AnthroCon 2009 - A Murry, Purry, Furry MMP!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Because if I’m going to take the time to write an MMP, you’d damn well better believe I’m gonna make it as weird as possible.

So, as I think all regular Mumpers are aware by now, for the last several years I’ve been a part - albeit not a particularly active one - of a primarily online subcultural group commonly referred to as “Furries”, and over the last week I was privileged to attend AnthroCon, one of the largest Furry conventions in the world. Held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, it draws several thousand Furries from around the world and hosts dozens of panels, discussions, performances, art shows, auctions, and more, all of it geared towards members of our weird little fandom. Before I can tell you all about my trip, though, I want to make sure everyone here is on the same page, because otherwise you’re going to be confused and probably a little freaked out. The Furry fandom is one of the more unusual subcultural groups out there, and is frequently misrepresented, stereotyped, mocked, and worse by various unseemly types on the Internet; what’s more, Furries tend to be hard to spot in real life, as there is frequently no way to distinguish us from regular people you’d pass on the street - or in fewer words, we usually keep the fact that we’re Furries a secret, usually because of all the negative stereotypes associated with the fandom. The net effect of these two factors is that most people either don’t know any Furries in real life, or if they do, they are not aware that the person is a Furry. So, if you’re not entirely sure what a Furry is, don’t worry, you’re not alone; more importantly, you’re also not out of luck, because I’ve taken the time to write up a summary of the Furry fandom to the best of my ability in the hope that it will help you make sense of the rest of this post!

Spoiler boxed so those who already know what a Furry is or who don’t care can skip it:

[Spoiler]If you’re reading this, that means you don’t really know what a Furry is, or at least have a few unanswered questions. So, in the Straight Dope spirit of fighting ignorance, I’m going to take a shot at answering some of the most common ones people ask.
Question 1: What is a Furry?

[Spoiler]What is a Furry? Well… A Furry can be a lot of things. To start, I’ll quote the official page for AnthroCon, the convention I just attended which is the subject of this whole post.

Now, I’m going to do the unthinkable - I’m going to cite Wikipedia. From the Wikipedia entry on Furries:

And finally, let me turn to what may well be the authoritative source for answers to questions about the Furry fandom - WikiFur, the Furry encyclopedia.

OK, so now that I’ve buried you in text, what does it all mean? To put it simply, Furries are people who like anthropomorphic or “humanized” animals. In the same way that many people daydream about being, say, a professional athlete, famous artist, movie star, Lord of the Rings elf, or superhero - characters who they admire for all manner of things, from fame and fortune to physical prowess to simply being “cool” - we daydream about being anthropomorphized animals. The reasons for this are as varied as the members of the fandom itself; in my case, I find these characters fascinating because, like superheroes, spell-slinging fantasy adventurers, or the cyborgs of science fiction, they give us an insight into what it would be like to be more than human - possessing the strength, speed, agility, stamina, and heightened senses of the animal kingdom while retaining the intellectual prowess, emotional richness, and other advantages of being human. Similarly, other people like anthropomorphics (henceforth “anthros”) because they find them cute, or because they feel they can relate closely to animals, because they feel a spiritual connection to the animal kingdom, or because they simply think animals are cool; whatever the reason, though, it is our shared interest in blurring the lines between man and animal that makes us all Furries.

So there you have it. A “Furry” is a person who, for whatever reason, likes anthropomorphic animals; it’s also a term for these anthro characters themselves, for the fandom as a whole, for any kind of art or other media pertaining to anthros or the fandom, and in general, anything associated with creatures that are part human and part animal. Of course, knowing what a Furry is marks only the beginning of the story![/spoiler]
Question 2: How did you become a Furry?

[Spoiler]More easily than you might expect. There are a lot of “Furry” characters in popular media, such as TV and videogames, and over a period of several years I simply realized “Hey, that’d be really cool!” The one moment which I think was most definitive or pivotal in my own long slide into Furriness occurred when I was in my early teens; I was browsing online for possible birthday presents I could ask for, and since I have an end-of-August birthday, I was looking at those Super Soaker water guns. During my browsing, I stumbled upon a piece of Furry artwork featuring a pair of anthro characters running around their yard and squirting each other with water pistols. I found the characters fascinating, and while I didn’t even know what a Furry was at the time, I can now look back and realize that it was that picture which turned me into a Fur.

Many Furries report similar “revelatory” moments, where some specific trigger makes them pause and say to themselves, “Whoa, I really like these characters! Anthros are cool!” Other Furs find their interest develops more gradually, as long-term exposure to Furry images in pop culture (Mascots, Videogame characters, Cartoon characters, and many more) breed a slow-growing fondness for those fantastic creatures. Still others become Furry as a result of religious beliefs stemming from a background in Wiccan, Therianthropic, Pagan-esque philosophy. And then there are those who simply like animals and decide they would like to be part animal themselves. So, all in all, becoming a Furry can happen in any number of ways - from internal motivations, personal beliefs, exposure to external forces, all at once, over a period of time… Just like “What is a Furry?”, “How did you become a Furry?” is a question whose answers are as numerous as the fandom’s members.[/spoiler]
Question 3: Why are you a Furry?

Another common question, and one whose answer can be much more easily distilled now that we’ve investigated what a Furry is and how people become Furries. In the literal sense, I’m a Furry because I saw anthropomorphic characters in TV, movies, videogames, print, etc, and I thought they were cool. And in the fantastic sense, I’m a Furry because I could look at those anthro characters I saw in various media and imagine myself as one of them, becoming a sort of “superhero” or at least “superhuman” in the process. Why am I a Furry? I’m a Furry because I think anthros are cool. I’m a Furry because I think it’d rock to be able to run really fast for miles and miles, and to leap gracefully through the trees, and to be able to see and hear and smell things invisible to my human self. I’m a Furry because I think it’d be fun to have ears and tail, and I’m a Furry because I think that anthro characters are really cute and cuddly. I like, in essence, what it would mean to be a Furry - to be cute, to be soft, to be cuddly, to be strong, to be fast, to be agile, to be… More than I am. And because of that, I like Furries and consider myself one of them.

Question 4: So what does it mean to you to be a Furry?

[Spoiler]Hmmm… These are getting harder to answer. I suppose, to me, being a Furry means what I said above - it means imagining myself as an anthro character because I like what being an anthro would imply for me. But more than that, it means seeing myself as something in between human and animal. I feel that I have a great deal in common with animals - some more than others – and specifically, I feel like I have a lot of characteristics in common with wolves. Now, I’m not crazy - I know I’m not a wolf. I don’t have wolf ancestors, wasn’t a wolf in a past life, don’t have a wolf’s soul or any such nuttiness - I simply feel that there are a lot of characteristics commonly associated with wolves which I possess as a well. Of course, being human (at least here in Meatspace), I know I have a lot of human characteristics as well. So I guess, when I think about it, being a Furry means being able to look at yourself - at the characteristics which define you and at the species, human or otherwise, which those characteristics are associated with - and synthesize everything you know about who you are into a coherent self-image. And perhaps most importantly, it means you can look at that self-image, your perception of yourself and who you are, and be comfortable with it - regardless of what species that self-image turns out to be.

Again, I’ll use myself as an example. I said that I felt I had a lot in common with wolves; let me elaborate. Wolves are a species which are famous for being solitary - the archetypal “lone wolf”. Yet they are, in actuality, a very social species. They don’t exactly go out looking to meet other wolves, obviously - they have a pack, a small group of “friends” (using the term only for convenience) to whom they are intensely loyal and whom they can be extremely protective of. In a way, I feel like this describes me as well. Most people think of me as a loner, and I do tend to be a very private and isolated person in real life; I don’t meet new people easily at all, have a hard time making friends, don’t talk much, and generally avoid social contact. But I do have a small, tightly-knit group of friends, many of whom I have known for many years, and like a wolf and his pack I find myself to be both intensely loyal to them, and very protective of them. It’s just how I am, a part of my personality I cannot change - a part of me which is as much wolf as it is human. There are other parts of myself about which I feel the same way, (like the fact that a lot of people think I’m “scary” but I’m really not, and the fact that I have a shock of snow-white hair on the back of my head) and the result is that when I look at all the aspects of myself, all the characteristics which make me who I am, I see a mixture of wolf and human elements. And so, when I take everything I know about myself and distill it into a cohesive self-image, the result is something that is in between wolf and human - specifically, an anthropomorphic Arctic wolf. This self-image is my Furry self - my Furry persona, or “Fursona”, and if you’re curious, you can see what it looks like - and thus, see exactly how I see myself - here. [/spoiler]
Question 5: Wow, that’s pretty deep! But I’m kind of lost… What does it all mean?

Time to distill everything I’ve said so far into something a bit easier to digest. I am a Furry, a person who likes anthropomorphic animals. I came to realize this thanks to a combination of exposure to Furry characters in media, and a “revelatory” moment where I saw a picture of two Furries playing and suddenly realized I thought the characters were really cool. I think the characters are cool because, in the same way that normal people have daydreams about, say, having a lot of money or having superpowers, I have daydreams about having the strength, speed, agility, senses, and stamina of the animals around us. Instead of just imagining myself as a person with these “powers”, though, I imagine myself as an anthropomorphic version of the animal in question, because I think anthros are cute and that it’d be cool to have ears and a tail. The reason I feel this way is because I see myself as having characteristics of a wolf as well as of a human, so when I think of who I am, the image that comes to mind - what I perceive myself to be - has wolf and human characteristics as well, and takes the form of an anthro wolf. So for me, being Furry is a combination of several factors - what I want, what I like, and what I am. And that’s pretty much all there is to it!

Question 6: OK, so I get WHY you’re a Furry, but… What do you DO as a Furry?

Finally, something I can answer easily. What do I do as a Furry? Well, everything. I am a Furry, so everything I do is being done “as a Furry”. Alright, alright, that was lame, I know. As far as specifically “Furry” activities, though… Well, I love to write, and I’m a total word nerd, so I write short stories (usually Science Fiction or Fantasy) about Furry characters. I also like to draw, and I do Furry sketches in between working on character designs for a (non-Furry) webcomic my friend and roommate Alex want to start publishing. In addition, I enjoy Furry roleplaying, either online (via AIM or Yahoo! messenger or whatever’s convenient) or in tabletop games. In fact, there’s a Furry tabletop RPG coming out soon and I know one of the guys who’s doing art for it, so yeah… Geek cred! I also enjoy going to “Furmeets”, small local get-togethers where Furries can meet and hang out and… Well, we mostly do what anyone else would do. Talk about what’s new, go out for food, watch movies. The only real difference is that we sometimes do so while wearing tails and collars. Other Furs enjoy costuming or “Fursuiting” in which they don full-body or partial costumes in the image of their Fursona and act or roleplay the part of their character; the detail, quality, and complexity of these costumes vary wildly and some Furs put huge amounts of time and effort into their costumes. And finally, there are the Furry conventions - big get-togethers for Furries, like a sci-fi convention or comic book convention or Renaissance fair, except weirder and, well, Furrier. Mostly, though, what we do as Furries is have fun! We enjoy being Furs, and we’re happy and comfortable with who we are - and it shows. We love to laugh, play, joke, goof off, and make fools of ourselves, all for the amusement of ourselves and those around us. Because, really, regardless of why people become Furries, or how they join the fandom, or how serious they are in their Furriness, if it weren’t fun and satisfying, there really wouldn’t be much point.

Wow, that was prodigiously long… Still, hopefully I’ve managed to convey the essence of the Furry fandom in a way that makes sense even to you normal people. Now… On to the actual post!
[/Spoiler]

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, on to my actual story!

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Last Fall, at UMBC’s Halloween celebration, I ran into an old friend from High School named Kayla who spotted me (in my Halloween costume - ears, a tail, and paws, all made to look like a wolf’s), correctly guessed I was a Furry, and more or less dragged me over to meet some of her friends from the school’s Pagan Student Union. After mutual introductions had been exchanged and I had caught up with Kayla (who it turns out had been a Furry since I knew her in high School, although I never had any idea), I ended up joining their little group and we became good friends. Fast forward to the end of the semester, and we decided that we wanted to attend AnthroCon, the biggest Furry convention in the US (yeah, we’re impulsive and suffer from delusions of grandeur). Most of us had never been to any sort of Furry convention before, but we pre-registered, bought tickets, reserved a hotel room, and got everything set up that needed to be set up. Nothing remarkable in that, except perhaps that we actually got it all taken care of in a mere four months.

Spoiler Blocked to avoid Wall of Text-ing you all.

Wednesday:

[Spoiler]Now, my parents don’t like Furries, and don’t know I’m a Furry, so I had to come up with a cover story. As far as they know, I’m in Pittsburg for a get-together with friends from my World of Warcraft guild. Yeah, I’m a horrible person, so sue me. Anyway, plans were made, lies were planted in advance, and then, finally, it was time to go. Our original plan was to have everyone be packed on Tuesday and meet at Danielle’s house, then stay the night there and leave Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, nobody was ready on Tuesday, so we decided to just rendezvous and leave the next morning. However, I did manage to get my laundry done the day before we were supposed to leave, so I wasn’t totally unprepared; then, on Wednesday, I got my sorry tail out of bed at 6:00 AM in order to pack my clothes and necessities, do some grocery shopping (at 8:00 in the morning and while wearing my collar and tail, which probably confused the people working there on many levels), load up a cooler, get all the stuff into my car, and meet everyone at Danielle’s by 9:00, which I somehow pulled off. We loaded everyone’s luggage, and the cooler, into Danielle’s mom’s crossover SUV, and after gathering all necessary convention-related paperwork and programming the GPS and running a general-purpose are-we-ready checklist, we set off.

It’s important to note something here: I was driving. In a car I’ve never even SEEN before – a big seven-passenger crossover SUV, a GMC Acadia or something like that, which is roughly 750 times bigger, heavier, and more powerful than the little Geo Tracker that I usually drive. On a five-hour, 400-mile roadtrip to a big bustling city. This would have made for an interesting trip in and of itself even if it hadn’t been for the rain, which came down periodically throughout the day in cloudbursts of such biblical proportions that by the second or third time the heavens opened up on us we were beginning to suspect that the internet wasn’t lying when it said that God hates Furries. Even so, the SUV was quite easy to drive and we made good time, except for the time I got in the wrong land and we had to take a 40-minute detour to get back on track, but nevermind that. Unfortunately, when we finally did get to Pittsburg, our luck ran out. We arrived during Rush Hour traffic, right after a baseball game, and the roads were PACKED. It was so bad, stoplights had seemingly become optional, intersections were free-for-alls, roads were gridlocked, and our motley crew was convinced every single driver on the road must be suicidal. Still, I managed to navigate through the nightmare, except right at the end of the trip the GPS essentially told us it could no longer save us, but we didn’t see the hotel and proceeded to get lost in the crazy that was Pittsburg at the time, and then to get even MORE lost when we tried to look for a parking spot and ended up in some sort of underground converted fallout shelter - cum - parking garage hacked into the bowels of the earth and accessed by a tight, low-ceilinged corkscrew ramp decorated in a mold-and-despair color scheme that must have been specially selected by Dr. Kevorkian himself to cause as much human misery as possible, with the whole complex lit by flickering 20-watt lights that would have felt more at home in a slasher movie. We were gonna park there but while searching for a spot I could actually get the nice shiny new not-mine car I was driving safely stowed into, we got re-lost and accidentally left said parking atrocity, but in the process found our hotel, and one questionably legal U-Turn later we did manage to get safely into the hotel’s underground garage. I could have kissed the valet, and we were all so glad to be safely here we simply headed up to our room and crashed.

Once we were done hating life, though, we got bored and headed out. Holy shit, we were actually here! We had made it to Pittsburg! Alive! We had planned and executed the entire trip, taken care of all the details, filled out the paperwork, and we were ready for the convention! That was a hell of a feeling of accomplishment for a bunch of College slackers, trust me. Almost immediately, we made friends with fellow convention-goers who were staying two doors over from us; they turned out to be Fursuit makers and had some AMAZING costumes. We decided to go out with them to a pre-convention gathering at the hotel attached to the convention center (which was not the one we stayed in - ours is a five-minute walk away), and so off we went once more into the breach. Or in this case, the streets, which were now nearly empty of traffic, thank God. The few remaining cars did seem to find us pretty interesting though - we got a lot of horn honks and waves and people stopping at green lights to let us cross, which was totally cool. Something about traveling with a girl in a full-body Eastern Dragon costume complete with its own custom clothing tends to draw the attention of passers-by, I guess.

We arrived at the gathering place in good time, and it was surreal. An entire Grand Ballroom full of tables populated by people in various levels of costuming ranging from simple faux tails to full-body costumes, all hanging out and talking. I suspect it looked similar to what you’d see on a really good acid trip, especially since some of the Furries have characters with neon-colored fur… But at the same time, it was cool to be in a place where you stand out more if you’re NOT wearing a collar and a tail. Anyway, along with our new friends, we commandeered a table and set up a rousing game of Apples to Apples. You want to know what’s funny? Watching someone in a Fursuit with claws trying to draw, hold, and play little glossy cards. Schadenfreude excluded, though, it was still a lot of fun - total strangers would stop by to say “hi”, join the game, chat for a bit, then leave and move on, so frequently that we stopped playing for points and started just playing for the hell of it. This was my first time in a large (read: More than five. This was closer to five hundred.) Furry group, and I gotta say, it was a lot less weird than I expected. Still, as much fun as we were having, the clock is a merciless mistress and by 2:00 AM we decided to roll out (make your Transformers jokes now). We meandered back to the hotel room, and crashed hard, by which I mean stayed up another two hours and went to bed at the crack of four in the morning…

And then four hours later our Fursuiter neighbors woke us up knocking on the door to see it we wanted to go to an early pre-con meet-and greet breakfast. We politely declined.[/spoiler]

Thursday:

[Spoiler]Thursday… A new day, and many new possibilities! I just hope none of those possibilities were scheduled for before noon, 'cuz that’s when we rolled our asses out of bed. I doubt we missed too much, though, because Thursday was the “pre-con” day where they set everything up and most of the Furries who’re attending show up and get settled in. Once we were all up and made presentable (well, as presentable as people like us are ever gonna be) we headed back over to the same big Furry hangout we had been attending the previous night. It’s called The Zoo and it was pretty much always open for Furs to just go and hang out. As we were chilling in The Zoo, playing some more Apples to Apples with folks ranging from a software design major to a long-haul trucker, two girls passed by and took seats at the table next to us. One was hot and carrying a cute plushie with her, and the other had an awesome Phoenix full-body suit, so purely in the interest of being sociable, I headed over to talk to them. Well, it turns out that the Phoenix girl lives in, of all places… Bel Air. My town. She works at a Petsmart 10 minutes from my house. Her friend lives nearby too, and is a Fursuit maker. It is a very small, very weird world, and I love it.

After a couple hours of Apple-based social mixing and mingling, we split from The Zoo and headed to the convention center, which is attached to the hotel where we were hanging out (but not the one where we’re staying). This is gonna get confusing… The Westin hotel and David L. Lawrence Convention Center are an attached complex where AnthroCon is held. Some of the hotel’s meeting rooms and most of the convention center are reserved for the 'Con, but instead of staying in the Westin we stayed in the nearby Doubletree, cuz it had free wifi. The Westin wants 45 bucks a day for wifi so screw them. Anyway, we headed to the convention center, even though nothing was set up yet, because we needed to pick up our official convention badges, which you need to get into… Well, anything. Lines for the folks like us who preordered were quite short (like, one person long), so this took essentially no time at all, and then we spent a bit of time meandering around the hotel/convention center complex looking for anyone we knew. We did find a few people, hung out, chatted, and pretty much chilled and killed time like any other group of friends. Later in the evening, we returned to our hotel room, and spend the rest of the hours between dusk and bed on videogames, music, and general hanging-out with our new friends, the neighbors from two doors over. So yeah, we didn’t really do much on Thursday… But hey, the convention hadn’t even officially started yet and already we’d made four new friends, including two from our own town, and one of those two was (and probably still is, barring a tragic accident) hot. Not bad for a group of convention virgins![/spoiler]

Friday:

[Spoiler]Friday marked the start of the actual convention, and being the proactive sort, I made sure I had a full itinerary mapped out in order to make sure I would be able to attend all the panels, discussions, and events being held that day which seemed interesting to me. After rolling out of bed at 11am and getting myself ready to face the world, I loaded my sketchbook and camera and official AnthroCon goodie bag (with maps of the Westin hotel as well as the convention center) into my messenger bag and set off towards my first day of my first Furry convention, boldly going where… Well, OK, where thousands of people have gone before. Whatever. I was the last person to leave the hotel room; now that the convention had officially begun, our group members went their separate ways, cuz everyone wanted to see and do different things. As for me? From around 1:00 to around 2:30, I hung out in a room in the hotel that holds open videogaming pretty much all day long. I played Super Smash Brothers Brawl with random strangers while I was there and had a lot of fun, even when I got my ass kicked by a girl, twice (I am pretty good at the game; she was better). Afterwards, I headed to an adjacent room for a presentation from 3:00 to 4:00 by Joe Harris, the creator of the Trix rabbit and Underdog, who was one of AnthroCon 09’s Guests of Honor. I used to watch Underdog with my mom when I was around six or seven years old and to this day, fifteen years later, I can STILL remember the theme song. I had been really looking forward to this, and had been hoping to get Mr. Harris to do a quick sketch of Underdog in my sketchbook and autograph it, but alas, tragedy struck - his plane was late, and by the time he arrived it was too late to do his presentation because the room was booked by another event at 4:00. There may be more to this later; I’m writing this post in advance so what you’re reading as past-tense is actually present-tense for me.

Anyway, following this disappointment, I headed to (yet another) adjacent room for a discussion of the fundamentals of webcomics, which I’d decided to attend in hopes of picking up some pointers I could use while working on the comic I want to write with my roomie Alex back at UMBC. We discussed how to grow your readership, develop your own art style, where to draw inspiration from, and some more technical stuff like how to host your comic online and what kinds of Tablets and Tablet PCs are best for doing digital art. It was pretty cool, and all three presenters were webcomic authors themselves, so it was pretty nifty to see the real faces behind the strips too. When the discussion ended at 5:00, I headed back out into the wilds of the convention complex, meambling (that’s “meandering” plus “ambling”) around looking for anything to do cuz I had some free time. I ended up running into a couple members of my little group from UMBC while hanging out in the Zoo during this downtime and we goofed off for a while, talking and watching a bunch of people in various levels of costuming, from “none” to “full-body Fursuits”, play games like Freeze Tag and more. It was pretty hilarious to watch, and good fun was had by all. Around 7:40, though, I headed off once more, in order to try to get good seats for Uncle Kage’s Story Hour.

Now, Uncle Kage’s Story Hour is an AnthroCon legend. Uncle Kage (real name: I forget) is the man responsible for organizing AnthroCon and several other large Furry conventions around the world, and is one of the most important people in the fandom and the closest thing we have to a leader. And every year, at AnthroCon, he does a one-hour storytelling/stand-up comedy routine that is renowned for being uproariously funny. This year, Uncle Kage’s Story Hour started at 8:30; I thought showing up 45 minutes early would get me near the front of the line to get in; I was wrong. The line was already several hundred people long. Still, I got in and, after plucking my friend Megan out of the crowd and into line with me so she would get a better seat and I’d have company, we ended up watching it together, and it turns out the guy’s reputation is well-deserved indeed. I laughed hard and often, and so did Megan and the rest of the audience. It was definitely worth the long line, and I was in good spirits when the show ended at 9:30.

My final activity for Friday was going to be a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament, held from 10:00pm to 1:00am in the same room that hosts the open videogaming. However, when I got there the line was over 100 people long, and I really didn’t feel like waiting for that many people to be eliminated, since only four people can play the game at once and I think they only had three or four systems set up. Impatience, coupled with the fact that it was late and I was tired, led me to meamble back to our hotel room, where I played video games with Jon-Erich, Danielle’s boyfriend and another member of our little group. Some gaming, some TV, one 2:00am pizza delivery, and a lot of writing later, it is now 4:10am and I’m freaking dead. It’s bedtime… I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds in store!

(As long as it’s not before noon.)[/spoiler]

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Saturday:

[Spoiler]Saturday was great. I slept in again, albeit not as late as the day before, and managed to make it to the convention center by around noon. After playing some free-for-all Super Smash Brothers with other Furs in the Videogame Room (Final score: One win for me, one win for the other guy who didn’t suck, a lot of corpses for everyone else) I headed next door for a panel called “Comics on Nuthin’”, which as its name implies was all about creating your own webcomics for as little money as possible. Topics addressed included getting yourself a digital tablet for as little money as possible, tutorials in basic use of several free digital art programs (GIMP, and some other Japanese-made program whose name I forget), how to recruit volunteers to help, and other cost-saving measures. It was a nice followup to the other webcomicing panel I attended, and I feel like if Alex and I can actually get characters created and start coming up with gags and a story we should have no trouble getting our “Goon Squad” webcomic off the ground, which would be awesome beyond words.

After the panel discussion was over, I headed upstairs and set up camp outside the Spirit of Pittsburg ballroom, alongside Jon-Erich, who showed up a little bit later. We were waiting for the Fursuit Parade, an annual AnthroCon event in which everyone and anyone wearing a full or partial Fursuit is encouraged to dress up and parade around a predetermined path in a big line; it was actually a lot cooler than I expected and I’m definitely beginning to not think so poorly of the suiters. I still think they’re a little crazy, but dancing around like a clown in a costume of your character looks like a lot of fun and they seem to be enjoying themselves. Anyway, there were a LOT of suiters, with all kinds of characters, all kinds of species, some REALLY cool costumes, and a lot of clapping and cheering and Fursuiters hamming it up for the assembled cameras. My camera was one of those and I took several metric assloads of photos as the suiters passed, trying my best to get everyone. Unfortunately most of the pictures are suffering from motion blur, because I don’t know how to work my digital camera! cries I’m really disappointed, as it’s a one-time opportunity and I blew it by using the “Auto” setting instead of the setting that reduces motion blur. Blech. Hopefully I’ll be able to link a video of the Parade off of YouTube or something, which would prolly be better than making you look through a bajillion pictures of Fursuiters.

Anyway, after the parade, I spent the remainder of the evening doing my best impression of a Japanese tourist, taking pictures of anything that would hold still, either on its own or by force. I ran around the entire hotel and convention center complex for several hours just photographing anyone who looked interesting - whether it was cool looking people or cool looking clothes or cool looking costumes, anything that was interesting and NOT a full Fursuit became a target for my snap-happy lens. I burned through eight AA batteries two at a time, I took so many shots, and I met a lot of cool people. I made friends with a couple of my subjects, too - a couple girls from Ohio and Wisconsin. According to them, the reason everyone draws my character as being nauseatingly cute is because I have such an adorable personality… Which really makes no sense as I’m about as big a cynical jackass as you’ll ever find, but hey, I’ll take a bit of flattery any time. I ended up hanging out with them in The Zoo for a good chunk of the evening, snapping photos of anyone cool who wandered by. Oh, and I made sure to take pics of any cute/hot girls too. To uh… Show my friends. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, I got a lot of neat shots of some even neater folks and I had a lot of fun in the process, and made more new friends, so all in all a good day. The only thing I regret is missing the fireworks for the 4th of July – apparently the convention center staff opened up the doors to the roof of the DLLCC and several hundred Furries were gathered there for basically the best view in Pittsburg of the fireworks they were shooting off from the river; I didn’t know about this ahead of time or I totally would have gone, instead of heading back to my hotel room and crashing before they even started. Oh well – next year I won’t make the same mistake![/spoiler]

Sunday:

[Spoiler]Sunday was, alas, the last day of the convention. I wasn’t ready for it to be over but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about that. In order to make the most of the day, I got up early (by my standards anyway) and actually made it to the convention complex by around 10:30am. Of course, I had special motivation for hauling my tail down there at such an unholy hour - a presentation by Joe Harris! Yeah, the creator of Underdog, who I mentioned earlier this post. His “Building a Legend from Scratch” presentation - the one that got rescheduled on Friday - was rescheduled for this morning, specifically for the time slot right before his OTHER presentation, “The Evolution of Underdog”. So thankfully I managed to attend both presentations, back to back! Joe talked about how he and his coworkers helped build up Total Television Productions with almost no money or equipment and in the process create famous characters like Underdog, the Trix rabbit, Klondike Kat, Tennessee Tuxedo, and more, from storyboards and production cells to finished product, as well as stuff like finding voice actors to fill the roles of the characters and more. It was cool to see how some of the characters in Underdog were based on real-life people; for example, Sweet Polly, the perpetual Damsel in Distress, was based on Marilyn Monroe, because Harris wanted a “white-haired minx” who would be the hero’s perpetual impossible sweetheart. We talked about the development of other characters as well, and generally talked about all things related to behind-the-scenes work on some of the classic cartoons I grew up on (note: I’m only 21. I watched them on Boomerang on Cartoon Network, but they were still as much a part of my childhood as they were for the older guys there who watched them when they originally aired in the 60’s). Oh, and I did manage to get an autograph from Joe, too. He had a table in the Dealer’s Hall where he was selling a few pieces of art; I wanted to buy a limited-edition full-color print of Underdog rescuing Sweet Polly and have him sign it but the prices for his stuff started at “WHAT THE FUCK!?!” and went up from there into the realm of “Self-Important Douchebag Thinks Too Highly of Himself”, which was really disappointing. Oh well… What’re you gonna do?

Once the Harris presentation was over I headed down to the dealer’s room, which I hadn’t visited until now. It was pretty much what I expected - a lot of starving artists, some of them very talented. A few tables selling things like ears, tails and paws (Price-gouging bastards, I could make my own for 1/4 the price… grumbles). Several tables selling sculpture, metalcasting, jewelry, and other wearables and shelf-space-fillers. A bunch of tables selling Furry comics. One table selling old videogame stuff - I very nearly bought a $15 copy of The Legend of Zelda for the NES. The one with the gold cartridge. I kinda regret that I didn’t buy it, tbh… At the very least it’d be a souvenir I can show my parents! Let’s see, what else… Well, there was a table set up to do lamination for people’s Con badges, several tables selling t-shirts, and a table for the premiere of Shard, a Furry tabletop RPG based in classical mythology - think Dungeons and Dragons but with anthropomorphs. A whole bunch of stuff, basically, most of it cool, not much of it useful. Oh, and of course there was a lot of porn… er, excuse me, “Furotica.” I was tempted to buy several different erotic Furry comics but didn’t because I only ever read anything once. Yeah, that’s it.

OK, I admit it, the only reason I didn’t buy a truckload of Furry porn comics is because I didn’t have the money. DON’T JUDGE ME!!!

I thought about buying everything from wolf-claw pendants to pre-made paws to commissioned character sketches but didn’t. Various reasons, mostly falling into two categories, “I have no money!” and “I would have to hide this from my parents at all times!”, both of which can be powerful motivating forces. Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures of some of the cooler safe-for-work tables and their dealers, so I’d have more photos to dump on my friends back home, as well of more photos of people in interesting costumes. I took some photos of the Artist’s Alley too, but only wide shots - I didn’t feel like going up and down all the aisles photographing a bunch of people just drawing. It wouldn’t have been very interesting to look at back home and would have required way too many assurances that I wasn’t trying to get photos of their work for redistribution. Finally, after taking photos and browsing all the dealer’s booths and somehow managing to get out of the hall without buying anything, I plodded my way back to the hotel room, even though it was only 5:00 or so - I was exhausted and my shoulders were killing me from lugging my heavy-arse messenger bag around all day for the past several days. And on that note, as I lay asleep, halfway through a much-needed nap in my hotel bed, AnthroCon 2009 came to an end - not with a bang, but with a whimper, which is ironic considering it was such a blast.[/spoiler]

And that’s how it went. Monday’s trip home was utterly unremarkable in every way, which is really the sign of a successful roadtrip if you ask me. I am bummed that it’s over, though. I have to be normal now - no more running around in a tail and actually fitting in, no more being surrounded by people who understand me (and what I am), no more, well, convention. Gone are the panels and discussions and dances and art shows and events and performances, and gone are the huge crowds of weird but fascinating people. But the biggest loss is the feeling of openness. Now I have to go back to being a “secret” Fur because I have parents who don’t approve and neighbors who don’t understand, and that sucks. Still, I’m glad I went. I had a ton of fun, met dozens of fascinating folks from all over the world, made half a dozen new friends, attended some fascinating discussions and panels, browsed cool art, hung out, played videogames, and generally had a good time… All while surrounded by people who I can relate to on a very personal level. And in the end, that’s what it really comes down to - the people. We may see ourselves as anthros, identify with animals, and call ourselves Furries, but we’re still people. People of all races and nationalities and genders and body types and sexual preferences and occupations and spiritual beliefs and personalities and more. People ranging from truck drivers to college students to artists to professional businessmen, ranging in age from grandparents to grandkids, black and white and Hispanic and Asian, but all of them people. People who have something in common and who, together, could ignore all their differences and be what they are on the inside, if only for a few days. People – over 4,000 of them - just being themselves, no matter who - or what - they are. I’m sure there’s a valuable lesson in there somewhere, even if I don’t know exactly what it is. And while I didn’t take home any physical souvenirs, I left Pittsburg with something far more valuable - a better understanding of myself. I feel more in touch with who and what I am now than I think I ever have in the past and I cannot overemphasize how wonderful that is. I feel like I learned so much over the last few days, both about what it means to be Furry, and about what it means to be human. Sure, I may not be normal, but I’m me. And that’s infinitely better.

So, goodbye, Pittsburg, and goodbye AnthroCon. I’ll be back next year, with more friends, more money, and a better costume. Until then, thanks to the staff at the Doubletree and Westin Hotels and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for putting up with our antics; we hope you at least enjoyed the break from your usual routine, even if you didn’t get what was going on. And thanks to you all, Mumpers, for taking the time to read this. I know I’ve prattled on for pages more than I should have so I am much obliged to you for reading what I have to say. And please, if you have any questions - anything at all, no matter how big or small - about my trip, AnthroCon, or the Furry fandom in general, please, ask. I want to answer and I’ll do my best.

Stay fuzzy, everybody.

  • Moonie

Photos and Videos:
My Con Photo Gallery
CNN News Report on AnthroCon
Video from the AnthroCon Furry Rave
New York Mets Complaining About Noisy Furries
Four-Part Video Series of the AnthroCon 2009 Fursuit Parade
Another Con Photo Gallery
Another Con Photo Gallery
Another Con Photo Gallery

Specific stories will be added throughout the week, carefully chosen by yours truly to both shock and delight. Don’t worry; they’ll be a hell of a lot shorter than this.

4

Alright, I’m all done. Have at it, folks!

5

Are you allowed to self-respond three times in a row?

FIRST FOR REAL, nyah-nyah!

Back from Sanfermines and from checking that my house is still where I left it. Haven’t killed Mom yet. Now to read the OPs.

6

Dang, Moonie, you certainly don’t disappoint in the OP department! I’ve never really thought of Furries as anything other than people that like to dress up like animals. The human-animal connection never occured to me. Food for thought indeed.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous MMP, work is exhausting. Detailed Manager is trying to get me out of my shell and interacting with the guests more in checkin. I’m working on it, but it’s a slow process. Also, I’m getting flirted with hardcore by a couple of the guys there. One of the housekeepers has taken to calling me Sexy Lady in an appreciative kind of way (older married guy, I can tell). The new front desk guy (who I strongly suspect is single and is close to my age) also may or may not have hit on me last night. I’m not sure anymore because I’ve spent the last day or so overanalyzing it. I won’t be working with him again until Friday, so I’ll have the whole week to wonder if I just imagined the whole thing. And yes, he’s hot.

Also, it looks like everyone missed it because I came down with a case of the cryptic, I passed my defense last Thursday. It’s all over but the fine details and formatting.

7

congratulations spaz!

8

Woo hoo, what a great OP, I mean, chock full of info. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to really check it out later on today since I don’t have enough time to right now. :frowning: Argh! But excellent job, Moonie! And hello all, yes, I’m up and caffeinating and going out the door in a few minutes …

9

Ooooh, how’d I miss that, Spaz? Congratulations!!!

Cool OP, Moonie! Sounds (and looks) like you had a really fun time.

Gotta get going. Is it Thursday yet? (I have Firday off!)

GT

10

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’ even though yes, it is my day off. I went to bed at eight thirty last night and slept all night long even. Didn’t even get up to pee. Imagine!

Moonie great OP! Like Spaz I always thought Furries were people who like to dress up like animals. You have fought my ignorance. Go You! I read the OP’s and have looked at some of the pics. I’ll go back a little later to check out the rest.

CONGRATULATIONS SPAZ!!!

Now that there’s enough daylight, Ima go turn the pool cleaner on. Today shall be float in the pool time. Plus bugman is comin’ at two. That’s my excitement for the day.

11

Monday blurfs.

I always thought people became furries because they couldn’t get laid any other way. :stuck_out_tongue:

Spaz, congrats on the deefense, and I’m jealous that other guys are hitting on you. :wink:

12

CONGRATULATIONS SPAZ!!!

Okay, now I know more about Furries than I ever thought possible. :stuck_out_tongue: Very interesting though … .says the lady with a ton of stuffed plushies surrounding her computer and on her desk. LOL I’m a closet anthro! I also need more caffeine. Happy Monday all.

13

Former (very) occasional MMPer who had to pop in when I saw the title. I’ve been meaning to try and get to AnthroCon for years, but time and finances have always conspired against me. The only Furry con I’ve been to has been Midwest FurFest in Chicago, which I’ve worked for since its inception.

I’ll be checking out the photos and reports in more detail later. And maybe I’ll make a more concerted effort to get there next year.

14

I usually don’t mention the race of people in these tales, because it’s largely irrelevant to telling a good yarn, and I also don’t want to be accused of reinforcing any stereotypes. This time, it’s part of the plot.

Early into my shift, we got a call for a 68 year old man with breathing difficulty. It took us 20 minutes to get there because the dispatcher gave an ambiguous address; one of three places, and the first two were non-existent. Harrumph.

Anyways, when we finally arrived, it was a gentleman I’ve transported before. He’s of mixed heritage, part Black and part American Indian, and why this is important is that he has his hair pulled back into a ponytail, and has a very small beard, giving him a distinctive appearance. He’s also a very nice guy.

The complaint was difficulty breathing. I immediately listened to his lungs, which were clear. His vitals were pretty normal, and in some respects better than mine. The only thing we could observe, beyond his being slightly winded, was a pair of bloodshot eyes and an irregular heartbeat.

We went through his history. He had previous heart trouble with bypass surgery, diabetes, asthma. What were you doing when this started? He answered mowing the yard, and that he could not mow in one shot; he has to mow over several days because it would overwhelm him physically. Fair enough, we thought.

After explaining how he mowed, he started teasing his 8 year old grandson that he was going to have to do the mowing. The kid retaliated by talking about his grandpa’s goat tail. Grandpa smiled, and the three of us looked at each other in utter confusion. He let the joke go for a minute and so, then said the kid was talking about his beard, the same kind Howie Mandell wears on his game show. Oh, a goatee… :smack:

Grandpa didn’t want to go anywhere, and as near as any of us could figure, he was having a combination of environmental allergies and overexertion. Take it easy, drink something cold with an allergy med, and call us back if it gets worse.

I was running on the unit with Mark, who was a classmate of mine in Basic class. When we left the scene, we went to his place so he could pick something up. While talking to Mark’s wife, she told a story of a spirited discussion they had concerning latticework on their porch. She wants some privacy; he wants the airflow. The location of the proposed lattice also had a hummingbird feeder that was popular.

In the telling of that story, she said, "Mark said no. ‘Lattice, especially with the ivy you want growing in it would block the airflow. Oh, hummingbird!’ " :smiley: A real-life “Oh, shiny…” moment. I ribbed him about hummingbirds all night.

Our other call came about 1 AM. Our patient had 2 seizures over a 2 hour period, the first lasting about an hour, and the second about 20 minutes, ending just before we arrived.

He was in bed, and in a classic postictal phase. I’ve likened seizures to a MS Blue Screen of Death, with the postictal phase being the part where the PC (brain) reboots. Once again, our patient had pretty normal vitals, except that he also had a raging fever.

We loaded him into the ambulance and headed for Bugtussel. I get to brag here, because I got my first IV start in a moving ambulance. Something I’ve seen done, in utter awe and amazement for the IV giver. I tried it once before, but it didn’t work so well.

Our patient was slowly coming around, and getting combative. I had 2 tries with one success, but because he fought, the successful one blew. Millie, the paramedic supervisor, had 2 successes but they blew, too. I was in good company.

When we saw him last, our patient was alert enough to be cussing out the ER staff. They knew him well, were used to it from him, and the abuse was normal for him.

No fishing Sunday morning. I overslept hook time.

15

Well.

Lots going on here today! Too much, even, to comment on already except to say HOORAY for SPAZ!!!

16

Interesting OP! My knowledge of furries has been the one Law and Order:SVU episode, and what I’ve read on this board. Thanks for fighting ignorance, Moonie! It sounds like you had a blast! I hope you find a video of the parade.

Busy busy busy here at work today.

Have a good day, all!

ETA: Yay Spaz!

17

Moonie, that’s one heck of a tale (or is that “tail”). :slight_smile:

I also poked through the photos… it’s amazing how much work goes into all the costumes, but I’m assuming most of the hardcore attendees spend all year plotting out what to wear for the next year’s convention. (At least, that’s how it went with CostumeCon, which I attended many many many years ago when I was an aspiring costumer and wanted an excuse to wear a Victorian ballgown for a day)

Also, you are totally adorable and squishable in your photos. :slight_smile:

Hurray for Spaz!!! (both on the getting hit on by cute coworker and passing your defence)

I’ve got a bad case of the donjuannas today. Can has more weekend, please?

18

Congrats Spaz!!

I have a friend who’s gone to AnthroCon 3 years in a row now and loves it. Glad to hear someone else’s story too. Sounds like a fun time.

Good weekend here. Had a coworker-friend over for breakfast Sat before she had to come in to work. There’s a big release coming up soon, which I fortunately don’t have a part in. But it interfered with our going-out-to-breakfast plans so we invited her for breakfast in instead. I make pancakes or waffles or muffins or something for Sat breakfast anyway so no biggie to have an extra person around. Kind of nice, really. And a gorgeous morning so we sat out on the patio eating and talking until she had to go.

Then KT and I went to look at new garage doors. He found out from the pres of the homeowners’ board that they’d installed cheap doors originally so we decided that it’d be better to replace the whole thing instead of just the spring. We should be able to get an energy credit thingy so that’ll help with the cost.

Sat afternoon we went for a nice walk at a wildlife refuge near here. We think we saw one immature bald eagle, but that was it on the wildlife front.

When we got home, we walked by our neighbors’ houses (Because the garage door is broken, we have to park in the parking lot so we actually walk by two other townhouses to get to ours.) and they were sitting out playing Life. They invited us to join them, which we did after grabbing a quick dinner. We had a good time and they said they would also be free on Sunday so last night I made some strawberry shortcake and they came to our place for dessert and then played a game called Plague. (That was the only description I could find of it in a quick search.) It’s quite a zany game that appears to have been created over a very large number of pints in some British pub. Basically, you’re a wagon driver going around picking up dead plague victims. But there are rats and fleas that can block you or kill you. But wait! There are cats that can kill the rats. Aaaaaaand there’s a vacuum that was sent back from the future that can suck up the fleas! Yeah, I am totally imagining people sitting around a bar making up rules as they got progressively drunker. But it did appear to be a lot of fun, at least for the half hour I stuck around for. I then headed off to bed like a responsible worker while my husband, who had to drive out to the manufacturing facility for work today so should have gotten plenty of sleep, and the neighbors stayed up until sometime after midnight I think. At least they had fun. It seems to be a very strategic game like Risk, but with a lot more laughter.

Anyway, it was really fun to do something with the neighbors and to start feeling like we’re building a community, not just all living in isolation with shared walls.

19

I think moonie wins for sheer volume. :wink: Fascinating stuff!

Congrats, spaz! Take a bow!

I am back at work. :stuck_out_tongue: That is all.

Tupug

20

Since I haven’t submitted a recipe in quite a while, here’s the Neener Pudding we take to the neighbors every so often.

==========================================================

**Neener Puddin’ **(reduced sugar banana pudding)

If you’ve made regular banana pudding, you’re 98% of the way there already.

2 boxes Jello Instant Banana Pudding
4 cups of milk, per pudding instructions for double batch
2 boxes sugar free vanilla wafers
4-6 bananas, sliced

In largish bowl, add pudding mix and milk, whisk until it starts to thicken per instructions.

Place a layer of vanilla wafers on bottom of serving dish or bowl. You may have to use a small amount of pudding to butter the sides if you have trouble keeping the cookies in place. The layer sequence is cookies-pudding-bananas-pudding; try to repeat twice. If you can’t, make sure pudding is the last layer in any event. Take a large handful of the leftover cookies, crush them, and sprinkle over the top. Keep refrigerated.

Please note that if you are diabetic or have some other metabolic condition where carbs must be counted, this isn’t entirely a freebie. You must still account for the bananas and the flour in the cookies.

(Why is it called Neener Pudding? My wife said, “I’m taking a nap, so you’re making it. Neener neener neener.”)