Hi. I haven’t posted anything here, and I’m not surprised it took this long to get started. But I have a bunch of ideas of things to post, so I’m going to try to keep up with actually posting. For a bit at least.

Content warning: MH; Brief mentions of wearing latex and background sexual scenes. Not explicit.

So I went to Further Confusion again this year, for the… seventh time? I haven’t missed a year since I started going in 2016, other than the obvious exceptions of 2021 and 2022 when the convention didn’t happen. When I got home, I tooted that I had some thoughts to share about my experience:

I didn’t intend to take almost 2 weeks to get around to actually doing this, but gosh darn it, I’m gonna do it now. Or at least cover the important bits.

I want to start by rehashing the sentiment of that toot: I had a blast, it was a massively positive experience with hardly any negatives, and at no point did I feel “I wish I had stayed home” or “I really do not want to go home.” Not overly long, and not too short. An ideal length.

There was a point during the weekend, while riding a dopamine high and determined to stay out for a little while longer, that I came to a realization: This was the first decent-sized con since 20191 that I wasn’t either volunteering at the con (and therefore “busy” most of the time)2, struggling with a mental health issue, or had something negative happen at the con itself that ruined my mood for the rest of the weekend.3 In short, I hadn’t had a good, fun con with no responsibilities since before COVID, and I kinda forgot what it was like.

I came to this realization while I was chatting with an acquaintance late Saturday night early Sunday morning, at that time of night where you’re too tired to keep partying, but it’s too early to go to bed. Of course, since it was Saturday night, there was both the party floor and the Night Market going on, and I was wearing my full-body latex cat getup for the occasion, which is even more of a reason to not want to go back to my room yet. I went over to a friend’s suite (probably around 1 AM), where they were having a low-key gathering. Three of the four people there were having a scene, so I just ended up chatting with said acquaintance for about half an hour before deciding it well and truly was time to turn in for the night.

Anyway, I just wanted to brain dump this. Here’s hoping that the trend continues, and I can manage to get to more cons this year. I coincidentally have a work trip in Atlanta the day after FWA, so I’m gonna hit that up. Maybe hit DEF CON finally, too.

I have some technical blog post ideas that I want to write up soon. I can’t promise any sort of cadence for posts, but hopefully more often than every 6 months.

  1. PAWCon 2021 and 2022 were pretty good, but those are the only exceptions during that entire period, and while I love that con, it is (or at least was) tiny and therefore doesn’t count for this. I was only at Furvana 2021 for 25 hours while passing through the area so that also doesn’t count (and it’s also tiny). ↩

  2. I absolutely love volunteering at BLFC, and have a blast doing it, but I end up spending most of my time “working” and don’t get to do many actual con things (by choice! Because I very much like playing with the expensive video equipment). ↩

  3. I don’t really want to go into full details of everything, but the highlights (lowlights?) are:

    • I was in a really bad place for most of FC 2020 for self-inflicted personal reasons. The details don’t matter.
    • TFF 2020 was still recovering from those same problems.
    • Furvana 2021 was only 25 hours for me, but it was neat, I guess.
    • FC 2023 got derailed fairly quickly when I had a major latex blowout Friday night, and that ruined my mood for the rest of the weekend.
    • BLFC 2021, 2022, and 2023 had increasingly large volunteer/staff commitments (but they were still amazing in their own way).
    • PAWCon 2021, 2022, and 2023 were pretty good (though I was exhausted in 2023 since it was immediately after BLFC), but that con’s size and vibe are completely different from other cons, so it doesn’t really count.

    ↩