I went to my first furry convention today. For those of you curious about my experience, read on.
---
My friend and I arrived at about 2:30 PM, what with the terrible traffic in town. We knew it was the right place when we saw the fursuiters walking around inside the glass doors. Unfortunately, we were so... awestruck I guess the word would be, with the surreal-ness of the place that we missed the arrows marking registration. It was just that people were walking around in fursuits, or if not that, tails or ears. That wasn't the weird part. The weird part was that everyone wasn't weirded out by this. Everyone was acting like it was normal, which I guess it was for a furry convention. So anyway, after asking some random people, we got to the registration, paid our rather large fee (one-day pass) and grabbed our info guides. They supply you with these con books which talks about the history of the show and who planned it, but with very nice furry art every other page. They were great! I got an extra one before leaving. There's a picture at the bottom.
Anyway, I signed in as Mr. Krystal, and that was interesting, going around with that as my name tag. We looked around first. Turns out we JUST MISSED the end of the fursuit parade, oh well. Next, we saw the various rooms with talks on interesting subjects. Interesting to me anyway, not to my friend. I'll get into that in a bit. The first thing we went to see was the Dealer's Den, where there were around 25 tables set up. Not that many, but it was a small con. I'd say that about half of them were offering adult stuff, but only 1/4 were predominately adult. Either way, they almost always kept their explicit stuff relatively hidden in specific binders, or with warnings. Even most of the nudes had conveniently placed stickers on the clear plastic binder sheets. There were a few nudes visible, but not as many as their could have been. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though there was adult art there, and a lot of it, it was pretty easy to avoid. I didn't recognize any of the artists, except maybe one or two adult comic series I've heard of, AND one artist I just
recently saw work from on the KLA.
The artist who drew this was quite cute, I must say. And that brings up the stereotypes. The ratio of men to women was about 3 to 2. Most people were older than me, with at least half around 30 or above. Then there were a lot of people my age. Very few kids, but I suspect that's different at other cons. They all appeared to have good hygiene. No weird smells anywhere. However, nearly 100% of the people were wearing at least a tail or ears. A fair percentage of them also wore those crazy clothes, you know the kind of baggy pants with lots of metal on them, all black. There were a lot of people who looked completely normal except for the tail, though. As for their... attractiveness, I'd say that 1/3 were very skinny, 1/3 were... larger, and the remaining people looked completely normal, as far as that goes.
After looking around the Dealer's Den, we went to the Pet Auction. People were auctioning off themselves to do whatever the buyer asked for the day, within reason. People were going for very cheap. $10 and $20 final bids were common. It was funny watching their antics trying to get bought. One guy was advertised as being a strong man, and he lifted a girl on stage. Later, I saw the guy who bought him riding piggy back on the strong guy around the con. It was kinda epic.
We went by the art show auction and looked at a lot of art. The adult artwork was completely sectioned off, with black curtains and staff card checking people who didn't look like they were over 30. Didn't go in there, and I was glad that they had that sectioned away. I didn't know most of the artists' works, but a lot of it was good. No Krystals to be found, however. A large number of the art's characters had wings, which I guess is because the con was flight (as in airport) themed.
After that, we checked out the game room. There was Golden Eye (N64), DDR, Brawl, Halo, and a few others. We then went to see the Ferrets as Pets talk, which was interesting, but probably too long. They should have made it a thirty minute talk. Long story short, unless you want ferret keeping as your main hobby, they probably aren't the pets for you.
We went walking around after that, never finding a good place to go or do. My friend wasn't really interested in listening to more talks. I kinda wanted to hear some, if only to get my money's worth. They had stuff on creating Second Life characters, and how to write fiction. By this time, the fursuiters had all but undressed and were probably walking around in normal clothes (plus tail). I had my eye on a relatively cheap piece of art in the auction that was literally the most colorful and cute thing available for purchase. I decided to go ahead and buy it. $24 bucks, plus tax. It was a
unicorn girl by Andrea Koupal.
We went back to the game room to see about doing some DDR, but it was too popular to really get into, so we went back to the Dealer's Den one last time before leaving. We grabbed those extra copies of the con book on the way out. My friend and I talked about want we thought of the con and furry stuff in general on the way home.
Overall, my opinion is that it was a great experience and I recommend it, even for people who are somewhat socially uncomfortable in crowded situations, such as myself. You can go to talks and be in the backs of rooms with ease and no-one will bother you. If you want to stand out, well, there are lots of opportunities.
If I go to a con again, which I likely will, I want to go to a bigger one where there will be more dealers, more talks, and more art. Also, I'd like to go for the full three days, not three hours, so I can go to lots of talks. Many of them that we missed seemed very interesting.
Here's what I came home with:
