Furlandia 2024: Furmagetton

Alright, I gotta come clean

After going through four years of Comp-Sci at Uni, I’ve coined “The 2 F’s Law”. It’s a law, not a theory, as I still have not had an instance of it being wrong, but the law states “All successful Computer Scientists must either be a Furry or a Fa-” I’m gonna stop myself there, you get the point. I’ve walked into classes where people had furry stickers on their laptops, hell this one ballsy mofo has a singular Bad Dragon sticker on his laptop, taking up a third of the real estate. This one time when I had a project partner, he was going to show me something on his cloud storage, and I could see his avian-sona ref sheet poking out. And I have proof of the opposite. Two of my closest friends started out in Computer Science when they went to college, but neither of them fit the criteria. As such, they ended up switching majors. Furries are fucking everywhere! Hell, you’re looking at one! Now, I don’t reeeealy consider myself a furry, but just say I do cause liking Pokemons is close enough.

Anyways, while my presence in the furry scene has been completely underground for a few years, I had an online friend of mine a few months back recommend I should try to get more into it, and go to a con. Back in Feburary, I saw that my domestic convention, Furlandia, was gonna be happening this May. So I bit the bullet and pre-registered.

The Haul

Before I get into the experience, I’ve got a damage report. I went in there with $300, and left with only $40! Got a bit carried away in the Dealers Den, especially when I heard there were at-con commissions available, WHICH ARE PHYSICAL! I of course had to get some stuff done of Quilava, and I am really happy with the results!

In total, I bought:

• At-Con Artwork (In order from left to right)
  • Flame Wheel Quilava sketch by Jellybeepin
  • Very Fashionable Quilava by Cross Chopper
  • FUKING PISSED OFF Quilava by Lytle The Lemur
• Pins
  • Goodra
  • Lucario
  • Lopunny
  • Furlandia 2024
• Charms
  • Braixen
  • Eevee
  • Glaceon
  • Vaporeon
  • Pawmi
• Prints
  • Typhlosion (Really happy I bought the last one, didn’t see it with my 10+ rotations of going through the DD.)
  • Steel Bridge Furlandia-made
  • Mt. Hood Furlandia-made
• Assorted protogen stickers from this one booth.
• Con book (It was separate! D:<)

I’d say I got my money’s worth. The At-Con comission by Lytle cost around $90, but I’d say it was worth it! Now I just gotta frame it.

Day 1: Friday

I have some online-only furry contacts, that live in the same region, I tried to invite with me, unfortunately they all fell through. I’ve heard that going to conventions like these alone is a one-way trip to sucks-ville, population: you. But it ended up being better than I expected! Met this one other group in the reg-line, and we hit it off. While waiting for the opening ceremony, got to meet some others by accident. One of the dude’s there was a true OG to this convention, every atendee is given a serial number when they register. And as an example, I was 6196. This man had the serial number 21!

We chatted for a bit, turns out he likes to bring infrared cameras to conventions and record the fursuiters who walk by. Turns out it’s possible to tell if someone is in a walking heat coffin based off of infrared alone. If you’ve got a fursuiter glowing bright orange, the suit is breathable. But once you see a dude who’s as cool as the ambient environment, poor mofo is gonna become a musky husky. As an example of what it looks like, here’s one of his vids.

But out of all of this, it was surreal to see fursuits in real life. I’ve only ever seen them online, and it was a bit jarring seeing how much larger they make someone. The only thing which makes me even more shocked are the prices of the suits. $3000 for a head alone?!

Dealer’s Den was PACKED. Both in people and items. The convention is family oriented, so no adult booths, but there were a bunch of fursuit makers there. Got to see how fursuits are made.

By the end of the day, I enjoyed my time. While I’ve heard most furry cons are crazy, and usually have some shit go down, like the Furry Weekend Atlanta, but Furlandia was completely chill. Worst thing that was in public were dudes in gimp pup masks.

Day 2: Saturday

Saturday was the most busy the con was. It sucks, I went back home during the middle of the day, and when I returned to the con, my ass forgot my badge. Had to drive a whole ’nother rotation just to get back in. Missed out on the HAM Radio panel.

But, I did get to witness the Fursuit Parade. And my god, the amount of full suits in attendance. I swear if I stole all of those, and liquidated them, I could buy my first house without a mortgage.

There was also this one dude dressed up as the Spy the entire time. And EVERY time I saw him, he ALWAYS had another, new mask on. It was great!

Now I was always joking about fursuits costing as much as a car. Well this one attendee decided to bring his car. And it wasn’t any car, but a Delorian! It was in MINT condition. Anything exposed was OEM, with only some buffing on the rear.

One of the Guests of Honor, Daniel Dubrick, had a panel on Ceres. An asteroid within the asteroid belt with contains ALL materials needed to sustain human life. Turns out it would make for an excellent place to create a base of operations to start asteroid mining, and importing back to Earth. Also got to learn how radioactive Jupiter is, making it nearly impossible to live on its moons. Hell, the type of radiation the planet gives off is able to rip particles, practically doing alchemy!

This was the day where I went all out in the Dealers Den, buying anything Pokemon related, as I realized items were starting to go off the shelves. Bit sad there wan’t more Pokemon stuff, but my wallet appreciated it.

The craziest part of the night was going to a petplay panel. Now, my ass is a vanilla saltine cracker, the buddies I met during the registration line were interested, and I was morbidly interested. When I got in the room, there was a mat on the ground, and one of the presenters was wearing MMA gloves. There were multiple presenters, and I swear that Seth Rogen was one of them, had the looks and laugh down.

Nothing extreme happened, mostly was more of a 101 on the subject. I was expecting LiveLeak The Gauntlet levels of cringing, but it was just stuff I already expected from furries. Ended up leaving early as my buddies got bored, and it was a 2 HOUR panel. I was just happy there were no cameras allowed inside. I was unmasked and in plain clothes, right next to gimp pup masks and tu-tu dresses. I’d stick out like a sore thumb in any photo.

Day 3: Sunday

Final day, and you can see it in the attendance and DD. What was a place filled with merch was getting empty. I didn’t expect furries bought that much stuff, but I guess I’m wrong. They are all suspiciously wealthy (or terrible at finances.) Nothing too big happened on the final day. But I at least was able to snatch this off of the global telegram chat from the previous day’s dance.

Also accidentally struck up a conversation with Laminar, without knowing it was him till we were about to part ways. Dude’s chill, get’s my BP approval.

Overall

Gotta say, for a first furry con, and convention in general, this was AMAZING! Now I’ve gotten the more family friendly experience, as I didn’t go looking for room parties, so God knows what else I missed out on. But, hey, ignorance is bliss. I am definitely keeping Furlandia 2025 on my radar and will be pre-registering when that opens. If there is anyone who does read this niche article, and does end up going to Furlandia. If you see a dude wearing a badge with the name “BP”, feel free to walk up to me and chat. The sleeper agent activator phrase will be “My dingleberries are a bit lower than usual.”