A Glimpse Between Communities · 4:53pm May 18th
May the Eighteenth be with you... or something, I'dunno.
The end of May might seem like an innocuous time to most. Yeah, the weather is getting warmer (as long as you're in the right hemisphere), and we're drifting closer to the longest day of the year (I live a stone's throw from Stonehenge, they love solstice there), but for a certain group of individuals, we're ramping up to the most exciting time of the year.
That group of individuals, is Furries. Mainly UK based ones, but some others may also pop in from afar. And the exciting time of the year, is ConFuzzled.
I've heard more than a few comparisons between Furries and Bronies, and ultimately the two are more alike than some would like to admit. 'Two sides of the same coin' was a more generous opinion, and 'Bronies are Furries with training wheels' was a more cynical one. Ultimately, we're all weirdos who enjoy talking animals. Just one has a tangible television show it is focused around, and the other is based more around a concept (though any film/show with generic anthro creatures seems to become furry bait).
Yeah, I'm not really a front-runner for an inter-fandom spokesperson, am I?
Anyway. In a nutshell, ConFuzzled is a Furry convention. The largest Furry convention in the UK, to be more specific, over 3,000 attendees. Which doesn't really come close to the numbers of the largest US-based conventions for either Furry or Brony, but it's still an impressive amount of people. For context, at its final year of running, BUCK (the largest UK Brony con) amassed an estimated 1,200 attendees.
Why am I talking about this UK Furry convention? Easy, I volunteer for it.
As well as doing a great deal of work for the team that handles the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, I also help out with the Charity Auction and in previous years have also lent a hand to the Events team. So yeah, busy! Last year the convention raised over £30,000 for our charity Wolf Watch UK, and each year we seem to do better and better. So needless to say, I'm excited for this year.
Now if I didn't immediately lose your interest at the mention of Furries, and you're at least a little bit intrigued by the sounds of all of this, go check out confuzzled.tv for a video archive of all our recorded events. There's a lot of fun stuff there, from last year I particularly recommend watching Opening/Closing Ceremony, the Live Art Auction, and the Director's Sea Shanty Hour. Our three directors literally spent an hour singing sea shanties with the attendees, it was glorious.
And that's where I'll be this weekend! ...by which I mean from Thursday 23rd until Wednesday 29th. Yes, the con goes on that long... if you do day early arrival and day late departure. I'll be conventioning, eating, drinking and being merry. And then afterwards, spending half a week recovering from Post-Con Depression.
Wait, does this mean you have one of them there fursuits, 8_Bit?
I'll catch you guys on the other side!
8_Bit
<3
You give us a link we can't access, how cruel.
Also another fandom has May being important.
Battletech.
May 20'th would be the end of the Battle of Tukayyid.
Pay your bills fucko
Also Toronto has Anime North next weekend. I believe it's somewhere between 3-5 on biggest Canadian (nerd) conventions. Fan Expo (Toronto AND Vancouver have positions 1 and 2) with Anime North, Ottawa Comic Con and Montreal Comic Con being the ones rounding it out.
I'll be working my booth at Anime North so... con staff unite, I guess.
5781496
I can access it just fine. Are you outside of the UK? If so, that could be the problem.
I mean, it was while I was (very mildly) active in the furry fandom that I first heard about MLP:FiM, so you won't hear anything from me about the two communities having no overlap and not being at all similar, oh no sirree...
Mind you, by 2012 or so I was feeling that furry wasn't quite the right fit for me anyway -- my main period of activity was a few years before that. ConFuzzled didn't exist in those days, and it was almost a running joke in the UK furry fandom that every so often someone would state they were planning a convention and then it wouldn't happen. (How many times was "Britfur" announced...?)
I'm happier in the Pony fandom for a number of reasons, not least that the all-ages nature of (most of) its major events appeals to me more than the 18+ nature of (most?) UK furry events. But that's just me, and I don't in any way begrudge those people who love how ConFuzzled works. You don't get 3,000 people for an event if it's not doing plenty of things right. I wish it every success, and I hope you have a great time.
5781496
If you're just getting a blank screen, it might be some kind of hotlink protection. I got that, but found that if I went to the same URL again, so that the referring site was also imgur, the pic showed up fine.