6:00 PM, Twisted Land theme park, Wicked Parks Resort..
“Here I am, ROCK YOU LIKE A FURRICANE!” On the stage within the Arts Center within the 100+ coaster theme park rises a solo musician wearing a shirt with the rainbow infinity symbol of autistic people. They are accompanied by a service dog who stands at watch and makes sure nothing bad happens to them. In a display of fog and lights, they emerge from parts unknown. And they unleash a power chord that makes the Arts Center shake. “Oh yeah! Who’s ready to-” “WHAAAAATTTTTTTTTT IS HAPPENING?!”
Despite the stage being literally underground, a tiny hurricane rips through and trashes the place. I, BlazeWarriorWolf, was the one to exclaim what was just exclaimed. The performer and their service companion were somehow untouched even as things got gloomy and then went boom like in Dexter’s Laboratory. What went boom were balloons and by balloons, I mean, balloons in the sense of the so called balloons in Finding Nemo. And yet, the Arts Center is still standing even now that the stage is a wreck and everyone is being swept up by the strange little hurricane that doesnt care if theres layers and layers of stone around because its all underground.
The musician yells: “WHAAAAAAAAAT IS HAPPENING?!” Used to this kind of chaos and also realizing that no one is actually getting injured including myself, I randomly belt: “Whatever is happening, it’s not something that happens at Disney World that certain guests of honor who are married and live in Orlando at a certain Ohio convention have a direct connection to!” My scientist friend who came here, expecting something bad to happen, yawns and exclaims: “This is a serious nap causation! Where in the omniverse did this hurricane come from, how much will it destroy, and how long will we be its prisoners?!”
A airy goofy voice replies: “Until I'm done playing with you for I am the real furricane except I dont have fur, I just have some furries in my grasp!” Someone else yells: “WHAAAAAAATTTTTTT is happening?!” “I just told you what is happening, you silly! It wouldnt be fun to have to repeat myself!” “WHAAAAAAATTTTTTT is happening?!” “Are you playing a joke on me?! I'm blowing you around underground and this is how you want to spend your time while I play with you?! Really?!”
POV shift: Swiftdrawer. I teleport to my creation the Wicked Parks Resort and find an underground hurricane going through Twisted Land. I draw my sword after I find it and cut through it: “Do not disturb my creation!” The hurricane screams: “NOOOOOO! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT IS HAPPENING?! I HAVE BEEN FOILED, FOOOOOILLLLLLEEEEDDDD! MY REAL PLAN WAS TO DESTROY THIS-” The hurricane is no longer. I rescue everyone left stranded and get them to safety before using the powers of the Artist’s Eye to fix what has been destroyed.
I sweatdrop: “We got finished dealing with that traitor at long last after they took over the whole omniverse and put us all in new bodies with our memories sealed and this is the first emergency afterwards that happens?! Can we get a break now?” I see the solo performer looking sad and recognize them: “Oh so you're the first performer to perform in this resort is far too long? Dont you worry, your show doesn't have to be cancelled. Come, take my hand. I will take you and everyone else back to the Arts Center at once. Chuy’s Mexican Grille has signs that read: ‘no crybabies aloud’.
I will spare the psychological analysis of crybabies as an insult. This resort however, does not tolerate killjoys. This is supposed to be a fun and safe place. And no killjoys or disruptive mischief makers that dont target those deserving of mischief instead will ruin this night!” A few minutes later, the show was back on and went without a hitch. I didn't stick around to watch. There were more fires to put out apparently but my fursona stayed and told me all about it. You would think this was the end of this strange tale.
It was not the end of this strange tale. No no no. And this day is not some Torment Nexus so we didn't see what was coming at all.. An asteroid appears in the sky out of nowhere and is instantly ripped apart by a werewolf. That werewolf is called Incinerate and used to be really hostile years ago but is now friendly with a still pretty intense demeanor. But the asteroid and its destruction were just a distraction. Time suddenly starts moving faster and faster.
In mere seconds, with my spouse appearing just moments before it happened to be by my side, not knowing what was going on, the sky has gone supersonic. The Sun flies across the sky in a blur. I yell: “What is this?! This nonsense is straight out of a certain chaotic anime!” And then, The Sun stopped moving as fast as a certain blue hedgehog and returned to normal speed. POV change. BlazeWarriorWolf. After the concert ended, I saw time accelerate and then stop accelerating just in time for a rock band to perform their own set in the Arts Center as its Rock N Roll Night in the Wicked Parks Resort today.
When they started performing however, skeletons rose from the floor and one of them yelled: “We experienced Death By Rock N Roll and now, we’re back! Get out of the way losers, let us show you how to really rock!” The rock band on stage happens to be Fluffy Afro and The Wacky Clowns. One of its members, Pickle Rick Not An Alien yells: “We challenge you to a Rock Off! But you do not have the wacky energy to defeat us! Prepare to lose!” The skeleton who yelled replies: "You're on!” Someone yells in the crowd: “WHAAAAAAAAAAT IS HAPPENING?!”
That was my submission to AnthrOhio 2026’s iteration of the Iron Author contest hosted by Jaru. We’ll talk about that at some point but it was a blast and I wrote what you see above in under an hour right after the rules of the contest were explained. Now then… DRUMROLL PLEASE! ..
Welcome everyone to my first ever furry convention experience writing since IndyFurCon 2023. I am BlazeWarriorWolf also known as Swiftdrawer as well as alicorn knight Pallet Blade(Im trying to incorporate them into my identity at the moment and just started part way working on this writing). My pronouns are they/them and I have been a furry since Valentine’s Day 2019 of all days. My first furry con was Fur Reality 2019. I am the author of over 4 million words of stories and counting as well as a brony(they need a non binary term for MLP devotees.. The best I could come up with was Thalicorn. Okay. Thats just perfect. Im going to start using it and get it spread around.), artist, gamer, nerd, roller coaster enthusiast, thinker, reader, swordsman, aspiring irl knight, and so on into anime, cartoons, cheese pizza, video games, books, science, history, and more. I just have so many interests that I dont feel like trying to count how many I have in total. For 2 of my high school school years, I went to a trade school for digital art and graduated top of my digital arts class(as in highest grade average) tied in first place with one of my peers.
Hundreds and hundreds of drawings have been created by me with my own 2 hands. A sprawling Minecraft theme park resort with over 110 roller coasters, 45 haunted houses and counting, over 100 places to eat, 4 hotels, several dark rides, a water park, and more is also my doing. It’s turning into a project I will be working on for the rest of my life with how many things I plan on adding to it in the future. Additionally, I volunteered at AnthrOhio and IndyFurCon in 2023, did a in person panel at iFC 2021, host the Fiction Writing 101 panel at CozyCon Online(which I have been doing every single iteration of the con starting with the spring or fall 2021 CozyCon), former host of A Wolf’s Tails which is a panel I no longer do but may bring back someday, and have written around 170,000 words(not including this writing’s word count) about all the times Ive been to furry cons except for MFF 2022 which I just didnt feel motivated to write about extensively. In terms of creative stuff, I have a terrifying amount of experience.
So again, welcome to this writing about my fantastic time at AnthrOhio 2026, I hope you will enjoy ut because its going to be lengthy. I will get into why AnthrOhio 2026 was my first con since 2023 and why I stopped going to cons for so long later but let’s start from the beginning of how my rockin’ adventure began. It was January 2026, around the time I was writing chapters 10-17 of my story Strange New Superplanet. I get a text from my cousin asking me if I want to go to the con with him this year. I accept, I did want to go back to furcons deep in my heart after all. Months passed by. I struggled with finding the drive and the words to continue writing my story and at this point, I am ending it after a few more chapters. The premise of the story is a highly complex and challenging one to work with so I do not recommend anyone else try to tackle it alone on their own. I went on some fun trips. Yadda yadda. I rode the revived Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare twice. After the second time, the con was fast approaching.
Days later, I started getting ready to go to the con by arranging stuff in a spare backpack and looking for anything that wasnt in there that I wanted to wear to the con. As well as find one of the tail clips so I could wear my tail to the con. I was successful in finding it exactly where I recalled putting it mere weeks earlier while trying to gather up all the garbage in my room to get it out of my room. I have so much stuff and now that the con is very, there are very few items I still want to buy that arent tied to my future survival such as first aid kits. The main thing after that was getting my clothes ready and all that. The overall packing process spanned parts of 3 different days and I dont need to go into that. But I did bring some things of note: my Nintendo Switch, iPad, red knight’s shirt with laces, red cape, collar, newer of my two red tails with white tips, phone, wallet, Scorpions band shirt, and fursona badges.
I will not be showing very many photos in this if any at all so please bear with me. I did not get any photos or video at the con. I was going to bring my beautiful gorgeous red princess gown until my cousin pointed out to me in person that that might not be a good idea with all of the stairs and what not. And he was right. It is a pain to walk up stairs with it on, there is a way to do it but it takes time. And thats not ideal for a con. I identify as a princess despite being non binary and quite frankly, having zero interest whatsoever in being anywhere near any member of any royal family. I dont want anything to do with them whatsoever so please do not treat me any differently even though being a princess is just kind of part of my identity largely by accident. I figured that out about 3 months before the con. Anyway, I suppose let’s just get to Thursday morning straight away.
Thursday Morning, The Fun Begins: Thursday morning, I sword trained for an hour and also did a shorter but more intense sword drill with a 2 handed sword instead of a 1 handed sword 10 inches shorter. Did some smaller things after that before I hopped in the shower and put on a shirt I got from Fur Reality 2019 via a Furry Mystery Box. We need Fur Reality back, I would be honored to help bring it back, be part of the discussion needed to put it back on the map, and work on mainly the storytelling aspect as was tradition at the con. And I put some ripped shorts on too. After that, I walked just to get Flu and Covid shots which I had not gotten since 2023. My mistake. That wont be happening again. Now that I have health insurance, I didnt have to pay the $255 I would have had to pay for the shots so all of that went to essentially food during the con instead amongst other things. After I waited 15 minutes just in case any weird symptoms happened, I walked right back home with 2 new battle bandages on me.
And by battle bandages, I just mean bandaids, I just wanted to call em what I called em first because well, Im a swordsman whose arms are getting pretty strong trying to be a irl knight of the people. And I love action anime and stuff. After getting home, lunch with the next priority and it was hard to eat. Because I went overboard with fighting back against mouth germs that has caused me so much pain the several days up to the con that my ear was hurting too. Then, I wipe out all those germs and the pain goes bye bye. Except I overdid it as I said. And that area in my mouth burned and was sensitive to oranges and mouthwash. Its all healed up now but I had to eat on the opposite side of the mouth from where I usually do it up till even the 2 days right after the con. It was only on Monday night that I had discovered I had fully recovered. That said, I already felt a lot better Friday morning.
I didnt tell anyone about this because I didnt want to worry anyone as I knew I could deal with it on my own. And I did in fact deal with it on my own. After lunch, I was all in on packing. My cousin arrived a little later than I wanted but by then, I was still finishing up getting ready so it worked out. Was gonna bring a cool souvenir bottle I got recently to use during the con but it leaked so I switched to a different bottle. That was a shame but oh well. At least I got to wear the Lego DreamZzz lanyard I have. That show is amazing, it is a wholly original thing that literally has an entire season of anti-AI slop messaging in season 3. Please tell me theyre working on a season 4. I love it so much. On the way to our hotel not far from the con(not saying which, sorry), we had some detours. Over to his house and another house, get gas, and use the bathroom. I got a treat at the place we used the bathroom.
A ice cream parfait with soft serve vanilla, graham crackers, Oreos(I will only have these if they are part of ice creams or as a snack I do not have to pay for at an event), and chocolate chips. The drive wasnt too bad but my butt needed to get up so badly and I was so glad to get out when we finally did again. I played Tomodachi Life Living The Dream on my Switch and accidentally let one of my miis change his hair. The next day, Banana Pants(yes, thats his name and he is as yellow as possible) had like goldielocks/princess hair. It was funny while it lasted. His hair was back to normal by Sunday. Oh yeah and I think I got two miis I have been trying to get together married while on the trip and got another pair to have crushes on each other at least at last. I had to bring my Switch. The relationship statuses of miis are highly demanding, if you do not help them along, married miis will eventually divorce and I do not want to see any of them get divorced in my game.
Before I knew it, we were approaching Downtown Columbus(please let its name be changed someday to something not named after an explorer who led to domino effects that caused some horrifying things that haunt and affect the entire world to this day that I will not get into here). We get to our hotel withoit too many hassles. The traffic jams we ran into didnt last very long which was good for us. We park in valet parking temporarily after getting permission to for the time being by a person from the hotel. After checking in, we went to our room which had a pretty nice view for us to enjoy. I needed more water than usual that day due to the burning in my mouth so I was quick to fill my water bottle. I then put my collar, fursona badges, tail, and cape on and was raring to go.
The Art Trade Sign: I also grabbed the sign I taped together for sketchbook swap/art trade meets a new friend of mine I encountered via a reply made to a post by the AnthrOhio Bluesky page and I “schemed” together to plan and host somewhere. We talked over days before the con to get it all worked out. Actually, no, I didnt bring the sign out till the next morning. But anyway, this new friend is GabuMatt and I am sending him this after I finish writing this and I am sure he is going to appreciate it. Neither of us had been to the con space AO was at for 2026 before and no one joined our group for planning the meetups. Everything worked out okay in the end. So the sign. It reads: “Art Trade Sketchbook Swap” or something like that. Its still in my suitcase as I have yet to fully unpack and I do not want to even though it actually wouldnt take that long at all. So whomp whomp. The letters of what it reads are in various marker colors and theres a red paw print on the bottom right of the sign.
It also has a little stand that I doubt works anymore. I threw the thing together and did a decent job at it. After we were both ready, we walked to the con and were lost on where to go to get inside and then once inside, where to go for registration. I looked over the con maps on AO’s website in advance to at least somewhat figure out where everything was and that saved us a lot of trouble in the end. We finally found registration only to find literally almost no line. Just one or two people ahead of us. When I got up to get my badge, as I was showing my ID after I showed the QR code I needed for registration(I registered over a month in advance online), my badge was already pulled out. It was like magic. It was already ready to be given right to me and as I walked out of registration, I saw the con store in there too. What I did not see were con guidebooks and I had to rely on my phone for the con schedule till I found guidebooks in registration Friday morning and felt a little silly. I also grabbed some stickers and a they/them green ribbon to add to my con badge.
I will be recycling it and the plushie collector ribbon I got at the plush collector meet on Sunday for reuse at future cons. Now is a good time to say that I will be jumping around in terms of when things happened more than I already have from here on out because I am solely relying on my memory of everything and I am sifting through 4 days of memories so I cannot promise a fully chronological writteh recollection of my time at the con. Now is also a good time to explain why I held off on going to cons altogether as long as I did. It is because AnthrOhio(in 2024), Midwest Furfest(in 2022), and IndyFurCon(in 2023), just like other midwest furcons lifted Covid restrictions and I did not feel safe in returning to any of them. AnthrOhio 2023 was the safest I ever felt at a con. In 2024, I spent most of my free time May to early October working on my Minecraft theme park resort. Shortly after that, Violet Blue finally released the Covid Safety Guide or whatever it was called. I backed it months prior on Kickstarter and got access to its audiobook and digital versions.
It was that which inspired me to up my game in terms of preventing myself from getting sick. The things it talks about in trying to not get sick with Covid helps with the Flu and the other nasty viruses that like to hang out in the air, too. I know almost no one wants to think about Covid anymore, I dont either. I would be happier if I never thought about it again. But I have a duty to avoid getting sick for not just my sake but for the sake of the people around me and the people around them. In October 2024, I upgraded from KN95s which I had upgraded to from cloth masks 8 months prior to N95s and after November 2024, I started along a long streak of not getting full on sick. My job is customer service related so you can see why I liked the idea of being able to not get sick without just staying home all the damn time. Being stuck inside is something I would not wish on anyone and when I got sick in Nov ‘24.. It was agony. I had to call off work. I felt awful.
I cried multiple times and it took an old friend reaching out to me for me to work towards feeling better and discover the wholesome Flying Witch anime in the process. I never want to experience something like that or the two times between 2022-2023 that I was sick with full on symptoms for a whole week each time ever again. Its why I started eating oranges practically every single day on Halloween 2023(isnt it funny that I have never had a single Halloween off from my job since I started working there July 2023? I cant pass out candy or dress in my knight’s shirt for Halloween and it sucks!). Vitamin C is great for the immune system, strengthens it and makes it truly a team of tiny warriors. As are vaccines which basically give immune cells training drills to perform to be able to fight against the enemies that are supposed to be vanquished swiftly for the safety of the body. But KN95s or better? Well, they are like the shields donned by knights.
A knight’s shield serves to protect the people, their comrades, and themselves from harm, that is what it is for. And high quality masks that are basically portable air filters you wear over your nose and facehole are basically the same concept of that of a knight’s shield. And that is pretty cool! Now that its been almost a year and 8 months since I started wearing N95s, my instances of falling ill have dropped drastically. I havent had a full on illness since November 2024, even now that I have finally attended AnthrOhio again. I ate so many vitamin C gummies while at the con that it may have been a bit overkill but nothing bad happened because of ingesting so many so thats good. I also used a nasal spray once a day that is actually so popular that even Walmart and Target apparently carry it. Terrible businesses but still. The nasal spray I got was recommended by Violet Blue if I am not mistaken and reading their book audiobook style truly inspired me and I busted out all the stops for AnthrOhio.
Except for the air purifier device. I didnt want to carry that thing around the whole con. That would have been cumbersome. Back to the nasal spray, it basically boosts the nose's ability to deal with germs. It is a compliment to the nose's natural ability to produce mucous to trap a lot of the germs that try to get in. Combine that with the KN95(or better)'s ability to keep lots of crap in and keep lots pf crap out and you have a pretty robust way to serious reduce your odds of getting sick. Which has a butterfly effect that reduces the odds of other people getting sick, especially significant for anyone who lives with someone who wears a KN95 or better. And all of these things plus getting double vaccinated are largely why the worst I experienced at con other than that burning were headaches that went away in the morning and sore throats that were there when I woke up but gone in 30 minutes or less.
So I did not fall ill! Huzzah! (Huzzah is one of my favorite words and I want to use it all the time when I become a knight of the people irl via a path that doesnt actually involve any knighthood ceremony. It'll be about merit and how much I have changed to be a genuine knight. I have automatic default beef with any authority who can legitimately knight people to say the least.) That about covers that portion of this explainer. My philosophy is I dont want to get sick nor do I want to get other people sick. I dont always know whether Im ill with something or not because some infections do not come with symptoms while others do but they come delayed which is standard for many diseases. Symptoms are tied to the immune response against illness, after all.
The comic I am writing about is about medical masks specifically. Those are the easiest parts of a robust series of sound, ethical, and logical precautions against falling ill other than staying home when needed. Also, the vaccine shots I got only caused soreness and no other side effects. So no big deal. It was all gone by the next morning and I just kind of mostly ignored it prior to that. I just did not feel safe enough to attend a furry con anymore, especially after going to MFF 2022 where over 10,000 people were there with almost none of them wearing any sort of medical mask. I will not go into the full details of just how passionate I am on the subject of protecting myself and other people from getting sick. Just know that I despise needless suffering and I want it to be brought to an end once and for all. Falling ill is no longer as inevitable as it always was throughout the entire course of human history. We have technologies and techniques that can allow us all to lower our odds of getting sick while also going to event if we are physically able to go to events. There are some people who are immunocompromised.
That means their immune systems are weaker than the average person’s and they can be much weaker. Immunocompromised people tend to not show up to in person events because it is not safe for them to do so. No one gets left behind. We should never leave any person behind in society. No one deserves that. Everyone’s needs must be considered and accomodated. AnthrOhio had some people in places such as the Artists Alley who are people with physical disabilities and I am so glad they let those people have an equal chance to get into such places. That is exactly what we need to see more of. We need people to have equal chances and fair treatment in society. My wearing of N95s is inherently tied to my desire to see our world become a much better place than the dumpster fire it is increasingly becoming by the day. When people get sick less, that means more time for them to do things that are meaningful and allows for people like me committed to training physically daily the ability to continue to commit to that with fewer disruptions that get in the way.
Smallpox is no longer a problem because science helped cause it to go extinct in the wild in the 70s. An entire strain of the Flu went extinct in 2020 due to Covid precautions. We are transcending inevitable illness but those in charge of the world want to reverse that trend completely. Me wearing N95s really isnt about me. Its about everyone around me and everyone around them and everyone around them. I think the staff members of AnthrOhio could say almost the exact same thing about the con. Actually, they really could. They know their efforts arent just for themselves, theyre for everyone who come to AnthrOhio and/or the smaller events organized by them throughout the year. A better future can only be written with the participation of the furry community alongside social scientists, medical scientists, other scientists, teachers, engineers, designers, mechanics, janitors, grocery workers, librarians, queers, BIPOC communities, communities for people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, animal welfare groups, irl knights of the people, nerds, gamers, historians, writers..
Animators, poets, musicians, fashion designers, drag performers, musical performers, dark ride designers, animatronic creators, painters, illustrators, the list goes on. Many of the things that happened at AnthrOhio this year, the good things that happened. Those are the kinds of things we need to change humanity’s course and create a lasting better future. And by doing that, a reciprocal loop would be created. When society improves, so do furry conventions. When more people realize what actually matters, that translates to things getting better at furry cons and other events. The only way I could feel safe attending a furry con again because no furry cons I know of have mask rules in place(notice how I dont mention vaccination rules. If transmission of disease is reduced, vaccines are required less.) anymore was by putting in the work to lower my odds of getting sick and lower peoples’ odds of catching something from me.
So I did exactly that and it worked well from as far as I am able to tell. Let us get back to my recollection of the con now. I have said my piece and I hope all of you consider the meaning and intention behind all of my words because they are important in these dark times.
After Getting My Con Badge: Badge around my neck via the awesome rockin flame themed lanyard I was given with the badge already attached to it, it was time to do things. I didnt full on meet anyone new on Thursday. I just thought back to see if that was actually true. It wasnt actually true because I forgot that I met 2 people. And Im going to write about it now even though that happened after the events I am writing about after I talk about it. I was checking the Ohio Furs Discord and got into a discussion where I basically offered to be someone people could meet up with at the con just to have met someone new to them. I will note now that no one judged me for wearing N95s the whole con, they treated me as they would anyone else and for that, I am thankful, thats actually reflecting well on the reception I have already gotten for my first ever comic. So I met the first fur, cant recall their fursona’s name but I met them. I waited for the right moment to get their attention as I hate interrupting conversations other people are having with a burning passion.
I know I can say sorry when I interrupt but I still dont like doing it. So when I got my chance, I took it and introduced myself a bit and we had a brief but solid conversation. Later, because I kept seeing the fur they were talking to before I introduced myself, I finally got their attention and said hi. That fur was Phoenix Fox, I cant recall their pronouns so I am defaulting to they as anyone should. Though, there is a case to be made for usage of the obscure pronoun per. Non binary people like me have helped alter the perception around they pronouns, they arent just used for when you dont know someone or their gender. Per is a solid pronoun for using for those 2 situations as well and I may as well start using it to help y’all see what it sounds like and for me to see how much I really like using it. We talked quite a bit and I learn a number of things about per. They are a new furry still trying to work some things out and have a 3D printer. Per gave me a prototype for one of their 3D printed buttons after telling me all about experimenting with the 3D printer and trying to get rid of all the buttons they had on them.
Phoenix Fox also like rpg games which was nice to learn. Our conversation was chill all the way through. It is rare for conversations Im in to not be chill. My default emotion is calm and collected. In part because Im an introvert. I have to go over what the con made me think on when it comes to introversion later on because not only is it fascinating but hearing about it could be a breakthrough for a lot of people. Our discussion came to its end and both of us went on our merry ways. Now for.. dinner. My first priority after getting the badge was figuring out dinner. My cousin and I soon parted ways to do our own things, meeting up every so often at the con to talk a little bit and check in for the most part. Including later on after I had dinner. I went to Mikey’s Late Night Slice. I wish some of the workers were nicer when interacting with customers but I understand the hustle they have going all the time at the same time. I can safely say that the quality of their food is legit.
The place is a full on sit down restaurant with a bar, hilarious imagery, a false bathroom door between the bar and the stairs down to the actual bathrooms(family style restrooms), places for furries to put stickers all over, booths, tables with stools, self serve fountain drinks, and an open kitchen. Much like Sbarro and Villa Italian Kitchen, they have the pizza already made but when you order what pizza you want alongside whatever breadsticks you may want, they put em back in the oven to reheat them and have them ready for you in under 3 minutes. I stuck with just cheese pizza with basil because I grew up a picky eater and have them to be pretty strict on what I want on pizza. Ive had pepperoni pizza a number of times, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Pepperoni from Domino’s is genuinely horrible. Same from like Pizza Hut and such. Do not recommend. Pepperoni is very hit or miss and I am just not enthusiastic about it at all. I do not care for it. It takes away from the other main flavors of the pizza most of the time and that is why I stick to just cheese.
Despite that one time some rando on pre-Musk Twitter called me a child for posting about having cheese pizza from my favorite pizza place. I dont understand whats so “childish” about having cheese pizza but one, I still find that encounter hilarious. And two, no one ever calls anyone or anything childish as a means to cause positive change. So I do not call people childish. Its more accurate to call adults lashing out over the most foolish of things just plain irrational and rash, the usage of the term “childish” makes it all that much easier for society to give children a hard time and treat them like theyre worthless. Mikey’s serves New York style pizza with thick crust and little pizza sauce. The little pizza sauce part is genuinely disappointing, theres like hardly any on their pizza. I can still taste it, yeah but its like they put as little on their pizzas as possible. I still have a lot of praise for the restaurant though even though the amount of sauce they put on their pizzas is definitely much lower than average. I should know. Ive been to countless pizza places for pizza in my lifetime.
Mainly in Ohio and Kentucky but definitely quite a few across Orlando, San Antonio, Dallas, Clearwater, Tampa, Winter Haven, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Valencia, Indianapolis, San Deigo, Carlsbad, and Chicago. Side note: Ive traveled to such cities basically for furry cons or roller coasters with the exception of Chicago which I visited more times for its various tourist attractions than for Midwest Furfest. I know a good pizza when I take a bite and a bad one also when I take a bite. The cheese, crust, and basil on the pizza I had 4 times over the con weekend at Mikey’s largely make up for the low amount of pizza sauce. If I were part of their team, I would definitely suggest they add more pizza sauce to their pizzas. Sbarro is New York style too and they still have a good enough amount of pizza sauce on the pizzas they serve. Were any of you excepting I go on and on about pizza? Well, those of you who know me personally well enough or read my previous con experience writings are most assuredly unsurprised at the very least. I still enjoy that Mikey’s pizza enough to come back for more. If I hated it, I would have not come back for more. Their garlic breadsticks and cheese breadsticks are great.
Though they dont last long as all breadsticks do when I am the one eating them. Always so soft and easy to chew. They dont stand a chance against my appetite. I actually hold back from gourging easily but still, breadsticks and New York style pizza dont last long after my first bites into them. Handtoss, pan crust, and deep dish pizzas also dont last long but they do last significantly longer. The breadsticks I had 2 separate times came with marinara sauce that was way spicier than I was expecting. It was still at a level I could mostly tolerate by just drinking sips of water here and there but whew, I did not see that coming. The second time I had their marinara dipping sauce, it tasted more like salsa than dipping sauce which was interesting to say the least. I also had 2 unicorn cookies. That was on Friday with my lunch. They were really good. Tastes like Lofthouse sugar cookies but better and not as soft so they actually didnt end up completely in my mouth in under a minute each. Lofthouse cookies were literally a part of my childhood and I have always been disappointed at how quickly they changed shape whenever Id take a bite of one. Theres apparently such thing as too soft for foods.
The garlic breadsticks didnt come with cheese on them I dont think. Which was weird if true. Oh yeah. The first time I walked into the place, I sat down at a booth, thinking it was full service. But no employee came to my table. I was confused until I saw 2 furs get in line. I realized what was going on and got in line myself. The bathrooms in the basement were really nice, clean, and smelled good. Lots of writings people did all over the walls but they added to the vibes of the place and on the stairs down to them, they have lyrics from the infamous song that people still sometimes love to Rickroll people with to this day. Theres also some artworks in the hallway in the basement that connects the several family style bathrooms down there. The self serve drink machine has like a “do you have Coke?” thing on it and it is so funny even though Coca Cola is truly a deliberate disaster of a company. Theres also a sign captioned meme style about the water cups next to it saying something along the lines of, “these cups are for water only, dont make us go ape on you”.
Theres also a painting of the Last Supper. So Mikey’s is religious. Except.. some of the people depicted in the painting are wearing sunglasses(nice shades, y’all) and the others are also goofy looking. The sense of humor that the people behind the restaurant had in mind when working on getting it to exist to begin with is everywhere in the place. After my first time at Mikey’s, I walked back to the con space. And I soon attended the first music performance by any of the three Guests Of Honor for AO 2026: Manick, Cosmic, and Rhubarb. It was hard to hear them perform from where I sat so I was unable to keep my full focus on it. It doesnt help music performances at cons have largely just become events that Im just not all that interested in entirely within the last 4 years as hard as I want to try to change that. There was still a great time going on but I really had to pee and finally went and used that kind of as an excuse to leave. I hope main events doesnt have to be in that room again because there were a number of times where I couldnt hear what was said between that performance and the panels that were a prelude to Opening Ceremonies Friday morning.
Do The BIM, Again: At 9:20 PM, it was time for.. MST3K and.. there were tech problems. Mamma Mia was planned to be watched at MST3K and was “definitely not illegally downloaded”. Sigma TheWolf, Alkali, Citrine, and someone else were the ones on stage drinking based on the rules of the drinking game set by the audience. I dont recall all of the rules because I didnt get any video of any of the panels I went to nor did I do what I did for iFC 2022 and wrote notes for everything said during the panels. Thats the weirdest thing I have ever done at a furry con: take notes of everything happening at the panels I attended. But interesting and funny that I actually did do that. But my suggestion for everytime weather changes, inspired by the hint for the movie we would try to watch that Alkali gave(kind of related to the con theme) which made me think of the crap rock band centered movie High Voltage(I love to hate that movie, the way it abruptly ends ruins the whole thing, at least The Apple stuck with whatever was going on in it) which would be a great movie to play at MST3K because it is such a bad movie.. That suggestion of mine was accepted.
And led to funny reminders of weather changes happening on screen as well as questions if certain things counted as weather changes. So I helped the panelists get hammered, yay. I was not expecting them to play Momma Mia which to this day, I still know nothing about even though it is a iconic movie. Why is that? Well, the audio for the movie cut out and Alkali and some helper tried to fix it but it would just keep messing up, leading to some hilarious things being said. MST3K made me laugh so hard that I had to rub my eyes as they hurt so much on 2 separate occassions and my nose got stuffy. It was the funniest event of the entire con for me. Iron Author was in second place. Y’all are going to love reading about WHY THAT WAS later. And why Convention Horror Stories didnt rank for me.. Enough about them, I will stay on topic now. So you may have already figured out what movie Alkali had as a backup in case Momma Mia didnt work out. Its in the title of this section and something more direct elsewhere. Can you guess it? Huh? Huh?
Alkali asked us who had seen the movie before, I and a few others raised our hands. He told us to not spoil anything. I talked to myself a few times during the time: “this is gonna be good”, “here it comes”, “its coming”, “oh no”, *facepalm*. As the first song of the movie played to begin the movie, Alkali asked that question. “B.” “I M.” “Do the BIMMMM.” It was The Apple. That movie. A movie so bad that its good. When it was revealed later on that the movie was based on the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, I muttered: “that explains a lot”. The filmmakers basically did their own unique take on events in that section of the Christian Bible apparently and the guy who played Boogalo(the main bad guy, head hancho of Boogalo’s International Music aka BIM) was commented on of trying harder than literally everyone else in the movie. I honestly see it now. The comments made during the runtime of the movie were largely legendary and the overwhelming majority escape my memory. Thats okay because Im pretty sure footage of the panel will be uploaded online. I was so floored. I laughed so many times, I hadnt laughed so good in a very long hot minute.
Theres this scene where theres a random earthquake that only really shook the people and Alkali asked what it was supposed to be and told us it was supposed to be the Great Flood from Biblical mythology. Before he did though, I was tempted to yell out something about the long defunct Disaster at Universal Orlando. They tore it down for their biggest flop ever: Fast & The Furious Supercharged. I rode that ride once in 2019 and to this day, I have never ridden it ever again and refuse to do so and its closing next year. Someone should hold a party for its demise, it is such a awful, crappy, cheap ride. Later though, after the movie ended, as Alkali was talking about how just bad The Apple was, I raised my hand, he let me speak, and I said: “At least its not Fast & The Furious Supercharged!” And he agreed. The Apple had vision, as weird as it was. Fast & The Furious Supercharged? Haha. No. Its like they had some corporate suit direct the entire direction of that ride. But I couldnt say whats more trash: it or Villain Con Minion Blast. I called out Villain Con Minion Blast multiple times during the con when talking to people.
All you do on it is stand on a moving sidewalk and shoot at targets on screens. Not even Six Flags has ever had a ride like that made for any of their rides and yet, theyre so cheap that they use AI slop for lots of merchandise at Kings Island now, I saw goose poop for the first time in multiple spots the day after opening day this year, they axed Kingda Ka, they made the Vekoma Flying Dutchman coasters go extinct along with Intamin’s bobsled coasters, they started giving reciepts for people to use as season passes instead of physical passes for season passes at some point(I dont know if they stopped doing that), replaced the long existing breadsticks they had at Kings Island completely with cheaper ones(at least theyre bigger, theyre just not as good but at least pretty tasty still), a lifeguard bothered my sibling and I about us splashing each other even though there were no explicit rules against that(we grew up without this ever happening before anywhere, not even in Orlando), and I hope John Riley leads them in a much better direction as they have already gotten better to an extent under him.
That is all you do on the ride in the same park the best shooting dark ride I have ever been on(sorry, Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare, Gobbler Getaway, Lost Kingdom Adventure, Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, and Toy Story Mania): Men In Black Alien Attack exists. Minion Blast replaced Shrek 4D, a far superior ride that was actually iconic. Villain Con’s theming and Evil Stuff store are really well done but the attraction itself? Only worth doing if youre bored or everything’s too long. Lets not talk about Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon. All I will say is Universal did not learn from Superstar Limo. Back on topic again, uhhh.. What else do I recall from before the movie ended. Alkali hyping up the ending of the movie and going like: “There it is!” and “wait for it” and “just wait till the ending”. The ending is something else, a mix of amazing and just outright bizarre and iconic in its own weird way. We were told that the scene where the hippies started being chased by police was inspired by Monty Python.
I saw Monty Python and The Holy Grail last year so I can confirm that to be accurate. Nii! Okay. Anything else? Well, the reactions to the whole “eat the apple” scene were something else, cant recall them in full detail though. And I didnt realize going into the movie just how much I had forgotten about the movie since the prior time I had watched it. In 2023. The reaction to the BIM mark stuff was great. My favorite part of the movie with the National BIM Hour made me laugh so much between all the reactions, commentary, and the pure absurdity of doctors operating on someone and firefighters trying to save a house stopping their work to dance along to BIM All The Way. Apparently, The Apple was supposed to be like another Rocky Horror Show. I know nothing about that movie either so I genuinely have no context at all whatsoever. Yay for no context! Or should I say, huzzah?! Theres this scene in the movie with that guy who Bibi originally was with at the start of the movie and it was explained as being much darker than it actually appeared to be to me.
And people in the audience and on stage were hoping the elderly woman he woke up to being asked what he was doing last night was NOT his grandma. I think she was his grandma. Im just jumping around as more comes back to me by remembering different parts of the movie. During Show Business, the costumes and the overtopness of everything were commented on. Alkali just kept revealing all kinds of trivia about The Apple the whole movie. So many things were said that I just couldnt recall them all no matter how hard I tried. When the panel was all over, my cousin reunited with me and ended up going ahead of me to our hotel room as I stayed to talk to someone. That someone was Sigma. So backstory because they and I are absolutely friends at this point and I got to see their true character show over the course of the con. Post Fur Reality 2019, I was obsessed with watching videos of panels and such from other cons.
One thing led to another and by spring 2020, I had found Sigma’s YouTube channel. Interacted with them on their live streams and thats how it began. Skip forward to AnthrOhio 2023. And Sigma was part of some things hosted by Status Ferret. Status is another awesome fur. I think I talked to Sigma at AO that year or maybe I didnt. I do remember being resolved to talk to them at iFC 2023 and by then, our social relationship has evolved to include hugs I believe and we talked a couple times. Last year, I was worried about them and reached out via commenting on one of their videos and they said theyre just really really busy with stuff. Back to MST3K Thursday night of AO ‘26 and they greeted me warmly and were genuinely set on talking to me after talking to someone else. But then, plans changed and theu informed me they got the job of handling Citrine this time around. So I chose to talk to them a little bit as they made their way out of Main Events 1.0 to basically just commit to trying to talk on another day at the con. Im genuinely thrilled to be able to call Sigma a friend.
You can tell that Im going all out in this writing. My heart is being poured into it alongside my memories. I am showing just how much of a good time I had at the con by just recalling what I experienced at the con. If I had to rank places I love being at most, furry conventions are number one. Theme/amusement parks are number two. Parks, nature preserves, state parks, etc are number three or four. Other fun events like the Ohio Renassiance Festival are number four or three. Museums are number five. After I parted from Sigma & Critrine, I went to my hotel room, ate some vitamin C gummies, changed clothes, and blah blah blah mundane stuff.
Before Opening Ceremonies: When I got up in the morning, my goals were: get to con, eat breakfast, brush teeth, and get shower. I did not shower at nightime once during the con. It would have been a waste of time as I would have done so right before bed. My morning routine at con varied a little and it took me varying amounts of time to get it done as when I went to sleep and when I got up wasnt all that constant. A detail I do not need to talk about in detail that much because its not that important for recalling a fun trip to a furry con a bit of a drive away from home. I did my best to get in and out of the shower efficiently. Used the bathroom when I needed it. Sometimes brainstormed, sometimes went on one of my devices while using the bathroom. My phone had to be charged every single night and morning my cousin and I were in our hotel room. My iPad and Switch at times too but not as much. Details, smetails. My brain runs on having watched like 300 cartoon and anime shows in my lifetime, almost all of them since the end of 2020.
I have all kinds of fun expressions I can put in that are stored well within my noggin. I in fact wore my red knight’s shirt with many laces that day. It is too bad I didnt get any compliments but at the same time, my collar and all my badges kinda took the focal point of my chest/neck area. Still, it is a great shirt. The only nice shirt I’ll ever wear anywhere because it is actually cool. Sorry y’all but tuxedos arent really all that cool, theyre rich people coded and stylistically almost always the same which is just plain uncreative and aristocrat energy. I’ll save my continued mockery of what people who dress too seriously and are stiff when it comes to picking outfits for FUN EVENTS for something else. There is nothing about formal clothes thats tied to the need to survive so the notion that they are needed is quite simply just a mere social construct that can be deconstructed at any time. But seriously, my knight’s shirt is so awesome. A little darker red than Id want but still fantastic. I also wore it to AnthrOhio 2023.
When combined with just a tabard, its pretty good at keeping me warm in the September cold like a light coat would. All 3 mornings we had breakfast at our hotel, I would shower and change clothes before doing that and leaving the rest for after breakfast. I had 1 thing of waffles as well as breakfast potato fries every single time. I put syrup on the first 2 I had and chocolate chips on the 3rd instead. The 3rd one, which I had Sunday was a strawberry waffle. The other two were normal waffles. All of them were really good. I had like a cinnamon muffin Friday morning along with red potato fries but decided to just have more fries of then on instead of more muffins for the other two mornings. That was a good decision. I got to really enjoy both red and yukon gold breakfast potato fries. I had wanted to try both of those kinds of potatoes in some form for quite some time. And I got the chance thanks to the con and hotel. Red potatoes on Friday and Sunday, gold on Saturday. The smaller bits that came with the red potato breakfast fries were just okay at best while the gold ones didnt really come with bits.
But I am still unsure of which of the types of breakfast fries I enjoyed more. Both were just really good. For drinks, I just had water or if that had run out, flavored water. The flavored water was good and all I would drink the whole con trip was water other than one can of Coke from the hospitality suite Friday(I didnt have to pay for it so I went for it)? afternoon. Right now, my memories of Friday and Saturday are largely mixed together, that should eventually change. Anyway, that’s all they wrote when it comes to breakfast during the con. The they is me. “All she wrote” is kind of weird when you think about it in the context of it being said by someone who doesnt identify as a girl or woman in any capacity. Or at least, thats my opinion on the matter. Okay. So. I had plans specifically to try to get to the con before 9 am. I grabbed my art trade sketchbook swap sign and took it with me and pretty much carried that thing all day. My left hand hurt every so often gripping the thing but I took it everywhere, determined to not go back to the hotel room unless I really needed to which I really didnt need to.
This also reminds me of something else entirely but related for sure. At iFC 2023, I also tried to stay at con as much as possible. And because I had my tail on the entire time, whenever I would have to use the bathroom, I would have to unclip it from my shorts and put it in my backpack. Then, after using the bathroom, I would put it back. This wasnt always easy. As a result, the free tail clip I got from one of the Dealers tables that iFC didnt work anymore by the end of the con. So I decided to do something different for AO ‘26, in tandem with continuing to move my cape so that it was over one of my shoulders whenever I had to use the bathroom while wearing it. And it worked. I would sit down on toilets, with my tail still on, right. Pull my shorts down, yadda yadda. I would then hold the tail up with my left hand every single time I had to sit on the toilet while I had my tail on. That was a wise choice that saved me a lot of time and effort as well as made things less painful for me. I will be doing that whenever the same thing happens again no matter where it happens.
I loved wearing my tail so much at the con because not only did it feel like a part of me but it also swayed a lot as I moved and the motion of that swaying felt really good. I now intend on wearing it while at other places so long as Im not riding rides at those other places. The con refreshed my connection to my fursona, furry, and the furry community at large as those connections had been slowly decaying within my noggin, which was not good. I am more confident than ever in saying the following: Blaze is me and I am Blaze. At the same time, I am still Swiftdrawer. I cannot define myself fully without my fursona. I just cannot, especially not after becoming more attached to my tail due to the con. And adding some accessories to my collar. I will talk about that way later into this writing. So my mission was to get to the con by 9 am morning. I failed. I got where precisely I wanted to be at the con at 9:12 or so.
But it wasnt a big deal. I did my best and still got to really enjoy the unofficial sketchbook swap GabuMatt and I had planned. We also had one planned for 8 PM the prior evening but that fell through. The two of us finally got to meet in person and it was awesome. We drew each other’s fursonas in each other’s sketchbook. Side note: art trades are part of the ideal future I want to see come to pass, I will not elaborate further. Talked to some other people who showed up about things. Phoenix Fox showed up. We had a solid turnout. And when we were done so that we could all head to Main Events 1.0, we cleaned up all of our stuff and put it all away and someone who brought model trains started setting those up. I saw them a few times over the duration of the con and I loved them so much, all those model trains and everything. I am a huge fan of trains, though they arent one of my main interests. I grew up with like Kings Island and Disney World and Disneyland’s trains so it was inevitable. I have the most train memories on Kings Island’s trains by far.
I remember the haunted train ride they did before 2016, when they moved White Water Canyon’s entrance to where the special entry for the haunted train used to be. It was called Tombstone Territory and what I recall most of all was the long walk back to the park from the old pumpkin patch area between the park and Soak City that also probably used to be used for like train robbery performances as well. Only got to experience it once in part because of hating the long walk back. They filled the whole train with people practically when considering how long it took for us to move even just 40 feet going back to the park from the middle of the woods. The old and original location for White Water Canyon’s entrance is now instead home to the queue and station for Mystic Timbers, Kings Island’s second wooden coaster opened in the 21st century and their first 21st century wooden coaster to not fail, opened 17 years after Son Of Beast opened and under 5 years after it was demolished to be replaced by Banshee. Mystic Timbers is in my top 10 favorite wooden coasters.
It is a great ride. I once knew a fur on Twitter whose fursona is inspired by and named after Mystic Timbers which is really cool. During the sketchbook swap, I got to draw a artist trading card of my fursona teaching a class as a professor. One of the books Im writing to eventually self publish may or may not involve Blaze becoming a professor at a very special and diverse magic school that canonically is under construction at the moment. We’ll see because that was actually not in the plan for the plotline until I wrote these sentences. It was a good time, we had a solid turnout though the turnout would be dwarfed by the sketchbook swap organized for Sunday by 2 other furs.
“We Cant Hear You!”: At 10:20, before Opening Ceremonies, the Guests Of Honor, Manick, Cosmick, and Rhubarb were able to introduce themselves and talk for 20 minutes. Thats gotta be an AnthrOhio exclusive event or something but what do I know? I do not recall too much from their 20 minutes of talking, in part due to them really not talking that loud even with microphones equipped. I also couldnt really see them well for where I sat, which was a problem at their music performace the night before as well. Oh well. So they were puzzled a little by having time to talk before Opening Ceremonies as was Sarah of WAGS 4 Kids after them. Cosmick and Rhubarb live in Orlando where one of them works at Disney World. I cant remember which of them does but the one who does has played music at EPCOT apparently so thats interesting. I think thats all I really remember which is rather unfortunate to say the least. Sarah was again, puzzled by getting time to talk from 10:40 to 11 AM. She used it well and got a lot of cheers and applause from us all which is just genuinely really fantastic.
It was her first time at a furcon and it was the first year WAGS 4 Kids was also at a furcon. She had her service dog with her the entire week and I think I will just compound all of the information I learned about WAGS between that talk, the panel on Saturday, and talking to her Friday afternoon ish for quite a bit. WAGS 4 Kids was founded in 2004 by her mom. They started out one dog at a time in their living room. The organization was created because her parents saw a gap in service animals as there really werent any service animals for children at the time. They sought to fill that void and have focused on different kinds of children who need service animals at different times, shifting towards autistic children in 2014. 2014 was also the year my Minecraft theme park resort was begun with the founding of its original theme park: Twisted Land. WAGS is present in 38 counties of Ohio, starting all the way up in Cleveland which so happens to have its own furry convention now called Furrest City.
I dont know why they named it Furrest City. Ive never been to Cleveland to be honest. I would love to change that at some point in the future. But not an immediate desire to be fulfilled. I have priorities. Many priorities. What else did I learn? Other than about the charity itself, quite a bit to be honest. Sarah co hosted that panel the next day with the WAGS rep for the Columbus area who has more recently moved to become one of the top people in the organization as well. I was going to ask if they had plans to expanding to like my county at the panel but I chose not to. There were important questions being asked by other people and I did not want to get in the way of that. Anywho, they went over the differences between the 3 main types of support/service animals. Emotional support animals are pets and do not have any special protections or rights. I cant recall what the second type was or the gist of it, other than limited protections. Number 3 was of course full on service animals. Which makes me recall something about the charity’s work and origin.
Their service dogs are trained by inmates at Ohio correctional facilities. They have a collaboration with the Ohio entity who oversees all of them and I was told that some of the inmates do change via training the service dogs but not all because you have to choose to change. I agreed with that statement. You cant force someone to change, no matter how hard you try. Looking at you, fraudsters who perform conversion “therapy”. The way I handle dealing with people with service animals at work is I just leave them be. And apparently, a lot of people do not understand that you should do that. I told Sarah that that was a lot like how people would boop fursuiters without consent and Jake Bunny explained the full details of that. This was during one of the two times I talked to her on Friday. And whats worse is that lots of people are unaware of the necessity of service animals, particularly those for children. Which is why I said there needs to be more childrens rights stuff because children need the same things everyone else need. They are as deserving of all basic needs as anyone else is.
It is that simple. There is nothing complicated about that, its just that society overcomplicates everything such as about the existence of non binary people for example. Now heres what I recall about the correct ways to interact with people/their service animals if they have any with them because they need them to be with them based on what was said at the panel Saturday afternoon. There are only 2 questions you can appropiately ask without making anyone uncomfortable or worse. Is that your service dog? And what is your service dog for? To accomodate everyone as one could possibly can, this is the way. You are also should never pet or otherwise interact with the service dog. They have a job to do to ensure their human remains safe. They need to be focused on keeping an eye and sense out at all times. When speaking to someone with a service dog, you must give that someone eye contact instead of staring at the dog.
If you do not adhere to that, you will have put their charge through a dehumanizing experience. You must treat people and their service dogs with basic decency. Unless you really do want to be on the path of wickedness. In which case, there are things I could say I am not going to say here. This about covers that topic. We were quizzed at the panel all about what to do in specific situations and it was pointed out that in situations with scenarios.. Unless the service dog is actually acting like a hazard, whoever is being bothered has to leave. At some kind of conference where Sarah talked to industry people of different industries or something like that, someone there had allergies to dogs so they were accomodated by being convinced to move to a place where they wouldnt have their allergies get aggravated. Pre Opening Ceremonies, Sarah only really talked about the mission and much of the backstory of the org.
There were 25 minutes left for questions at the panel on Saturday which was a lot more time than I was expecting. She powered through the presentation and we were a great audience. I dont remember many of the questions asked but someone in the audience was with their service dog which just made me think of something interesting. I'll hold that thought. That person asked something in regards to how their service dog was treated, leading to a brief discussion that reinforced some of the points of the presentation. Sarah and her co panelist made certain that all of us were better equipped when it comes to acting properly around service dogs and their charges. It was a solid panel and Im glad I wrote about it here so early on. I knew that would help jog more recollections than otherwise. It also just steamlines things a bit. I didnt even realize there was a lack of service dogs for kids. AnthrOhio did a great job with researching them and other charities they considered working with after 3 years working with Ohio Nature Education. I am so glad they picked WAGS.
Sarah is really nice, caring, easy to talk to, and just a great face for the organization(as is her service dog). I just remembered something else. Just first, the other thing. Not long before the con, I was treated to a rare thing to encounter at Kings Island. Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare uses the same exact vehicles and omnimover and building that have been in use together since the original Phantom Theater opened in 1992. In Boo Blasters's final years, I really got to notice the accomodations the ride ops at the ride made for mainly people with wheelchairs. They would even stop the ride entirely if they had to. It was one of the most accessible rides at Kings Island and Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare is slightly more accomodating than it was because of the little gate they put within the wall that separates the path from the staircase to the loading area from the ride exit path leading from the loading area. It makes things easier for people with wheelchairs as well as anyone in their (adventure) party. Okay, when will a theme park call groups who visit it an adventure party?
Missed opportunity! But the gate isnt the subject here. No, I saw someone with a service dog get on with their party and dog. They were told to just have their service dog lay down in order to allow the front of the vehicle to come down as normal. And it worked. That was just so interesting to me because I have never seen anything like that happen before. Maybe it isnt technically my business to mention it but since Im typing about WAGS, I thought it was relevant. And it may actually make some people with service dogs feel a little bit better about going to Kings Island. The thing I held off on writing about just now was a very recent WAGS success story. A kid's life used to be very difficult until this past December. Every single thing they did outside of home had to be planned out to ensure nothing happened. But before the holiday season ended last year, the kid was paired with a service dog Sarah had gotten really attached to and wanted to keep.
Dog and kid paired together like bread and butter, the kid suddenly was able to do things like go to the grocery store without any plans or anything as long as their new buddy/protector was with them. Service dogs are protectors of their charges. Sarah has had a number of service dogs she has gotten attached to in the past. Understandable, she must have met hundreds if not over a thousand by now! AO truly picked the right charity. Truly. They provide a service that is just severely lacking in many places. Someone asked her about things like the cost of a service dog, saying they are trying to start up a service like WAGS with others in another state or something to that effect. And woof, service dogs are expensive! More expensive than Disney World! And thats saying something. Over $300 to visit 2 parks on the same day.. Ugh! That is theft, practically! Anyway, WAGS exists largely because service dogs are so expensive, they making getting service dogs to children much less stressful for their families.
I have learned a lot about service dogs and kids and I will continue to behave logically when it comes to people with service dogs. Now, lets turn it back to moments before Opening Ceremonies actually began. I will talk more about WAGS later, I just needed to put my recollection about their panel on Saturday here. And thats going to help me out with this writing in the long run. Things seamlessly transitioned to Opening Ceremonies. Jaru was standing in fursuit while Sarah talked and then quietly left suddenly and then desuited for Opening Ceremonies. It is truly amazing how well he takes care of his fursuit. What I learned about it essentially from the Fursuiting 101 panel way back at Fur Reality 2019 was that his fursuit was made in 2012. Thats the year Son Of Beast finally came crashing down.
And when the world was supposed to end according to crackpot doomsday people. It is 2026 already somehow and his fursuit is still in excellent condition. I almost want to ask him at next AnthrOhio or something about his secrets hehe. Except I binged hundreds of furry videos in 2019 and learned heaps of things including some fursuit care tips. I am once again considering commissioning one due to AO BUT I will not fully plan on it until I actually start cleaning my swords and plate armor and conditioning the leather on them as well as that of leather gloves I use for sword training. I keep badly tearing leather gloves over and over again and train with a glove right now that is covered with tears! I dont actually need to ask him specifically. Not with all the info in my noggin and what I can find online. And I know some people who make fursuits/other fursuiters. Plenty of ways to get what I need to know.
After a few minutes of setting up, Opening Ceremonies began and I think I really had to pee but refused to go anywhere. I was not about to miss a thing just to pee. Yeah, I did have to pee. I went right after Opening Ceremonies ended. I also held in pee a number of times at other panels. Was never for too too long so there were no lasting effects of doing so or effects of any duration at all. Shutter, as chair of AO did a lot of talking but the other members of the AO board spoke as well. They told us all a bunch of things like the fact that there was a Yugioh tournament happening in Tower 402 that day. The Yugioh Championship Columbus. We were stuck with just the con space in Tower 401 until Saturday. It was AO’s second year at the Hilton Downtown Columbus, the first year, it only had the space in Tower 401 and well, you’ll learn later if you havent already why it was a good thing they got Tower 402 too this year. The amount of con space in 401 is actually very much comparable to the amount of con space Fur Reality had at the Holiday Inn Eastgate from 2018 to 2019. Fur Reality had around 600 attendees.
AO 2025 had over 2,500 attendees. Some of the places to eat in the area were mentioned as were the special menu items the Hilton made for the con this year. They werent mentioned by name but I read the list of em online pre con. Im so mad at myself for forgetting about the bone shaped iced sugar cookie. Not only would it have been tasty but it would have been perfect for a wolf furry like me to eat. Next year, Im going to get it because Im going to stay vigilant in keeping myself from getting sick even though my job puts me at a pretty high risk of falling ill as demonstrated in Nov ‘24. We were told to stay away from floors 3 to 5 of Tower 402 as they’re where YCS was being held. Later on, at Mikey’s on Saturday I think, I saw someone wearing a YCS Judge jacket. So either theyre also a furry or just stuck around that long. I do not know because come Saturday morning, Tower 402’s con space was all ours to use. Anyway, the GOHs and charity were talked about a bit and the attendance records the last 2 AnthrOhios were as well plus something else that was related.
I think they mentioned having to get food trucks to make sure attendees could actually get food easily when they were at their previous hotel just outside of Downtown Columbus. I was there in 2023, I know they really did do that and Im glad that they did. Thats no longer a need now that they are smack dab between all kinds of places to dine and shop. Moving on, what else they talked about was just pretty standard stuff for furry con Opening Ceremonies. Nothing too special happened and in like 30 minutes or less, it was finished and I could get up and use the bathroom. This is where I must consult with a record of what the con schedule was that morning because I spent so much time talking to people on Friday that Im struggling to recall when exactly I did a lot of that as well as when I had lunch at Mikey’s and met 2 people there, one of whom became a full on friend. Uhhhhh.. I forgot I only did one more panel on Friday.
OH YEAH! They had free HIV testing provided by a local pro queer non profit based in Columbus and they talked about that by having a representative at the organization talk about it on stage. They told us about the services they would provide that included more than just HIV testing as well as where the clinic and pharmacy locations of the organization are located.
I Dont Exactly Have Any Idea What Order These Happened In: Look, Im an introvert, I spend most of my time doing my own thing for better and for worst. For worst meaning Im not reaching out to people locally to work together to resist all the nonsense thats going on and things of that nature and Im not bonding with friends as much as I want and need to. For the best as in Im focusing on my creative stuff and avoiding getting worn out by socializing and having all the space I need to figure stuff out. I am going to put something here that sounds out of place but it is actually probably the key factor as to why I was willing to go to AnthrOhio to begin with. I am surrounded by people who do not wear any sort of mask to protect against illness when I wear N95 masks basically all the time and anywhere I go. Im almost alone in wearing them almost everywhere I go and that sucks. But I dont feel singled out even despite that. I used to have such visceral anger towards people(mostly my biological family.. Many issues with them left unaddressed or just handle poorly for years now..) who do not wear them.
I mostly let it go for 3 reasons. One, I shifted my anger to those behind basically all of the suffering across the world. Two, I knew I would be a miserable person if I didnt let it go while still trying to get magical airships? Im keeping those last 2 words in to show how funny I get when I write while really tired. It is now the 28th of May that Im working on this. So much writing left to be done. Back on topic. What I meant to was while working the job I work and just interacting with people. Uhh.. What was that third reason again? All I can think of expanded upon the second reason so I will just share it right now. If I werr to be bitter about everyone around me not wearing masks, what do you suppose would happen? I will tell you what would happen. I would be truly miserable, unable to get along with people, incapable of ever having a real shot at saying things to people that could potentially drive them to improve themselves, less able to see the good and potential to change in people, unable to make friends. Friendship is magic. It would be a disaster and I would be falling for the nasty trap those behind all the divisions in society and their successors have laid all over the world throughout the last several centuries.
Hating everyone around me instead of being angry at the people who are behind the continuation of virtually all of the world’s countless problems. Good luck motivating people to change if youre lowkey mad at everyone around you all the time. So thats how it goes for me and it is time to return to my recollection of the con once more. I appear to have a gap in my memory. So I may do some jumping around again and uncover more buried memories in the process. What I do recall next from after Opening Ceremonies was the exciting debacle that was going on with the Dealers Den lines. My cousin had informed me he was in the Mature Market to hang out with some of his friends a bit via text. I was already heading there and would run into a little hurtle. The line to get in was long and got cut off before I could get in line only for someone to announce a new line was forming. I was puzzled by that but wound up in a much shorter line into the Dealers Den. When I got in, I pulled out my ID to get into Mature Market, which was new this year at AO but didnt see the line to get in there..
So what happened was I had to actually get in line which I did and it took a few minutes. And the line itself was causing a problem for Dealers Den. They had furs coming in right into where the front of the line was, making furs have to move back to let people coming in pass. It was kind of a disaster. Furs in line like me were asked to move towards the wall to make space for furs not in line. What a mess it was but at least the ID check was simple and fast. I am thrilled to say that by the time I visited the Dealers Den again the very next day, they had solved the problem by just moving the Dealers Den entrance to another set of double doors much further from the Mature Market and closer to Burkhart ballroom which was Main Events on Thursday and Friday. Anyway, once I got into the Mature Market, my cousin and I took a walk through it as I accepted his offer to do so. We talked a bit and then, he had to bounce. I didnt stick around much longer in the Mature Market. I was on the hunt for 2 new red collars a lot like the one I already have but couldnt find any on sale all the times I was at Dealers/Mature Market.
I should have just commissioned someone. I want to go to iFC at the beginning of September in about 3 months so I would get another chance there. Question is: how would I end up going to it? I’ll worry about that another time. All I ended up getting at Mature Market after my cousin left it were some funny stickers from one of the dealer there. I will not speak on what I saw in the Mature Market as this writing is meant to be good for most ages at the very least to read without issue. But I will say that I certainly wasnt all that disappointed. Queue some of y’all to laugh at the sentence I put right before this sentence. I then returned to main Dealers and looked all over with an eye for 2 things: collars and dakis. I want a custom daki and I will not go into further detail than that. There is nothing else important to tell about it thats worth mentioning here. I didnt end up sticking around for long, I didnt buy anything else either from any of the dealers. I sure saw dakis and wondered if anyone did customs. I saw plenty of other things too like dealers I recognize and just enjoy the existence of such as Houndsaint, Pawgyle, and Cosmell Cosplay. Very familiar with those three.
I also saw Pirate Artisans again. I was so sad I didnt want any of the things they had on sale because their display and theme is just so cool. I love me some good pirates. One of my OCs is a trans pirate captain named Blaster(chosen name). I did see collars in the times I was in the Dealers Den. Its too bad none of them had the same half circle metal piece mine does at its center. One of the 2 collars I wanted to get was going to be a spare, the other was going to be for my persona/alternate self who has all my memories but also lives life in another body traveling the omniverse alongside many others to put down tyrants and protect space-time and what not.
Do The Talkie Talk: After leaving the Dealers Den, I talked to Sarah for the first time. Beyond what I already mentioned before, we talked about a lot of things after she started the conversation. I picked up a information flier type thing of WAGS and she said: “thats us!” She at one point struggled multiple times to get her service dog to act like a normal dog which shows how well trained her protector is. We talked about a wide range of things, I told her that Im an artist, writer, and Minecraft theme park resort creator, going on to say it’d be awesome for me to try to write someone and their service dog together in one of my stories. She was excited by such an idea and well, I sort of did do that via what I introed this writing with. All the named characters and locations in it are my OCs/my creations. I was also like: “furry is more progressive than general society so that helps” and she agreed. A fursuiter laid down on the floor after being invited to and that is really when she encouraged her pal to try to act like a typical dog. Sarah normally doesnt do that but was willing to just for the convention.
I replied to hearing that by saying: “Its like youre giving her a treat!” or something of similar wording. At some point, one of the furs on con security came by and talked to her for a few minutes. I didnt say much during that and I will not speak on what was spoken about during that other than that some general questions were among the things asked/talked about. Eventually, they had to return to their duties and give a farewell. The uniforms con security were wearing this year’s AO were actually brand new according to another thing I forgot was talked about at Opening Ceremonies. And I will still carrying my sign around. I really did carry it around all day. There is only one time I left the vicinity of the con the whole weekend. When I write about Saturday evening, I will get into that but not now. I would have talked to Sarah longer after the security fur left but she had to work on something on her computer. I respected that and left to go somewhere else.
As I started to do that, 2 other furs showed up to talk to her. Speaking of furs, while I originally began talking with her, one of the con’s staff members was with her, hanging out and also making sure everything was just okay. Yo! Another memory has resurfaced! While I was in Mature Market, AnthrOhio’s self titled Snack Lady was nearby and I overheard her say that they were doing a new system for getting snacks and drinks to dealers, artists in the Artists Alley, volunteers, and anyone else doing essential work for the con experience via snack and drink request forms. I remember Snack Lady from when I was volunteering at AnthrOhio 2023. And her self title made me think of Snack King, something from the visual novel in demo phase: Our Life Forever and Always. In that game, you make your own character, choose pronouns, and choose whether to romance someone or not and your character moves to a new town with their mom, eventually leading to hanging with a group of boys.
That group of boys when at a store to pick up snacks always picks someone from their group to be Snack King and buy all of the chosen snacks. There is also funny banter related to it. Snack Lady was apparently the test subject for the new snack and drink system. So.. What else did I talk to Sarah about? Mostly things like accessibility and me feeling inspired by something to build quiet rooms all over my Minecraft theme park resort. I also mentioned the 45 minute ish long space roller coaster I built in it I think. Most roller coasters in real life are 2 and a half minutes in duration or less. Very few coasters are over 3 and a half minutes such as The Beast at Kings Island. Over my time at the con, I talked to so many people about my Minecraft theme park resort, stories, being an artist, going to trade school for 2 years for digital arts, Kings Island’s new Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare and new kitty friend Archie the Cat who has an animatronic of her in the pre show/main queue area of the ride, and like how much Villain Con Minion Blast and Universal’s OPT OUT “facial validation” process for entering their parks suck. Archie is such a sweetheart.
And Im just practically waiting for the furry community to really pick up on her existence at this point. I will be drawing her in the near future along with my fursona wearing the collar I wore to the con and added special accessories to. I am writing all of this right here so I dont have to spend as much time writing about when I talked about those things. I did this same exact tactic in past furry convention writings. Would you believe I went from refusing to do another com writing for AO this year to being on the fence about for most of the con to deciding to do it around Sunday afternoon? The last one I made before this one is 70,000 words long and I wrote it while I was sick for a week! There is a reason why I didnt record any panels at AO this year. I didnt want to have to transcribe every last word just about said at them again. No thanks. I am just done with just. Just absolutely done. Plus, just going by memory will save me time and effort as well as make this writing feel a lot more authentic in the process. After I finished talking with Sarah, I talked to someone at the table for TrotCon at the new Exhibitors Row.
A place where staff from other conventions get to sit down, hang out, and let other furs talk to them and ask questions about their cons. That person was actually just holding down the fort for those who came on behalf of TrotCon so I moved to talked to the staff of IndyFurCon instead. I talked to several of them so the things talked about kind of blob together. I remember telling one of them I wanted to come back and in reply was told that I should and that pretty much sold me on going back someday. It better be this September. I feel a lot better about going to cons now that Ive upped my actions to keep myself and others by default too more safe from catching something nasty. And because I didnt fall ill. Con crud is a bunch of crud and it is in our collective best interest to do something about con crud so we dont have to deal with the crud that comes from con crud to begin with because dealing with con crud is truly something that is super crud. Con crud plus Post Con Depression are a brutal combination I dont wish on anyone.
So with that in mind, back to me recalling what I talked about with members of iFC staff including Jake Bunny and Storm Gryphon. Jake at one point pointed to Storm and said: “He’s my boss”. I replied: “I know.” I hadnt realized he was still con chair just as he was in 2023 after Pandez stepped down from iFC’s board of directors altogether. The folks at iFC were so much fun to talk to and they were also just hanging out and having a blast doing so, judging by all of the laughter. I got to hear some interesting theme park related things from Jake Bunny because I brought up Universal or something. Some of the details have vanished from my memory but its really cool that hes been involved in the industry despite all of the skeletons in the closets of Cedar Flags, Disney, Universal, SeaWorld/United Parks, and Herscend to an extent as well(any company who explicitly says they run based on Christian values is immediately suspect to me as an ex-Christian, I did not have a fun time in Catholicism).
I talked to Jake Bunny about things like the new show starring Toothless at Epic Universe as well as Fur Reality, iFC con themes, and attendance related stuff in part because I heard him talk about Fur Reality earlier on. I must have been there for at least an hour talking to all of them. Literally everyone except for Jake ended up having to leave for various things, leading to some funny banter in some cases. I think Jake was definitely the most energetic of them all in every way so that was quite something. After I said goodbye to Jake, I headed back to Mikey’s for lunch.
The Paperclip That Cause Friendship: In line for Mikey’s, I was handed a paperclip with a fly or something on it as line art that was really cute by Juju, who I met along with his sister right then and there. We just sort of started talking because I was in the market for meeting new people the entire convention, driven by the need to actually build community with other people and to make my life more people centered. Ive been very reclusive for such a long time and I want to stop being so reclusive because everyone’s lives are in danger right now and blah blah blah(its actually serious but Im trying to make sure no reader starts feeling down at any point in this writing!). And I sound like Blue from Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends which I just started watching mere hours after I began writing this writing. Its a great cartoon, top notch plot, comedy, and cast of recurring and main characters. I have had interest in watching it for quite a while too and now, I am! And its just soooo good! I wanted to talk to the two of them some more so I asked if it was okay to sit with them and they were okay with it.
I straight up said: “I literally dont normally ask this.” I am further overcoming the shell of shyness my immediate family knew me to have when I was in elementary school. I recognize the need for socialization and fully understand it more than ever, therefore my logical side goes into my desire to socialize with people too. As does the realization I had earlier this year that there is no experience greater than socializing and bonding with other people, not even reading, brainstorming, writing, or drawing and thats saying something! People are unpredictable, you never know exactly what someone else is going to say when you talk to them except for rare and special instances where things just go differently in a good way. We got to know one another. I mostly ended up talking to Juju, his sister was just on her phone a lot and I felt more inclined to befriend him in part because he and I are so close in age. I am glad he and I are friends. And he’s into paleotology and animatronics and drawing and anime, our interests are so very much aligned.
And now, we have nonverbally committed to keeping in touch with each other online. Over the course of the con, I showed a handful of people including him me in my suit of plate armor as well as my red princess gown that’s just perfect for balls. Would I go to a ball? Id rather drink a Bean Boozled jelly bean smoothie over doing something like that. Which reminds me.. Ive had this idea for a panel to raise money for charity by weaponizing the disgusting and humorous capabilities of the dreaded Bean Boozled jelly beans whose offerings only seem to get more disgusting overall as time goes on. Some flavors have stuck around since they were first released including peach and.. BARF. You may or may not see a panel revolving around those demented things at next year’s AnthrOhio. I am scheming around submitting some panels for next year. Anyway, I got to see some cool and cute things bought by Juju and his sister over the con which was fun. That pretty much is all I gotta say about meeting them. It was a blast and I think we walked back together to the con. I believe it was raining a bit at the time.
I still have that paperclip and I plan on passing it along to someone somewhere for it was passes around to Juju from someone else. Pay it forward and all that. After we parted ways for the time being, I went back to Exhibitors Row where I finally got to talk to some of the staff of TrotCon. Their con chair who I didnt know was their con chair was assembling a plushie so I chose to not talk to fae that much out of respect for the craft and effort being put into making the plushie. I literally just checked TrotCon’s Discord just to find out what the con chair’s pronouns are. Fae is one of the uncommon pronouns Ive seen around the most as of late. And I think it’s awesome. I was talking to one of the other staff members about being excited about TrotCon Online this year, that I had never been to TrotCon in any capacity before, and I had submitted a writing panel. So Darkly(con chair’s fandom name) said: “I remember a writing panel being submitted”. I replied: “So youre in charge of programming?”
“Im in charge of everything, Im the con chair.” I ended up mainly talking to yet another staff member who is really not that much older than I am. We talked about a lot of the things I talked to a lot of people about as well as things like video games including Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and how terrible RCT World is and how beautiful Planet Coaster is. I told them that Frontiee developed both RCT3 and Planet Coaster and they said it feels like Planet Coaster is for people who do a lot of realism for building video game theme parks, something along those lines. I enjoyed talking to them a whole lot. I also asked Darkly how long fae had been making plushies and got 7 or 8 years as a response. I kept talking on and off until Exhibitors Row was soon coming to an end. And thats where things got a little odd. Furrest City’s staff didnt show up to be at the table next to TrotCon’s that day so one of the artists at the Artists Alley asked if they could drop their stuff off there and have it be watched and Darkly said yes. So they did that and I talked to them a little bit.
TrotCon’s staff suddenly learned they had to take their stuff for now. All the while, no one knew exactly where the Artists Alley was supposed to be from 7 to 10 pm. It didnt say on any form of the con schedule or the con map. Another artist showed up with her stuff at this point and sat down because the artists didnt even know how setup was supposed to work yet. It was just a mess in part because Exhibitors Row was where Artists Alley was the entirety of AnthrOhio 2025. So I just kind of hang out with them for a bit. And the latter artist and I just kind of quickly bonded like 2 hours later after talking while no one knew what was really going on. Stary Starfire Traveler is one of the names she is known by. When they were told that the artists in Artists Alley are supposed to go to a meeting of some kind, I parted ways with her and all that and endeavored to go after dinner. But only after I talked to Sarah again for a bit as I was hoping I was able to do that. Other than the stuff about touching without consent, I dont really recall what else we talked about that evening before she had to get her table packed up for the night.
Jake Bunny made sure of that as she was unsure if she had to do that or not. And then, he soon left after saying he had to go and was just sticking around the con for the last of the weekend. And that he was actually serious about that when he communicated that he had to go. I didnt see him at the con anywhere after that so it seems to have been true after all. And then, I started researching for a place to eat dinner that had a food I know I like. The place I wanted to go to was just a 6 minutes walk away. I had an umbrella my cousin gave to me and I still have it at home because I forgot to return it to him Sunday night. I was just so tired and ready to go to bed and what not by that point. So I was so looking forward to wherever it was I was going to go. It serves pizza and everything BUT it was raining. And by raining, I mean it was POURING. So that plan went out the window. And I started researching hotel restaurants so I didnt have to go out in the rain. And I was really thirsty. I had neglected to get much water in a while. I will try to be more proactive about that next con I go to.
At Kings Island, its never a problem with all the places you can get something to drink even though some of those places are almost never open. Like the Coca Cola Freestyle place at the train station in Rivertown. For as long as I have known it to be there, I have probably gotten something to drink from it less than 20 times over a span totaling 10+ years of time. And also because Im not as focused on doing other things as I am at cons. I couldnt find the menus of restaurants on the helpful touchscreen thing in the lobby of Tower 401 so I ended up going to see the menu in person for a restaurant in Tower 402. I get there and I see the menu. The menu items are painfully pricey and they have nothing I want. Spaghetti with meatballs?! What is with many places only having spaghetti with meatballs? I dont really like meatballs and have zero interest in them! Just let me have spaghetti with tomato sauce!! I dont want any chicken in it either! Just the noodles and the tomato sauce! Thats it!
If the prices werent so expensive, I still wouldnt have ate there because I didnt want to potentially still have to pay the same price for a meatball free spaghetti as one with meatballs. $35+ for every single entré? Thats so excessive! I know its supposed to be fine dining but in my experience, that extra cost isnt worth the increase in quality and taste that accompanies it! Hard working class people like me do not get paid nearly enough at our jobs and some public restaurants still want to charge that much?! Thats so incredible. Absolutely incredible. Just purely amazing. Unbelievable. And.. now Im getting hungry. I have been deprived of spaghetti with tomato sauce for- Stop it right there, me. Im sounding like Im wealthier than I actually am with a statement like that. I can just savor my many memories of various recipes of spaghetti with tomato sauce for the time being. Like memories of the spaghetti of Portillo’s in Chicago. Which made me think of the hectic on the way home from MFF long waiting adventure of going to Portillo’s just because my mom wanted a chocolate cake shake. But forget Portillo’s.
There was another restaurant next door to the one I originally wanted to eat at in Tower 402. Spark. Its a bar restaurant with a unconventional layout. Its in the lobby chill out area of Tower 402 so all the non bar seating is just hotel lobby style seating. Coziest restaurant ever. Very open air, too. One of the workers there was wearing furry ears and a collar and I got the chance to compliment them which was fantastic. By 6:45, I had sat down and was all but ready to order. The name Spark made me think of Record Of Lodoss War: Chronoicles Of The Heroic Knight or more specifically, the warrior named Spark who was advised and mentored by the main character Parn. And it still makes me think of that character even now because of how many times I heard his name said in the second half of the second anime adaptation.
WAAAAAAIIITTTTTTTTTTT I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MISSING GAP OF TIME AFTER OPENING CEREMONIES! I went to the hospitality suite to have some snacks and a Coke. No tables were empty so I just sat down at the same table as some furs, leading me to meet several furs. Got to see some fursuits, just a lot of chill chatter mostly. I never made any friends sitting there so Im not too keen in writing what I talked about there. But it was a nice unexpected hangout thing. AnthrOhio having the hospitality suite open to all attendees is one of the best things about the convention by far. I wish more cons were doing the same thing and they are not doing the same thing as far as Im aware. Makes me think of Fur Reality’s art lead Sal providing some free meals for Fur Reality attendees in 2019. That was one of the things that made that con so special. I actually talked to someone working at one of my favorite museums briefly who was wearing a Fur Reality lanyard back in 2023. I waited a little bit to have my order taken at Spark and it was so soon before Boozy’s Legal Funhouse too.
But I was well taken care of and given water when I was finished with the water that was previously poured for me. I ordered the flatbread cheese pizza and fries. The fries were okay, nothing to write home about. Not impressive, not disappointing(okay, they actually were, I was expecting bettee). Pretty good. Alright. So so. I think they were made from beef tallow or something. I didnt pay attention to that until while I was trying them. Beef tallow fries are a huge meh. I’ll take regular potato, sweet potato with powdered sugar, red potato, gold potato, and apple fries instead, please. I dont intend on having beef tallow fries again. Thats not just because they sound weird. Im just not impressed at all. The flatbread was not as good as I was expecting either but it was still pretty solid, much better than the fries. Also longer and thicker than I was expecting it to be. Yes, when I wasnt eating or drinking, I kept my N95 on at all times. I would be mad at myself if I didnt adhere to that. Also, little secret.
When I have to eat or drink while wearing a N95, I dont fully take it off. I just lower it so that my nose and mouth are temporarily out of it so I dont have to keep completely taking it on and off which wouldnt be sanitary. The flatbread I would rank on the low end of all the pizzas Ive had. It was still good but theres a lot left to be desired. At least its flavor was really unique. I have this nagging feeling that the Hilton Downtown Columbus quietly installed air purifiers or something. Some people did get sick at the con but still. I have this sneaking suspicion, a good one to have ironically enough. Ive seen some places just quietly have things like Honeywell products installed to make all that indoor air cleaner. Honeywell was the first place I got N95s from. Im still glad I switched to Indiana Face Mask though. Smaller business and you save more per box of N95s the more N95s you buy. You could call me a N95 enthusiast because N95s are genuinely so awesome. Some places offer like lime green N95s which is really cool.
After I paid my bill at Spark and all that, I was off to Main Events for..
“Ohio Squirrels Will Definitely Burn Your House Down”: Boozy’s Legal Funhouse. It was around 7:20 PM when I sat down in Main Events to enjoy the panel. Boozy was not talking very loudly so I had to focus a little bit. The panel featured Boozy coaching Alkali on legal matters. He would tell us all of a specific court case with bizarre backstories and it was Alkali’s job to say what he thought the verdict in the case would be. I do not remember all of the cases I heard he and Boozy talk about. What I do remember is “Ohio squirrels will definitely burn your house down.” What else I remember is: “You know what furries hate more than giant corporations? Insurance companies.” The context behind that is a car that was left outside for 3 years had a dead squirrel in it, went up in flames inside a warehouse, and burned a house down. The car’s manufacturer was sued for damages and it tried to argue that the squirrel was behind the fire, leading to a lot of bizarre back and forths apparently. The verdict ended up forcing the involved insurance company to have to pay up.
And the car’s manufacturer had to pay the people who lost their house damages, rebuilding costs, and more. So as Boozy said, it was the insurance company that got screwed in the end. Insurance is a pure evil industry. There were a lot of funny details and things said while Boozy explained the entire case and all that that I havent fully recalled. I think there was another case involving a car. But Im not sure. I can only remember them talking about that one case. After the panel waited, I headed to the stage because I wanted to ask Boozy something. This led to me talking to him for up to 90 seconds. I asked him if he heard about the feud between SeaWorld and Sesame Street. For those of you who dont know, they have had a partnership for a very long time. Maybe longer than Ive been alive and Im a older Zoomer! He heard about it. I mentioned Cedar Flags and we talked about their 6 BILLION DOLLARS of debt(most from legacy Six Flags, not Cedar Fair) and things like the recent sale they did of some of their parks to the new Enchanted Parks chain, formed by people who used to work at Disney World.
He grew up going to Kings Island and Kentucky Kingdom and brought up to me the 2005 Superman Tower Of Power accident at the park. I knew about it and told him as much. I brought up how the park was abandoned by Six Flags(during their worst era ever, an era that still haunts the combined Cedar Flags to this day which is actually just called Six Flags but Cedar Flags is basically coaster enthusiast slang at this point) and how Ed Hart came back and that Herscend bought the park in 2021. Boozy also said he’s moreso visiting like Kennywood and Dorney Park nowadays. After that, at the end of our short conversation, he told me he has connections to the people in Dorney Park’s higher ups and that they are planning to put in something new and good in the future after I said: “I hope Dorney Park gets something new soon”. Boozy’s openness to talking made me have a realization about community in conjunction with how much easier it had been for me to befriend people at the con than anywhere else.
What is introversion, anyway? What is it beyond needing to build up energy to talk to people as talking to people drains far more than being alone does? Community.. AO showed me answers to such pressing questions. Community. When you are in true community, no one feels like a stranger, you are welcomed and warmly greeted, there are no expectations of what youre supposed to be. I experienced true community via AnthrOhio. I could be myself without pressure. No one turned me away. Everyone was willing to talk but if that changed as they had to go somewhere else or do something, they communicated as much. No disdain. No rejection. None of that crap. This is what true community feels like. True community has helped me further understand introversion. When you are somewhere you feel like you truly belong, introversion is something that changes for the time being. Because the social pressures and expectations arent there, gone, erased, and you feel like youre so welcome there.
An introvert will not hesitate as much to socialize. Any reclusiveness all but melt aways at least for the time being. Introverts thrive most when in spaces where they feel like they truly belong. This is what AnthrOhio 2026 has taught me. Isnt that just truly beautiful? After my chat with Boozy ended, I went to the Artists Alley and did some buying. On 3 occassions, I really chatted it up with artists, accidentally holding up the line at one point but from that artist who I was talking to when I did that, I bought some fursuit sprays after sampling all of the ones for sale. They all smelled amazing. I think I got stickers from a different artists. I commissioned yet another artist for a headshot badge of my persona. I as I told the artist I commissioned a fullbody badge of my persona from, scoured Bluesky, looking for an artist who made a physical badge for a human character. I couldnt find anyone. All the badge commission posts featured fursona badges. I looked at the examples set out by the two artists and chose to commission them. Both of them were fun to talk to and really nice.
The fullbody badge is the only one I havent gotten yet and that is perfectly okay. I am in love with the headshot. The eyes arent supposed to be gray, theyre supposed to be brown instead but literally, once I approved the sketch(online), the next update was the finished work and it was sadly too late to change the eye color. I pretty much talked about all my usual topics to both artists and the other artists I talked to as well. I then went to Stary Starfire Traveler’s table at last and talked to her so much that she said: “let’s be friends!” and we’re friends now in what was literally Tomodachi Life like fashion. I got to hear hours before about how she and the other artist who showed up early with their stuff were at a pirate themed event the previous weekend, the organizer of it was terrible, and they had tents and it was raining. Stary’s boxes all got wet and she switched that sealable containers afterwards. While talking to her after her table was set up, I complimented her outfit and loved her dried mushrooms with artworks in them.
I told her her art belongs in a museum and that the artsy mushrooms reminded me of nature theming in theme park lines and that her mushrooms would belong in those so well. She has been growing, finding, and buying mushrooms since 2008 and drying them to make art because she loved a mushroom so much and got attached to it. Stary was running on little sleep but was still very energetic to the point I said: “I love your energy!” Unlike me, the mushroom artist is a local to Columbus. She also does silhouette art and like prints and little paintings. Apparently also roleplayed as a landscape artist in a LARP type event setting and that was an excuse to paint some stuff. I was floored with everything and her mushrooms were in a nature themed container with fake moss at the bottom. There must have been over 100 in that container and she had more to put in should she need to put more in. I looked at a lot of time and struggled to find one I wanted to buy. I picked a spider themed one, one of her favorites. I should take a pic of it somewhere in my room and show that picture to her.
Her skill in making minature art inside of mushrooms is just so beyond words can fully detail. The attention to detail. The patience. The everything. Do I plan on sharing this writing with her? You butter believe it as that is exactly what Im going to do! We talked about so much and I committed to adding her as a friend on Discord. So I eventually left with that goal to work on. Even with access to her Linktree page, I wasnt able to get her username correct for a friend request. So after I struggled to find somewhere to hold a sketchbook swap, found somewhere, and failed to get anyone to sit with me to sketchbook swap, I went back to the Artists Alley even though it had closed and found the other artist who came early. Theyre actually friends and I asked them if they had her Discord. Thanking them, I promised to look at their table on Sunday which I did and I bought a non binary colored creature stickee and talked a little bit. After that, I sat down nearby as I really needed to sit down. And nothing much else happened besides mundane stuff like going back to the hotel room.
A Huge Time Skip: I dont remember what I did between leaving the hotel room after breakfast/furrying up(this phrase was inspired by ponying up in MLP Equestria Girls) and going to part 1 of Iron Author. Its gone, whatever I did much of that hour must have been mundane. Im just glad I got to writing about Saturday earlier than I was expecting to because Ive put over 13 hours into this writing by now. And I still have so much to write about! Im writing this in a notes app so I dont even know how many words this thing has so far! I can guess that its over 18,000 words by now but thats as far as I can go without copy pasting it to something with a word count for writings. So Iron Author. It was one of the first panels in Tower 402 which meant I had to consult a map of Tower 402 to find it. I got to the 3rd floor, unsure if I was on the right floor because in 401, the lowest level is the basement level.
So I thought the lobby of 402 was floor 1 at first but after wandering around a little bit, I understood that I was in fact on the third floor. And part of my back was killing me. I might have just sat down for a but before heading to Iron Author, given how badly my back was bothering me in an area with that part of it that started having weird muscle/bone easing happen. That began after I somehow developed symptoms of chest wall pain a day after intensely sword training 2 handed style and eventually fully recovered around 2 weeks later. I wont go into the details of how unfun that all was. I would rather not. All I will say is that I read a bunch of books mainly with non binary or genderqueer or genderfluid main characters to pass the time and that aspect of the recovery process was naturally fantastic. So now, that part of my back specifically hurts sometimes or eases up with cracking noises. When it eases up, it feels so good. It being close to a certain bone thats useless may have something to do with it.
Oh well, it is not causing anything alarming. Anyway, I was so happy to sit down in the room Iron Author Rules was in. I needed that so badly. During the panel, things were really chill. Jaru told us he inherited the panel from someone else and mainly explained the rules after giving people more time to show up before he got started on all of that. He may have mentioned the age of the con too there. Either way, I found out or rather, relearned that AnthrOhio’s origins go all the way back to 2003 or 2004, it was a picnic at first. And was called Morphicon the year after that until around 2015. It has moved venues quite a bit over the years, though not as much as iFC which is moving to a hotel in Downtown Indianapolis because they are growing so much and the con center there is as big as they can get. Thats what I was told at Exhibitors Row Friday afternoon.
Iron Author’s rules always include keeping things family friendly, having fun, staying on theme with the con theme, and being under 1000 words as well as bonus points for putting in things related to the charity, guests of honor, or AO 2026 twist: putting in a phrase that repeats over and over again like a chorus. I was brainstorming what I wanted to write while he was going over the rules and it would be easy for me to come up with a really good concept that evolved the more of the rules he explained. Jaru was asked some general questions relating to the panel and what we had to do to participate. We needed at least 5 printed copies for us to have for the judges of the panel and Sarah had previously told me she would be one of the judges for Iron Author this year after I said I intended on participating in it. Jaru was another judge and the guests of honor would be the other 3. Jaru is always a judge for Iron Author.
He also offered to print copies out for us if we just emailed our entries to him at his AO chief of staff email. Additionally, we could email about like suggestions for more writing events at AO as he wants there to be more as at cons, writers do not get as much attention as artists and fursuit makers do. There are far fewer events for them and everything. So I have some plans relating to more writing panels. I expressed my intentions of submitting my Fiction Writing 101 panel for next year to him and had a short but good talk with him as he left the room once the panel was done. My back still hurt but I kept talking anyway until he had to take care of something. I told him that I was going to put in my Minecraft theme park resort as the setting and went on about my theme park and creative interests. We definitely both enjoyed the conversation, that truth is as clear as day to see. My work on my entry continued after we parted ways and I found a place to sit down again nearby, I had started it after he had finished explaining the rules. All in all, it took only around 40 minutes for me to write it just as predicted.
It got very close to the 1000 word limit and there was no minmum word requirement as AO’s chief of staff wanted there to be more creative freedom in it. He isnt a writer but he is a reader and he promised unique goodies for the winners of the contest Sunday afternoon. After I was done, uhhhhhhhhh.. Well, the panel I wrote about in detail earlier was at 12. But what exactly did I do before then? Im pretty sure I know what I did. I think I just had lunch. At some point, I went to Mikey’s specifically to just hang out with Juju and his sister again. Yeah.. Yeah! Its all becoming clear! I had lunch at Mikey’s before 12 and did the hang out there later! I was back in the con space in time for the panel on being an ally to people and their service dogs. The title of it was along those lines and there isnt much I havent already covered about it that I recall now. Or at least, recalled but I lost it! Darn! Well, Im about to get a shower, maybe it will come back due to that! We’ll see! Aha! It did! There was a brief talk about invisible disabilities. There are people out there who look healthy on the outside but they are just good at faking it.
The last part of that sentence came from someone I talked to at the con. What WAGS does is focus on children with invisible disabilities because of all of the cruelness and hardships they have to face because people do not typically believe people with invisible disabilities have them and have to live with them. I have seen it online, I have heard about it. Like in the case of people dealing with chronic fatigue and conditions related to it such as ME/CFs and Long Covid. (Not along Covid, autocorrect. Jokes on you, I completely disabled you along with predictive text last fall and I am not going back!) Even the pharmacy I went to to get my Covid and Flu shots recognizes the existence of Long Covid nowadays, according to the papers stapled together about post vaccination info about both of those things that I was given. I do not want to talk about the details of Long Covid here because its not fun. I am so glad I have not developed it across all the painful times I got sick between early 2022 and late 2024.
So yeah, thats the other detail about that panel I was able to recall unexpectedly and thankfully. After that panel, I went to another..
The Nation Of Josh: The Nation Of Josh was a panel about worshipping a fictional country called Josh. It was just 40 minutes of that. Haha, just kidding. It was actually 35 And Fewer. 35 And Fewer is a panel in which you have to mess up the US state borders to the point there are 35 or less states left. Its a bit complicated. In the first 5 minutes, state name changes and minor border changes can be done without a donation to charity as long as there is a massive consensus. The room it was in had round tables with chairs the entire con and was used for a fursuit thing that lasted 3 hours right before it. And some people were still cleaning up and getting stuff from that out as all of us were coming in. A map of the US was put on a Smartboard style screen, connected to Sigma's laptop which they actually mainly use for things that mean if those also connected to those things found out they used it for something else..
And end statement. After the 5 minutes were up, for varying amounts of donations, all kinds of name and border changes could be made and someone could buy ownership of a state or states. They could allow changes to what they owned that someone else wanted or they could deny it and start a bidding war. No bidding wars happened. For the best I guess. Cabals and alliances were more than possible but not really done as no one really went for them. So that was a thing. But heres all the things that happened to the map of the US I can recall. Someone's spouse couldnt remember where Ohio is on a map so a new Ohio was chosen as a joke. Iowa became New Ohio and Sigma's spelling of things was pretty bad at times because they were documenting everything all by themself unlike when Status hosted the panel in the past.
I suggested Florida be renamed so that it would become Disney's as a joke in the first 5 minutes. That went through. I considered suggesting renaming California to Six Flags California but didnt go for doing so. I also had another suggestion idea but I forgot what it was. Florida later was cut away from the continent to become North Cuba. Bugs Bunny doing the same to it in a cartoon was explicitly mentioned and that was funny. Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and maybe Colorado to just became part of Mexico and Canada got to take Idaho and another state, creating South Canada. Old Ohio was deleted. Wyoming became a lake that was clarified to still count as a state hilariously enough. Hawaii's top island was erased. Oklahoma's panhandle was given to Texas before it became part of Mexico again. The New England states were combined. Pittsburgh became its own state. Pennslyvania's name was changed to something goofy and it ate New Jersey.
Alaska lost its panhandle and was relocated above Michigan along with being flipped around a bit. North and South Carolina became North South Crossroads, one state. The Dakotas were merged and became the first North South something only for its name to get longer later. Indiana ate Illinois. An idea to let Chicago be its own thing was suggested but fell through. Lets see.. Trying to think of anything I dont already recall but nothing is coming up. Someone suggested that the entire coastal area of the Pacific states be made a state called North Chile. Pronounced North Chili because lots of people here in the US do not know how to pronounce that country’s name. Sigma was unsure where the Pacific was and was soon informed but to save time, they just put North Chili in as a rectangle in the Pacific Ocean. Someone proposed Kentucky become West West Virginia and get taken over by WV.
That did not happen but Virginia did absorb West Virginia and someone said: “There! No more state financial problems!” or something to that effect. I have saved the best things for last. Alabama and Louisiana I believe were merged into a new state called Beans. In all honesty, with all the states named after indigenous words and tribes even though the US government has never once ever truly respected indigenous nations or indigenous peoples even once in its now 250 years of existence.. Maybe the names of the states should be changed with one being actually renamed to Beans in real life. Or better yet, just let indigenous be caretakers of the land again. Anyway, Beans ended up being combined with a state that was a merge of two called McMo or something. The combined state became known as Mr. McMo's Beans and that is just hilarious! And at the end of the panel close to 1:40, there was time to rename the country. The Fractured States, The New United States, and Josh were all suggested. Sigma exclaimed: "The Fractured States?!" Silence. "The New United States?!" Silence. "The nation of Josh!"
Cheers and applause and woohoos. The nation of Josh was born and the panel actually went a couple minutes over its scheduled time. After it was done, I went to go to the 5th floor after maybe a bathroom trip to see the Fursuit Parade. Ah yes, the Fursuit Parade. Thats something even more magical than a parade at Disney World in several very important ways. I went up to the 4th floor, forgot where the parade was starting, realized my mistake, and went up to the 5th floor. I moved to stand near the escalators but without obstructing anyones' view. Considered sitting down but refused to. I was trying to avoid dirting my tail the whole con when possible, after all. But then, I had a realization based on my plan to see the full parade and then head back to the 3rd floor to attend whatever was left of Sigma's mental health panel in the same room as 35 And Fewer. Haha. A plan. A good solid plan..
I was going to take the elevator down to get back there to beat people to that floor and get there faster instead of following the parade down the escalators. And to that end, I moved so that I was next to the escalators but just steps away from the elevator. And from there, I waited, thinking the parade was starting a few times but it wasnt until it was. THEY HAD HOW MANY FURSUITERS?!: No comment on the title of this section. Jaru, in fursuit, holding a full on AnthrOhio 2026: Rock You Like A Furricane sign in such a way that it was glorious led the entire parade with con chair Shutter, also in fursuit, right behind him. I stood in place and did my best to keep my eye on the parade to see everyone. Even though I was right by volunteers in pink safety vests working to ensure everyone in the panel including fursuit handlers made it down the escalators safely or were able to use the elevator if that wouldnt work for them. And y'all are not going to believe this if you didnt attend the con.. So. Fursuiters and handlers were advised not to jump on the escalators. Guess what happened?
The escalator down from the 4th to 3rd floors broke down. It stopped moving altogether. Emergency stopped and everything. Furries broke the escalator because we furries.. we ruin EVERYTHING. Forget that Adam guy with glasses and a beard from Comedy Central. We ruin EVERYTHING. We could see it broken down from the 5th level. It was quite the sight. It really was something. They had to stop anyone from going down for a bit while the parade got unclogged from being clogged due to the escalator that broke down. This is so very funny to write about and its only going to be funny still for a bit. I know its a maintenance headache but still. The Fursuit Parade led to an escalator breaking down! Can you believe that? Can you imagine that? When furs could actually go down the escalator, there were a few interesting happenings.
A handful of fursuiters with such long tails that they were advised: "Watch the tail!" Oh but it only got better. One pair of fursuiters had one of them lift the other’s tail. It only got better. By better, I mean just tragic and not funny. A fursuiter dropped one of their things, leading to worry all about it. I feared the escalator's fate was sealed. But it wasnt. Anything else of note other than all the fursuiters? Well, someone on the floor or something was playing songs the entire parade. It was clearly not from some intercom or coming from another level. Classic songs from across the decades were played of various genres which some fursuiters used as a chance to shine and show off some of their moves. Over the course of the parade, I thought it was about to end multiple times and when it finally actually ended, I didnt see it coming so it seemingly ended all of a sudden. I was standing there so long, I had to move my legs while staying in place a bunch of times to fight the stiffness that was building in them.
Im just glad that by the time I finished my Iron Author submission, my back felt sooooo much better. You want to know how long it took between Jaru starting the parade by leading it and when it ended with the final fursuiter? Just under an hour! I got somewhat bored and my mind wandered a number of times during the parade! Next time, I should try to watch it from the con center or something as they had planned a pretty lengthy route! My plan was kapoot!! Kapoot! I missed Sigma's mental health panel and just went down the escalator from the 5th floor after all. Met up with my cousin after the conclusion of the parade. We talked a bit and parted ways again. If I had watched the parade further along its route, I could have maybe seen part of Sigma's panel before doing so. But in retrospect, I dont think that alternate plan would have worked all that well. But if I tried it, doing it would have a pain because everyone was watching the parade for the most part.
Since it wasnt raining all day like it was Friday, I think the group photo was done outside. In fact, when I was heading back to my hotel Friday night, it was windy and so rainy! That was not fun! And so, I put the umbrella in one of my backpack's side pockets Saturday morning so I didnt have to pull it out from the main pocket. I forgot all about that. Now, lets talk about the fursuiters. I was in paradise with the diversity I was seeing among the fursuiters and the handful of fur wearing something other than fursuits that were still costumes. That said, fursuits tend to be more personal than costumes but thats a whole other thing. I was floored with what I saw. One of the furs in con ops was in the parade and their outfit was so cool!! It was like a decked out con ops themed costume with armor like elements! One of the coolest things I saw at the con! Pair that with fursuiter and thats just beyond words! Holy cazoili! And I dont even eat that stuff, if that is in fact a kind of food!
But there were fursuiters with even cooler attire! One of them wore their fursuit head with A FULL SUIT OF STEEL PLATE ARMOR! Plus like a red shirt or something underneath! That was impressive! I saw them later when I was heading to Mikey’s for dinner and complimented them, saying it must have been such a pain to get that all on as I know from experience! Just the curiass, pauldrons, tassets, gorget, my knight’s shirt, my tabard, and my cape all combined usually take me about 25 minutes total to put on. And thats only because I know what Im doing and have done it before! It originally took me 3 hours to put all that on but with a different not nearly as awesome looking curiass my first time wearing plate armor June 2023! All of the armor for the top half of my body, including the helmet I got made to order weigh a combined total of probably over 45 pounds. The curiass is around 25 pounds and by curiass, the new one, not the old one.
The new one is just so cool and gorgeous and extremely knightly. Theres a lot more to it. Its made of a lot of different steel plates and such. To say I love knightly steel plate armor is an understatement. When I don it, I feel most like myself as well as safe and secure and protected. My princess gown is the other outfit I feel most myself in but that feeling is stronger when Im wearing my plate armor. If it werent for the cleaning nightmare and setting off ALL METAL DETECTORS in close vicinity and not liking drawing attention to myself usually and just how hot it can get in it, I would love to wear my armor ALL THE TIME. But I dont. I look the part of a knight in the armor but I am still not one in real life just yet. But rest assured, my armor will truly become knight’s armor in due time unless some twist occurs. What other coolness did I see? I saw someone dressed as a tree creature with leaves on stilts, that was seriously wow! There was someone in a full face wolf mask, no actual fursuit head but the mask worked with their hood very well so shout out to them. They embodied the spirit of a fursuit without a actual fursuit.
A handful of kids were in fursuit. I love seeing kids in fursuits, its extremely heartwarming. There was someone with the appearance of like a mythical eldritch creature with a skull going on as well as a really wide, long, and big forest green cape. I saw them previously as well. Same goes for the triceratops fursuiter. Actually, while I was talking to iFC staff, some of them, especially Jake Bunny were excited by some of the fursuiters who passed by such as the triceratops fursuiter. And I saw a breakfast themed dog fursuiter at the Artists Alley that night I think, complete with egg yolk ears and a pancake prop out in their fursuit mouth. They were also in the parade as well. I think I also saw a reindeer fursuiter in the parade. Cant remember too much. Most of the parade’s a blur. I was predicting 600-700 fursuiters and adjusted my prediction to 800 after the parade. The original estimate was based on attendance growth between 2023 and 2025 and the statistic that 20-25% of furry con attendees tend to be fursuiters at every single furry con. And thats something that just keeps being proven true over and ovee again.
I know I saw one or two fursuiters who were very purple. There was a Jedi fursuiter or something with an awesome lightsaber. There was another in light leather armor/gear carrying identical daggers or shortswords, one in each hand/paw. I remember a fursuiter with music coming from them as well plus one dresses up rock/punk style. Not that many fursuiters were dressed on theme for the con’s theme so the few that were really got to stand out a bit. Someone was wearing a Fluttershy fursuit. Fluttershy fursuits are something special. Ive seen up to 4 so far in my lifetime. Fluttershy is just one of my many favorite fictional characters alongside Kirito, LLENN, Pitohui, Eugeo, Silica & Pina, Sinon, Lisbeth, Asuna Yuuki, Judai Yuki, Yusei Fudo, Yuma Tsukamo, Playmaker & Ai, Go/Gor, Spectre, Soulburner, Ghost Gal, Yami Yugi, Mahad, Shadi, Ishizu, The Hair Guy, Abridged Pegasus, Abridged Tristan, Scooby Doo, Velma, Shaggy, The Hex Girls, Jimmy Neutron, Carl Wheezer(largely because of his voice and someone covering songs in his voice), Stitch, Jumba, Pleakley, Lilo, Sonic, Tails, Shikamaru, and the list goes on.
I cant really think of any other fursuiters that stuck out. Now I just need to remember more about between the parade and when I stopped by the dealers den for a hot minute.
Prelude To Deep Dish: Aha! Checked relevant Discord message history to uncover some stuff! But theres still a 20-30 minute gap I dont recall what I did during. What could I have done? I dont know! So unless my memory is suddenly jogged later, Im just going to move on. Juju, its sister(he also uses it pronouns and Ive been working on getting used to those as pronouns, not an easy task for obvious reasons), and I met up at Mikey’s so they could get some drinks. I got there well before they did and thats not just because Im swift on my feet. I just had more open time or something. Is that blood? No, nevermind. Sorry, Baldurs Gate 3(its a 17+ game so if you are under the age of 17, please wait till youre 17 to play or just boycott Larian games along with everyone if its CEO is still being an AI slop shill) is in my head now because I said swift on my feet and my character in game kept saying “is that blood blah blah blah” throughout the entire playthrough a number of times. So it was on Saturday I showed my gown and plate armor.
Juju found them so cool, saying he noticed that I put princess in my Discord bio. To which I replied: “I really identify as a princess” or something akin to that. I do not want to be treated any differently due to me being a princess because I have chosen to be one in a way not seen anywhere traditionally at all. There are no duties for the kind of princess I am. I wrote all about that in my life advice/wisdom book Im writing so thats enough on that here. Showing my armor cause it to say he knows someone who does actual blacksmithing, showed some of their work to me such as a brand new axe, and also said their partner is a knight. And I agreed with him that that is so perfect. Smithys do not get the credit or respect they deserve most of the time. A medieval knight would probably be dead in the gutters without a smithy’s tools, armor, and weapons. You cannot find anything better quality in steel than what is created by a blacksmith. It requires years of learning as well as so much patience and precision. Ive seen enough scenes of blacksmith in games as well as anime to understand that well enough.
The forging scenes in Baldurs Gate 3 show the process quite well. I would love to meet this smithy friend of Juju’s as well as their knight. I am so close yet so far from achieving my dream of completing an alternate modernized path to knighthood. Its annoying. I have waited almost 4 years now but theres still so much to do. If I just did enough virteoys actions and changed myself enough, I will have finally done it at long last. I am running out of time to do it before a certain breaking point in society is eventually reached. My chest feels tense from the anticipation as well from thinking about the long wait. When I embraced being a princess, I had a multi day increase in happiness and motivation. I can only imagine what will happen once I can call myself a knight and recite the vows I will write till I know them by heart before that can happen and then recite the vows 3 times every single day from there on out.
I want to just call myself a knight and live as one already but I cant. I havent earned the right to truly call myself one without any doubt in my mind. We would leave the restaurant together after not very long but kept talking. I decided to accompany Juju and his sister to see what that kandi furs meetup was all about so we just kept walking and talking. And talked about a bunch of things. If there was anyone I became friends and bonded with most of all at AnthrOhio 2026, it was most definitely Juju. I know that to be certain. Whew, all the things I have typed in this writing are excellent writing practice that may even benefit the story Im trying to finish writing so that I can get out of writing it already. We were going to go to kandi furs after all but there was a line to get in because the room hit capacity so we instead chatted more as we made our way to the panel about werewolves and other TF(transformation) things. That was a panel Juju had been considering to go to as well and it worked out. I stayed for the first 15 minutes of the panel after we chose to sit in the backrow in part due to the tables in rows.
Those tables were not in there for Iron Author mere hours earlier but for some reason, they were there anyway. And they would remain in there the rest of the con. I didnt get to hear all that much before I left to go to the Dealers Den before it closed up shop for the day. Juju and I would next see each other at the sketchbook swap the next day. What I did hear at the TF panel was that Christianity perverted creatures like spirits and mythical creatures into demons and stuff and that transformation is something that has been in human creativity for millennia. Some gods would take on the forms of animals and such. We were told by the panelist that there are multiple versions of the panel online so maybe I should parse through them at some point. I am choosing not to write about anything else that was presented. Its just not enough to me. At dealers, I had one goal in mind. My favorite sibling wanted me to get a surprise. So I did my best and looked my hardest and I talked to some of the dealers while also enjoying light crowds in the place that day to an extent. I asked a dealer if they did custom dakis and I was told their wife does those but isnt open for daki commissions right now and told me her business name.
I also was impressed by the massive selection of stuff for sale and they told me it was a mix of their wife’s creations and their own creations. I appreciated verbally the options for more afforable goodies for purchase. At another dealer, my eyes were semi glued to a sketch of a anthropomorphic big cat wielding a sword and wearing full plate armor. So I nerded out as well as mentioned how much I love the art and how hard it is to draw plate armor, thus allowing me to state I drew the most complex armors donned by Saint Seiya’s main characters. The God Cloths. So many details big and small. They took an average of 2 hours each and I drew 5 of the 6. I didnt feel like drawing Ikki’s Phoenix God Cloth back early in the year when I drew the others. I took the time to look at the art examples in the binder on the dealers table as well and expressed how much I loved looking at what I was looking at. What I saw is what you see more than anywhere else at events that explicitly ban products with AI slop generated images on them. AnthrOhio has an anti-AI slop policy and for that, Im grateful.
They understand whats going on with all that than the average person. Because the furry community largely revolves around artists, maybe much more so than most global communities that are considered subcultures. Shutter, the con chair is literally a photographer. Photography unlike AI slop is art. Anything generated by computers can never be art because they are not sentient. That is why so much art is stolen from living and dead artists and fed into the AI slop programs such as CrapGPT. While I was wandering around, I talked to someone who makes crochet plushies and we got into a discussiom revolving around AI slop. I switched topics to something more pleasant a couple minutes in and we had a good time talking while I also complimented all of the plushies. But then, I found something at another dealers.. Bells. Clippable bells. I wanted one. I bought a red one after looking at everything else on sale there. It would be hours until I actually clipped it onto my collar.
I loved it so much on my collar that when it didnt sound loud enough the next morning while I was walking to the con, I went ahead and bought 2 more at the Dealers Den. The bells are the accessories I bought to add to my collar. Bells are just part of my thing now. Theyre mainly meant for cat and reindeer furries but no one can stop wolf furries like me from wearing them too. I cant state enough how much I love the bells. Theyre so cute, in my favorite color, and just so pleasing to hear. Wore em while sword training once and they made so much noise while I watched the anime The 8th son? Are you kidding me?. An interesting isekai but I cant believe the MC decided to pursue “becoming a proper noble”. Dude, dont do that! Thats so boring and disappointing! Stay tied to your past life, keep knowing some noble customs arent just a bunch of bunk! Because they are a bunch of bunk to the point that the descendants of those who invented them in real life should feel second hand embarrassment when thinking about formal crap.
Or should I say, fancyslop? Or better yet, formalslop? Tangant over. Where was I? Oh yes. After I bought the first bell, I continued my quest and eventually found something: a sticker of Stitch and I got in line to buy it from a dealer who was collaborating with others for just one dealer space. When I pulled out my wallet to pay, they recognized the wallet as something an artist they know makes and that they dont make them anymore and that the dealer themself had the same design on something else. Small world! The conversation didnt last long. My quest complete, a new quest soon began: finding a place for my sibling to pick me up to have dinner together. She was running late and had gone up to Columbus separately on Saturday morning due to work schedule and all that crap. ..I pressed the wrong button and thought I deleted this entire writing by accident. I didnt but that was FRIGHTENING. For a few seconds, my world sort of came crashing down but that didnt last long enough for that vibe to really take hold. Holy crap. 4 minutes later and Im still recovering from that scare. Whew. That was..
That was really scary. My favorite sibling stayed in Columbus for 2 days, one night and left for home sooner than our cousin and I did. It took the better part of 40 minutes for me and her to roll on out like the Autobots towards where we were going to eat after Dealers Den closed. And our appetites were set on a whole deep dish pizza. We didnt get any appetizers, I wanted to get back to the con for Sigma’s The Trans Experience panel and the deep dish was probably going to take like 45 minutes to make. I just had water as usual. I have been hard at work trying to free myself of impulsive desires. Starting to rarely drink pop in fall 2023 helped a lot and recently choosing to avoid eating store bought sweets from now on for the most part and actually committing to doing so this time around unlike the times before has made a small difference. I have eaten so many store bought treats so many times that I have memorized their tastes and they just dont beat fresh treats like at theme parks and such. I want most of the treats I have to be fresh and delicious. Im willing to pay and eat sweets less to accomplish that.
I will free myself of impulsive desires someday. I am getting closer to that goal. Its taken serious willpower to get this far and I will never give up on trying to complete the objective. We ordered the deep dish as soon as we could with how the restaurant was short handed and all that stuff. And on the way to the place and as we ate, we exchanged stories of what went on since the last time we had seen each other before switching to different topics. I will not go into any of that. *read this word in the voice of Skinnet the skunk from Lego Legends Of Chima, a series seemingly mostly unnoticed by the furry community* Soooorrrrrrrrrrryyyyyy. Despite earning a reputation amongst my immediate family growing up as a messy eater, I hardly made a mess at all eating my half of the largest size deep dish pizza they make at the restaurant. I didnt use a fork or a knife, which means that Doji from Beyblade Metal Fight would call me uncivilized. But who cares what that guy thinks?
Hes manipulative, power hungry, and all kinds of bad alongside the voice and personality of something akin to a butler and stereotypical British man but without that “high class” accent. Hed be horrified by the concept of a furry convention. He also gives off a pretty creepy vibe. Not even falling into a deep hole to his death was enough to put a stop to him and his plots. But eventually, he was finally put down for good at long last. Beyblade Metal Fight, aka Beyblade Metal Fusion, Metal Masters, Metal Fury, and Shogun Steel in the anime dub is an amazing anime thats among the most underrated S tier animes of all time. It was part of my childhood. And that entire franchise is just furry coded as nearly all Beyblades are based on animals real and mythical alike. Diablo Nemesis, Chronos, Jade Jupiter, and Twisted Tempo are among the few that arent based on any animals. Im glad Doji lost his Dark Wolf before season 1 ended. The deep dish was so good. I wish there was more sauce on it but still.
It was really really good. And Ive only fallen in love with deep dish pizza recently, back in early 2024. I was dropped off by my sibling near my hotel and we didnt see each other again until after my cousin dropped me off at home Sunday night. Both of us had to pee multiple times at the restaurant, that was fun.
Back To Con, Not Back In The 90s: The title is a reference to a show most furs should be familiar with by now. After being dropped off and by 8:30 PM I believe, I finally made it to The Trans Experience. I really only went there to see and talk to Sigma as I hadnt seen them once outside of their panels since Thursday night. So Im just going to skip over most of what I heard being talked about. Thats also because I just got to the panel so late and its an 18+ panel with more adult stuff than MST3K. But there is something I will note that was said. Sigma told everyone this was the last time they would be involved in a panel like The Trans Experience as a host. They would be happy if they asked to be part of a similar panel to give some guidance and/or insight/answer some questions. Their memories of their affirming surgery have just faded more and more, they want to pass the panel on to trans people with more recent affirming surgeries.
That was what really showed me Sigma’s true character most of all and that is why I intend on staying friends with them. Hah, if I call someone a friend, theyre practically “stuck” with me for life. Ironic I say that when it was my closest friend, a comic creator and artist from Canada known as Gearpunk who originally said something like that to me. He’s wonderful. Check out his comic Fractured. Fans of Space Dandy may appreciate some details in it like the turtle themed spaceship. Issue 1 of Volume 1 has so much going on deliberately that readers and characters alike do not really know whats going on. After the panel was over(after time was extended a little bit and allowed to do so), some people asked more questions and I waited for my chance to speak with them. I would speak with them about various things for a few minutes, during which all the stuff for the panel still in the room was packed up and me, they, and their friend/copanelist left the room together. When we started talking, I was greeted with a hug. That hug made the song from the Super Silly Funland part of Despicable Me 1 play in my head.
It was why I later said just minutes later or maybe the next day instead that we are basically friends at this point. There was no disagreement on that at all. No disagreement of any kind. Sigma had to return to their room so we were unable to talk for very long but we promised each other to try to hangout the next day, no guarentees. I asked if they knew about the sketchbook swap but they said they were going to the trinket trade instead. Theres something really funny about that but I am not spoiling what it is. Thats something I will talk about on the later. Wait! Oh! OOOOOOOHHHHH! I think I knew what I did in that 20-30 minute gap after all! The Artists Alley! The Artists Alley! I visited the Artists Alley and talked to some artists, including one quite extensively who told me about a cool event or something that happens in my area that they love driving to go to. They had a lot of art prints on their table and I flipped through all of them and gave plenty of compliments such as “your art belongs in a museum” before adding that pretty much all artists deserve to have their works in museums.
They said they were actually working on that or something and I enthusiastically supported that verbally. I also commissioned another artist there for a badge of my ponysona. They point out that my ponysona’s name is a little funky as pallets are not the same things as paint paletts but I was like: “its set in stone already, screw it” and they were cool with that. I also mentioned I came up with a 3500 word backstory for them on the spot. We talked a little bit and I enjoyed flipping through their art examples. I had their pony stuff out because they didnt have time to switch over after previously vending at a brony con or something. Post con, I have realized I have made a grave mistake. Never introducing myself as also being my ponysona Pallet Blade or making ANY progress towards making them truly a part of myself. I didnt even think to do that until after AO ‘26! Whoopsie daisies! I am going to have to fix that but its not going to be easy, their name and design were finalized just last summer! If I have them become a recurring character in my stories and I guess buy some horsey things too..
And introduce myself as being Pallet Blade as well.. That should eventually do the trick. Well then. Im going back to the intro of this writing before I get ready for bed to begin progress in ceasing to make the grave mistake I have been making all this dang time! It will not take long! It really did not take longer at all. About a hundred more ponysona affirming things and I should be good to go. Im going to have to start thinking: “Im an alicorn”. Heh, I can take that on just fine. I am basing my newly emerging mentality around my ponysona based on my mentality around my fursona. I was going to make a new pinned post for my Bluesky eventually because I now identify as a princess so this works out. I was promised that the badge would be completed before the con was over. I saw the sketch hours later and approved immediately. Next morning, I approved of the final look and was told that the laminator would be fired up. I sure hope my nearest branch of my local public library has a laminator I can use.
After all, I want to make the pfp of my fursona I made and use everywhere as well as a local city furry thing as badges and get them laminated. Did I already cover this? Well, by Sunday afternoon, those things are things I intended on doing, in light of meeting local furs at the con and having so many sona badges.
Printing Pandemonium: Back to what I was writing about before and I am so so glad Im almost onto writing the final day of AnthrOhio 2026. Something I had been trying to find time to do all day was print out copies of my Iron Author submission as Jaru told us all at Iron Author Rules that the hotel has an office with a printer in the lobby of 401. So thats exactly where I went. And I couldnt find an office anywhere until I really looked at the corner of the place between the main entrance and the side entrance. Its so easy to miss because there are no walls between it and the rest of the lobby but its right there. The office. I made sure to check for a printer and there was in fact, a printer as promised. Im going to be honest.
Doing the printing via a Mac that I was able to use for up to 30 minutes without having to extend the time was a hassle. And thats not just because Macs force you to download whatever you want to print. It all started because I forgot my password to get access to my Docs on the Mac. I should have just reset the password but instead, I painstakeningly made the document with my submission on it viewable by anyone with the link and typed the link by finger onto the web browser. No matter how many times I tried, it did not work and I wasted like at least 12 minutes doing that until I gave up and knew there was no other choice. I wasnt able to send a password reset request on a device Ive never used before for my account but that actually makes a lot of sense. Thats why I wanted to type the link up painstakeningly instead. In the end, I had to reset it on my phone and that allowed me to get access. I hit file print after remembering from trade school that thats how you do it on a Mac. It downloaded my document instantly. I tried to fight that by retrying but to no avail. Thats one of the things that sucks about Macs.
You have to download everything you want to print. That can be troublesome at times, mostly when youre using a public computer. I disposed of the document and its copy as needed when I was finally done. But printing was no picnic either. Just when I thought nothing else would go wrong, I print it out for the first time and my submission takes up 2 pieces of computer paper. In school, we were able to print things double sided to reduce the amount of paper used. When I changed the setting to 2 pages per paper and printed some copies of my submission, it wasnt double sided. Instead, everything was fit onto the front side of one paper each and so, all the text was tiny and that was a problem. So I guess the printer at the Hilton Downtown Columbus doesnt have double sided after all. I even double checked but couldnt find that anywhere. Forced to admit defeat, I returned the settings to normal and had the copies print as they did originally so that they would actually be easy to read.
Finally done with all that, I put em all in my sketchbook because when I put a paper in a bag in something that isnt a binder or folder, it always gets all wrinkled and all that. I tried to avoid that and thankfully, the copies were not bent looking at all the next afternoon. Following the completion of that side quest, the Furry Drag Show was coming up in less than 30 minutes so I think I had some water, used the bathroom, and then, headed towards that. On my way there, I was messaged online about a art scroll and where it was set up. So I said I would go check it out and thats precisely what I did. There were plenty of supplies to borrow set out by the creator of the scroll who questioned the length of the name on my con badge by asking if I was trying to see how long I could make it. I replied I just have my fursona’s name as well my chosen name on it, thats all there was to it. This led to some exchange of dialogue about really long names that went into hypothetical really like and I was like: “Thats so Let’s Game It Out style.” I asked the scroll’s creator how long it is. Their pal next to them replied: “Yes.” Before they themselves said they didnt know or after they did, I said: “Good answer.”
And their pal was like: “I was right!” I drew my fursona in full color bust style with a roller coaster over and around them, finishing by putting “@blazewarriorwolf” and “find me to hear about a Minecraft theme park resort”. I didnt attend much of the charity auction the next day so I dont know if it was auctioned off or not. Im pretty sure it was but cant say for certain myself. At Opening Ceremonies, they did talk about the specific area of 401 they had for taking in items donated to be auction off at the charity. They also talked about charity baskets people could bid on before the auction and win them before it started. Those baskets had all kinds of goodies including passes to Kings Island(Id love to know how they got those as Im assuming the passes were not tied to anyone’s names or whatever. That must have led to an interesting conversation with Kings Island’s guest services or something unless the park quietly has a procedure for something like that kind of unusual season pass purchase.) and the COSI museum right in Columbus itself. COSI sounds really cool. All the science stuff and such.
After I finished speaking with the creator of the scroll, I decided to go sit down nearby or something. And I ran into the artist I commissioned the full body badge from the night before. He was decked out in a full on clown costume and we talked quite a bit while he was working on art commissions. Its plain obvious why that worked out. Years of drawing experience, enough to allow for conversation while drawing, thats not an easy skill to achieve. To be able to talk and draw at the same time? You have to really know what youre doing by instinct to pull that off. All the muscle memory and stuff. If you were guessing, yeah, he’s the artist of Circus Kitsch. Why cant I recall his furry name? The artsy clown(he told me he made the whole clown thing a part on part of his thing for his art and I love clown costumes) and I talked about a lot of things and he’s been on Minion Blast and we agreed that its so odd that its there in the same park as Men In Black: Alien Attack. We talked about Disney as well. Just a lot of theme park stuff which got him excited as he’s also really into theme parks. There is a huge crossover between the furry and theme park communities and you can largely thank Disney World for that.
I told him about the facial validation nonsense and he agrees that thats weird. Like if we ignore how invasive it is, its still just really weird. Its never been industry standard, at least not till CrapGPT, Midjourney, and so on came to be, behaving very much like invasive species of plants and animals. They are invasive to the arts, humanities, sciences, history, cultures of the world, and so on. They compete with who and what was already there and literally siphon resources, money, and more from there alongside all the people living near all the datacenters their creators have been obsessively propping up all over the place like weeds that are also killer plants that came from nowhere in nature. I grew up going to theme/amusement parks so I know facial validation has never been an industry standard until the last 4 years in any way, shape, or form. I talked to someone who was with him and making sure he was getting hydration as well. I complimented their Lightning McQueen Rusteez themed shirt. Which actually reminds me of a shirt that came in the mail at last while I was at AnthrOhio.
It has red plate armor printed on it as its design. The armor is apparently of some evil demon king or something from a RPG game and buying the shirt online gave me some digital rewards for that RPG so I might actually play it sometime. Though I actually have my eyes on Paralives right now as it promises to be a strong indie alternative to The Sims 4. EA is now owned by either the Saudis or UAE elite alongside like Jared Kushner so I suggest y’all stop giving EA money. The amount of buyable packs there are for The Sims 4 for now is bunkers. From late 2017 to spring 2018, I spent like $200 on Sims 4 packs. That was well before I knew about the evils of giant corporations but also when I was learning about the evils of the mainstream music industry. Brainwashing people to like songs by playing them on repeat on Top 40 radio.. The loudness wars.. All that nonsense. Thats why I drifted away from going out of my way to like what was hot and trendy. And Ive only drifted away more. I dont know about new memes or viral trends because I really dont care. The mainstream sucks. Its all plastic, smoke, lies, and mirrors.
Try to fit in? I dont think so. What I want to do is be myself, build community with others, create things, and help save our planet. I dont want to be all plastic and like everyone else, some irrelevant person with no original thoughts nor diverse interests. We must fight against AI slop “brainrot” because of so many reasons including it causing people to lose their awareness of their own potential and creativity and having their thoughts becoming less and less original and more compliant with the intentions of those in power who wish horrible, beyond horrible things on all of us. Back to that shirt with the red plate armor print. Its exactly the kind of thing I spent hours and hours over months scouring the internet for. Its too bad Lego’s knight costumes dont come in adult size. Otherwise, I would be tempted to get one because woah, their designs have evolved to cartoonishly try to mimick the appearance of armor with 3 plate curiasses and its great to look at. The artist I commissioned eventually had to leave to go somewhere.
He said he hadnt had as much time to work on commissions as he thought. I approved the barebones sketch he sent me earlier online but I have not gotten an update on them since besides being messaged around 12 hours latee that something beyond his control happened by Sunday morning. So he’s behind and thats okay. I actually did not originally plan to sit down and talk at all. I was going to go to the Furry Drag Show but by the time I was ready to go in, there was a line to get in as Secondary Events had hit near capacity so furs had to leave for anyone else to be allowed in. I had no idea there was a Furry Drag Show that is an established thing in the community until I talked to the artist about it and the long line in. And the last two sentences have made me think of a quote from an anime that deserves a second season that I finished watching 2 days ago. It was The 8th son? Are you kidding me? A older mage was asked to go defeat an undead ancient dragon to keep the airship he was on from being attacked, And he said in a very specific way that will remain in my memory forever: “I cant defeat that dragon”.
After the artist got up and left, I just went back to my hotel room and interacted with people online before bed.
Check Out “Blues”: There were no blues. Not yet at the moment at the very least back then. Side note: Blues music was invented by black people as was rock n roll after it. If it werent for black people, there would be no death metal, Metallica, Scorpions, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hollywood Dream The Ride, Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, Hard Rock Cafe, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Skid Row, Babymetal, DragonForce, Helloween, King Diamond, Ramones, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, The Pretty Reckless, Incubus, Hard Rock Casino, Metalopocalypse, Beavis & Butthead, Schoolhouse Rock, Greta Van Fleet, Led Zepplin, Beatles, Elvis, Godflesh, Napalm Death, Dead Kennedys, Green Day, Black Sabbath, Mac Sabbath, Static X, Korn, Slipknot, J-Pop, etc. So the morning before going back to the con was pretty normal but with the twist of my cousin and I packing everything up and making sure nothing was left behind. Nothing was left behind. We were able to bring everything down in one trip.
Then we went to the parking garage he parked in and loaded up the car with our stuff except for what was in our pockets as well as my backpack. I carried around my backpack the entire con and it wasnt a big deal. Hardly felt the weight increase due to what I had in it at all. I gave him my roomkey so he could check out on his own as he didnt need me for that. I then went back to the con, about 20 minutes late for the plushie meet up but it was fine. I wasnt sure where to sit so a person directed me to a table where a bunch of like skunk plushies were out. Seeing all the tables with plushies on them, I knew what I had to do when I sat down. I pulled out my 2 favorite plushies who I brought from home with me: Andromeda the wolf(got them at the Indianapolis Zoo the aftenoon of the day after iFC 2022) and Chocolate the horse(bought her at Holiday World September 2023, a week or two after iFC 2023). Andromeda is a white and gray wolf with brown eyes and the appearance of a wolf puppy.
Chocolate’s all black besides a large white area on her forehead, her brown nose, brown nostrils, and white stripes on her legs. That means her mane and tail are all black. A wolf and a horse. Ironically, my fursona’s a wolf(not a fox, not a cat, not a folf, a wolf.) and then theres my alicorn ponysona. I just stared into space for some seconds, imagining my fursona as a fursuit, which has been surprisingly easy to do for the last roughly seven years. And that remains to be the case, even after I sustained a concussion last summer. My long recovery from that proved to end up being good for my prospects in the end. So I set my favorite plushies down and mostly talk to other furs at the table including fursuiters holding plushies of each other which was really adorable. I learned about the stories of some of the other furs’ plushies, told the stories of my own, and explained that I no longer collect plushies because my room has all the plushies my favorite sibling and I grew up with plus the ones I bought since then and after my purchase of a mystery plushie this year, Im all good and I just have so much stuff at home.
Whatever else I get in the future will be mainly stuff that will help me survive dangerous situations and help protect lives. I cannot be a full on protector if I am unable to have what is required to have a solid shot of surviving dangerous situations should things come to that. I wont just throw my life away. I have way too much to live for. If I must give up my own life to protect someone else, it better be well after helping protect lives across many bad situations through being equipped and well protected. You dont see a knight give their life unarmored to save another’s life in fiction all that much for a reason. Enough on such a subject. I also talked about sleeping with a Minecraft spider plushie Ive had since 2014. His name is Spidey and almost every single night, I sleep with them and 3 other plushies. Another fur told me they like their plushies on their bed outside of when they are sleeping, in which case, they all get knocked off. Yet another has a hamper hung on the ceiling for their plushies.
After some time, I got up to talk to other people as well and see the table where there were plushies being adopted in exchange for donations to charity. Thats where I got my free plushie collector ribbon. Red with gold text. I do not like gold that much, but it looks great with silver(on plate armor), white, and red. Because of gold’s ties to wealth as defined artifically by people, I am usually repulsed by such things as suits of armor made out of gold or as SkyDoesMinecraft used to call it, butter. That joke’s funnier when you consider how gold armor in the game has such low durability. Gold IS a soft metal. Its its visual appeal that has made millennia of civilizations value it so much. But the Millennium Items in Yugioh are really cool despite being made of gold other than how that gold was.. obtained.. Whatever you think about how it was obtained if you dont know already, its worse. But let’s not dwell on that. This writing is supposed to be fun and archival! Not dark and depressing! If you must know, find that out later. Let’s focus on the main subject here instead.
Going to that table would lead to something unexpected. I met one of AO’s staff members who was one of the hosts of the meet up: Moki Jaggz. She’s local to me and all it took to figure that out was mention a specific store I will not divulge the name of here, sorry. We talked about a lot of things such as Kings Island before it was time for the group photo. And by group photo, just a picture of all of the plushies everyone brought together on one table. No furs were actually in it. I was also talking to another fur because they started talking to Moki, having adopted the pufferfish Webkinz somefur didnt want anymore. So we talked about Webkinz. It was all the rage when I was little kid and Rem, the other fur I was talking to said they still have their old Webkinz account. But it has their deadname on it and they started a new one but gave up as that didnt feel right, to just up and abandon all the effort and memories of the old account. Moki suggested they try to contact support to get the name changed. I wonder if anyone ever produced a Webkinz cartoon because I would pay to see something like that.
Oh yeah, I just recalled Zhuzhu Pets were huge at the same time as Webkinz. And also that I talked to some people at AO about A Cloudy Chance With Meatballs. That series is underrated. Its second movie has an evil corporation disguised as a good corporation. Fake name: Live Corp. Real name: Evil Corp. After the group photo, we all ended up adding one another online along with a 4th person who was welcomed into our discussion as it turned towards us finding out all of us were local to one another. Rem plans on maybe making a planning group for meetups sometime. Moki had to run off due to staff duties so the 3 of us planned on going to the Dealers Den together except the other fur made other plans and couldnt actually come with us. Okay, I need to remember that fur’s name. Brb. Dang guided access mode(it helps me stayed focused on writing better). I screwed up with the passcode to unlock it. Okay. Brb for realz! He’s Big Man T-Dawg where I added him. So now I remember his name or at least, one of his names.
“Im Going To Be Running Around Everywhere”: Rem and I then talked as we headed from Secondary Event in 402 to 401 basement and looked through both the Dealers Den and Artists Alley while I struggled to find the dealer who was selling bells and the artist I commissioned the headshot badge from separately. We discussed a whole bunch of things including jobs, my stories, my art, and my Minecraft theme park resort. They went along with wherevee I wanted to go for some time and we had a blast hanging out. The hanging out continued to board gaming as they wanted to try out Blood On The Clocktower. I would have tried it out too if I hadnt had to do more running around as I would end up doing all the way to 4:30 pm ish. We talked a bit more as more players came in and apparently, the game actually ended up lasting till 3 PM. I made the right choice in not playing and soon returned to the Artists Alley to look again. I had at least successfully gotten the bells when I was with Rem still if I am not mistaken. I got the headshot badge and the artist told me they had a blast drawing it!
Before I had to “run off” to Iron Author, I mainly talked to Stary again. She was playing Pokemon Go as it has like all of the Pokemon and she likes exploring places because of it and she was in a group for it due to 2020. I didnt buy anything, we just had a blast talking. I saw Twining Tree Creations at the Artists Alley at some point and almost commissioned a badge as that was an option but I was looking for an artist with pony art examples to have draw a badge of my ponysona at the time. So that was on Saturday. Thats right! I bought a cute artsy artificial nature sculpture from Twining Tree Creations all the way back at iFC 2021 or iFC 2022. Hope I get to go back there this year. Rem I think is planning on going there and they suggested we carpool if things align to require something like that. I soon had to go and told Stary as much, said goodbye, and I was off to Iron Author with just a few minutes till it was scheduled to start. I used the bathroom and filled my water bottle before going in.
Things were chill as we waited for the other judges to appear. I handed the copies of my submission in and sat my not so fluffy butt at all down. Sarah was the second judge to show up, before which Jaru went over the rules again and said that people didnt have to be at the panel the previous day to partake and that normally, there are 2 days between Iron Author Rules and Judgement. Having to wait for 402 to be open for furry usage changed plans a bit. Manick soon came in and said that Rhubarb and Cosmic were at Citrine’s concert and enjoying it so much so we waited for them a bit. Actually, there are a number of panels I skipped because I didnt actually have time for them. Convention War Stories and Citrine’s Chaotic Charity Concert were 2 of them. The other guests of honor never showed up to judge so we went on without them. I should have volunteered to read my entry aloud first but I didnt feel like it that much. I guess the nerves were subconsciously getting to me or something.
I did feel semi nervous but it didnt seem that bad at all. I ended up being the second to last fur to go. One or two of the participants had a judge read theirs instead. But I cannot for the life of me really recall the other entries except for one of them. I do hope Jaru makes sure his idea of having entries of Iron Author appear in the conbook and the site in the future is made reality. Because I would love to enjoy the other entries again and be refreshed on them all. One of the entries was about like performing at a rock concert and having instruments that didnt work. Some of them were genuinely funny but I just cannot recall any of them all that well except for the funniest one. The funniest one wasnt mine. The funniest was read by a duo. One, in a suit with a British accent and a black unicorn horn hat. The other, in a pretty dress who had worn 3 or more dresses over the duration of the con in a more standard colored unicorn horn hat. A picture of a tree having gone through their house was on the front page and I do not know how their copies of their work was double paged so that both pages were on the same paper.
They made so many copies that they had enough for everyone, not just the judges to follow along with. So Im going to take advantage and pull out my copy, so long as it didnt somehow get lost due to the sketchbook swap. May as well because I have all this info in my noggin about what is written on the thing but I cannot pull out the full recollection, the words I remember are just out of my reach to recall enough to write down! It is called Recipe Disaster. Ingredients: 1 Tall British Man, 1 box of Twinkies, 1 audience, 1 WAGS, 4 Kids, 1 Jaru, 1 Hurricane, 1 Rented house, 9 Inch Nails, 1 roll of duct tape, 21 Pilots, 1 Manick, 50 dollars worth of raffle tickets, 1 bought house(without a tree on it), 4 cups of freshly chopped Cosmick Rubarb. I was already reeling from this list. So hilarious. The fur in the beautiful dress was the one to write all of this entire thing. Preparation, 1. Take your Tall British Man and have him read the rest of the directions for you. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. (this literally was done) 2.
Get your box of Twinkies and use them to bribe the audience. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. I laughed so much at this part as she came around passing out Twinkies to everyone. I would eat the Twinkie as nourishment during Dead Dog Pub Sings hours later. I laughed so much and so hard that my tears of joy got on my glasses! 3. Remind audience members to donate so much to WAGS that they change their name from WAGS to RICHES. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 4. Ensure that your 4 Kids knows how to correctly identify a donut. Now check to see how much your audience has aged by seeing how many of them understand this joke. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. That joke screams mockery of 4Kids. “All hail 4Kids!” (Yugioh Abridged line) 5. Beat your Jaru (in a SFW manner) until they realize that this year’s con theme is as much about weather as it is about rock and roll. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 6. Take your hurricane and apply it to your rented house until it looks like the above photo.
Do this twice (yes, this literally happened twice in the past year) for good measure. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 7. Unwillingly, let the rented house rest in this state for 18 freaking days! And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 8. Attempt to apply your 9 inch nails to the damaged house sliding, but give up and use duct tape instead. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 9. Take your 21 pilots and use them to fly back and back to WPAFW to acquire plushies. While more expensive, trust that this method is less chaotic than the WPAFW bus system. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. So the Western Pennsylvania Furry Weekend bus system is a mess? Oh good grief.. 10. Have youe Manick politely explain to you the WPAFW raffle system. Then, take your 50 dollars’ worth of raffle tickets and place exactly one ticket into each lot. This will somehow allow you to win 53 plushies. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. There is a story to this. This really happened, didnt it? 11.
Sort your newly won 53 plushies into the following categories: Unicorn, other animals, and apparently unbuyable and highly sought after Fursona Pins plush. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 12. Before you leave WPAFW, whip your Manick(in a SFW manner) until they realize that WPAFW is a horrible acronym. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. This reminded me of OWCA from Phineas & Ferb as its the Organization Without A Cool Acronym. 13. Rest for seven months and/or attend 20 conventions and have a major surgeey in the interim. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. I.. know how expensive dresses can be, especially full on ball gowns like the ones the writer of this was wearing and I was thinking earlier while writing this that the two are suspiciously rich. If step 13 is based in reality, it really says it all. 14. Buy a house without a tree on it. This must occur in a 24 hour period while attending a convention. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. I am only realizing it now.. Many steps are based in reality. Can you believe that?! Woah woah woah! 15.
During this time period, check the age of your Cosmick Rhubarb. If your Cosmick Rhubarb indicates that the magenta dress you were wearing on Friday was red rather than pink, its eyes might need to be replaced. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. I was laughing so many times during all of this. This is still funny to read even now, almost exactly 5 days after it was read aloud. 16. Attempt to understand escrow while watching a fursuit parade. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 17. Donate weird, unbuyable Fursona Pins plushie to charity auction. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 18. Somehow succeed in buying a house despite being a millennial who was told to buy avocado instead. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. 19. Profit for the charity. Seriously, this is not an investment property. And always remember… this is a recipe for disaster. Im going to have something to eat now before I continue writing and will finish watching episode 1 of season 4 of Tensura/That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime while doing so.
I laughed so very much. I believed they had the greatest shot of winning first place. That never changed. I knew I had a good shot of winning but against the hilarity they presented, not even what I wrote could truly compete in generating giggles. What they put together was presented as “creative non fiction” before they got into it. Eventually, after some confusion that happened, I was up. I stood up and walked to the chair with a microphone by it for those who submitted entries and wanted to read their own entries to use. And I could have done a little better with how I used my beginner voice acting skills to express the tone of what I wrote but I still did a great job for the most part. My favorite sibling and I grew up playing with our plushies, doing voices for them, and having all kinds of adventures with them. Sometimes, a plushie would be possessed by an evil entity. Sometimes, the plushies would have feuds. Other times, strange things happened. I will not write about one of those things.
I shouldnt write about it anywhere without my sibling’s permission. To say it was weird is an understatement. Me making a mii of one of the plushies in Tomodachi Life 1 accidentally ended up causing a new OC to be created and become very distinct from the plushie she is based on. Sometimes, there would be battles involving the plushies. All those hours we played for years like that.. Its no wonder I was able to voice what I wrote at Iron Author so well. Plus, thousands of hours watching cartoons and anime since the end of 2020. Those 2 things combined pretty much made it my destiny to act out what I read out loud so easily. I had a blast reading my submission aloud. I made so much tone and emotion into it while saying calm and composed. I underestimated my voice acting skills. One of my lesser goals is to voice characters for animated shows someday.
When my sibling and I did voices for our plushies, we made them all unique as best as we could at the time. Doing so was one of the best things about our childhoods by far. I was sweating a bit while I belted out every word I was reading without stopping for anything. I verbally kept the flow of the chaos and everything going on. One of the most fun things Ive ever done and my submission had to have been the longest in word count of all of them. I was reading it aloud for quite some minutes. When I was done, the cheers and applause were really quite loud. Sarah spoke: “I dont whhhhhhaaaaaaattttt was happening. Perfect.” After the last fur to submit something read theirs aloud, the 3 judges left us to our own devices and told us to: “entertain yourselves” as they went to go to con ops or something to have a meeting to decide who won. I did not win but I had so much fun. Looking back, Im glad I didnt win because Im such a seasoned writer. I would rather someone who is far less experienced than I am win.
They need the win and morale boost more than I do. Facing internal struggles and beating them in the process of writing over 4 million words of stories.. That itself is victory after victory after victory after victory. While we waited, I complimented Disaster Recipe and learned that they realized that they would have to actually buy Twinkies and left the con to do so and had a bit of an adventure. 2 stores were out but the second store had 2 boxes left in the back at the very least. After I was done talking with them, I complimented the fursona badges of another fur who was seated nearby. I was treated to a treat in the form of the telling of a backstory with excellent worldbuilding. I cant recall the full details but one of them is a year younger and a clone of the other created with magical help as their mom thought he was dead along with her husband. The backstory I was told was so very good. Faster than expected, the judges returned. I exclaimed: “That was fast!” They did take notes on all of the entries as they were read aloud and that certainly helped speed things up as did Cosmick and Rhubarb never showing up.
My entry caused Jaru to talk about being impressed by the usage of voices in some of the entries including mine and Manick expanded on that. That was after Sarah said basically that they were going to talk about each entry in no particular order. I was skeptical about that. Especially after mine was talked about and they went right after that to announcing the top 3. She was just trying to throw us off. Good try but in many things, I am not so easy to decieve! The deception was all fun and games at Iron Author, no harm intended or done, I just find it funny that I wasnt fully decieved. Recipe Disaster earned 2nd place. Mine did not rank in the top 3. Which is okay. Jaru also spoke of while speaking of mine that Ive always loved theme parks because I told him that the day before and my entry really did take place in my Minecraft theme park resort as I planned it to. My entry was unique in that it was an extension of the storyline all of my stories and my theme park resort are on together.
In fact, it was practically a Chaotic Hangouts style writing. Chaotic Hangouts is a story I started almost exactly 4 years ago as of today when Im writing these words: May 29th. It has been on indefinite hiatus since November. Each chapter involves some kind of hangout thats chaotic. And I really stretched the definition of a chaotic hangout many times over the course of the story’s almost 50 chapters so far. And that chaotic anime I vaguely mentioned in my entry? Its JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The JoJo reference was to a scene in the Stone Ocean arc of that series. Gotta love me a JoJo reference out in the wild. The top 3 winners of Iron Author each got a book about writing or bad writing. Manick at some point talked about how hard it is to intentionally write badly and that its a seriously hard skill to have as Jaru told us what the prizes were before announcing winners. And those who did not win got their pick of a good collection of rock band themed guitar pics.
I almost told Jaru about getting a set of Hard Rock guitar pics at Hard Rock Cafe Orlando next to where Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit was for 17 operating years. I instead said other stuff like how easy it was for me to write my entry, how I had written over 4 million words, and that it only took less than an hour to do so. Stuck around long enough to be one of only three furs in the room alongside Jaru and someone else. I also told him I plan on submitted my Fiction Writing 101 panel and things related to that. He replied with words related to what he said the day before at Iron Author Rules. I would have stuck around to talk a little more but I had a sketchbook swap to go to.
3 Friends In One Place: Whats funny about the title is that none of them actually know each other, I dont think. The unofficial sketchbook swap was held 2-3 PM on floor 2 above the lobby of Tower 401. And guess what was next to it? The trinkets trade meetup Sigma mentioned the night before. In my head, I thought: “Fancy seeing you here!” It did not get executed well because Sigma clearly learned that the sketchbook swap was next to them. I mean, it was RIGHT THERE, just 10 steps away and lots of furs on the floor and in chairs/couches with sketchbooks out. But before I talked to them, GabuMatt said hi to me, I said hi back, and promised to split the 40 minutes I had till Theme Park Furs started in the Johnson room of Tower 402 between talking to him and talking to Sigma. Juju also saw me and was on the floor right by Gabu and said hi to me too so I said hi back to him as well. I hadnt had lunch yet and yet, I wasnt hungry. I turned my sketchbook in onto the table for people to bring their sketchbooks and then take one that wasnt theirs to draw in.
After seeing others put fursona badges in theirs, I took off one of my own and would worry about it a bit because its the smallest one of the 3 badges of my fursona I have in size. Sorry for not talking to you much at the sketchbook as I had planned, Gabu. I kinda really got into talking to Sigma. I talked to them while drawing two sketches for 2 other furs via the sketchbook swap and I think of everyone, my sketchbook may have been the biggest. Sigma and I talked about a bunch of things while they were also trading stuff with other people and all that. When the time almost came for me to run off yet again, we gave each other hugs as Sigma was about to walk off to trade with someone a little bit away from where they were sitting and I told them one last thing. That I was going to message them online, they told me they had all kinds of things going, and I said I didnt care how long I had to wait for a response. Im used to even getting responses weeks or months later from some people. And to some furs over the duration of the con, I legit said: “it feels like all artists are so busy all the time”.
I get it. Almost every single artist I have commissioned the last 2 years has been so busy with life that what I commissioned them for took longer to complete than expected. And Im waiting on like 8 things from different artists to be completed right now. Thats no exaggeration either and Im okay. I can wait. Good art takes as long as however long it ends up taking, that is all there is to it. As I was about to head out, I had seen the artist who had my sketchbook prior to doing so and approached them to basically say Im about to head out, I need my sketchbook back, but I will let you finish first. I complimented how good of a job they were doing and I made sure they signed their name so I could maybe find them online sometime. I wished them a good rest of their con and I was running off yet again without actually walking. Ive gotten serious leg day hundreds of times over the last 12 years. Getting back to 402 was no biggie. And soon, I was at Theme Park Furs. Contrary to what I thought, it was mainly a Q&A with all the current and former ride ops in the room.
The original hosts of the panel had to drop out last minute so someone else took over and everything worked out okay in the end. All the ride ops at the panel work or worked for Kings Island or Cedar Point. I asked if they had any evacuation stories but the only one told was one of them being an ex ride op riding a coaster on Cedar Point and seeing people get off and what not. When one of their former coworkers saw them while coming over to check on everyone, they said something really funny. The ride op could get themselves out and all that. I heard all kinds of stories like about the day Son Of Beast closed for good. Their crew came over to the crew for Dodgems/Monster/Scrambler and were told that Son Of Beast had some difficulties that were going to be fixed. And the park just kept changing their minds, saying it was gonna open back up soon, then next year, then the year after that.. It never operated again and the last thing to go was the lift hill. The moment it was pulled down and fell to the ground is a gif online. It was that viral and iconic of a moment.
The most iconic moment for the wooden disaster ever. I asked about ride evacuation stories because I have gotten stuck on or even evacuated on a lot of rides over the years. Here we go. Y’all are about to hear stuff I told no one about at the con because it hardly ever came to mind. The falling apart Cat In The Hat dark ride at Islands Of Adventure. Was boarding the vehicle, about to put down the lap bar. The ride breaks down and I had to get back up. 5 ish minutes later, it was back up after a full cycle test and my fav sibling and I were among the first to get on the ride from there. Lego Ninjago: The Ride, Legoland Florida: ride broke down right before we were going to board it. We decided to wait for it to be fixed and that took about 15 minutes. It was boring but I got to look at the station more at least. We still enjoyed the ride of course. Funnily, the first time we rode it, that ride had us stuck at the end of its course for maybe 3-4 minutes or longer. No evac. Windseeker, Kings Island. Ride operated as normal until we were down to about 50 feet up in the air where Windseeker normally briefly stops before descending further at a very gentle speed. Got stuck up there for like 15 minutes. That was fun. No evac though.
Diamondback, unusually cold day in April 2018, within mere days of when I started writing my stories as a hobby. Got through the whole ride, made it the breakrun, moved to the second break area just before the station. Got stuck long enough for employees to come out and check in on us to make sure all of us were okay. In the end though, the coaster was eventually fixed and we got off the normal way from there. Phantom Theater Opening Nightmare. Stopped at one point long enough to hear 2 lines for the scripted ride has stopped stuff. The flashlight blasters and projected music notes all turned off instantly. But the ride resumed shortly without incident. Also full on got stuck on Boo Blasters a few times but never had to evacuate off of that ride. Delirium. Didnt get stuck on it but watched as people got stuck on it. Ride functioned as normal but when it returned to the rest and did its final spins before coming to a complete stop, it didnt stop. It kept spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. Waited for it to stop for minutes but it was clear the ride was broken so we got out of the line.
Firehawk. Kinda got stuck on the breakrun. Just laid there, waiting for the ride to move again for some time and had to keep my eyes closed to protect my retinas from direct light from the Sun. Flight Of Fear, Winterfest. Got on the ride just fine but on two separate occasions, I was in for a unforseen surprise. The ride stopped after launch both times. The computee automatically did that because the coaster did not get enough speed from the linear induction motors. After stopping, employees came out and pushed the train back into the station and we were let off from there both times. The Beast. Never stuck on it but a number of times, almost got on it before it broke down. Hooray. Dudley Do Right’s Ripsaw Falls, Islands Of Adventure. Back before I hit puberty, while riding it once, it stopped and I got stuck with my dad on it. We didnt evacuate as far as I recall. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, back when it was still Splash Mountain, Disney World. This is the ride I have gotten stuck on the most amount of times by far.
Nothing else comes close unless you count some of Kings Island’s rides being stopped for 2-5 minutes after ride cycle ended. Almost got stuck on Monster once. So back when Tiana’s was still themed to you know what, I got stuck so many times that I remember some of the areas I got stuck on it. A couple times on the lift up to the big splashdown. In the part of the ride about midway with all the houses and beehives and stuff. And Im certain other places too. Got evacuated off of it 1 or 2 times, last time was in November 2017, the last time I rode the ride. I dont recall any other breakdowns that got me stuck or evacuations. Actually, one more. Disneyland, Indiana Jones Adventure. Some kid unbuckled their seatbelt far too soon and shut down the entire ride, causing the emergency lights to turn on. Better that than them not turning on and “incidents at Disneyland Resort: Indiana Jones Adventure”. So back to what was talking about at the Theme Park Furs panel. Monster at KI being talked about.
How its still going because Canada’s Wonderland shut theirs down and gave KI all of its parts back in 2015 or 2016 when Monster was out for a season. It was out for a season again last year due to needing a special part as its manufacturer Everly went out of business in the 90s. Its cars and lights are now the ones from Cedar Point’s which was dismantled mere months ago. 2029 will be its 60th anniversary. Sometime at The Racer, the ride stopped due to the ride breaking down and guests were told to stay in their seats. Somehow, someone who definitely should not have been able to get out of their seat, got out of their seat and walked down the stairs towards the station from the lift hill. They asked to get out because they really had to pee. Only because of that reason, they were let out even though you are not supposed to be doing that even if you really do have to pee. At Monster, two people were being disruptive in some way only to leave the line and start fighting each other in the path between it and the big swings ride Zephyr which also came from Coney Island Cincinnati just as Monster did.
At Soak City, a future AO ‘26 attendee saw something while working as a lifeguard for the water park’s lazy river Splash River. 1 person was hitting the other person. The then lifeguard signaled to the one further up about it but they just shrugged. The two were still physically feuding for whatever reason almost the whole way around the lazy river when they got out as they were supposed to, put their inner tubes where they were supposed to be put back, and resumed fighting. At Firehawk, the coaster that was Kings Island’s biggest maintenance headache, a incident occurred that not even Screamscape knows about before the park opened for guests that day. The mechanisms for bringing the train down so that the seats were in a bed position did not work so during testing, a train went through the whole cycle with the seats upright which they were not designed to do. The coaster had problems at its previous park too and was closed for the whole day and until the issue was resolved. Somefur jokingly asked if that would have counted as a new coaster credit and another replied: “Yes”
The accident at Banshee in 2024 was mentioned. It is a incident identical to the ones that happened at Raptor and several other inverted coasters over the years. Some person hops the fence into the restricted area below the coaster to retrieve a lost item for themself or someone else instead of letting lost & found find it after park closing and the coaster comes and they die. There was an attempt to sue Kings Island I think but it obviously did not work because the incident was guest negligence. Incidents like that are really sad and tragic beyond words but it is not the fault of the parks or manufacturers when situations like this happen. Still, to pay for a mistake you made by having your life forfeit that way is just.. Let’s cut it off here. There is a time and place for really going into all that but this is not the place for that. There is a time and a place for processing and handling everything, good and bad alike. I was never once upset at the con other than when I almost cried due to the early onset of Post Con Depression around 4:30-5:30 PM. It didnt last long because I refused to allow myself to fall into despair.
And I have not experienced any PCD since that instance due to growing up going on so many vacations and already had nasty bouts of both PCD and vacation ending depression. The joy and satisfaction the con gave me ended up subplanting the feelings of PCD that almost fully developed. Now, where there other stories about Kings Island that I can recall being talked about during Theme Park Furs? No, I do not think so. Sure, the fact that there used to be other observation decks publically accessible on the park’s blue 1/3rd scale replica Effiel Tower was touched on as well as why that changed was vaguely mentioned. But other than that, there really wasnt any other stories covered. Oh yeah, it was mentioned that the lifeguard position at the water park is a pain because some lifeguards really like to power trip. There are no rules against splashing explicitly and playing around with my sibling as we splashed each other has never gotten us any flake from any lifeguards. Except for one time. Tidal Wave Bay, not so long ago. At first, we thought we werent the ones being yelled at to stop.
But we were. It was both annoying and puzzling. It had never been a big deal before. I tried to understand it from a safety perspective but it still didnt make sense. Not when Ive seen people splash each across all the years I really remember as well as my oldest memories, not to mention the hundreds of times my favorite sibling and I have splashed each other over the years. Thats it. So.. Cedar Point. A person with a pretty thick accent walks to Raptor and asks if it was Millennium Force. They are told that Millennium Force is actually that big tall blue coaster but was still confused. Eventually, they were told enough to finally understand but the process towards understanding really was quite something. And the former ride op who told that story hoped that they had a good time. There was a time where a guest was being really disruptive by refusing to put their phone away on Blue Streak’s lift. The ride was stopped, the ride op was exhausted from a long shift and was just done, and the person was removed from the ride.
Security was called as is procedure and security asked the ride ops team what they wanted security to do of 2 options, one of which was to remove the person from the park. I believe the phone user was also causing a scene after being removed from the ride. I have seen at Kings Island people having their phones out on The Racer specifically. They think theyre sly due to how the track goes from the station to the lift hill and how you cant really see the lift hill from the station but it never works. They are told to stop as many times as it takes to get them to stop or if that doesnt work, the ride is stopped. There have been a number of incidents at parks involving guests’ belongings and roller coasters. At Steel Vengeance in 2018, not long after its grand opening, someone threw a packet of hot sauce at an incoming train, leading to some nasty results that required first aid treatment. That wasnt talked about at the panel but I read all about that incident. There have also been injuries due to things like phones hitting riders on coasters. On a roller coaster, if a phone’s out, it becomes a dangerous hazard.
Im trying to remember what other incidents I heard about via the panel that happened at Cedar Point but I cant think of any. I did learn that some higher up at Cedar Point is so obsessed with the Cedar Creek Mine Ride that she is the main reason why it’s still operating and got the recent upgrades that it apparently got. One of the ride ops that was at the panel basically said that there is always someone higher up at every single park who is so in love with a ride that they will fight tooth and nail to keep it around. Which makes sense but I never realized that that was a thing on my own at all. The panel went on so long that it started going over its scheduled time and I really had to pee. So I went pee and went back to 401 afterwards and saw Sigma still hanging around. I had to pee so bad that I focused on that instead of doing another chat with them and by the time I was out of the bathroom, they went somewhere else and I only saw them again briefly after Closing Ceremonies had just ended.
And I had a bit of a mission to carry out: my ponysona’s badge was complete and laminated so I went to the Artists Alley to go get it. I did and showed it off to Stary after putting it on the same clip as another badge as the artist I commissioned for the badge did not have one of those things. Having two share the same one was wonky so it wasnt long until I tried to make it not so wonky by sharing a different clip with a different badge to no avail so I put it in my backpack. It was nice to get to Stary a little more at the con even as Artists Alley was announced to be about to close. The staff member who announced that info and when it was closed the moment it was closed threatened something jokingly and then threatened joking that anyone who was left in the Artists Alley after closing would be recruited to join staff next year. The volume of their voice and their jokes were splendid. After it closed, I had another quest on my mind.
The Final Bit Of Running Around: With all the running around I did, I had literally no time to eat lunch. Fortunately, I didnt plan on attending the Charity Auction at 4 nor was I feeling hungry by the time 4 rolled around. Still got lunch anyway which was a good idea because my cousin and I decided to skip dinner to get home sooner and because we wanted to hang around for a good while after Closing Ceremonies ended. After Artists Alley closed, I started towards Mikey’s sometime after that, waited in line for a little bit(15-20 minutes ish), didnt get to try a unicorn bar as they ran out of unicorn bars, and had a solid lunch of 2 slices of pizza and a serving of 4 cheesy breadsticks with very much salsa like tomato sauce. I dont entirely remember everything I did besides lunch between 4 and 5:40 PM. I know it wasnt that much besides texting people. As I do not recall talking to anyone for a good while and Dealers Den and Exhibitors Row were closed by 4:01 as well. Right! I remember something now!
Before lunch, I actually sat down somewhere, having been kinda wiped out from using the bathroom a number of times. It was a chair in the hallway between registration and 401’s lobby. I chatted a bit on a Ohio Furs group and offered to be someone some furs could meet for the first time again in person. It didnt pan out but the conversing was fun at the very least! After lunch, I went straight back to the con. By 5:40, Juju and I had exchanged messages as we wanted to meet up at Closing Ceremonies. Ended up going to the end of the Charity Auction to sit near him. Closest I got was like 3 rows behind him and we texted some before people cleared out of the Charity Auction when I was expecting everyone to stay seated for Closing Ceremonies. The end of the Charity Auction proved to be worthwhile to witness in the end. Not to mention the mini adventure to get to Main Events 2.0 where it was at. I thought Main Events 2.0 was on the 4th floor but it wasnt and I looked online to see where it actually was. I got to the 5th floor after that and was not expecting to turn into a hallway basically just for that room but I did.
I noticed that the windows on one side of the hall are identical to the ones used in the panel rooms on the 3rd floor. That lined up with what I already knew to be true, I was walking 2 floors above some of the panel rooms. Oh and quick detour. I mentioned the Johnson room for a reason. But it wasnt because it was where Theme Park Furs was hosted and had the doors closed into it closed at the time for some reason. The name Johnson reminded me of Johnson of The Big Five from Yugioh Duel Monsters. Johnson is the former attorney for KaibaCorp until he and the other Big Five failed to cause a hostile takeover of KaibaCorp and failed to trap Kaiba in his own fulldive VR video game world and got trapped in cyberspace with the others of the Big Five. They all returned in season 3 to steal the bodies of the main characters and their friends as their own bodies ended up being destroyed. I wont spoil anymore but the way he introduces himself in the English dub as well as in the Abridged Series are really something.
That panel room being names Johnson reminds me of something we were told at Opening Ceremonies I also forgot about completely. All the rooms in Tower 402 are named after local artists and all the artworks in the towers were created by Ohio based artists. Which also makes me think of some things I heard from Jake Bunny. He apparently designed the sign for Exhibitors Row and also criticized having so many things be “Ohio this, Ohio that, we get it, we’re in Ohio” as well as criticizing the emphasis on like university pride being all about Ohio Ohio Ohio. And now, I recall that for some reason, there was a pretty open wound on my rightmost ankle Friday night that I saw after taking my shoes and socks off. Its now 8 days since I discovered it and I still do not know how it developed at all. I was too tired to worry about it by that point and I forgot about it the next morning. The scab that formed from it is just about ready to come off and it has shrunk so whatever happened, it didnt cause amy lasting damage.
Back to the Charity Auction, I only remember fully about the last 2 items that were up for auction but there were still artworks and goofy photoshops that I did see up for auctions before those last 2 items. The last item up for auction was the big AnthrOhio 2026 Rock You Like A Furricane banner hung on the stage of Main Events 2.0. It sold for $500 in a pretty anticlimactic bidding round. And was picked up by the buyer after Closing Ceremonies as per the terms of what it would take to be given it. Juju actually got a bag in the auction before I arrived and somefur really wanted it and offered to buy it. It said he would give it if the fur made a donation to charity. I dont think that panned out either. Why did I talk about the last item first instead of the second to last? The second item was some kind of fursuit con badge or something and maybe came with some goodies. The first bid on it was $666 by AO’s very own charity lead. As they had a serious and stern and intense expression on their face, Alkali, one of the auctioneers said: “Do any of you want to outbid our charity lead?” Somefur shouted: “1000!”
The charity lead went over to them and continued to have that hilariously intense expression on their face. Seconds later, they said pretty firmly: “3000!” Not everyone heard that bid so there was a lot of verbal confusion. “How much?!” Alkali said: “Ladies and gentlemen, both and neither, $3000!” A roar of applause was unleashed. It was the highest bid on any item at the auction. Speaking of that “ladies and gentlemen blah blah blah” thing, there is a small criticism I want to talk about. At shows like at Kings Island and such, things like “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages” are said and the “children of all ages” part usually isnt said and yet, it is usually the most amount of validation I get at many shows. Outside of Alkali going out of his way to say “both and neither”, not once did I hear anything beyond “ladies and gentlemen” including at Opening and Closing Ceremonies. As someone who is non binary, when that sort of thing happens, I think to myself sometimes: “I dont exist.” I think it in like a sassy type way basically. But this is actually a bigger thing than its made out to be. When you do not address people who do not fit into the categories of either man or woman, boy or girl..
That is genuinely both disappointing and disrespectful. If its an accident, very well. If its no accident, thats some bs. If you want to use formal showmanship speak to address an audience, you need to acknowledge everyone, including non binary people like me as well as people who use neopronouns and such. And the simplest way to do that is Alkali’s way, adding both and neither. Shouldnt a performer of any kind want to be accomodating and inviting to as broad of an audience as possible? Putting both and neither in shows the audience that everyone is welcome. Not doing so leads to a slew of harmful assumptions at best and lots of trouble at worst. I know we are all struggling against the mindsets instilled in virtually all of us via the gender binary nonsense but we need to include one another and leave no one behind. Please address people like me at the same level as everyone else. Its not just basic decency, its the right, ethical, and logical thing to do. I did not see the charity lead bidding so much and being so intense about it coming. Thats a moment that will go down in AnthrOhio history.
The Con’s Finale: Especially because I just wrote about it in here and that the Charity Auction will have a recording of it posted online. Once the auction was over, Alkali told us to give a round of applause for Sigma as it was their first time being an auctioneer. Theyre really becoming a mainstay within midwestern furry cons now. The rest of what Alkali said was pretty standard along with him announcing Closing Ceremonies was about to start. It took a little bit of time before it was fully under way. By which point, I moved seated sat down in a 2nd row seat and Juju moved up to sit next to me as the seats had just opened. We talked a bit and soon, Closing Ceremonies began. The winners of all the contests over the con’s duration were announced. I didnt partake or watch any of them besides Iron Author, not even the Smash Brothers tournament. Total amounts of money raised from various things including some profits donated from a local restaurant were announced as well as from charity panels and all that stuff. Im trying to save talking about the really juicy stuff for last.
There were thank yous to all the staff, GOHs, charity, staff, I think the hotel, volunteers, attendees, etc. Was there anything else besides the top volunteers being credited for all their hard work? I dont really think so. They did explain they need more furs to join staff, they are so proud of the con’s growth but they need the help the more they grow at such an explosive rate. Shutter did most of the talking and he also talked about the fact that panels earn you double volunteer hours and went over the rewards foe volunteering. That was at either Opening or Closing Ceremonies. I cannot remember which. So so.. Anything else Im missing or am I good to talk about the juicy stuff? I think Im all clear. I may recall something else later but without further ado, its time for the juicy stuff. The final amount of money raised for charity was announced after Shutter summoned the charity lead to check the math last minute even though both of them struggle with math. But once it was figured out, the total was a whooping over $12,000. But there was a surprise for all of us.
The board of directors of AnthrOhio did not feel like that amount was high enough so they donated an extra $6000 to WAGS 4 Kids, bringing the total to over $18,000. Now for even juicier details. Juju had previously told me that not even AnthrOhio staff were fully prepared for how many fursuiters were in the parade. My prediction went up to 800 from 600-700 due to that. He also heard rumors that 3400 attendees registered online. I originally predicted attendance to instead total 3100. I was surprised. Because of how much space we had most of the con, it never felt like there were over 3000 people at the con at any point. The numbers on attendance and fursuiters were.. I hinted at the shock of the numbers well before this section. There were.. ONE THOUSAND FURSUITERS! I was blown away, shocked, appalled. Nothing could have prepared me for that. Okay, I wasnt nearly as shocked as the state of being fully shocked but still, that caught me really by surprise. ONE THOUSAND FURSUITERS.
Never in my wildest dreams did I foresee that happening at AnthrOhio this year. But it did happen and sure explains why the Fursuit Parade was this long. Im calling it now. Well, after I type out the total attendance numbers. There was a shocking total of 3902 attendees, 98 away from my final prediction of 4000. That number was a growth of 53% from 2025. Orange I glad I ate so many orange shaped vitamin C gummies, wore N95s, and all that while at the con. Im really calling it now. Next year, there will be around 6000 attendees. That is my prediction for next year. Only time will tell if that comes out to be true or not. After all those bombshells, it was announced that next year, the con will be held on the week prior to memorial day weekend. In exchange, they will be secured exclusive access to the memorial day weekend slot from 2028 onwards because the Hilton Downtown Columbus loves hosting us furries. Next year’s GOHs were announced to be the furs of Pirate Artisans! Last but not least..
I was hoping the con theme would be related to them. The teaser video for next year’s theme was played. It shows Dawn and Dash, the con’s mascots going into a dressing room at a rock concert, all decked out in rockin’ attire. They appear and act worn out and exhausted when suddenly.. They find themselves on a tropical island and lounge in lounge chairs under an umbrella and drink something cold and refreshing. The camera pans a bit I think, showing part of the sea and the emergence of a pirate ship. The huge banner for 2026 is taken off to reveal the banner for next year’s theme: Island Getaway! I fully support it as long as its on a deserted/never inhabited island which appears to be the case. Some of the board of directors, namely Jaru in fursuit were decked out in tropical getaway attire. Juju and I basically hung out after that. And I told him Id love to make some art for the con theme. We talked some about it and I realized I didnt know how to go about it.
I also mentioned Twisted Land theme park, the original park of my Minecraft theme park resort has a tropical/adventure area recently renamed Adventure Cove from Paradise Cove. The area is home to a volcano coaster, hidden pirate dark ride, ancient temple ride, and more. I also told Juju that the water park of the resort has a pirate area. Im considering contacting someone at AO about submitting art for the theme as well as maybe screenshots of areas of Adventure Cove that would be perfect for the theme such as the stations for the Island Shuttle transport ride. The only thing the resort doesnt have is a full on beach to hang out and play on. Adventure Cove has a mini beach themed section but not a large one as Twisted Land Boardwalk & Arts Center, that themed area takes up nearly all of the coastal area around Kanoka Bay. Kanoka Bay(which was unnamed until 2022 when I was developing the Escape From Kanoka! volcano coaster) is the body of water within Twisted Land’s original boundaries and is basically wholly a part of Adventure Cove.
Yeah, I really want to talk to con staff about infusing some of my creativity into next year’s AnthrOhio theme. The pirate dark ride even has a full sized pirate ship! Its massive! Juju and I were basically talking to pass the time till Dead Dog Pub Sing A Long began at the Spark bar/restaurant. We arrived a little late due to bathroom needs and originally sat a bit far from where we heard the piano get tested out but moved to where we were right by where it and the GOHs were. The sing along was exactly what I needed to quash Post Con Depression. They took a lot of audience suggestions. Each song they played had so much heart and energy poured into it. They joking played a little bit of All The Single Furries after Manick made the mistake of mentioning he was involved with that parody song. It is one of the cringiest songs of all time. I dont think I like it as much as I originally did. If the original song is like a Universal theme park, All The Single Furries is like a dirty Six Flags branded park with some theming but not nearly as much. That song is truly a bad song. Funny but just bad.
I suggested a handful of songs, not all were played but I was happy they did play Another One Rides The Bus and Scooby Doo Where Are You from the original 1969 Scooby Doo cartoon thats way older than I am. They also played Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Bohemian Rhapsody(everyone sang along to this one), Weird Al’s Star Wars parody of American Pie, and a bunch of others songs I cant really recall. Almost suggested such songs as Pardon Me by Incubus but chose not to suggest anything hard or heavy even though they could have sung Pardon Me so well because their instruments arent set up to produce any music that sounds hard or heavy. All acoustic guitars plus the piano. Juju suggested they play a song I should know the name of but I dont even though it screams iconic song and helped Manick with singing the lyrics correctly, for which he was later thanked. When it was all coming to a close, we heard about how the singalong got started as a tradition within the furry community. It all started at Anthrocon some years back.
The hotel left the piano unlocked on accident and it was played, drawing a unexpectedly huge crowd of furries, causing security to come and say: “Hey, you have too many people gathered here.” It immediately took off from there and after the last song, another song was played for fun after most people had left, I was complimented for suggesting that Scooby Doo theme, and I said I grew up with all kinds of Scooby Doo, the original, Whats New Scooby Doo, Be Cool Scooby Doo. Whats New Scooby Doo is my favorite I think. Im biased for it because of the Roller Ghoster episode. Thats basically my favorite Scooby Doo episode. Its official. Roller coasters/theme parks/dark rides are my number one special interest together. Cartoons/anime are probably in second place. Juju and then talked until my cousin found me and asked if I was ready to go home now. I told him I was and introduced him to Juju. And they introduced each other in such a way I was reminded of Tomodachi Life Living The Dream. Juju and I hugged and said goodbye to each other. And that was that.
Im sweating as I have just about finished this writing at last! Used the bathroom on the way out of the con and then, we got in the car and were off on our way home. I just chatted with people online, did some thinking, and played Tomodachi Life Living The Dream the majority of the way home. It is just before 1 PM EST on Saturday, May 29th, 2026 and I still havent fully unpacked even though unpacking would only take a couple minutes to complete. Thats how devoted I have been to this writing. That leaves one challenge. Where am I going to put this? Not on Wattpad. I dont want to put it on my dormant Neocities site I made last year either. Certainly not on Google Docs or Blogger. As a downloadable thing only? No way, José! Post this as a bunch of screenshots? No! That will be too much work! I might have to cut my losses and just put this on Wattpad. Well, wherever it ends up, its done. I want to thank you all for joining me through an extensive journey of me going through my own memories to show how much of a blast AnthrOhio 2026: Rock You Like A Furricane was.
My words do well in capturing the magic of the furry con but it is not the same as being there. May we create a better future together where everything good is allowed to grow and change in ways we did and did not see coming. May we see an end to the centuries of lies that have controlled our world for so long now. May AnthrOhio 2027: Island Getaway be even more successful as WAGS 4 Kids’s second year with AnthrOhio. May many lives be changed and saved in the near future by people with good hearts. And always remember to follow your dreams. Im going to go eat lunch now. Will I proofread this? I may as well. Screw it, Im going to put this on my Neocities website despite my reservations about that platform. Its going to be quite the process so I better hustle with proofreading. But first, heres anything and everything I have now remembered as well before this writing comes to a close.
I told Jake Bunny on Friday I would love to design a dark ride someday and he encouraged me to go apply after I mentioned I went to trade school for digital arts. I have reservations. I want to do it so badly but at the same time, *checks notes*, most major theme/amusement park companies suck. Right, during Closing Ceremonies, we were told 911 didnt have to be called once for the 3rd AnthrOhio in a row, one escalator broke(I actually saw 2 broken, including the one broken during the fursuit parade but the other one must have been not our fault), no elevators broke, and things were mostly anticlimactic in many ways! Yay! Okay, thats all. See ya all whenever we next meet. Bye bye now. And please, seriously, follow your dreams, even to the bone if you must, whatever that even means in this context! Be yourself, have community with a give and take relationship, and try to always improve yourself and whats around you!
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