All right, it's time for a convention journal again. This one is going to be a little bit different from usual.

You're probably aware that last year at Midwest FurFest, there was an incident where the hotel was attacked with chlorine gas, and a few people, including both convention attendees and bystanders, were hospitalized. Well, although I have attended a number of conventions since 2008, in both furry and other genres, this will be the first time I have attended Midwest FurFest, as well as the first time I have ever purchased a supersponsor membership for a convention of any kind. While I am there, I will present matching donations of $1000 (which, if you'd like to keep score, is $1000 more than has been raised for any charity by the entire atrocity tourism, anti-fandom, and "fail" communities put together over the entire time those communities have existed,) both to the 501(c) organization that runs Midwest FurFest itself, and to Save-A-Vet, the convention's official charity for this year, which is dedicated to finding adoptive homes for military and police service dogs.

Why am I doing this? Well, part of the reason is that over the past several years, I've seen the entire internet become steadily worse and worse, more and more devoted to the ongoing arms race of who can be the most self-seriously nihilistic and the most mindlessly ironic. And Midwest FurFest and Save-a-Vet both provide excellent counterpoints to that attitude. They're great examples of what can be done when one admits something genuinely positive into their life, something they have a sincere passion for that can make the world better in a small way.

The main reason I am doing this, however, is simply because I know just how deeply it will hurt the perpetrator of the gas attack to see this happen. I'm doing this to make it quite clear to him that his little cry of self-satisfied petulance has literally accomplished less than nothing. I want to see him raging impotently about that all over his chans and his drama communities, trembling with righteous fury and inconsolable despair as he witnesses an event that offends him so deeply not only continuing to grow and thrive, but becoming stronger than ever as a direct consequence of his own actions. After all, a life that will never have any greater fulfillment than that to offer him is the only destiny he really deserves, and the destiny he has willingly chosen for himself.

What I think we have to realize, however, is that furry conventions do not exist in a vacuum. Sooner or later, we will inevitably be affected by events in other subcultures, and there are now both pro-Gamergaters and anti-Gamergaters sending in bomb threats to conventions (by the way, a wise person, instead of raging at me here for pointing out that both sides of that particular shitfit are nothing more than two heads of the same hydra, would learn an important lesson about why the mere fact that a fight is occurring does not mean there must be a good guy in it. I believe in taking a consistent stand against all movements that reveal by their actions that their motivation consists simply of hatred for some dreaded Other, because it is their actions, and not any high-minded principles their PR divisions might assert to be what they really stand for, that demonstrate what they believe in and what they are willing to fight for in reality. And any movement that tries to excuse its actions by pointing out that the other side does the same things is only demonstrating that both sides are equally unworthy of my respect.)

Although we have no real way to tell what cause the MFF 2014 attacker thought he was fighting for, it's ultimately immaterial, because over the past few years, we've only seen more and more examples of the sort of authoritarian movements that are soon going to be reaching out and trying to bring furry fandom within their control, just as they have done with other communities. And these are the sort of movements that I want to see stopped before they see any chance to gain a foothold within our fandom, before they start to convince others that they ought to be gatekeepers and that the sincere passion, creativity, and individuality of furry fandom ought to be subject to their approval. And there is absolutely no way that I could care any less about what side of what social issue any of these movements may claim to be on. Everyone who has ever looked at fandom as a target for their entryism to be whipped into compliance by means of violent threats, I want to lose. I want them to never receive anything but scorn and humiliation for their efforts.

When it comes down to it, the truth about terrorism is that it's all about control. Terrorism is the mode of operation of millenarian mass movements whose true cause, regardless of what noble ideals they might claim to believe in, is always and everywhere to enforce their bigotries on the entire world by means of arbitrary violence. As the ongoing politicization of absolutely everything continues, we in fandom will only see more and more and more similar efforts at controlling us, and I believe there is only one way to stop them. The only solution is for everyone across all fandoms to unite in sending a message too powerful to be ignored, saying that, regardless of what cause it claims to stand for, we have no respect for terrorism, and we will not allow terrorism to become a viable means of controlling fandoms or conventions. Whenever a terrorist threat is made against a convention of any kind, we will all join together in overwhelming public disobedience against the terrorists' agenda of control.

That is why I am doing what I am doing. As far as I am aware, I am the first person in furry fandom to do something like this, but I want to preemptively set a precedent of resistance against authoritarian activism before it infects furry fandom to the degree that it has already infected gaming fandom. Because as someone who's a furry and not just a product of today's social media outrage culture, I don't just know what I'm fighting against. I know why furry fandom is worth fighting for.

-- Bartolo Polkakitty
Leave the night light on inside the birdhouse in your soul.