Anthrocon report (fur)
Treesong
anthropomorphics (furry) convention in the world, with 3390 in
attendance. I thought some of a conreport might be of interest to some
of my correspondents.
The Anthrocon webpage explains, 'Today, Furry fandom is . . . an
artistic and literary genre that is practiced and enjoyed by tens of
thousands worldwide. We count among our ranks professional sports
mascots, animators, cartoonists, puppeteers, artists, illustrators, and
writers, as well as those who simply think that it would be a wonderful
thing if animals could walk or talk like we do. If you as an adult still
occasionally like to flip to the old cartoons, or have a stuffed animal
sitting on the dashboard of your car, or buy cereal because it has a
cool tiger on the box, you may well enjoy what our fandom has to offer.'
I hadn't been to an Anthrocon since 2002 owing to conflicts with NPL
cons, or penury. I don't know if things have changed, but I was struck
much more than before by the emphasis on creativity. I went to Morphicon
in Columbus last month and didn't find much to do because the program
was oriented more to doing rather than to appreciating furry stuff.
Anthrocon is ten times its size and I managed to find plenty to go to,
but it still seemed like a majority of the program was devoted to
how-tos on things like constructing and performing in fursuits, furry
puppeteering, drawing furries, writing furry stories, organizing a
furmeet, etc. The art show was comparable to that of SF conventions
several times AC's size, in both size and quality, despite the lack of
professionals attending. I felt rather like a fringefan, since my
interest in furry is mainly in comics and fiction, and to a lesser
extent artwork. Not even movies; it seems a number of people were drawn
to furfandom by Disney's *Robin Hood*, which I've never seen. Nor *The
Jungle Book*, nor *The Lion King*, etc.
There was a fursuit parade Saturday so that one could see all the
fursuits in action. Well, not all; there were 453 in the parade but
scores who didn't join in (not to mention hundreds more who just wore a
tail or ears during the con). You can't get an idea of characterization
from a mere walkby, but I was struck by a beautiful Roman centurion
lion, an anteater, a couple of elegant Chinese costumes, and some suits
that produced a great illusion of digitigrade legs. The centurion shows
up briefly in the KDKA TV report
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI4SIcemOtg).
Talking in a fursuit seems to be uncommon, maybe because one's voice can
be muffled, maybe because mascots do their communication by pantomime.
Whatever the reason, one of the events was 'Fursuit Charades', which I
attended. Not many people were there, what with overlapping events like
a charity auction and the fursuit dance competition preliminaries: about
eight fursuiters and a dozen bare hyoomans. Humans were matched against
fursuiters, trying to act out various things from a 'Charades for Kids'
game. I was on the human team, which won. Tsk. I don't know if this was
because of mobile fingers, greater skill, or just luck. Or antifurry
prejudice, since the remainder of the (suitless) audience was drafted as
guessers/judges. There was a wide range of difficulty; I remember doing
slingshot (easy), elbow (trivial; 'no props' was not in effect), flat
(did waves and negation), and tambourine (I thought I was clear enough,
but no. Piano?). Nobody had to do sprinkles or (gad) an egg-and-spoon
race. This, by the way, was the only event where I met someone I
recognized: Ron Bauerle. Aside from staff like Uncle Kage and
artists/publishers in the dealers' room like Mike Curtis and Bill Holbrook.
I spent a number of hours in the open tabletop gaming room. I wasn't
interested in Magic: the Gathering or Apples to Apples or poker, enjoyed
a game of Munchkin Cthulhu but wasn't faunching for a second
opportunity, might have played The Red Dragon Inn (D&D-style characters
trying to drink each other under the table) if it weren't limited to
four. I did get to introduce a few people to Set and Coloretto.
I arrived early and had an opportunity to head off to a bookstore before
the official program began. Found a nice copy of Baus's *Master
Crossword Dictionary* for about $4.75, eat your heart out. And no, you
can't have it; it replaces my copy with both covers detached. I also
visited Eide's, my favorite comics store back when I lived near
Pittsburgh. It was just a couple of blocks away from the convention
center. My want-list is short and esoteric nowadays, things like
*Hairbat* #5 and *Flaming Carrot* #32, and I didn't find a single thing
in all the downstairs boxes. On a second visit I did pick up a few
things from the clearance boxes, like a couple of issues of an excellent
magazine about comics, *Hogan's Alley*.
The dealers' room is one of the main reasons I go to conventions: a
chance to buy things I couldn't find anywhere else. I picked up four of
Bill Holbrook's comic strip collections and all five of Ursula Vernon's
books from Sofawolf Press, three of them collections of her online comic
strip *Digger*, one of my three favorites. It's about a wombat. Wombats
have the souls of engineers, hence a thorough dislike of magic and gods,
and Digger gets thrown into a world full of them: a talking statue of
Ganesh, an oracular slug, vampire squashes (they have no teeth, but if
enough of them knock you down they can mess you up), and much other
unwelcome stuff. You can imagine how she feels when she learns that
something magically influenced her to pick up a fossil ammonite as part
of an evil plan. 'I'll kill it! I'll break its face and feed it gravel
through a straw! I'll--I'll--gnttff-huff-urrrrff!*' *Lit. 'I will
construct its dwelling using inferior materials!' (The footnotes are not
the least of the wonderful things in this comic.) I recommended it to
Wombat, but I'll recommend it to all you other copyees too:
www.graphicsmash.com/comics/digger.php. The first 300 strips are free;
the rest you only get to see one day at a time unless you subscribe.
One organization at Anthrocon was Parrot Rescue, this year's charity,
which got $8900 from various sources. Another was a scientific team
investigating correlations with the relative length of the index and
ring fingers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio). They had a
long multipart questionnaire with furry (I wish I could take animal
form) and nonfurry (I worry about what people think about me) questions,
and gave a dime to Parrot Rescue for every hand they could photocopy.
Let's see, what else. I was rooming with a few people who put on a
weekly puppet webcast, so I went to the puppet-improv 'Pawpets Gone
Wild!' Fine puppets, but a sock puppet--literally, just a sock that
someone took off his foot and put on his hand, and that later accreted
eyes and a goatee and stuff--kind of stole the show from them. There was
another show the next day that included a visit from a Capt. Jack
Sparrow-suiter and the singing of 'Still Alive' from the videogame
*Portal*. Uncle Kage's Story Hour was excellent as usual. Floyd Norman,
a Disney animator for decades, was the Guest of O.K. and gave a fine
talk, 'Memories with the Mouse'. I ate a number of meals at the
fur-friendly Steel City Diner and Fernando's but did not buy one of the
SCD's Anthrocon T-shirts. Also went to the only downtown Indian
restaurant and was unimpressed by their chicken saag. And then I went
back to Cleveland.
--
Always carry a grapefruit, Treesong
--
Always carry a grapefruit, Treesong