#rainfurrest 2015

[clinically-not-straight]

If anyone is looking for a good time, I recommend looking through the newest comments on this video

Like, I love his videos, bar the plagiarism, but it isn't a surprise that he has an audience of weird little conservative puritans. Half the comments

[coelpts]

aight, this is a bit of a long shot sort of post but here we go.

rainfurrest 2015 is commonly reported to be a bit of a problematic convention, and that's probably fair. but i went to rainfurrest '15 and what i took away from it was not the constant problems with staff and rooms and the towels and whatnot, but instead an interactive element put together by a small staff team: a puzzle solving game set.

in the con book and scattered all over the hotel there were several puzzles. the solution to each puzzle gave the name of an item or a hint to it, and once you had solved all of the puzzles you could trek your happy kibosh down to puzzle hq and present your findings in one final superpuzzle. if you won, you were thanked during the final ceremony and if there were any other prizes i don't remember them. i think it was just for the fun of the hunt.

i was one of four solvers, and one of only two solo solvers (and unfortunately the last of all of them- but i was nineteen at the time, so i think this is justified). and honestly, i was so deeply engrossed in the puzzle hunt that i developed tunnel vision for three days straight. i did puzzles and nothing else. honestly it was the best three days of my life until my roommates made a custom puzzle hunt for my birthday just last week <3

unfortunately because my old r2droid2 phone was phased out and the lg4 shat itself point blank in 2016, the photos i took of rainfurrest '15 were almost completely lost- and nobody else ever posted an archive of these puzzles anywhere on the internet. originally the head of the puzzle team was going to post them, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. i happened to save most of the puzzles via dodgy skype log research and reaching out to my friends, but anywhere between 1 and 3 puzzles have been lost. i know the title to one such puzzle was the Librarian's Puzzle, but if there were any more i've straight up forgotten them. having memory problems really sucks.

so, i'm making this post now. it's a longshot, but hey, it might work. if anyone has the missing 1-3 puzzles from rainfurrest '15, please tag them onto this post or drop me an ask so we can have a full collection. i want to try and save this tiny but fun piece of rainfurrest, so i can talk about what made me fall so deeply in love with puzzle solving games.

[psychedelic-charm]

I hope you guys set more realistic expectations for this con. We don't want another situation where the organizers have to beg guests for money because they overestimated the amount of attendees and can't pay their booking fees.

And you'd better pay Strange for her appearance!

Prepare yourself.

[alphacrone]

there is no better kind of youtube video essay to listen to while working than the ones that break down wacky petty internet drama from niche communities

[apotheoseity]

mutual 1: does anyone ever think about [obscure fan content for a specific fandom] anymore

mutual 2: [37 consecutive images of raw meat and wild game] sorry i got hungry

mutual 3: look at my anime boys [fandom tag i have blocked] [fandom tag i have blocked] [untagged content of the fandom tag i have blocked]

mutual 4: stop upselling stuffed animals on ebay or ill kill you

mutual 5: i think i hauve covide [image of a cartoon character]

mutual 6: hehe whimsy! [image of baby animals frolicking]

mutual 7: Every day I find myself feeling undeserving of what little peace there is in my life.

mutual 8: [UNTAGGED VR DINOSAUR COCK POV]

mutual 9: if you interact with mutual 5 block me

mutual 10: please be normal about people who have sex before i martyr myself to make you people normal by force

mutual 11: im so high i got scared about my favorite character being in my house

mutual 12: hey guys did i ever tell you how i was at rainfurrest 2015

mutual 13: [thinly veiled furry fetish art that i WILL like and reblog]

mutual 14: [mutiple reblogs from my ex in a row]

mutual 15: [reblogs a post from me to tag me in it]

[nico-the-overlord]

What is Dashcon

What is RainFurrest

What is ApeFest

[psychedelic-charm]

I don't go to conventions, but I am curious to see what a liminal space meetup would look like.

dashcon

I’m an so happily and blissfully ignorant of a lot of the bs that goes on. I just learned about Dashcon and 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I love tumblr and the idea of us all physically together in one place is 😂😂😂😂

Now we’ve had Fyre fest, the wonka experience, and now bridgerton ball. I date back to Star Trek conventions in nyc at the now defunct Stadler Hilton near Madison square garden. Late 70s.

you pay your $7 at the door and watch Star Trek eps, and maybe see a presentation or two. Ah the good old days when 40,000 fans didn’t show up, and the normies poked at us with sticks and laughed.

creation con was the company that and they sucked. Schedules were more like suggestions. But there really were gatherings, they really had guests (like George taikai and Adric from Doctor who). And we had a great time.

Hmm..maybe I can launch a liminal spaces convention. 🧐

[galacticcosmologist]

CG: DOES ANYONE EVER THINK ABOUT [OBSCURE FAN CONTENT FOR A SPECIFIC FANDOM] ANYMORE

AC: :33 < [37 consecutive images of raw meat and wild game] sorry i got hungry

CA: look at my anime boys [fandom tag i havve blocked] [fandom tag i havve blocked] [untagged content of the fandom tag i havve blocked]

GC: STOP UPS3LL1NG STUFF3D 4N1M4LS ON 3B4Y OR 1LL K1LL YOU

AG: I think I hauve covide [image of a cartoon character]

CC: )(-E)(-E w)(imsy! [image of baby cuttlefish frolicking]

TA: every day ii fiind my2elf feeliing unde2erviing of what liittle peace there ii2 iin my liife.

GC: [UNT4GG3D VR D1NOS4UR COCK POV]

AA: if y0u interact with mutual 5 bl0ck me

CG: PLEASE BE NORMAL ABOUT PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX BEFORE I MARTYR MYSELF TO MAKE YOU PEOPLE NORMAL BY FORCE

TC: Im sO HiGh i gOt sCaReD AbOuT My fAvOrItE ChArAcTeR BeInG In mY HoUsE

AC: :33 < hey guys did i ever tell you how i was at rainfurrest 2015

CT: D--> [thinly veiled furry fetish art that i WILL like and reblog]

GA: [Mutiple Reblogs From My Ex In A Row]

AT: [REBLOGS A POST FROM ME TO TAG ME IN IT]

x

[muskmelon-enjoyer-199x]

midwest furfest 2014 and rainfurrest 2015 happened within 10 months of each other and honestly it was a hilarious time to be on tumblr and twitter lmao

[conkreetmonkey]

IT'S REAL

ngl, I was expecting you to tell me it was all made up, but I suppose in hindsight it's not terribly hard to believe that it happened. It's not too farfetched, especially compared to some 100% verified convention incidents such as the exploding toilet of Rainfurrest 2015.

Honestly, as disgusting as the truth probably is, I can't help but wonder what the aftermath looked like. There's no way it worked out as intended, even if the skin poisoning part is an exaggeration. We'll never know the ratio of ink and alcohol to water, but dipping your entire body in it while it's still concentrated enough to stain must have some wretched effects. I'm not even clear on what the alcohol in the mix was supposed to be doing. Helping the ink penetrate, maybe? I know tabletop terrain hobbyists use it to make white glue penetrate deep into sand, gravel etc. to avoid a globbing effect. I think I've used alcohol to remove Sharpie from my skin before. It's a general purpose thinner, I thought.

Thanks for answering, it means a lot that you keep answering people's silly little questions despite doubtlessly being a very busy man. I appreciate it.

Do you personally believe the sharpie bath incident really happened, or do you think it's just an urban legend?

i've already talked about this at length, but I guess not on tumblr. I will do my best to recount the tale here as well.

(TLDR version: yes, it did but the extent to which it happened has taken on a life of its own.) Here is what I know. In the prime days of the fandom, I still used to go to conventions. Anime Expo was local to me and I could take one train right to the convention center. A lot of my IRL friend group at the time were cosplayers that I'd met through homestuck meetups etc. Octo and I were meeting up with friend of ours (this is the person who made the original post) and told us about the incident because they framed it as something that happened in their hotel room. "You won't BELIEVE what I just had to deal with." We were sort of shocked but like "yeah I can believe that." It was a typical con story honestly. Somebody did something weird and thoughtless and maybe a little insane? Yeah sounds about right. That's conventions for you. If you know con groups and cosplay people, you know they pack like 10+ people in one room to save money and often times its friends-of-friends who need a place to stay. The hotel rooms are like a chaos zone staging area and people are constantly coming in and out. So and so needs to borrow a glue gun because their thing is falling apart. Whats her name is the only one who knows how to apply the sealant right so she's gonna be hanging out while we get ready. That guy you met at Denny's the other night needs to use our bathroom to put makeup on so listen for the door he said he'd drop by but idk where my phone is. You get it. It can actually be such a fun and welcoming community when you don't have some shithead whispering in your ear that its cringe. So these rooms are already chaos and nobody is paying attention to what other people are doing. This actually lends the story a lot of legitimacy. However. There is a grain of sand here. I can only tell you what I know and heard. Here are the facts: somebody tried to dye their skin with sharpie/water/alcohol in a tub. The mess they made trying to do this could not be cleaned up by the people in the room. They had to pay a fine. I saw some of the mess in cell phone photos, but never met or saw the person that made it. Did they go to the hospital? I don't know. Was it a young kid? I don't know, probably. Did they lock themselves in the bathroom and they had to break down the door? This actually seems kind of unlikely. Was some of the story likely embellished over the years for entertainment value or to make fun of Homestuck fans? Absolutely. The point is it sort of doesn't matter. The story gets passed around as an easy way to dunk on a fandom that is already sort of easy to dunk on. (its true im taking fucking potshots from friends who really shouldn't be throwing stones. you know who you are and when you are least expecting it, i will fucking get you in the vc.) Anyway, hope that helps.

[very-gay-alkyrion]

It's been officially eight years since RainFurrest 2015

[terrania]

the thing about being on the internet is that everything and anything has already happened on here and you have no idea about it. your friend and you will be talking about furries who operate ham radios on call as an impossible niche and you'll check wikifur for it and find 28 entries for the topic, including the page "radiofur," which "hamfurs" are a subset of. on the same website, you'll find a page- off the main front page, mind you- about furry livejournal communities, last updated in 2013, with pages ranging from that year to a decade before then. choice pages will include a furry cookbook, infuriatingly locking its recipes behind a physical print, long out of commission, and an entire swath of furry playing card producers- though it'll really all just be commissions with mobile device aspect ratios, but made before mobile devices. You'll start to imagine a time when this is all the community got, before echo or adastra, when everything was this level of quality, when all there was was what your peers made... and you'll start to get wistful for that type of peership, wondering if those livejournal people knew that one day, 20 years after they type all this...

...

Holy shit, there's a livejournal for Rainfurrest. your friend will have no idea about it, so you'll have to fill him in- starting with the vanilla knowledge about the flooded basement, and working your way up to the Cum Pizza Incident that closed the con for good. saying all this, you'll realize: what you're describing happened *12 years* after some of these entries, *during* the beginning of echo's production, at the dawn of what you actually know about this community. you'll realize that your knowledge of the internet as a *whole* hardly goes back before 2015, and while you're realizing this, you'll check wikifur's character-stubs page, and find, near the bottom, the entry for something called Licenseable Bear™.

you'll check the website and it's beautiful. he's just a little teddy bear, and all he wants is to be licensed. it's the subject of four different physically-printed comic collections- again, all out of print!- documenting the bear's escapades in licensing. his website was first created, again, 20 years ago, but his series will have ran until 2009- the last collection having an ultra-rare obama pastiche cover version. naturally, you'll send out an email to the creator of the bear, Nat Gertler, asking to license the bear yourself, though you'll have no clue what you'd use him in.

later, off call, you'll look Nat up, just out of curiosity, and find out that he's still active after 20 years- but what really catches your eye will be that in his mastodon profile, he'll have revealed himself to be the founder of hourly comics day.

this will spark something within you. it'll be seeing this line, this strange, strange line moving through time, through strange people and stranger community, to bigger and bigger projects, to greater and greater heights. it will be knowing that just as Liscenceable Bear™ has the same origin of hourly comics day, Echo has the same origin as those furry playing cards. it'll be knowing that somehow, through some miracle, these 20-year-old sites are still up, an ancient, unknown origin, a forgotten mark along a long, winding path, all catalogued in a hardly-less-forgotten website. it'll be knowing that these little projects were always somewhere behind you, in the past, informing all the strangeness and community around you now, and it'll be knowing that despite everything, the long-dead find ways to stay with us.

[cursedweezerblingees]

dont go guys please

[sero-in-places-he-shouldnt-be]

Sero vibing at rainfurrest 2015