Furry enthusiasts flock to Anthrocon

Over the weekend, Anthrocon, the world’s largest furry convention, came to Downtown’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center and brought with it some 5,000 attendees, who took part in everything from a Fursuit Parade to panels on how to improve one’s digital animation skills.

Each year, Anthrocon brings together furries — some of whom are known for their fandom of anthropomorphic fantasy animals and the costumes they wear to resemble them — from all over the United States, as well as several countries abroad.

Although the furry community’s most recognizable constituents are the ones who don their fursuits — full-body costumes that can cost upward of several thousand dollars — the majority of the subculture sport casual wear. According to Anthrocon Publications Director Karl Jorgensen, only about 20 percent of attendees came to the Pittsburgh event suited-up.

Much of the interest furries have in their subculture is predicated on a fiercely dedicated appreciation of the arts.

 Anthrocon’s Dealers’ Room, the largest ongoing event at the convention center, featured scores of writers and illustrators of graphic novels and other forms of fiction, as well as a wide variety of other artists’s works.

Norman Rafferty, one of the many self-publishing vendors at the convention, said that the niche interests of the furry community allowed him to put out his work.

 “Back in the early ‘90s, I really wanted to be published. But I don’t need to tell a newspaper that printing has certainly changed a lot,” Rafferty said. “No one was publishing me, so I did it on my own.”

Rafferty is the creator of Ironclaw, a fantasy role-playing game about four fueding noble houses in which players take on the parts of various furries embarking on adventures in a Renaissance-era world. The corresponding literature and storybooks to the game were successful in large part because they appealed to a demographic that typically doesn’t have as many options as other interests do, Rafferty said.

“One thing as a self-publisher is that you don’t want to do what other people will be doing,” he said. “So, I found an underserved market of people who wanted to read my stories about steampunk and furries.”

Peter S. Beagle, an author of many furry fan-favorites and a 1959 graduate of Pitt’s writing program, echoed many of Rafferty’s points, but took care to describe the openness and acceptance of the community as its best traits. According to Beagle, furries don’t judge one another artistically or socially.

The social and artistic air of the furry conventions set it apart.

Andy Runton, author of the Owly graphic novel series, said that the “mainstreamness” of non-furry conventions proves that they lack the sort of creativity that Anthrocon brought to the table and the individuality that Jorgensen and others praised.

“I’ve just been blown away because at normal conventions, a lot of people are licensed characters, like Superman,” said Runton. “These are all original creations, and that’s what makes it so cool because everyone is supporting each other as creators just by coming here.”

Aside from supporting each other as fans and as artists, the furries of Anthrocon also support one local animal-related charity a year, and their track record of philanthropy attests to their generosity. Since finding Pittsburgh as its recurring home since 2006, it has raised about $100,000 for charities around the city and area, such as Hello Bully and Fayette Friends of Animals and Pittsburgh Parrot Rescue, among others.

This year’s charity, Equine Angels Rescue, is based in Cabot, Pa., and works to rehabilitate injured, sick or harmed horses and ponies, as well as care for them if rescued from slaughter. Pamela Vivirito, the organization’s founder, said that she was speechless when she learned that she could expect to bring about $20,000 back to her charity at the conclusion of Anthrocon.

“I would have never expected this kind of giving,” Vivirito said. “We’ve had to be carried by Christmas donations, so this couldn’t have come at a better time.”

However, despite its reverence for artistic work and engagement in philanthropy, Anthrocon’s — and, by extension, the furry community’s — nature remains slightly opaque from the outside, even if attendees know exactly what it is that personally brings them to the event.

“Basically, there are a lot of misconceptions, and people who are unfamiliar with the community are afraid of what they don’t understand,” Jorgensen said. “But the people who do come down, they see that we’re fun — maybe a little weird, but completely harmless.”