AnthroCon 2009 Report

This has got to be my best con I’ve had ever. I’ve been to plenty and I was really really happy after the fact. From the minute we got there it felt like it was going to be good and it sure was. So here’s my extremely lengthy report from what I remember.

Day 0: Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning

“Day 0” (the drive and packing just before getting to the con) was worth mentioning because of this story of how it went down. After I managed to find a ride there a few days before with Bobskunk, we discussed that we’d be trying to leave around 3:30 PM Thursday. Fine with me. I wanted to get there Thursday and that wouldn’t be too late.

It was then later discussed that we should leave by 11:30 AM from here so that we could get there earlier. Also fine with me. No specific plans to get there. I inquired as to why the change was made though. It turned out that Bob’s roommate for the con was already at the convention and checked in. I then remembered how my roommate for the con, Jasen Tamiia, was also at the convention already and checked in. So I joked about the idea of leaving now.

A few moments passed and Bob asked me if I was packed right now. I told him that I wasn’t but was in the process but I could be packed shortly. It turned out that the four of us in the car all had space available already. So we figured why not and started getting ready at around midnight to head towards the con.

It was raining that night over here when he arrived a little before 1:00 AM on Thursday. So we had to scramble to try and get stuff in the car. Of course me being me, I “pack like a female” as some say. I admit sometimes my clothing bag contains a little more, but I  bring one or two bags of entertainment and my bag with my fursuits which is huge. Usually it just contains just fursuits and related stuff and is huge as is. Today was no exception.

So we headed to the local Wawa before driving off to a nearby town and picked up the last member of our ride, GHDA. On the way we fought through lots of flooding since that’s what tends to happen on our roads in the area when it heavily rains. On the way we managed to not quite find his house due to GPS issues. We pulled off into a parking lot of an apartment complex, only to find out his house was literally right next door, simply blocked off by a fence. So we drove around and got him and headed off.

Blah blah blah, not much on the road. We stopped at a few places for gas and snacks. Nobody was in these rest stops since it was 3 or 4 in the morning when we stopped at them. However on the way, my cell phone company realized I was a bit behind on my bill and disconnected my service. D’oh! I was still able to receive calls,  so thanks to Google Voice, I was able to “make” calls somewhat during the con. But no data plan at all sucked. And no easy calling or texting sucked. We arrived at the con and everything at about 7AM. This is probably the earliest I’ve ever been to a con thus far.

Day 1: Thursday morning – Friday early morning

Ok so we’re at the con and I feel a bit tired. I’m in the room with Jasen Tamiia and Joel the Lemur. Joel seemed a bit out of it and quiet cause he was very tired. I figured he was going to be very shy and nervous the whole time. I found out he was anything but shy or nervous.

Anyway I managed to rest a little bit but not for too long. I figured not many people were up anyway when I did rest so I didn’t want to not rest while there as nobody to talk to when I was tired. But after a while I said “hell with this” and decided to wander the con, since sleep at cons is less fun time. I was awake enough and there were people there. I got to hang out with some good friends say hi to some new ones. Some things stood out more or less than others.

I got to meet Mozee Otter. We had talked a bit before the con, but I don’t believe I told him I’d be going to it. Mozee was really really cool and I’d easily say was the one person I spent the most time with during the con. More about hanging out with him in a bit though.

I also got to see TILT Longtail. It had not been very very long since I had last seen him. It had only been mid April, but we had been getting much closer to each other and building a strong friendship in the months prior to seeing him in April and more so after wards. So he was very excited to hear I’d be going and I was very very eager to see him. He was just as eager to see me. We got to hang out quite a bit at the con.

A little tiny bit of weirdness during Thursday though. One person who I didn’t recognize for whatever reason came up to me while I was in suit and was obviously not sober in some form. Said some things and got a bit flirty. Eh. Nothing too bad just a little weird and one of those “excuse me I think I left the refrigerator running, I gotta go” moments.

Later on an unidentified female came by and wanted a picture. She was dressed in some well, let’s just say it was not your average attire. Nothing I didn’t like honestly. However this unknown person posed with me for a picture but just before the picture took their hand and then slowly dragged a finger along my fursuit. Just barely above my crotch. But definitely along or below the belt line. Yeah. I wasn’t exactly freaked out. But it made me think “ummm, hi there and who are you?”

I let security know. One of them responded in a funny way about the incident. “Well we’ll keep an eye on her, but to be honest, based on how she’s dressed, I think you just saved yourself about $10”. Yeah pretty much.

Thursday night ended about 6AM. At around 1 or 2AM I was with Mozee and he wanted to go get some food with DEX. Sure why not! He said he’d go upstairs for a moment and be down shortly 10-15 minutes. A bit more than that passed, and I was concerned. So I called him up. Turns out DEX was upstairs in suit in Mozee’s room. He was locked out cause his key wasn’t working and his roommates were either asleep or not in the room.

Nobody could contact the room and we didn’t have any of his roommate’s numbers. D’oh! So he was stuck in suit for the night. So me and DEX and Mozee hung out and me and DEX talked about our past. Then later on some other folks joined the room. So til about 6AM we were all laughing and talking about random stuff including Homestar Runner, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and various movies. Mozee left and came out in suit in the middle of all of this, so I got lots of otter cuddles. I had a fricking blast. Once 6AM hit I decided it was probably best that I get some rest.

Day 2: Friday though Saturday early morning

I wake up and wanted to goto Opening Ceremonies. I missed almost all of it cause I couldn’t find my badges originally. Oops! Speaking of the badges, I finally seemed to get more people to notice the existence of my one badge compared to MFF. Hehehe!

So after that I waited and wanted to goto the game room. But it wasn’t open! At least not yet. Eh whatever, went to go hang out with some other folks. When it was finally open, there was a huge lack of bemani at the time. So yeah went to go hang out with others again. Hung out with Mazer for a bit. I made so much fun of his name since it matches the name of a weapon in Star Munchkin. Saw TILT a bit more. Hung out with him and Mazer and others for a little while at a gathering with some others. Had a real blast there.

Came back to the game room and hey look bemani is here! Wasn’t DDR at the time and I was in the mood to play some DDR, but whatever. Played some IIDX which I did better at than when I was playing in Mozee’s room. Played a little pop’n and did better than when I played on an arcade machine recently.

Saw Ian Keith there. He was running the DDR tournament. He was wearing this shirt which I eventually got myself. So I saw it and the shirt became a running joke between us. The idea of a fox opening their muzzle and out comes a heart symbol instead of words was just funny.

I believe Friday I eventually suited up and went around for a while. Went to the headless lounge eventually with Mozee, Dax, Axel Funx and Woods.  We might have been in there for an hour, haha. Out of nowhere I met a friend of mine Darius-Kei that I totally did not know was going and had never met in person. We snuggled for a little while in the Zoo while he played Apples to Apples. Definitely good times.

I don’t remember specifics about Friday night/Saturday morning except that my roommate Jasen Tamiia was probably drunk, and that me and our roommates were all joking about Metal Gear Awesome and Tourette’s Guy a lot. Fun times.

Day 3: Saturday through Sunday Morning

Saturday, woo. First off I’d like to point out that in the middle of the previous day, I had thought it was Saturday because I was so not used to already doing this much stuff by that point in the con. Same thing happened to me mid way through Saturday where I thought it was Sunday.

Met more people. Hung out with more people. Saw that the DDR pads were up for qualifiers. Played a bit of DDR and stuff. Went back to Mozee’s room and also hung out with TehWolf in there. They both got suited up for a bit and hung out. Woo.

I decided to suit up again and play the qualifier for the hell of it in suit. Mozee said he’d go do it too but out of suit. He said to me he was not a good “perfect attacker” like I can be, though there’s plenty of  other people who can step those arrows in time better than me. It was just CANDY☆ on Standard. Nothing too hard, but technically a sight read for me and Mozee.

The song was being played on SuperNOVA 2 JP mix so that the scoring was easy to take, but it also meant marvelous timing, which is better than perfect for those that didn’t know. All marvelous means 1,000,000 points (100%). 99% (990,000) or higher is now a AAA, but many will not consider it a true AAA unless it’s a full combo with no greats (perfect combo).

Anyway beyond the technicalities of the game I played this song in suit. I told them I had no intentions of being in the tournament and just wanted to see a ranking if I actually did go into the tournament. At that time I ended up AAAing the song with 2 greats. I took 2nd place, only 110 points behind first, meaning I was 11 marvelouses behind the top seeded player.

So then Mozee goes up. And he straight up AAAs the song. 0 greats. Taking first place, bumping us to down to 2nd and 3rd. Amazing. Hilarious. I played a bit more songs in suit and kinds tried to pimp my YouTube channel. I don’t think many people recall me saying it though or would remember my username haha. Oh well. I completely botched AM-3P and Mikeneko Rock in suit while trying to stealth them. Blah. Tomo if you’re reading this, you walked infront of me and screwed up my groove when I tried to start Mikeneko Cock! *shakes fist*

So yeah I decided to finally get out of suit and shower. So did that and was just about ready to head out when I heard a knock at the door. Holy shit it was Greifer. He was just back from drinking at Tonic. He was there for lots of cuddles. Wow! He actually remembered :D That made me so so so happy.

After he left I went back around the con, played some more bemani and such, played some Apples to Apples in my room. Invited Mozee into the room. We had a blast. Jasen Tamiia turned out to get pathetic and dysfunctional and a couple of other nasty cards, yet he got “hot” as his first card. We “phoned a friend” a few times. I judged the last round, and asked for phone a friend. So the last round went to: “Cuddly Spontaneous Combustion”.

After that I went out with Mozee and a bunch of other furs to some late night restaurant and had some cheese fries there. Was kinda hungry, was just kinda wanting to hang out and stay up. Came back and pretty much went to sleep from there.

Day 4: Sunday through Monday at about 5AM

Played a bit more vidja games in the game room before the DDR tournament went underway. More IIDX and some DDR. Helped record some qualifying scores. At that point me and Sharz decided for the hell of it to play the qualifying song again. So I do. I go and actually AAA it this time out of suit. So I decided to compare this score to Mozee’s score. I beat him by 10 points. That’s a single Marvelous step. Hahaha. Amazing. I was so ecstatic at the whole thing cause of the hilarity.

I forget much of what else happened that day between then and the tournament. I decided to watch some of the tournament in the end. Played some IIDX, recorded Taren playing IIDX in his fursuit. It’s up on YouTube now. Uhh the end of the tournament was nice. Wag played Paranoia Respect and passed it. He got 4th place… and got a bag of Doritos for it. I kid you not. I won’t go much into detail about the end of the DDR tournament, and how I felt about its results, but let’s just say it was surprising and some folks were amused.

Played a little more DDR before it was obvious that the room had to be closed very soon. So then it was wandering at that point. At some point I went into the zoo and played some Set with Nik Vulper as the dealer. He’s the dealer now cause he’s just that damn good at the game. For the 4th time in under a year of me owning this deck, we managed to clear the board. Yeah. All of the cards got picked up in this game. If you play this game you know that’s hard to have happen.

Blah blah, played Apples to Apples again. Blah blah, card games. Got introduced to “We Didn’t Play Test This At All”. Fuuuuuuuucked up! Annoyingly hilarious is the best way to describe it. As is “fluxx on crack”. More Set, blah blah. More eating, more lots of stuff. Hung out with Jasen and my roommates in our room for a while again. Went back out at 1AM or so. Stayed up til 5AM doing random stuff. Now I had mentioned the running joke between me and Ian Keith earlier. Well he was selling $1 “art” of stick figure furries. This resulted in this picture being made. Hilarious I tell you. Not much more to tell you from there really. Eventually went to sleep.

Summary

I really enjoyed the time I got to spend seeing Mozee, TILT, Darius-Kei and just everybody in general. Thanks to all who helped make this weekend totally awesome.

PS: Koebi has declared Rule 34 on the game. Somebody do something about this.