AC2024

Anthrocon Recap

I'll keep this short, mostly because in the span of the week after... the stress of some personal matters has kind of made my thinking all mush. Either way I want to finish writing this down.

I left for Pittsburgh on the 2nd to pick up one of the con hotel roommates from the airport. I was nearly delayed by family at departing as they have done to me in the past but thankfully I buffered enough time and picked said friend up right on schedule. We got to their hotel and for the first time in.. a year I had a bed to myself to sleep in, a shower to use, and just... a room with access to air conditioning. The first hotel night was honestly a bit rough. My body is not use to beds proper. I sleep normally on an old twin mattress that it propped up on a camping cot in my parents living room. It's been like that since 2018. Overall I did get sleep finally and I didn't really want to wake up the next morning.

Time passed forward and the 3rd roommate for the convention finally arrived and we moved from this temp hotel over to the main convention hotel that was under their name; we got oddly lucky and due to hotel BS we were moved into the Westin main hotel. This honestly was a huge blessing as not only was it minimal outside walking, but the hotels this year were honestly super less crowded even with the con breaking over 17,000 attendance. I roomed this year with AuroraBrightscale and Balenar. Unfortunately due to the hotel mix-up, we only had one king bed but thanks to local friends Scrapper and Scratch, we got access to a inflatable mattress for the room.

Overall the con was Fast, between most of Thursday being stuck in registration line hell. It took me three attempts as I kept becoming over heated waiting in line outside as the said line nearly wrapped around 3/4th of the convention center nearly all day, outside in 90F+ heat. I missed a few panels that way that were early things because they had a hard policy on accessing the event hall till you had a badge and this alone was... frustrating. But once I had my badge in hand, it was the end of Thursday, and it was time to go poke the Games area of the con in the evening for games of Ultimate Werewolf.

This year the duo who normally run the Werewolf panel games each evening were down one due to illness. And the original person remaining was starting to feel under the weather themselves. BUT due to my willingness and enjoyment of running games for others, I stepped up and did an unofficial volunteer as the second GM for the games over the weekend. So starting Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night from 9pm to 2am, I ran one of the werewolf social deduction rooms! At any given time I was running circles of werewolf for between 15-35+ people. It was a bit of derust but a ton of fun and I hope those who played also enjoyed their time.

I also ran into a BUNCH of old and online friends this year. But I also missed connections with other older friends who were at the con and while we tried to line things up to cross paths, it was just not in the cards this year. To keep from spamming everyone, I ended up meeting a bunch of streaming connected friends, a few general online friends, local friends, but missed a bunch of people in passing. Over all it was great to meet people IRL for the first time even if it was only for a moment, but some of you kept tracking me down and we got to hang out either playing table top board games or during werewolf or even as part of dinner and meal plans.

All in all this Anthrocon was much needed break from family, I was tired and worn out but it was so very worth it. My spirits were on a high and I honestly felt good shifting back into that mind and physical groove. It makes me even more hope I can save up and get the plane ticket asap so I can accept the invite from friends to try hitting up Megaplex at the end of August this year. it's very short window of time but I want the high of being away from family again and getting to relax. I also really want to do more with streaming, and just... find my forward path in life again. Thanks to everyone who helped make Anthrocon positive for me this year!