Fox’s MFF Writeup 2018

Fox’s MFF Writeup 2018
As I walk back to the Crowne Plaza from the Hyatt for the final time, snow is falling from the sky. I can see my breath and snowflakes are falling on my eyelashes making everything hazy, these are just a few small things that happened that will never happen where I usually live. As I do with every convention/“big” event I attend, I like to do a small writeup just to help me remember some of the good times I had during my trip and update people about my life! I actually have to omit a lot of things this time around compared to my usual writeups because I was witness to so many things that I don’t want to get any of my friends into any possibility of legal troubles lmao.

I arrived way earlier than most people, I left on Tuesday night and arrived on Wednesday morning, I got super lost at the airport for a bit and wandered around since it was super difficult for me to find the actual shuttle center. All of the airport staff were telling me different directions, so I ended up spending about an hour and a half just wandering around O’Hare, which is kinda hilarious tbh. I couldn’t find anyone since most people were flying in that night or the day after, so I ended up knocking out for hours (which is why I wanted to fly in a day earlier). I honestly think flying in early is the strat if people can afford it because jet lag from Hawaii to anywhere is murder, and you’ll basically be comatose for whatever day you arrive on. We’ll just consider this Day -1 since literally nothing happened, but it was fun nonetheless!

The beginning of Day 0 I met up with Berylium (who will henceforth be called Bery or Bara Bery), he’s a furry from Germany! We wandered around looking for breakfast and ended up going in a huge circle just to finally turn up at the american diner right across from the Hyatt. We had this hilarious moment when trying to order because the chef couldn’t understand Bery when he was trying to order eggs, but he understood literally everything else. I think the chef and Bery learned English as a second language even though both of them were fluent in it, but it was just so funny to hear Bery clearly repeating he wanted an egg sandwich over and over again and the chef throwing guesses at what he wanted.

Later on in the evening I got to meet KaimTime for the first time in person and he was just as sociable as I expected him to be! I’ve known the dude for years through TF2, so it’s always a fun time to actually meet other people from that community. The hotel was actually already extremely crowded compared to most Day 0s, but I think since MFF is now officially the biggest furry convention at 10,700 attendees this year, it sure makes a lot of sense why. I decided to be dumb and waited until later at night to pick up my badge instead of standing in line early with the others and it ended up taking 1:53:43 (any%). Badge pickup was so ridiculous, but I think they had a slightly dumb system since the sponsor lines were empty, but they weren’t diverting the flow of lines so they just had 4 open lines doing nothing while the normal preregs were ultra slow. A lot of people were actually just registering from scratch because the prereg line was longer by over an hour, especially since you can transfer your prereg to a sponsor upgrade or to a future convention badge.

Moving onto Day 1, I gave out a ridiculous amount of snacks and ran into an enormous amount of people. Checked out the dealer’s den and got a few small commissions, then hung out with Stigmata and Sasha for a bit. Ended up running into Wachi and we met up with Radruler’s party and ordered some Chicago style pizza from Giordano’s (which I know some of my Chicago friend’s hateeee), and thought it was okay, wasn’t anything special imo. Some of us visited the arcade at the hotel, which was small, but it was definitely better than nothing. A lot of the furries there had zero arcade manners (complaining about people playing a set rather than just one song, trying to cut and make it seem like they’re the victim), which didn’t really surprise me, but it was disappointing nonetheless.
I went to three room parties and uh, some of them were nuts lmao?? I really do not want to write anything about two of them, but I finally met Whithy’s boyfriend Pita for the first time and it was the funniest introduction I have ever had. I was standing in the hallway trying to get into the room when the gut punching furries were filming a scene (lmao) and really wanted me out of the shot so we all started slamming the door to get me in, Tagg swings open the door and Pita is right behind him and offers me what I thought was a white pill at first glance. I look at Tagg, I look down at the white thing, I look at Pita, I look at the thing, and Tagg was like do NOT eat that while Pita REALLY wanted me to eat it. Pita says it’s a jellybean so I toss it into my mouth and it tastes like spoiled milk lmao, they had packs of those 50/50 jellybeans and that one was either coconut or spoiled milk, it was SO DISGUSTING but it was the funniest introduction I ever had to someone I’ve never met before.

I actually enter the room and see the most ridiculous sight. There are christmas lights, which led my eyes to the walls covered in wrapping paper and every wall has furry dakimakuras hanging from them, there are multicolored LEDs flashing patterns across the walls, and in the middle of the room is hecking FENDER in a bird fursuit bound to a chair with belts, my first question is obviously wtf is going on and they all answered he asked for this, and it led to the most hilarious night of the con IMO. Fender was tied up just for twitter memes, but he was just getting wasted while being locked onto a chair. Drunk Fender in a fursuit is a very Powerful Energy, and I really think he embodies Big Furry Energy when he is in there. I also got to meet catboots and tzarrevolver and some of his friends, and they were pretty cool too!

Day 2 some of the raysfurs group decided that we wanted to visit Round1, which was about 30 minutes away from the convention, splitting a $45 uber in 5 ways was not too bad, of course when we get there the beatmania IIDX machine has a broken key, I ended up playing it anyways and failed so many songs, but it was a lot of fun regardless. I tried out the AC groove coaster there since it had more songs than the setup at the hotel and got to try the Danganronpa songs, which was really awesome! I also tried out the other weird Japanese rhythm games like theatrhythms arcade cabinet. I asked the front desk when the tech was coming in, and they said he was coming in around 2 pm, which is around when everyone wanted to leave so we set it up so that if he can fix the IIDX, I’ll stay behind while everyone else goes back to the convention space. We got lunch while waiting where rad and I spotted this place called #fries, and we had to try it since we saw the prices and had no clue how $6-9 fries could be worth it. They gave us belgian cut fries, but they gave so much that it was like a bouquet of fries! After lunch the tech finally fixed the iidx so I ended up just chilling at the arcade until like 10 PM lmao! Anyone that knows me would understand why I would basically skip day 2 of MFF for an arcade trip (esp. if it’s $40+ one way)

The uber driver I got for the way back was actually from my island, but he’s a year younger than me, so we just talked about everything the whole way back. He couldn’t understand what a furry convention was, so he was talking about anime and about how he was so excited to see all the COSPLAYS when he dropped me off and the whole time I was just like uhhhhhhh. I don’t actually remember exactly what happened Night 2, but I remember seeing 7 guys on a bed in a room party, helping Kuro with a ranking dungeon, and then checking out the rave for a bit before getting whisked away to bed!

Day 3 was so chaotic lmao, I was rushing from person to person since I still had half of my snack duffel bag filled, and I knew a lot of people that were heading out that day. I think I managed to meet everyone I wanted to meet, which is ridiculous considering there were so many attendees, I’m pretty sure I was able to find EVERYONE day 3, which is such a weird thing to say. I spent the morning with stigmata and loaf/kenket’s table just hanging out while looking for people, which I ended up meeting with LuckyHowls/LuckyFoxx who was someone that got converted into being a furry since TF2, apparently I played on a team with him a decade ago. Afterwards, I went with some of the raysfurs group to IHOP, which turned into a chipotle expedition (please refer to my old tweets). The IHOP burrito was a mountain that I climbed, and I don’t regret doing it!

After lunch I think I finally met up with Jake (0kbps) and we just hung out and talked for what seemed like forever, and then Kaim joined us and we talked into eternity! I love them!!!! A lot of the Day 3 party plans fell apart (probably because no one had the suites to fit everyone in it lmao), so I visited Tagg’s room for a while after randomly running into timbrrs and poolboy in the lobby. I finally saw dingables in Tagg’s room and we all just hung out and ate a bunch of nuts lmao. We all went downstairs to handle BIRD FENDER, and recorded a bunch of shipposting content and then kinda dispersed at some point idk?? I know they went to get a billions mcnuggets, and I think I met up with PiKitsune and Radruler to trade a billion pokemon in pogo, and then we all ended up at IHOP. The event was pretty much over so we just hung out in the no-parties party room and everyone said their heartfelt goodbyes (i miss all of u). Pi eventually fell asleep so I ended up leaving to go pack (I think it was 6 am at this point lmao), it started to snow so I had to rush to my hotel and started packing to go home.

Honestly this was probably one of the best conventions I’ve been to just because I was able to successfully meet like 99% of the people I planned to meet (which was like over 40 individuals). I went out to more room parties than usual, although idk if that’s really an accomplishment, I do the same things as when I’m not at a room party but I guess people do get more crazier since doors are closed. I hugged so many people, and got to watch so many people try weird snacks that I brought over! I didn’t really want to write too many names in this entry just because I hung out with so many people, but generally if you got a snack or a hug from me, you’re appreciated! There’s literally zero possible way for me to mention EVERYONE I met just because there were so many!

As with all of these writeups I usually talk about what I’m going to be up to now that the event is over, and I don’t really want to make this part too long. I finally ordered new audio equipment, just waiting on the mixer to help upgrade my stream’s audio! Was still thinking about getting a new PC for a dual PC stream setup, but I think I’ll wait a bit since I’m not in a huge rush for that. I exercise a lot and still eat like garbage, so everything is in duality, I’ll try to eat less by next convention but I love food!!!!!!

Although snow falls, and eventually melts, you can always expect for it to fall again! I know I’m going to eventually see people again so I can’t get too sad about leaving, I appreciate anyone that has managed to get through this mess of a writeup and sorry it took so long, I had to verify with a few people if what I wrote in here is okay to post!