Who wants to hear about what happened the first time I went to a furry convention? https://twitter.com/comedybun/status/1296933916365000704

OK, SO. Some backstory, I was a youngster, attending community college, living in a van, had a few friends that I met online or in school, a few friends who I bought pot from, and like one friend that I had sex with. I was pretty much killing it in the success department...

...I was also REALLY into the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It was the first time of been exposed to any sort of fandom or online clique. I’d browsed 4chan when I was younger, and spent time on Newgrounds and Weebls and Homestar, but nothing to the level of...

...obsession that I had going on with this silly cartoon. I knew all the writers, actors, directors, the other shows they’d worked on, everything. It was creepy, but ultimately harmless. I have a bunch of crazy stories about that, but for another time. Also, no weird sex stuff..

.. happened there for me. Just throwing that out there, head that off at the pass. It definitely was happening, but it was not my bag at all.

ANYWAY, I had some friends I’d met online through this weird group of people watching a kids show, and I was down to a solid crew of...

...about 5 or 6 people who were all kind and paid their share of con rooms. About half of them were legit real world furries. OC’s, badges, commissioned portraits, the whole nine yards. I had never met furries. I had never even really heard of furries. But I had been to a few...

...anime and MLP cons. So when I was asked to go to a furry convention I thought, “cool, we’ll get hammered, smoke some pot, and go to a rave.” And signed up. What I didn’t know at the time was that this particular furry convention was in Pennsylvania, and was the largest...

... gathering of its type in the United States. When I say that this convention was big, I mean it took up like two whole ass convention centers. Like huge hotels. If you’re from Detroit and have been to Youmacon, this was about double the size of that.

Now. There are different types of attendees. There’s people like me, who were dragged there by their friends and liked to party. There were people who were like my friends, who were furries, but still just walked around in dude apparel. Then there were suiters.

Fur suiters are probably what you think of when you think of furries. They have these huge, custom made mascot outfits that cost thousands of dollars and make your high school outfit look like a crummy Halloween costume you made when you were 12. These people live and breathe...

...for the convention circuit. They go to a bunch of these things a year, it’s a hobby the same way that like, guys who restore old cars and take them to car shows and share memes with Calvin pissing on a can of white claw is a hobby. It’s more of a lifestyle than anything else.

I personally think that as an art form and a mode of self expression, fur suiting is kind of awesome. I also can’t help but notice the overlap of furries and LGBT folks, and think that a safe community that caters towards helping people feel good about themselves is ultimately...

A positive thing. One of the several reasons I don’t go to these cons anymore is because they aren’t for me, and while I know that I’m welcome in that space, I’d like to just leave it for those who need and want it more than I.

Another small bit of backstory before the tale really begins, I became single about 9 months before this trip, and was dealing with it by getting really into psychedelic drugs and other hippie shit. One night, a girl I’d been seeing for a while gave me two tabs of what I thought

was acid. It was not. I still don’t know what it was, but that was the worst night of my life. I won’t give specifics, but it gave me, a person who would basically just wake up, smoke weed all day and then sleep, a deeply felt desire to stop all drug use immediately.

Which I did not do. Instead, I kept smoking weed and trying to just get over it. I was having nightmares, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t really tell where reality began and the terror ended. Years later, I would recognize these as PTSD symptoms, but at the time...

...my only cure was more hair of the dog that hit me. And it got hairy.

Eventually, I decided that it was time to just break entirely from that lifestyle and cling to sobriety for a set amount of time. Both to try and catch a break and to remember what sobriety felt like.

The con was in a month, so I decided I would take a month off and party hard at the con and see what happened.

WELL HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

I had a pleasant time.

Two of my friends had the higher tier of badge that let you into a special lounge with free beer, and we all badge swapped our way in (that’s where two people go in, then one leaves with both badges. You get the picture) and after my month of sobriety

.. it was nice to have a beer and chill. I made some friends in the smoking area outside, meet a cute girl who offered me acid and a trip up to her hotel room, both of which I declined given my mental state. But we traded numbers and met up a few times through the con.

The rave was fun. I ran into my sister completely unplanned, which was a bit of foreshadowing that I didn’t catch at the time. The suiters do a little parade on the second day, which was fun. A guy let me put on his mask. I was shocked by how innovative the suits were. Ig I was..

Mostly expecting like dogs and cats? But there were all sorts of animals. A sloth, some dolphins, a moonkin from World of Warcraft. Bats, rats, marmosets. Seriously everything you can think of.

I really did just have a good time. If you’ve ever been to any sort of convention, it’s pretty much that, but half the attendees are in mascot costumes. I didn’t really write this up to bash on furs, they get enough of that everywhere else, and frankly I have a lot of respect for

Anyone who is willing to push against the social stigma that people throw at furs just to enjoy their lives. The world is a cold and cruel place and these folks are using the advances of modern society to find a like minded community. More power to them.

Like I said, this narcissistic thread serves more as a snapshot of what my life was at the time than having anything to do with furries. I wanted to write more about the actual event, but I ran out of tweets on this thread, and it wasn’t really that remarkable beyond being a con

And seeing my sister by happenstance. If you’re curious, I’d encourage you to find some people you trust and check one out yourself. You will meet interesting people. You will have dance. You will have a good time. It was a wild time. If you have any questions, ask away.

Here’s the pictures I have left on my phone from the event.