This year, I’d decided to take a break from furry cons. I wanted to see the shape of the hole they left behind, and decide if I wanted to keep coming. And I wanted to expand more into comic cons.
Well. The weekend before last, I realized a major part of what I was missing. The dances. I was at SPX’s dance, which was about half of one small function room in the hotel, and some people spinning pretty poppy stuff. The people DJing mostly just played songs rather than mixing and fooling around. There were probably never more than about two or three dozen people ever dancing at once in a fairly dark room.
And I thought of the dances I’ve been to at furry cons. And I felt profoundly spoiled. To me, the dance at a con should be an event. I’m used to huge dance floors that fill up a ballroom, full of a couple hundred people in outlandish costumes ranging from full fursuits to street clothes. And a lot of those fursuits are full of blinking lights and EL wire, plus people playing with all kinds of glow toys out on the edges. And DJs who can put together a really good mix on the fly of mostly electronic music that keeps the crowd bouncing, and lots of colored lights making things exciting. In short, I’m used to raves. And comic cons just don’t deliver that.
So despite having spent the last weekend behind a table selling stuff, despite still recovering from an exhausting five-hour flight home and a cold on top of that, I went to Rainfurrest.
Amara drove up from Portland and crashed at my place; we drove to the con on Friday and Saturday afternoon and came back around 3AM both nights. It was great. I showed up on a panel, and got to dance for something like five hours total. I probably would have danced more but by a couple hours into the Saturday dance, I was feeling really exhausted from both the dancing and from my body being busy dealing with the cold. So I spent a chunk of Saturday evening lounging on a chair outside the dance; a couple friends showed up, one of whom had had Too Much Weed and was “melting”. For a while she just kinda hid in the space between the chair I was in and the pillar I was next to; I was glad to give her the social shelter of my own general taciturness. People came and went; I think at the peak of that phase of the evening there were maybe ten people loosely clustered around me, talking, trading silly drawings, and generally being social and happy. It was pretty nice and I wish I’d had enough energy to be more social myself.
Sunday, Amara and I both opted to skip the con. I knew I was tired enough that I’d probably have a bad time if I went. She’d been thinking of hitting it, but didn’t want to stay too long. So we puttered around my place a bit. She showed me what she’s been doing with the dragon costume she’s slowly working on for me, and I showed her how easy it was to set up the sewable LEDs and sewable Arduino I’d picked up. She left with those in her bag, excited to work on the head and hopefully finish it in time for Halloween. I spent the rest of the day playing Bloodborne, experimenting with a new character that’s a strength/arcane build rather than the skill/bloodtinge I’ve almost finished the game with. I killed Father Gascione in a mere six or so attempts, and went on to the Blood-Starved Beast, which I couldn’t quite kill but was doing fairly well with in general.
Last night, I think my body finally cleared out the cold. I feel a ton better now. I got up and showered, and pondered LED stuff. Stuffed that into my bag and went out for some lunch, then realized I’d left the Arduino back on the desk. Oops. Had everything else ready to sit under a tree and play with programming some LEDs to have some basic patterns that I feel would fit well with a Peganthyrus outfit, but that was not to be. So I worked on That Page of Rita instead. Did one more panel. I have two more panels to do in that row, and a handful more left around the edges, plus the ones some friends said they’d do. I think once I’ve finished this row I may just post the damn thing and create some excitement about the comic for myself again, which will hopefully help me power through the last few bits. I’m really ready to be done with that story.
Anyway. The shadow of the tree I sat under to draw has moved enough that the sun’s in my eyes; I think it’s time to move on. Maybe go home and work on the LEDs.