Despite being involved in furry for most of my life, I hadn’t been interested in attending the conventions. If it wasn’t for the lack of resources for travel and other expenses (as well as living very far away from everything), I just didn’t feel like I’d enjoy being at them. A whole weekend of a plethora of options with full control of what activities to choose and with a sea of people I don’t know and no one to go with—it always just seemed like an overwhelmingly bad time. But as I’ve started my journey into technical production in the past year, I realized that I will find my joys in contributing to the convention as a staff member, rather than being a normal attendee. And that is what I did! I also looped Salad Forrest into volunteering.

Thursday
(Load-in)

On Thursday, I helped with tech load-ins to set up the stages. I got to meet the AV Lighting mains Nullreff and Goofy, as well as Francois, Aster, Silva, Shimo, Rapson, Lars, Kyla, Antwelm, Cole, and Percy. It seems most of the team stayed there all day into midnight, but I was only able to stay for the 8 hour minimum for free admission for the weekend because I had to get home and take care of other things: mainly installing a fursuit fan for my fursuit, as well as generally getting prepared for the weekend since I was too busy in the preceding days.

Road cases and trusses in the convention space.

It was a bit rough because we didn’t have access to the Staff Room, and the venue was very strict about not bringing food, but I ended up checking out a nearby restaurant for lunch at Pho K Vietnamese Cuisine where they had a drink special of a free thai tea with a meal purchase.

Friday
(Setups and Maid Cafe)

Friday began with volunteering with the Accessibility Desk where I met Pixie and LineMonkey. I got to mark out some seating areas with blue tape for the designated wheelchair spaces, and then continued helping with AV setup with Tlalli and Russec since a stage area still needed to be set up before ADA could finish sectioning out its seating. After that, I grabbed my staff badge from Echniel at the Registration Desk and headed to the Staff Room for food and briefly met Oreo.

I was very surprised at how stocked the area was, along with its peace and quiet which was amazing to relax in when I needed some time to decompress. There were even lunch and dinner times where they brought in meals—to name a few: Raising Canes, Panda Express, various salads and sandwiches… The food budget was spectacular, and it was a huge load off my back that I didn’t have to worry about taking care of food. It was also just nice to see all the staff members together and knowing that I am a part of such a team.

Anyway, one of the other things supplied was instant ramen, and there was a water boiling machine there too. There wasn’t any instruction for it, so I looked up the instruction manual online and figured it out. Eventually, some other staff members came in, one of whom was named Crake who was also interested in the instant ramen cups and wanted to use the water boiler. Seeing what situation was going to arise for anyone wanting a ramen cup, I went and wrote down some instructions on a napkin (which ended up lasting throughout the weekend).

Staff room tables full of snacks.

Then, I had a shift with AV Lighting at the Main Stage for some musical VR performances. I didn’t do much aside from setup and was more of a backup during the shows, but it felt cool to be at the back of the house with the AV team. A strange occurrence happened when one of the performers was cursing like crazy during a song—all the while there was the Furry Playground right behind the stage where children were hanging out, but… Oops! Well, that’s live performances for you. (If it were up to me, I would have gone and cut out the stream and pretended it was a technical difficulty or something.)

It was a pretty neat concept to have people from outside the con as a VR performer though. Aside from the large digital screens on the sides, there was an attempt at having a facade in the center of the stage—it was a bit hard to see, but it was a great idea that I’d love to see expanded upon for the future.

VRC Victory virtually performing on Main Stage.

After that, I was an auxiliary staff member at the Maid Cafe, led by Kitty and Baxter and staffed by all the lovely maid and butler fursuiters including (but not limited to) Allspice, Beau, Blue Hasai, and Hazel. No uniform or fursuit for me, I was mostly just added in as a gopher (AFC called them GoFurs, which was fun), but I got to help maintain the spaces so the maids could spend more time having fun with their patrons.

I cleaned up tables, took note of how long each table had been there, guided the guests to the photobooth, as well as reset the tables with new placemats and reorganized the activities. I was at that with Zhao who was maintaining the space alongside me, and eventually we got to have breaks that allowed us to partake in the food that the Maid Cafe served. They had an Italian menu, and we got to pick what options to put in our pasta, and they’d cook it right then and there. It was super lovely and special. And free for Maid Cafe staff, of course (the tickets for the attendees were $50).

Chef cooking my meal at the Maid Cafe.

At the end of the night, we got back to the parking lot and found that the car that I borrowed from Forrest’s relative had two main issues: 1. I left the headlights on and 2. The keyhole on the car door itself was not catching onto the key. We were a bit stranded in the parking lot since it was complicated to reach the car insurance. After a while of reaching out to all kinds of people for help—including coming up to random people in the parking lot (like Cosmo and his friend who so kindly hung out at our car for a bit and tried to help), calling Chip Unicorn at AFC’s Con Ops department and Amanda at Event Operations, messaging the staff Discord, and talking to Spencer in the parking lot security booth—we finally were able to get through to the insurance and called a tow truck to help us.

I had downed some apple juices from the con and desperately had to use the restroom by this time, so I ran back to the con, but security didn’t let me in because I was wearing a chain, so that was annoying. When running back to the parking lot, I ran into Kyla again, and then got Silva to let me run into his hotel to use his bathroom (because I guess I felt like doing that instead of taking off my chain and trying to get through security again).

When I got back, the tow truck was making its way into the parking lot. A group of people came up and were trying to flag it down, and I called out to them and apparently they were also having car troubles and were waiting to get towed too. We took a silly group picture together before they ran off back to their own car. After about 20 minutes of trying out different methods of getting in, Mark from the tow truck company successfully got our door open. Thankfully, the battery was just fine, and I got to drive us home (and then I drove my own car for the rest of the con weekend).

Saturday
(Fursuit Parade, Dance Competition Lights, and Fursuit Lounge)

I made my Kludge fursuit partial back in 2020, but I never had the means of wearing it around since I didn’t attend cons, plus I simply couldn’t wear it for more than 5 minutes because my glasses would fog up. With my fursuit fan installed, I finally got to wear my fursuit around and joined in on the fursuit parade. I got a few compliments, along with a short video centered on me (also, later on in the night, someone complimented me for my fursuit and especially its hair, so I got to explain how I made it). I got to enjoy wandering around in fursuit for the first time, checking out the areas like the Tabletop Games Room where Benji greeted us, and walking through the halls around other fursuiters.

Before I got to my next volunteer shift, I stopped by the Maid Cafe to say hi in my fursuit this time. Kitty took photos of us at the photobooth and even snapped a free Polaroid as a thanks for my service the previous day, which was super sweet. I won’t be uploading the Polaroid since someone in it doesn’t want their face shown, but here’s another photo Kitty took with my phone:

A few of the Maid Cafe hosts with Kludge in the center.

Next, was the dance competition, which I believe was called Fur Battle. This was a freestyle dance that I got to be on the light console for. I was given four buttons to press along to Goofy’s DJing, and I loved it. I hadn’t done too much with lighting in general yet, aside from some short staged plays last summer, so I tried to play it safe with some simple pulses to the beat, in hopes it wouldn’t be too distracting or blinding for the audience (looking back on the videos I took, they are a bit plain, but they at least served their purpose and stayed on beat).

The Fur Battle was as follows: Two dancers were chosen and brought to the dance floor, the first dances for 30 secs, the second switches in for their own 30, the music changes and the round repeats for a second time. After that, the three judges decide who wins the battle by holding out their hand in the direction they choose. Since one of my lighting effects was this horizontal waterfall, I decided to add in a little light effect of going in the direction of which dancer was chosen (as well as when they switched out during the dances). Take a look!

Dance battle between two fursuiters, and winner selection by the judges.

After the Fur Battle, I monitored the fursuit lounge near the main stage. I briefly met Cedar who filled me in on how to take care of the space. Nothing wild, just keeping the place tidy as fursuiters came in and out of the dance floor.

Sunday
(Artist Alley, Dance Competition Lights, and going home)

Since I was so busy with all my antics of the weekend, I hadn’t even gotten to see the Artist Alley yet. I didn’t have much time, but I managed to get my free shirt from the con store (a gift from the con for volunteering at least 12 hours) that was being managed by Rarushi, as well as bought some traditional commissions from artists named crosschopper and pawberry.

Art by crosschopper and pawberry, next to convention t-shirt.

I got back to the Main Stage to do more AV Lighting shifts—one of which was operating the lights for another dance competition. This competition was choreographed by the contestants ahead of time, rather than on the spot like the day before. Split Pixl, Lilac, and Amber showed me some more things I could do on the light console, so I had a lot more options. It involved quite a bit of movement and color changes to match the colors of the fursuit, so I had Split Pixl take care of those while I focused on getting the various pulses to match the beats and intensities of the songs.

Stage with all dance competition contestants.

Next time, I’m definitely going to familiarize myself with the tracks that we were given so that I could match up with the music a lot better—if I get to operate the console again, anyway. Also, I got Kyla to take some pictures of me at the lighting console, which was awesome. I bleached some stripes into my hair last month, attempted a bit of a skunk look (it’s not super apparent, especially at this angle, but hopefully it still looks cool regardless).

Selecting a color at the grandMA 3 lighting console. Photo taken by Kyla Fox.

After the closing ceremony, I sadly had to leave the con (I had work and other life stuff that evening and early the next day) and couldn’t stay to the end nor be able to help with striking everything down. But I did finally get to meet Parse Noire after being mutuals for a few years and got to play the game he’s been working on with his team.

Parse’s game “Rocketpult” on a Playdate handheld console.

-—-

It was just fantastic. I ended up volunteering just a smidge over 30 hours total. That’s well over the requirement to get me free admission to next year’s con, but honestly, I think I’m just gonna keep volunteering from here on out. Attending as a staff member makes so much sense to me! I am already immensely looking forward to next year and how I can increase my contributions. A bit bummed out knowing well in advance that I’m gonna have to miss one of the con days next year, but I am excited regardless.

I hope I get to do some carpentry builds too—I’d love to build some large-scale stuff for the con or at least create some custom structures and continue to build upon my knowledge and help make the spaces unique and special. I also hope to have more time and funds to spend in the artist alley. I’d love to get more traditional artwork in general, and it’s especially exciting to have it created at the con.

Various items from my time at the convention.

Wow. 2024 has been the longest and best year of my life. Now that I have entered the vastness of technical production, I feel like my life has begun. I’m finally living at the age of 26. I’ve been getting jobs that are more fun than they are work, I’m getting connected with people and creating great things with them, and now I have gone to my first furry convention because now I get to be a part of its success.

This is so fascinating, I cannot believe how life has changed so suddenly. I’m just so happy.

AV Lighting Team listed in the con book.