Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Fur and Loathing in Austin, TX |12:37 AM| The furry incident
Or
Fear and Loathing In Austin, TX.
Several years ago, I, along with several of my friends, crashed a furry convention.
What, you may ask, is a furry? I'd go into it now but it's horrible. In any case if you're reading this blog, you're online, and so you've probably had some kind of contact with so called furry "culture".
In any case, they were having (what the organizers claimed to be) the first Texas Fur Con. I got a call from Derek midway through the afternoon of that day, telling me that this Con was in town. This must have been on Saturday night, it was the last night of the convention, and I had just purchased a new video camera.
There was havoc to be wrought.
We called up Will/Dante and Rissa, and Portal was up for the adventure. Among the advantages of bringing Portal and Rissa along was that Furries tended to be, well, male and desperate. Having two women in our group would be very useful.
Having found the hotel of the convention, we arrived in the early evening. The plan was to register (We were even willing to pay to get in, as to have greater access to the festivities)
Among the advantages of bringing Mariko and Rissa along was that Furries tended to be, well, male and desperate. Having two women in our group would be very useful.
The plan was to register (We were even willing to pay to get in, as to have greater access to the festivities, if it was reasonable.)
Registration was sadly closed, leaving Derek and I at a bit of a loose end. How would we get into the inner sanctum of this convention? We contemplated our options at length while Mariko and Rissa just walked up to the nearest furry artist and started talking to him.
This proved far more effective than Derek and I's "Standing around taking pictures with the video camera".
In fact, we were able to win the trust and help of just about every furry we ran into, thanks to Mariko and Rissa asking them to describe their "art" and offering constructive criticism. Mariko's particular focus in painting is the human figure, and so she was having to choke back quite a bit of criticism of these sketches and paintings and etc.
The issue was not so much the corruption of the human figure into animals, from what she said, but a serious lack of understanding of anything else that goes into sketching a figure, like where the muscles should connect or the proportions of the limbs, etc. I think that when you're sticking a horse head on a musclebound human, and are managing to sell it for $20, concerns like that probably fall by the way side.
In any case, it was clear to most of the furries that we weren't exactly hard core furries, despite the occasional statement that we were members of the "fandom".
In fact, if I can find the right video, at one point Mariko is asked what animal she (deep down, spiritually, whatever) is, and she replies "Butterfly". There's an awkward silence, since for the most part furrys tend to see themselves as mammals.
Anyhow
Our cover as actual furries was pretty blown at that point, but since we'd been polite and were acting interested, the furries were MORE than happy to talk, at length, about the "fandom". 2 of the most important events in recent furry history had been the CSI episode featuring furries getting poisoned and killed, and an MTV special. It was important to them that they clarify inaccuracies in the portrayals, etc.
We were taken to the Horsepitality suite. Horse. The furries were pretty sure they had beer somewhere, and they wanted to give as much as possible to the women in our group. Desperately. I don't know if I still have the footage but there's a moment when Mariko and Rissa are looking for ID to prove that they are over 21 that one of the furries does say "Oh please, please have ID!".
They were generally treating us well, and Will, because he is an asshole, did pay for furry-ized sketches of Derek and I. The images of these sketches are, sadly, corrupted, and I think just one of the thumbnails survived.
We were on our way out, and were standing in the parking lot examining the beer. "Beer! We got beer from furries!"
Thaaaats when things started to go way south.
As a comment, we were leaving, with nothing to really make fun of, they'd treated us very nicely, Rissa, Will, and Mariko were generally expressing "Why do you and Derek show such hostility to these people? They're not so bad, etc"
This dude pops out of the side exit, actually I should say "Lumbered out of" since this was a biiiig dude.
And he points at Derek, and says something about his shirt.
The other members of our crew dispersed while the dude was bitching about how Derek would have to come with him, he knew what Derek was up to, etc.
I slowly ambled away, hoping Derek would understand "Stall...stall I'm getting the car."
He did not.
When I was halfway to the car, Derek takes off running, I see this, so I start running as well. We jump into the Corolla and I'm starting it up as the giant Furry gets in front of it.
Fuck.
I don't want an "assault with a motor vehicle" on my record, so I do not drive into him.
Later, I found out I could have, but at the time I was concerned about the legalities of it, and I had just gotten the car out of the shop.
Also, all the crazy shit that happened after that, I would have missed.
Derek's shirt was from a website called Something Awful, which is known to be very hostile towards furries. Very hostile.
We didn't know this, but the day before we crashed the con, someone else who posted on that website had also dropped by. They had poked around, not really seen anything of interest, and then left a note with the statement "Something Awful is watching you" on the front desk, along with a drawing of the SA logo.
Which just happens to be a grenade. The furries took this as some kind of threat.
I have a video of the moment that we were "made". (As in, the shirt was recognized). We only figured this out later, when reviewing footage. The person in it who recognizes the shirt/logo Derek is wearing was also an occasional SA poster (sometimes known as a goon). I can't remember if anything happened after they were ID'd on the forum, in the following days.
Hot damn! While I was writing this, Wonderlust managed to dig up some of the old postings on Something Awful that we made the day after.
Relevant Text
I'm still digging through the corrupted mess of files I have in the archive. I'll post the videos next.
Fur and Loathing in Austin, TX |12:37 AM| The furry incident
Or
Fear and Loathing In Austin, TX.
Several years ago, I, along with several of my friends, crashed a furry convention.
What, you may ask, is a furry? I'd go into it now but it's horrible. In any case if you're reading this blog, you're online, and so you've probably had some kind of contact with so called furry "culture".
In any case, they were having (what the organizers claimed to be) the first Texas Fur Con. I got a call from Derek midway through the afternoon of that day, telling me that this Con was in town. This must have been on Saturday night, it was the last night of the convention, and I had just purchased a new video camera.
There was havoc to be wrought.
We called up Will/Dante and Rissa, and Portal was up for the adventure. Among the advantages of bringing Portal and Rissa along was that Furries tended to be, well, male and desperate. Having two women in our group would be very useful.
Having found the hotel of the convention, we arrived in the early evening. The plan was to register (We were even willing to pay to get in, as to have greater access to the festivities)
Among the advantages of bringing Mariko and Rissa along was that Furries tended to be, well, male and desperate. Having two women in our group would be very useful.
The plan was to register (We were even willing to pay to get in, as to have greater access to the festivities, if it was reasonable.)
Registration was sadly closed, leaving Derek and I at a bit of a loose end. How would we get into the inner sanctum of this convention? We contemplated our options at length while Mariko and Rissa just walked up to the nearest furry artist and started talking to him.
This proved far more effective than Derek and I's "Standing around taking pictures with the video camera".
In fact, we were able to win the trust and help of just about every furry we ran into, thanks to Mariko and Rissa asking them to describe their "art" and offering constructive criticism. Mariko's particular focus in painting is the human figure, and so she was having to choke back quite a bit of criticism of these sketches and paintings and etc.
The issue was not so much the corruption of the human figure into animals, from what she said, but a serious lack of understanding of anything else that goes into sketching a figure, like where the muscles should connect or the proportions of the limbs, etc. I think that when you're sticking a horse head on a musclebound human, and are managing to sell it for $20, concerns like that probably fall by the way side.
In any case, it was clear to most of the furries that we weren't exactly hard core furries, despite the occasional statement that we were members of the "fandom".
In fact, if I can find the right video, at one point Mariko is asked what animal she (deep down, spiritually, whatever) is, and she replies "Butterfly". There's an awkward silence, since for the most part furrys tend to see themselves as mammals.
Anyhow
Our cover as actual furries was pretty blown at that point, but since we'd been polite and were acting interested, the furries were MORE than happy to talk, at length, about the "fandom". 2 of the most important events in recent furry history had been the CSI episode featuring furries getting poisoned and killed, and an MTV special. It was important to them that they clarify inaccuracies in the portrayals, etc.
We were taken to the Horsepitality suite. Horse. The furries were pretty sure they had beer somewhere, and they wanted to give as much as possible to the women in our group. Desperately. I don't know if I still have the footage but there's a moment when Mariko and Rissa are looking for ID to prove that they are over 21 that one of the furries does say "Oh please, please have ID!".
They were generally treating us well, and Will, because he is an asshole, did pay for furry-ized sketches of Derek and I. The images of these sketches are, sadly, corrupted, and I think just one of the thumbnails survived.
We were on our way out, and were standing in the parking lot examining the beer. "Beer! We got beer from furries!"
Thaaaats when things started to go way south.
As a comment, we were leaving, with nothing to really make fun of, they'd treated us very nicely, Rissa, Will, and Mariko were generally expressing "Why do you and Derek show such hostility to these people? They're not so bad, etc"
This dude pops out of the side exit, actually I should say "Lumbered out of" since this was a biiiig dude.
And he points at Derek, and says something about his shirt.
The other members of our crew dispersed while the dude was bitching about how Derek would have to come with him, he knew what Derek was up to, etc.
I slowly ambled away, hoping Derek would understand "Stall...stall I'm getting the car."
He did not.
When I was halfway to the car, Derek takes off running, I see this, so I start running as well. We jump into the Corolla and I'm starting it up as the giant Furry gets in front of it.
Fuck.
I don't want an "assault with a motor vehicle" on my record, so I do not drive into him.
Later, I found out I could have, but at the time I was concerned about the legalities of it, and I had just gotten the car out of the shop.
Also, all the crazy shit that happened after that, I would have missed.
Derek's shirt was from a website called Something Awful, which is known to be very hostile towards furries. Very hostile.
We didn't know this, but the day before we crashed the con, someone else who posted on that website had also dropped by. They had poked around, not really seen anything of interest, and then left a note with the statement "Something Awful is watching you" on the front desk, along with a drawing of the SA logo.
Which just happens to be a grenade. The furries took this as some kind of threat.
I have a video of the moment that we were "made". (As in, the shirt was recognized). We only figured this out later, when reviewing footage. The person in it who recognizes the shirt/logo Derek is wearing was also an occasional SA poster (sometimes known as a goon). I can't remember if anything happened after they were ID'd on the forum, in the following days.
Hot damn! While I was writing this, Wonderlust managed to dig up some of the old postings on Something Awful that we made the day after.
Relevant Text
I'm still digging through the corrupted mess of files I have in the archive. I'll post the videos next.
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