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Feast, Festival, and Fur – The rituals of a furcon

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Age: 27

Text: Interviewer – “When was the first time you heard of a furry convention?”

JP – “I’ve for sure sure known about them since I was younger but I didn’t really think positively about them until years later. I was a bit of an edgelord back in the day.”

Interviewer – “Have you been to one before or many?”

JP – “I’ve been to the same one, TFF, or Texas Furry Fiesta for 3 years as of now. So a couple times, I’d say.”

Interviewer – “What has been some notable elements of these, some highlights that you get excited about when traveling and going to these conventions?”

JP – “To me, the Artist Alley, a large room in the convention center where tons of different artists are posted up to sell their merchandise, get commissions in person, or advertise. It’s super cool. Besides that, the various community events that TFF has have been the highlights for me.”

Interviewer – “What rituals do you feel are active elements of every furcon, or you feel should be a part of them if not?”

JP – “Fursuiting for sure, and while it’s unnecessary I particularly have fun playing a bit of a character. I have 2 different suits, so I’m able to change up the characters I go as, which adds to the fun of it all since a lot of other people are doing the same. Some conventions even have events to show off all of the different attendees suits! Though despite it being a very integral thing, it’s still unnecessary and one doesn’t need a suit in order to attend.”

Interviewer – “What’s been your most memorable or best memory in the fandom or at a furcon?”

JP – “As far as my best memory, it would prolly be my first con just getting to spend time with some friends and having the opportunity to explore the city with them.”

Context: Similar to other fandom based conventions, a “furcon” is just that, a convention for furries or fans of the furry community to gather, go to panels, buy art, and be a meeting point for friends who would usually be online to meet up in person. When talking to JP about his involvement within the fandom, since I knew he recently went to Texas Furry Fiesta, I wanted to delve in and ask about the folk practices done at this kind of event, as I know other conventions akin to comicons have their cosplays, panels, celebrity features, and art galleries.

Analysis: Furries are one of the fandoms that have such deep cultural ties to industries, popular culture, media, and their own complex traditions, rites, and rituals. One of said rites of passage is attending a furry convention, or a furcon for short. Aside from this rite of passage, many traditional events occur, some mentioned by JP. These would include the sharing of community folk art at the artist’s alley, a dance competition, showing off the hard work and craft of fursuit makers by featuring your own, as well as being a pseudo-pilgrimage for a friend group all within the fandom to meet up. A furcon is a multi-faceted treasure trove of lore for all of those who attend, their passions, and particular interests in their characters, how they present themselves, and the boundless memories, activities, and events at their disposal.

Hobama

HF: “I wanted to talk about the most iconic ship around…especially since it’s been resurfacing online through TikTok. Harry Styles x Barack Obama, aka ‘Hobama’. This ship has been around ever since I can remember, I don’t even know how I learned about it, but suddenly I just knew. This was way before TikTok, I probably heard on Twitter and Tumblr since most memes like this originated there. It was during the One Direction era when it started so probably around 2014-2015 was the start.”

Interviewer: What kind of memes was it? Did people actually see them hang out as One Direction meeting the President or something?

HF: “Hahahah, no no, that would’ve been amazing for the fandom though, I’m sure. They were photoshopped images, some goodish, some really poorly mad but they were equally as funny. I’m pretty sure there were even Wattpad/Tumblr short fanfics on them, too. The fandom took the bit and just ran with it.”

Interviewer: “Omg wow, that’s so funny. You mentioned earlier it’s resurfacing, could you please expand on that?”

HF: “Yeah, for sure. So there’s always the occasional edit from time to time, like since 2014, the fandom has kept this running, so out of the blue, you’ll find a great edit or photo. But recently, I’ve been seeing them in what everyone’s been posting about the new Tomodachi Life game.”

Interviewer: “Tomodachi Life?”

HF: “Nintendo released a game this year called Tomodachi Life, where you can make custom Mii’s, and it’s kinda like Sims, where you watch them live life and help them move the stories along. People are genuinely so creative and have been posting videos of their games and the Mii’s they’ve created, and how they interact. Oh, and the characters can fall in love with each other! You can’t make them, though – you can try and have them hang out until they do, but it’s all worth their coding like of the personalities you picked for them match. So, to my point, people have been making Mii’s of Harry Styles and Barack Obama, and they’ve been falling in love. So basically their love is universal haha….This fandom brought people together. Having a shared joke like this all over created a community, and I’m so happy to see it continue now.”

Context: This was a story told to me by my cousin. She is 25 now and was a prime target audience for One Direction, being a teenage girl during their peak years. On a phone call, we were talking about Tomodachi Life and the different characters people are making, and she mentioned Harry and Obama. I knew some of the lore, but knowing she was older and deep in this info during the prime of it all, I knew I had to ask her to elaborate for the archive.

Analysis: This shows how internet fandoms can take a completely random joke and keep it alive for years just because it’s funny and weird. It started on Twitter and Tumblr and has moved to every social media platform since then. Becoming a prominent part of the new viral videos of Tomodachi Life on TikTok proves how diverse its platforms are and how it will jump and continue anywhere. This fandom ship has had so much potential to break up, considering Obama has not been president, and One Direction has broken up for a while, but the ship is still prominent and not going anywhere anytime soon. Fans will always find new ways to keep them going. The strength of ships and fandoms is a force that should not be reckoned with.

Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons

Interviewer: Can you please dive into what exactly is Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons?

VS: A movie franchise that pretty much raised me. To be shorter, we can call it ROTBTD. It’s a mix of the movies Rise of the Guardians, Tangled, How To Train Your Dragon or HTTYD, and Brave. I honestly don’t think there’s any crossover between the movies, but they came out around the same time and have similar story lines with shared themes and animation styles. OH! And Frozen is sometimes included in there too, but isn’t a main one enough to change the fandom title.”

Interview: Ok, so interesting fandom them for such a random reason…how did the fandom grow and spread? Did people just know to watch them together, or where did you see it?”

VS: “Well I just knew haha, but that was through my older sister. She was old enough around then to have Tumblr and Twitter and read it through there. She would show me and my brother and just laugh, it was all so creative, honestly. The movies came out and people saw the similar styles and made this awesomely random connection to put them together.”

Interviewer: “What kind of things would you see?”

VS: “Ha it’s kind of what wouldn’t I see to be honest. There were edits of them – both photo and videos, Wattpad fanfics, AU stories on Tumblr of them all together in high school. People would ship the characters as well. It mainly revolved around the big four, like Rapunzel, Merida, Jack Frost, and Hiccup. I think Frozen came into it because people loved to ship Jack Frost with Elsa…rip Jelsa, that was a peak ship. Those edits were before AI and always edited so scarily accurate, like they were in the same room. Also, Rapunzel showed up in a blury background in Frozen during Elsa’s coronation scene. That’s pretty much the only part where Frozen’s in the ROTBTD fandom, it mainly consists of the big four.”

Interviewer: “Is it still a thing?”

VS: “Not as big as before, but it comes back sometimes, especially on TikTok. It’s very nostalgic.”

Context: My friend and I were watching YouTube videos together and saw the creator, Danny Motta (a movie and TV show reacter), had started a series on Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons. We started watching his videos on the subject and started reminiscing about it from when we were kids. I was aware of the Jelsa part on the internet, but VS knew the true lore and crossovers of everything.

Analysis: This truly shows the power of fandom and that it can emerge from anything. These were four movies that seriously have barely anything in common, yet people put them together, and it took the internet by storm. It became a true fandom with fanfics, edits, ships, and AU (Alternate Universe) stories of them hanging out. It goes to show the creativity and extend the fan will go to create something new entirely for others to enjoy, and ultimately create a community. These characters have never interacted, so everything made was completely from the fans’ imagination, and one fan would build off the content from another fan. Communities and fandoms can be made from anything.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Text: “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is a tag used on Archive of Our Own. EK notes the tag’s negative reputation, however, its “correct” usage simply means to pay attention to the other tags on the work, because what is tagged is what will be present in the fic. This often is usd in fanfiction with potentially triggering or upsetting content, because the author wants to emphasize that the content is tagged, and it should not come as a surprise to any reader who chooses to read the piece.

This tag’s origin comes from an Arrested Development scene, where a character opens the fridge to see a paper bag labelled “dead dove: do not eat.” He opens the bag and, when he finds a dead dove inside, says “I don’t know what I expected.” It’s in this way that the tag is meant to say that the fic is going to contain what the tags denote, and the reader should not be surprised by the content.

Analysis: EK discusses the misinterpretation of this tag as having a “scary” reputation–that often, “dead dove” is a red flag for many readers in and of itself, without even looking at the rest of the tags. Because it is often used on works with potentially triggering or taboo content, the tag itself has taken on a taboo reputation. It’s interesting to me, however, that this has become the case for a practice that is essentially a public service–“dead dove” itself doesn’t mean anything scary or taboo, all it does is tell a reader to know what they’re getting themselves into. I also believe that “dead dove” as a tag is kind of a sweet custom, on a fandom’s part; it’s community care, in a way, looking out for others to make sure they won’t be upset by anything they read. It’s also a measure of protection, as online anonymity makes people quite comfortable yelling at fic authors in the comments for things that were clearly advertised in the tags or description of a fic.

No Beta, We Die Like [Blank]

Text: “No Beta We Die Like [Blank]”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years. She explains the meaning of the phrase is that the fic has not been “beta read” by someone else–it has not been read or edited by another person aside from the author before being posted online. While the original form of the phrase is “No beta we die like men,” often the phrase is customized toward the fandom, with “men” being replaced by the name of a character who dies in the show. EK notes that it’s usually a particularly painful death, often a particularly beloved character who died, whose name is substituted in. She also notes that it’s not always solely a character name–in some instances, it’s “my sanity” or other references to the author’s real life, or other times a reference to a commentary about the show’s writing [ie. “we die like [character’s] characterization] or other aspects of the property.

The origin of this phrase comes from a picture of a bumper sticker that read “no airbags we die like men.”

Analysis: EK views this as a public service announcement on a fanfiction, sort of a disclaimer meant to explain any errors or “bad writing” found within the piece. I also view this as a kind of signifier of in-group status, recognizing that someone is a member of a fandom and was emotionally impacted by a character’s death–enough to bestow their name within the tag, almost as a badge of honor. This is a way to make light of any emotional turmoil brought on by a character’s death and find community in the emotional response to a piece of media, as most fandom is fixated on.