NEWSDUMP: Four cons for Pacific Northwest, history and scandal in the fandom – (9/15/16)
by Patch O'Furr
Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. Here’s headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.
FOUR cons for the US Pacific Northwest? (Tip – Fuzzwolf.)
Furvana (2018). Anthro Northwest (November 9-12, 2017). Pacific Northwest Fur Con (Spring 2017). And a rebirth for Rainfurrest (under parent organization RAIN, who actively runs other events year-round.) All of these are intended for one region. Amazingly they seem cooperative, with none replacing another.
On Reddit’s r/furry, a con staffer explains more about all the activity.
In late 2015 Dogpatch Press looked at five regions for “One Town, Two Cons: Let’s compare and ask organizers about Furry community growth.” It was about fan support, competition and cooperation, with questions about how to sustain more than one central event. But four is unprecedented ambition.
It could only come with 2016’s amazing Year of Furry. From Zootopia’s billion-dollar success, to Fursonas (the first movie about furries with mainstream distribution), to the continued explosion of cons, there’s much more to come.
Furry party posters from the 1980’s.
In the 1980’s, sci-fi cons gathered fans of funny-animal cartoons for room parties. Mark Merlino and Rod O’Riley have the Prancing Skiltaire furry house in So Cal that has posted some of their party flyer collection. There was drama about the “furries” being weird, because that stuff isn’t for grown-ups is it? So in 1989 they got their own con, ConFurence. Look at how they multiplied like bunnies. Now it’s too late to stop them. Just don’t let anyone with a time machine go back and change the flyers to send them to Floor 13.
