I do anime cons. I do sci-fi cons. I do comic book cons. But I until now, I never did a furry con. As a grizzled con vet, would I experience culture shock?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
(Not my bit, but just as fun to write as it is to say.)

This furry con felt like an anime con. The main differences were that it is a lot easier to spot people in costume in a furry con and furry cons have more dogs present. Both cons featured a Dealers Room with stuff I try to avoid buying, an Art Room with art I like to watch but would never buy, panels that I occasionally visit, a Masquerade, late night dances, and a lot of interesting people mingling with fellow interesting people. I wish I could have spent more time experiencing the convention and reporting on the previously mentioned, but work came first.

The main thing that I liked about Further Confusion is the interaction the fur suits have with each other. I do not know whether the fur suits rehearse their interactions to form a spectacle for the audience or if they just improvise when two or more fur suits meet. In any case, they are believable interactions. And they even hold panels to teach fur suit costumers to develop their characters.

And it is just cute when the fur suits interact with children.

The fur suit parade was my highlight of the convention. Getting time off to see it and the sheer numbers (again, 530 as the official count) impressed me. My experiment in Chow Yun Fat style dual wielding with my machine pistol digital camera and my cell phone pistol went okay, but I should have used the camera to film and the cell phone to photograph since I then learned that cell phone cameras shoot in different file formats. I'm sorry for the craptacluar conversion and uploading. I need a new converter.

And some photos from the parade:

And it seems furry cons and anime cons share the same Internet memes for better...

...or for worse.

Actually, I don't mind Caramelldansen. It's just the opening notes of the song cause me to have a knee jerk reaction of, "Good God, not again."

While feeling like an anime con, meeting a new group of people outside the anime cons was refreshing. While the Fairmont Hotel for Further Confusion is further than the Doubletree for me, I may pop in next year because I had fun this year.

For more Further Confusion 2009 videos, check out Travelvalenti's play list on Youtube.

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