd turned Grumpy and I loose on the world, which made my remaining time much easier to fill. When I met up with Ace one more time and he saw me in a different suit he asked “You’re addicted to fursuiting now, aren’t you?” Well, I’m certainly a fan by this point. Addiction is kind of a strong word, though maybe this is the free hit that the crack dealers are always offering to get the new customers hooked. And Redd is a fursuit maker too! Crafty… Ah well, if that’s where I’m headed, I may as well enjoy the ride. Case in point, I had no interest in karaoke, until I had a brand new fursuit to do it in of course. I invited Ace to come with me and requested something I knew really well because I can’t read for shit in a fursuit. Despite the fact that Grumpy has a comically large head, there still wasn’t quite room enough for my glasses. At least, I thought that I knew Hey Jude really well. After powering through the song and pushing myself to the “near death experience” flavor of exhaustion, as I so often do in fursuit, I was hit with a rather distressing realization. The file they had on the machine was some 8.5 minute version that I would’ve found to be quite a challenge even under normal circumstances. As it was, I simply reeled in betrayed shock at the revelation that there are words after the nah nah nah part! I bailed on that one, but I think I did pretty well with the part that I actually knew existed.
I really do like doing karaoke, what keeps me away from it is being forced to listen to other people doing karaoke. Though we actually had a really good crowd that night, I found. Not what you’d expect at all. Plenty of people were pretty good, and made my lengthy recovery a bit more pleasant. There was a guy who did a touching rendition of Puff The Magic Dragon as a tribute to a lost love, and a pair of pirates who did some truly fantastic opera pieces, to include the indomitable Phantom of the Opera. Ace did a passionate tribute to Freddy Mercury, none other than Radio Gaga. I have long resisted the temptation to say this about Ace, but dear God he is such a fag. Karaoke was far too popular for me to get in another request before they had to close, especially disappointing was that they had half a dozen Lion King songs but no Be Prepared. Seriously, am I the only person in the world who loves that song? Anyways, by the time I came up with another request it was too late. We did a great big exhausted, somewhat drunken rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody to close the night out. A really great way to close the night out, actually.
I was the only wuss to turn in by 3:30, but I was also by a wide margin the one with the most functioning brain cells in the morning, so a fair trade. We heaved to first thing in the morning and… asked the front desk for a later checkout. Twice. And then we actually managed to leave. I do wish I’d programmed in a little more time in Colorado, as the con soaked up pretty much all of my stay. Denver seems like a nice city. Clean and well designed, at least to a cursory glance. We had a day to work with though, and we made a good day of it. We went out to eat at a nice little bar and grill place. I’d certainly call it local flavor. Arashiin let us skim the top off the gallon of Starbucks he buys daily, and we took a trip up into the mountains.
The countryside out there really resembles that of the much smaller mountains that I’m from, so I was keen to get up and see some of the really big peaks that the area is known for. Colorado certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s amazing how much you can see from up there. Whole cities, neighboring states on a good day. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I’ve always found it fascinating to see rock strata lifted up to such oblique angles in areas like this. Rock is only laid down in horizontal layers, so any rocks with layers at a higher angle are that way because of uplift; the tectonic upheaval that created the mountains. It’s amazing to try and wrap your mind around the way that mountains are being made and ground down to dust all the time beneath our feet, just on a timescale too vast for us to grasp.
Alas, I made plans out of necessity, so the time came shortly for me to leave. Even if I rather did like the idea of staying a bit longer, I had a week before school started, a long way to go before I got there, and a lot to do before I was ready for it. Nevir was kind enough to ferry me to the airport in the morning where I got another irritating little jab from Frontier Airlines in the form of how they handle baggage. There was a tremendous line outdoors spanning across half the sidewalk to check baggage. Having an as-always terribly vague idea of how long the slog through security would take, I was a bit concerned about the wait. I was tempted to try the “hey I fucked up please help” method at the gate again, but that’s really not something to be relied on. Some quick recon turned up a baggage claim for them inside that most people didn’t get to because of the bizarre honey pot placed outside at the curbside dropoff. I managed to make it through that line and then security in pretty good time.
From there I just had to proceed to Gate: ****. Oh thank you so much helpful boarding pass! Fortunately I remembered from my trip in that Frontier parked their craft at concourse A, so I at least knew where to get off the train at. Some quick, semi-frantic research got me an actual gate number and everything was copasetic from there. I even had enough wiggle room left to have some Panda Express. They have orange chicken with bacon now. That’s a good omen if I’ve ever seen one. Cliff the mountain goat was there to welcome me to my return flight. That’s about the only good thing about Frontier. They paint animals on their wingtips, making them a fantastically appropriate airline to fly to furry conventions with. I actually had some amount of consciousness to make use of on this flight, so I got a bit of work done in my novel for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long. I was really hoping to get more done over the summer, but it just didn’t shake out that way.
Once back in Ohio I cringed at the over $100 in parking fees I had accrued in my absence, and after that I had another abbreviated visit to breeze through before I had to hit the road again. Just like last time, staging a visit after a furry convention was quite a bit straining. It made for a quiet visit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. We played some Hearthstone, trading some strategy pointers on it and then went out to some German place where we played menu roulette, just shouting Einbahnstrasse or whatever and eating whatever came to us as a result. My friend there also introduced me to Sword Art Online, which I found out was actually not some sort of DeviantArt knockoff just for pictures of weapons, but was an anime about people trapped in an evil MMORPG and slowly losing their lives to it. So you know, sort of like a lot of my friends when they started playing World of Warcraft. It was pretty interesting, and of course we got through like eight episodes in one sitting because Netflix has quite thoroughly obliterated the concept of moderation. I learned that my navy and high school friend there in Oxford plan to continue to hang out as the school year begins, so that made me feel a little less guilty about shoehorning the two of them together with my visit.
In any case, I heaved myself out of there and managed to cover the nine-ish hours to home with my sanity intact. I never had the best understanding of why medical insurance was such a big deal until I arrived home to find that the bill for my appendectomy had arrived in my absence. It had been so long I was starting to hope that they’d just forgotten about the whole thing. It was staggering for me to think that even a simple operation that went perfectly and entailed only a 1.7-day hospital stay could cost $14,700. Utter nonsense! So yeah, whilst I talk with the college about my upcoming classes I’m also going to be bandying this figure about with their healthcare machine to see about how much of it I’m going to be responsible for. That’s cool, it’s not as though starting another year of college has some large startup expense associated with it or anything. I’m sure that everything will be fine.
In any case, I covered a total of 1700 miles during my various adventures, a total that I rather underestimated during the planning phase for this one. I also put over two weeks and an amount of money I don’t even want to tally into this. And you know? I don’t regret a thing. I know I’m going to be trying to get an internship or somesuch next summer, putting a little more time pressure on me, but I’m going to work hard to be able to do something like this as well next time around. Here’s to another year!
Update:
sketchywolf has furnished me with the pictures that he took of me dressed as Pocket Panda. Go ahead and check them out! The quote that I think best captures the experience came when someone in the headless lounge when someone asked how I was feeling. "I am slowly dying, but I've never felt more alive!"
Thanks to a shuffling of rooms and other arrangements that I never even fully grasped in the first place, much less retained well enough to reproduce here, my problem of where to lay my head had been solved just slightly in advance of my arrival. It ended up that there was an opening in Nevir and Ryoken’s room. When we discussed it, Nevir asked if I’d be okay with sharing a bed with a girl. Okay? That’s great! Way better than my typical convention sleeping arrangement. I’d yet to meet this girl, but the wondertwins there seem to attract some pretty good people, so I was pretty optimistic. Well, on her arrival, Redd Pandafox most certainly did not disappoint. I suppose her general bearing can be best summarized simply by the few moments that we spent getting her to the room.
“I’m totally not a Brony though,” she asserts, slamming the doors of her car, both of which were covered by a sprawling, five-foot Rainbow Dash decal, as she hands me a hamper containing a Rainbow Dash hooded bathrobe.
Her next assertion was the still-more-questionable, the claim of “I packed light.” As we filled a luggage cart to the point of crushing its own wheels with her supplies, four fursuits and entire suitcase full of booze. Yeah, she came prepared. At least it was easy to direct our caravan to the room. I just had to find the door that had our names and likenesses hanging from the door handle.
After apparently making a very good first impression on her over the ensuing 20 minutes, I helped her get together the Ocean’s Eleven crack team of various animals that we had packed into the baggage cart. She was very enthusiastic about her latest addition to the menagerie, a male deer-fox combination that looked teddy-bear-cute and extremely well-crafted. She speculated idly on which of her remaining characters might fit me, and we shortly got to testing that out. A red panda called Pocket was a good fit for me, and she was a good karmic balance given that Redd was also running with a gender-deceptive choice. This was obviously an opportunity that blindsided and thoroughly overwhelmed me, so in my staggering state of shock I pretty much just threw on the head, tail and paws over whatever I happened to be wearing at the time, making a right mockery out of what I’m sure is a very treasured character of Redd’s. I really will have to give more careful consideration to this sort of thing in the future. The last way I want to react to such generosity is with inconsiderate disrespect like that. I went out there wearing shorts. Shorts, in a fursuit! What the hell is wrong with me?
Regardless, suiting was a blast, as it always is. Having the precious Pocket Panda’s proper player presiding at the occasion was a unique opportunity for both of us, I think. Redd really seemed to appreciate what I brought to the character, so I do hope that I earned some redemption in that respect. I didn’t do anything special, necessarily. Followed my crew around, danced, socialized and generally did silly furry things. Nevir had counseled me about the altitude and the fact that it would necessitate an adjustment period. I hadn’t noticed it at all until I wrapped my head in carpet and started doing aerobic workouts. Funny how limited oxygen will put a harsh cap on such activities. Also, I’d swear that this elevation puts us measurably closer to the sun, as it was just beastly outside. I had this confirmed later when I looked at the UV index. It was an 11, which I didn’t know was possible. In any case, in spite of my rapidly-increasing recovery times, I like to think that Pocket Panda and I did her momma proud.
Pocket has a strange knack for public relations, I found. I was walking through the hotel and I noticed Ryoken amidst a small group talking adamantly. Not an uncommon occurrence with him, really, but I thought that I’d check in on the action. It turned out that it was one of those bewildered “just what the heck is going on here?” conversations that pop up on occasion when furries overlap with the general public. I rather enjoy such things, and people who will actually engage in a conversation to obtain this information are somewhat few and far between, so I joined in. Ryoken eventually ran off to satiate his short attention span with other activities, so I was carrying the conversation for a little while until Kota showed up to join in as well. We talked about everything under the sun, for far longer than I ever thought I could discuss such things.
My inquisitor for this little exchange was a middle-aged gentleman in a pastel polo shirt and khaki shorts named Jamie. Either vacationing or retired by the look of him. He kind of looked like the bald guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm. In any case, he was fascinated by the scene taking place before him, and I did my best to explain it all to him. A lot of the questions that he wanted answered are things that vary widely from person to person, and I did my best to bring that across; describing the general trends that I’d observed and going over my own situation in detail. The one that he kept coming back to was “What do you all get out of this?” an interesting query that I’d never heard phrased quite that way before. I admire him in the way he made me dig deep and really get to the heart of the reasoning behind why we were all doing whatever it was we were doing.
He apologized again and again for taking up so much of my time, but I really could think of no better use for it. So many people judge furries out of hand without ever even speaking to one of us in person, so I really treasure those few people that undertake the effort to ask these questions, get to know us and generate some truly informed opinions. That’s a rare opportunity, and I could hardly allow it to go to waste. I don’t often have the occasion to put these things into words, but that’s a really fun experience, to be honest. I mean, everybody loves talking about something they love. There were a few questions that I didn’t have answers for, some of which stuck with me. When it came up that I don’t tell my parents what I do here and he asked why, I was kind of stumped. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a particularly good reason.
Lots of people have extremely good reasons for keeping this sort of thing under wraps, like parents who would disown them or cut them off from the money they’re using for college if they found out. Still others have parents who attend with them, or at the very least support this particular oddball enthusiasm. I’m somewhere in the middle, I think. My parents would most likely think that this is just another weird thing that I do and not really look into it too much. It’s a lot less of a big deal what they think of my actions now that I’ve gained some independence. Well, I had independence for awhile there. That kind of evaporated when I left my job at the navy to go back to college. Now that I’m living with them during the summer I can’t really claim that they’re not involved in my life anymore. Maybe that’s where some of that pressure comes from. Ironically, I think it has a lot to do with my fear of doing for my parents what I so easily do with strangers, explaining exactly what the heck is up with all this furry stuff. I’ve always had a very good relationship with my parents, and I never realized what a rare and precious thing that was until I got out into the world a little bit and heard a lot of the much more tragic stories of my contemporaries. I guess that’s why I value it so much now, and I’m wary of anything that could potentially put a strain on that relationship. This certainly isn’t a secret that I plan to take to my grave, but it’s something that I really ought to wait for the right time to talk about.
In any case, we spent a long time indeed doing our little chat. It was half-past tomorrow by the time we ran out of things to talk about. Jamie started off really distressed about not being able to see my face as we talked. At the end, I offered him the chance to come with me to the headless lounge so that he could have that chance. He actually declined, saying that he felt he knew me plenty well now and no longer felt the need to see my face. That really felt like progress to me. Making a complete stranger feel comfortable talking to someone in a cartoon animal costume is a pretty tall order. It’s nice to know that I rose to the challenge in that respect. I had my success confirmed by an onlooker of this little production. SketchyWolf mentioned a few times that he was very impressed with the way that I represented the fandom. I’m glad that I did well. This is one of those scenarios wherein I don’t even claim to know what I’m doing, and yet I seemed to have a pretty good handle on it, and I really enjoyed the experience.
After a little cooldown with Kota in the headless lounge I headed back up to the room. It was undeniably bedtime by then. For the first and only time that con, I actually got to bed at a time sort of close to that of my roommates. Everyone was in bed already, so I kept the lights off and was as quiet as I could be while navigating the cluttered minefield of fursuit debris on my way to the bed. Sleep is really important to me, so I try to do what I can to not deny it to others. I didn’t realize what a rarity that was until I talked to Redd the next day. Apparently it just blew her mind that I’d actually think to quietly slip into bed and do my best not to wake her. Great to know that I’m such a gentleman, apparently. So yeah, as con sleeping arrangements go, this one was all aces in my book. Not that the competition in that respect was terribly fierce.
I’ve yet to fully break myself of the habit of waking up early, and at this rate I may never succeed at doing so. That’s a big part of why I like to get to bed at a sort of reasonable hour at cons. Waking early is an encumbrance for the most part, but I figured that I may as well take advantage of it. What really got me out of bed that morning was that the recipient of my lecture the previous night had invited me to breakfast, should I manage to rouse myself in time for the early bird special. I was only a little bit late, actually, but still managed to miss him. This still left me in a good spot for registration though, so everything has got a silver lining I suppose. On-site registration was actually not a disaster, which speaks very well for how the con is run. 2 Gryphon was also prowling about the venue at that unholy hour. It took a little bit for me to work up the nerve to approach him, but as the first familiar face I’d seen at this convention I could hardly let this opportunity pass. I should’ve gotten a picture with him. I could’ve titled it ‘Photo 1, of 2’.
When I finally did get the chance to sit down to talk to 2, too, I was reminded of what a fool I’d been for hesitating. Despite his somewhat abrasive (if we’re being charitable) stage persona, he’s actually quite personable if you can catch him in his natural habitat. He talked a great deal about his disappointment with living in California, and how he had high hopes about becoming local to RMFC. He and his betrothed have moved to Colorado Springs just recently and he seemed pretty excited about it. I really enjoyed the chance to sit and talk with him for awhile. Like so many furry luminaries, he’s a great conversationalist and always has an interesting perspective to share. It really was a great way to start the day. Maybe I’m starting to understand some of the insufferable smugness that morning people exhibit all the time.
First up was easily the most efficient opening ceremony I’ve ever been to. We got through special guests, announcements, introductions, statistics and embarrassing the charity people all in the space of about five or ten minutes, and I was on my way once more. Normally I wouldn’t go for this sort of thing, but the early timeslots were sparse and I really didn’t like how I knew absolutely no one here. I really liked the idea of going to a meet and greet, and the singles one was the only such event that I actually fit into the demographic for. It was about what I expected, that is to say, mostly gay men, but it was still a fun time and I got a few laughs with the dossier I used when it came my time to introduce myself.
“Hi, I go by Bucephalus around these parts but you can call me Beau because I’m entirely aware of how ridiculous and unpronounceable my name is. I’m from just outside Rochester New York though I can’t say I’d recommend being from there if you’re in the market for a place to be born. A year ago I completed my tour in the Navy and before you ask, yes, there are a decent amount of gay people there and no, nowhere nearly as many as there are at a furry convention. Since then Uncle Sam has been signing some pretty big checks in order to let me pursue my degree in nuclear engineering, so thanks a bunch sucker- I mean taxpayers! My fursona is a jackal, but I’m wearing this red panda tail because, well look at it! It’s awesome!”
So yeah, not a lot to be said for that one, but it was still a lot of fun. The tail that I was wearing was one that Redd generously loaned me. It was a massive and voluptuous red panda tail that I immediately fell in love with. It had to be four feet long at least, a fluffy and wonderfully audacious creation that I wore pretty much the whole con. After the singles meet-and-greet was the only writing panel I managed to make it to this con. It was decent, but once again I’m spoiled by the cons with highly developed writing tracks like… all of the other ones I’ve ever been to. This one was a lot less structured, with it basically being a single author who wanted to talk about writing for a little while, and so we did. There’s nothing wrong with something simple like that, really. It’s always nice to hear someone else’s perspective, especially on something as diverse and subjective as writing.
In any case, next up was the dance competition which was… quite disappointing actually. Mostly forgivable things, but just so many of them piled up as to make the overall experience profoundly average. The place had some bad visibility because it lacked a stage. That would’ve been a huge issue if the place had had a bigger crowd, but as such it was only a moderate imposition to find a good vantage point. Now that I think about it Anthrocon is the only place I’ve been that could manage a stage for the dance competition, so maybe that’s harder to pull off than I think it is. I’ve been spoiled by that Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom, I suppose. They had to change technical directors at the last second, and that most certainly showed. Not knowing what song to play, not being able to get the files to work, lots of problems on the technical end. “Oh, the file got corrupted.” Seriously? What year is this? I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. It’s been years since I’ve had a file just give me the finger and irretrievably stop working out of the blue. Computers are better than that now.
After the whole system went down they just ended up playing the tracks on a cell phone through the headphone jack with a fraction of the signal strength needed to drive the amps. It was a tinny, disappointing sound whose most prevalent tone was transistor saturation clipping. The emcee was also brand new, so I’ll forgive him a certain amount of performance anxiety. He also had the great misfortune of experiencing these difficulties in front of 2, who pretty much ran him out of town on a rail for it. They also ran short on time, prompting that ever-disastrous decision to cut out the judges’ commentary. It’s so hard to watch someone put in a great effort and do an awesome job to be answered only with “Yeah that was nice, get off the stage.” Perhaps if time needed to be saved it would’ve been prudent to have some prelims, or at the very least auditions? They pulled in some pretty good talent, but there were people in that competition who very literally couldn’t keep their head on their shoulders during the dance. Nothing against the novices, but we could’ve streamlined this production a lot by screening some of them out.
Right after that was Purry Fictionary, also known as Furry Pictionary, also known as “I can’t understand this motherfucker.” Or alternatively as “I can’t understand this, motherfucker!” The difficulty was that this hotel featured a large and expansive atrium right in the middle. It was a really nice room, but it was absolutely vacuous and just ate up any sort of sound that was produced. You can’t overcome bad acoustics with good intentions, nor can you use a speaker the size of a car battery to be heard in a room the size of a battleship. I gave it a sporting chance, but I quickly tired of having no idea what was going on. Fortunately, that event overlapped with one called Fur Your Entertainment that I was keen on attending, so I was able to slip out in the middle of the frantic sketchfest. FYE was a show put on by a local improv group called the Unmentionables. They put on a really good show that left everyone wanting more. Great games, great creativity and energy, I was a really big fan of these guys.
Friday night was sort of quiet. A bit more prowling around and socializing, a few games of Fluxx in the tabletop room and things like that. A quiet night was fine with me though. I knew that I’d need my sleep because the middle day of a weekend con is always the crazy one. Judging by the schedule this one was no exception. Everyone really put programming in a bind because they only requested Saturday slots for their panels and events, making for an incomparably dense day then. I had run out of ideas and energy, so I was planning to make an early night of it, in hopes of better surviving tomorrow. I really should’ve known better.
I got in an hour or so of sleep, which honestly made that whole effort worth it. I was later, predictably, roused by Redd coming in and parading past me the half-dozen or so followers she’d accrued during her adventures that day. She’d brought them by to sample her fantastically well-stocked bar, and to get a little cooldown break, as many of them were fursuiters like herself. She apologized profusely for disturbing me, which I appreciated, though I really didn’t mind all that much. By now I know what I’m getting into when I get into a roomshare at a convention. I bore it with what grace I could muster, and I’ll admit that it actually was kind of fun to have the party come to me. Redd had left the head of her new Fox-Deer suit on the bed, and so naturally I wore that for most of the exchange. Wearing a fursuit head in bed was oddly soothing, though I can’t fathom why.
Eventually the chaos moved on and I had to give Redd her head back so she and her entourage could return to whatever shenanigan that they had been in the middle of before their break. To her credit though, I went more or less undisturbed for the rest of the night. Largely coincidence, but I’ll give her the benefit of assuming that she was being considerate. Really though, the change was that Ryoken had to run home to do laundry and run other such sundry errands, so there was a space for her in the other bed with Nevir. An arrangement that she actually didn’t know was new until the next morning. As I mentioned, I dazzled her quite effectively with what a gentlemen I had been that first night. When the truth came to light, it actually seemed like quite a shock to her.
“Oh that was you next to me last night?”
“It was. Though fortunately we are in a context wherein not remembering who you just slept with doesn’t actually carry any negative connotations.”
“No, I mean, I just thought that it was Nevir. You were so respectful and quiet I never would’ve guessed it was you.”
“There was a compliment in there somewhere, I know it.”
“Well, it’s just not what I would’ve expected. You know… thank you though. That was nice.”
My assumption that first night had been that she’d just want to be left alone so that she could sleep, since I apparently project my own desires onto people I don’t know very well. I kept to myself as best I was able and I thought that it was a pretty equitable arrangement. Once the subject was broached on Saturday morning though, Redd mentioned that her comfort zone was much smaller than the one I had afforded her, so I needn’t have bothered. That was a relief, certainly. I knew that I’d need sleep by the end of the big busy day, so having a better timeshare arrangement worked out in advance was of some comfort to me.
The thing that dragged us out of bed Saturday “morning” was the fursuit parade, which I was actually a part of because Pocket was still happy to host me for the day. The parade struck me as another badly mishandled event, much like the dance. For one, the staging was in the atrium, which is hot and, as I mentioned, extremely difficult to hear anything in. That’s a pretty big deal when you’ve got a handful of handlers trying to herd a couple hundred fursuiters through a cluttered space into a photograph-shaped cluster. The route was short, and yet still managed to obstruct access to all hotel rooms and the headless lounge. So when you finished the parade, you were essentially trapped in the hot, cluttered, crowded atrium. So I really hope you didn’t burn yourself out on the parade because you’re just fucked if you need someplace to go.
This sounds a lot like complaining, but that’s just the rote, analytical portion of my brain that records everything to tell stories about it later talking. I had a blast and wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I used the crazy long tail this time because I had pretty much committed myself to never taking it off. And of course I pranced and loped energetically all across the hotel as I made my way through the parade route. I was actually somewhat relieved that the route was short by the end, as I managed to overheat quite spectacularly from my antics during the parade. It’s always so much fun to go around in suit. I thought that suiting as a female character would be awkward, but I really enjoyed it. I suppose the whole point of suiting is to dress and act like someone else, so it’s even more exhilarating when you get to act like someone way more else than usual. Pocket was a lot of fun, and I do hope that I get the chance to meet her again in the future.
After a noteworthy recovery phase, I thought that I’d try out the nutrition panel. FreeFox, RMFC’s resident gourmet chef, (no seriously that used to be his job) was having an open discussion about all things healthy. Nutrition is one of those subjects that I don’t necessarily find keenly interesting, but could nonetheless talk about all day long. I thought that it would be a nice panel to visit as I do find myself doing a lot of cooking for one these days, which is difficult to do whilst still turning up anything that looks like it was actually meant to sustain human life. I didn’t really learn too much on that front, but it was still a good way to spend an hour. I did learn about a dozen things that you can do with avocadoes, and that they are perhaps the best thing to happen to nutrition literally since sliced bread.
The next show was “The Amazing Pickles” in which the titular Pickles dazzles you with something that could not inaccurately be called magic. There were few actual magic tricks to be had, but the show was thick with dark comedy and some spontaneous slapstick that I just couldn’t help but love. It’s an effort that you respect just due to the sheer balls of pulling something like that off. It was like when Splat did “I’m a Little Teapot” in the dance competition. Sure it wasn’t good, but one has to admit that they could never pull off something like that. Incidentally, did you know that song has a second verse? Yeah, that’s a thing. Also apparently you can dance to it.
2’s set was up next, so of course I had to see that. He always puts on a great show, and his “origin of furries” bit was tremendously clever. I thought it was great, but it apparently wasn’t enough to keep Redd terribly engaged, as she spent much of the production asleep on my lap. Poor thing, she’d been having a hard day, I’m sure. After the show I had the chance to hang around a bit and talk to the star, as well as the star-adjacent Toast the Rabbit. I’d met him before more than two years ago, but held out little hope that I’d stick in the memory of someone so popular.
“Oh yeah! You were one of the two navy guys from Anthrocon. Of course I remember you!”
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”
So there ya have it, folks. I actually, verifiably existed at some point. Even though it wasn’t long before those two had to run, it was really nice to hear that I’d made an impression on at least one of them. Of course I had places to be as well, the 18+ version of fursuit charades, namely. It was a great idea. The hundred or so people that turned out for it certainly seemed to think so. This was another fumble though, unfortunately. Small, hot room with a few dozen fursuiters and three times that many spectators, wherein we have to keep the door shut because of the evil, deviant goings-on within. Yeah, no potential for problems there at all. Adding to the oppressive atmosphere was the no-camera rule. Now, I very much understand the necessity for that rule, I simply take issue with the way it was enforced. Posting a sign or indicating it in the pocket schedule would’ve been perfectly sufficient, I think. Perhaps have the guard at the door who was checking IDs remind people about that restriction. Pretty much anything would’ve been preferable to having the host of the event yell “If I see anyone with a camera out I’ll have them removed from the con!” every five minutes, followed by the inevitable audience dogpile on anyone absent-minded enough to check their text messages or facebook status or whatever on a phone containing a camera (read: all of them). It all made for a generally unpleasant experience, so I left.
This time I didn’t have a backup plan, but after a little poking around, I saw Toast and 2 at the bar, so I sat with them and had a drink. Other visitors dominated the conversation, but it was still a nice time. The pair were taking a break from the casino set up in the atrium. Toast was talking about how he’d gotten burned out on it and had just given away his chips to a passerby. I wondered aloud at how long one had to hang out with those guys before I got a couple hundred dollars in poker chips. As it turns out, the answer was about 34 minutes. 2 was bought another free drink by an admirer from down the bar, and given that he was just drinking vodka on the rocks he knew he’d be there for awhile. He surrendered his chips to me in good time, which was a nice surprise. Honestly I would’ve much preferred to stay and drink with him, but 2 had given me an ultimatum to make the most of his winnings, so I took off once I finished my drink.
“Alright guys, I’m done drinking. Now I’ve gotta go gamble.”
Man, furry cons are awesome!
Now then, the reason that the $700 worth of chips that just got dropped in my hands weren’t really such a big deal was that they actually weren’t worth anything in cash. It was a charity event and the fact that it was being played for a prize drawing was what made setting up an impromptu casino right in the middle of the atrium actually somewhat legal. $100 in chips bought you a raffle ticket, so there was still some incentive to play. I was pretty late to the game, so I only got in about 15 hands of blackjack, but that was fine by me. I picked blackjack because that’s about the only game wherein I have some reliable assurance that I won’t rapidly hemorrhage money all over the table, and that was actually somewhat true. I ended the night $125 ahead, though that was pretty much all due to the fact that I heard the “last hand” announcement so I bet $200 on that hand. In any case, I won nothing at the raffle so nothing ventured, nothing gained, it seems.
The Unmentionables had their own 18+ panel in the same location as the preceding disaster. I worried a bit about that, but I figured that they could pull it together. And pull it together they did, with an unexpected burst of brilliance in the form of:
“Hey, this room sucks. Let’s go get a bigger one.”
And indeed we did! We got a nice fancy conference room thing that’s called an “Amphitheater” so that you’ll pay more money to reserve it. It had risers with desks so that everyone had lots of space and could see well. I took advantage of the shuffle to get a seat right in front, which let me get involved in the action a little. They took a lot of my suggestions when such things were called for, and my snarky outbursts were welcomed the majority of the time. It was a great time for all involved. Some of the con bigwigs dropped by towards the end, I guess because they’d run out of things to supervise by then and had nowhere else to go. Later on they told us that at karaoke nearby they try to get as many people as they can to sing Bohemian Rhapsody at the end of the night. Literally everyone was up for that, so we flooded the room and just moshed it out to one of Queen’s greatest hits. Great way to end the night, but of course the night couldn’t actually end then. Hell, it was still today! What kind of night ends then?
Ace had finally arrived by then, having been delayed by a flat tire as he was driving to the con. I’m glad that I got to see him again, and this time on a level playing field wherein neither of us knew anyone that was there. Of course Ace knew a few people because he knows everyone ever forever, but that made things run a little smoother than when we were at the party. He was also mostly coherent, which also helps with most aspects of social interaction.
Ace had brought more of what had nearly killed him at the party, some kind of Swedish version of Everclear that I’m pretty sure he needed a HAZMAT clearance to cross state lines with. It was one of those “you can’t even taste the alcohol” things in mixers, allegedly. Every time anyone has said that to me it has been an outright lie because I can pretty much always taste the alcohol in everything. That’s why I drink mostly cocktails with near-lethal amounts of sugar in them. This fancy foreign one though, actually came pretty close though. I had a cup of it cut about half with Mellow Yellow and sure I could taste it, but I never would’ve guessed that there was something you could use to run a diesel engine mixed in there. Ace was really impressed with how I’d handled that. He was looking at me like he expected me to burst into flames after the three drinks I’d had with him. The secret is a fresh liver. Not drinking yourself stupid all day leaves you much better able to fight off the lighter fluid that you’re offered at the end of the night, and it certainly beats trying to steal a liver off someone else. Lots of people seem extremely attached to theirs, despite how unrepentantly they abuse them.
This time I beat my roommates back to the room by a much narrower margin. So I guess you could say that I was getting into the groove of things. When she came to bed Redd mentioned that I needn’t give her a million miles of personal space and leave her completely alone the entire night, so we hashed that arrangement out a little better. I made such a good impression on her that she was completely comfortable with me getting pretty darn close. She said that cuddling a little was okay, and I liked that idea too, so off we went. ‘A little’ turned into ‘the entire night’ with very little provocation, but she didn’t seem to mind. I really enjoyed that. Having the chance to wrap your arms around a cute girl all night isn’t an opportunity that I’ve gotten often, or ever before in my life for that matter, so I really enjoyed that. I’ve written in fiction a few times about how nice it is to sleep with your arms wrapped around someone else, because it suited the story and I hear nice things about it, but it’s nice to not have to take that on faith anymore. Honestly I think that just in the gap between midnight and 2 AM I very nicely encapsulated the whole con experience. Laugh and have tons of fun with total strangers, meet old friends, drink a lot, stay up late, cuddle. Yeah, that’s a furry con in a nutshell!
Our new sleeping arrangement worked so well that it took a great deal of time to extricate myself from it. I didn’t want to spend the whole day lying in bed snuggling. Well, actually I did, but I knew that wasn’t feasible. I managed to blearily stumble into the furry statistics panel Sunday morning. This one was a place where the guys from [Adjective][Species] pore over all the results of the furry surveys (furveys, natch) that have been collected over the years to see if all the things that people say about furries are true, or just as often, find out things about furries that no one says at all! The panel was called ‘Exploring The Fandom Through Data’, which of course led me to find no end of amusement in the fact that the host is a dead ringer for Brent Spiner. Kinda sounds a little bit like him, too.
Childish humor aside, the panel actually was quite interesting. The data doesn’t support that everyone in the fandom is a gay, male, broke, antisocial loaner who lives in his mom’s basement. The statistics in most categories actually follow the bell curve in most places pretty consistently. The most pronounced bias after gender (still overwhelmingly male, that’s undeniable) and age (the fandom is still young. Give it time), seems to be the species-bias in favor of doggies, with greater than half of respondents being some form of canine. Even the one that I receive oh so many examples of, the bias that most people in the fandom are anything-other-than-straight, wasn’t entirely accurate. The question on the subject actually showed an almost perfectly even distribution across the Kinsey scale. Granted that’s considerably more gay than the general populace, but it’s a fair bit short of the idea that everyone is a rainbow-shitting leg-humping horndog, which is the impression you’d get from spending 20 minutes at a furry convention. The fandom attracts such… unique personalities, it’s easy to see how it could suffer from a severe vocal minority distortion when trying to draw conclusions just from observation, so it’s interesting to see what shakes out in the end when anonymous, impartial numbers are turned against the quandary of the fandom.
Later on I found the fursuit games in full swing. They suffered from the sound-eating nature of the atrium as well, but fursuiters trying to accomplish any coherent task is pretty reliably entertaining in any event. It wasn’t long though, before I wandered off towards something more interesting. FreeFox was back, this time with a full blown cooking show where he actually had food and heat in front of him on the table and was combining them in fascinating ways. I normally wouldn’t have given such an event too much thought. Actual cooking is quite beyond me, but I really did like his style when I saw him earlier and Sunday was pretty thin on events, so I went for it. This was the sort of event that would’ve been a total drag if not for the fact that furries were putting it on. When you really know your audience you can make just about anything fun. Granted, most of it was sexual double-entendres, but I never said those weren’t fun! I actually did learn a couple interesting things about cooking. I’m unlikely to employ them ever, but they’ll at the very least add a little spark to my small-talk in the near future.
Conveniently enough, the Town Hall Meeting and closing ceremonies were in the same location as the cooking show, so I just had to loiter long enough for the rest of my evening to come together all around me. The meeting was the bitch box for con feedback, which if you’ve been paying attention you’ve probably guessed that I took liberal advantage of and if you haven’t been paying attention then WAKE THE HELL UP I’m doing a thing here. Now, just because I raised my hand to complain about eight times that doesn’t necessarily mean that I thought the con was bad. I’m just really good at complaining and I apparently have a very detailed memory for stuff like this. I didn’t go there to skewer the staff and make them feel bad for their many faults. I just knew that if no one told them about these problems they’d never get fixed. So I’ll include the same disclaimer here that I did with my feedback at the con. I went through a lot to get to this con, as you well know because I just told you about it, and I would call that time and expense quite well spent. I most certainly plan on heading to Rocky Mountain Fur Con again in the future. The vast majority of the problems that I noted were pretty much just growing pains from moving to a new venue this year. I certainly won’t fault them for that, because the new hotel they have is a fantastic con space, and besides the little snafus related to the transition scramble, it was overwhelmingly well run.
The closing ceremonies were smooth and efficient, mirroring the opening ones, and then it was over. Except for screw that this is SO not over. I got word through the grapevine that The Unmentionables were doing an improv workshop where they revealed all of the dark and terrible secrets behind their wild success. It was really just a collection of the games and exercises that they use to hone their thinking-on-their-feet skills. It’s all about recall and being able to come up with something quickly, and not being afraid to say something stupid. It’s more balls than talent, really. The worst thing that can happen is you clam up and come up with nothing. At the end we did a bunch of open-participation games like the ones that they do in their shows and that was an absolute blast. Thanks to three days’ worth of con I took no time at all to loosen up and really get into it. I got a lot of laughs and a handful of people complimented me on my performance afterwards.
After that I bounced around a bit to various contacts here and there, seeing what was going on. I got to see Nevir trying out Shawshank, a fascinating crux suit. He was really into it, by which I mean creepy as all hell. He wandered through a dark abandoned room at one point, and when I went in there after him I found that there were motion sensing lights in there. Shawshank didn’t trigger them because he clearly has no soul. I figured it was best to let Nevir be weird and terrifying in peace, so I wandered off after awhile. Once again I knew it was far too early to try and go to bed, but I did head back to the room for a little breather. Redd was there, and she brought along a friend of hers, one of the improv performers. His name was Rune… something. Damn, I’ve been so good with names so far. Anyways, he took the opportunity to let me know what a great job I did at their events. He actually asked me if I’d like to join The Unmentionables, which was quite flattering. I asked him if he’d like to move them about 1500 miles closer to me and he seemed reluctant to accept my terms. Ah well, missed opportunities. Such is life.
Earlier I mentioned to Redd how the jacket I wore with her fursuit (the only thing I had with me that had long sleeves) looked kind of stupid and didn’t really work with the suit. I also got the nice white tip of her awesome panda tail dirty oh God I ruined all of Redd’s nice things whydoessheputupwithme? Anyways, when she agreed that the black jacket didn’t really work with the suit and said “Don’t worry, I’ll find you a better one.” I never thought for a second that she was being serious. Well, I came to find out that she was indeed picking up another fursuit head, for which I was afforded the incomparable privilege of breaking it in. The lucky newcomer was a stately Doberman that there actually isn’t a name for yet. We were just calling him ‘Grumpy’ for the moment.
Anyways, Redd turned Grumpy and I loose on the world, which made my remaining time much easier to fill. When I met up with Ace one more time and he saw me in a different suit he asked “You’re addicted to fursuiting now, aren’t you?” Well, I’m certainly a fan by this point. Addiction is kind of a strong word, though maybe this is the free hit that the crack dealers are always offering to get the new customers hooked. And Redd is a fursuit maker too! Crafty… Ah well, if that’s where I’m headed, I may as well enjoy the ride. Case in point, I had no interest in karaoke, until I had a brand new fursuit to do it in of course. I invited Ace to come with me and requested something I knew really well because I can’t read for shit in a fursuit. Despite the fact that Grumpy has a comically large head, there still wasn’t quite room enough for my glasses. At least, I thought that I knew Hey Jude really well. After powering through the song and pushing myself to the “near death experience” flavor of exhaustion, as I so often do in fursuit, I was hit with a rather distressing realization. The file they had on the machine was some 8.5 minute version that I would’ve found to be quite a challenge even under normal circumstances. As it was, I simply reeled in betrayed shock at the revelation that there are words after the nah nah nah part! I bailed on that one, but I think I did pretty well with the part that I actually knew existed.
I really do like doing karaoke, what keeps me away from it is being forced to listen to other people doing karaoke. Though we actually had a really good crowd that night, I found. Not what you’d expect at all. Plenty of people were pretty good, and made my lengthy recovery a bit more pleasant. There was a guy who did a touching rendition of Puff The Magic Dragon as a tribute to a lost love, and a pair of pirates who did some truly fantastic opera pieces, to include the indomitable Phantom of the Opera. Ace did a passionate tribute to Freddy Mercury, none other than Radio Gaga. I have long resisted the temptation to say this about Ace, but dear God he is such a fag. Karaoke was far too popular for me to get in another request before they had to close, especially disappointing was that they had half a dozen Lion King songs but no Be Prepared. Seriously, am I the only person in the world who loves that song? Anyways, by the time I came up with another request it was too late. We did a great big exhausted, somewhat drunken rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody to close the night out. A really great way to close the night out, actually.
I was the only wuss to turn in by 3:30, but I was also by a wide margin the one with the most functioning brain cells in the morning, so a fair trade. We heaved to first thing in the morning and… asked the front desk for a later checkout. Twice. And then we actually managed to leave. I do wish I’d programmed in a little more time in Colorado, as the con soaked up pretty much all of my stay. Denver seems like a nice city. Clean and well designed, at least to a cursory glance. We had a day to work with though, and we made a good day of it. We went out to eat at a nice little bar and grill place. I’d certainly call it local flavor. Arashiin let us skim the top off the gallon of Starbucks he buys daily, and we took a trip up into the mountains.
The countryside out there really resembles that of the much smaller mountains that I’m from, so I was keen to get up and see some of the really big peaks that the area is known for. Colorado certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s amazing how much you can see from up there. Whole cities, neighboring states on a good day. It’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I’ve always found it fascinating to see rock strata lifted up to such oblique angles in areas like this. Rock is only laid down in horizontal layers, so any rocks with layers at a higher angle are that way because of uplift; the tectonic upheaval that created the mountains. It’s amazing to try and wrap your mind around the way that mountains are being made and ground down to dust all the time beneath our feet, just on a timescale too vast for us to grasp.
Alas, I made plans out of necessity, so the time came shortly for me to leave. Even if I rather did like the idea of staying a bit longer, I had a week before school started, a long way to go before I got there, and a lot to do before I was ready for it. Nevir was kind enough to ferry me to the airport in the morning where I got another irritating little jab from Frontier Airlines in the form of how they handle baggage. There was a tremendous line outdoors spanning across half the sidewalk to check baggage. Having an as-always terribly vague idea of how long the slog through security would take, I was a bit concerned about the wait. I was tempted to try the “hey I fucked up please help” method at the gate again, but that’s really not something to be relied on. Some quick recon turned up a baggage claim for them inside that most people didn’t get to because of the bizarre honey pot placed outside at the curbside dropoff. I managed to make it through that line and then security in pretty good time.
From there I just had to proceed to Gate: ****. Oh thank you so much helpful boarding pass! Fortunately I remembered from my trip in that Frontier parked their craft at concourse A, so I at least knew where to get off the train at. Some quick, semi-frantic research got me an actual gate number and everything was copasetic from there. I even had enough wiggle room left to have some Panda Express. They have orange chicken with bacon now. That’s a good omen if I’ve ever seen one. Cliff the mountain goat was there to welcome me to my return flight. That’s about the only good thing about Frontier. They paint animals on their wingtips, making them a fantastically appropriate airline to fly to furry conventions with. I actually had some amount of consciousness to make use of on this flight, so I got a bit of work done in my novel for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long. I was really hoping to get more done over the summer, but it just didn’t shake out that way.
Once back in Ohio I cringed at the over $100 in parking fees I had accrued in my absence, and after that I had another abbreviated visit to breeze through before I had to hit the road again. Just like last time, staging a visit after a furry convention was quite a bit straining. It made for a quiet visit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. We played some Hearthstone, trading some strategy pointers on it and then went out to some German place where we played menu roulette, just shouting Einbahnstrasse or whatever and eating whatever came to us as a result. My friend there also introduced me to Sword Art Online, which I found out was actually not some sort of DeviantArt knockoff just for pictures of weapons, but was an anime about people trapped in an evil MMORPG and slowly losing their lives to it. So you know, sort of like a lot of my friends when they started playing World of Warcraft. It was pretty interesting, and of course we got through like eight episodes in one sitting because Netflix has quite thoroughly obliterated the concept of moderation. I learned that my navy and high school friend there in Oxford plan to continue to hang out as the school year begins, so that made me feel a little less guilty about shoehorning the two of them together with my visit.
In any case, I heaved myself out of there and managed to cover the nine-ish hours to home with my sanity intact. I never had the best understanding of why medical insurance was such a big deal until I arrived home to find that the bill for my appendectomy had arrived in my absence. It had been so long I was starting to hope that they’d just forgotten about the whole thing. It was staggering for me to think that even a simple operation that went perfectly and entailed only a 1.7-day hospital stay could cost $14,700. Utter nonsense! So yeah, whilst I talk with the college about my upcoming classes I’m also going to be bandying this figure about with their healthcare machine to see about how much of it I’m going to be responsible for. That’s cool, it’s not as though starting another year of college has some large startup expense associated with it or anything. I’m sure that everything will be fine.
In any case, I covered a total of 1700 miles during my various adventures, a total that I rather underestimated during the planning phase for this one. I also put over two weeks and an amount of money I don’t even want to tally into this. And you know? I don’t regret a thing. I know I’m going to be trying to get an internship or somesuch next summer, putting a little more time pressure on me, but I’m going to work hard to be able to do something like this as well next time around. Here’s to another year!
Update:
sketchywolf has furnished me with the pictures that he took of me dressed as Pocket Panda. Go ahead and check them out! The quote that I think best captures the experience came when someone in the headless lounge when someone asked how I was feeling. "I am slowly dying, but I've never felt more alive!"
