FWA 2026: Day 2

Alright, Day 2 is where things FINALLY started to kick in, at least in terms of things being fully "fun". First of all, since Oscar was visiting GA for the first time, I OBVIOUSLY had to take him to Waffle House, which there was thankfully one nearby, but not so thankfully, there was a line of people waiting to get in, so we had to wait a bit before we got in, but we finally got in, ordered and ate our food, which Oscar said he loved, funnily he got what I also get whenever I go to WH, and he basically devoured that shit near instantly, he was like halfway done by the time I had basically just started to eat, and was fully done when I was halfway done eating, plus he kept saying how much better WH was compared to other chains like IHOP and Denny's, so ig to someone who's never had it before it tastes heavenly, while I have it like multiple times a month so it's more common for me to have it, lmao.

After that, we headed towards the Dealer's Den/Vendor Hall (I still don't know what it's properly called) since it was the first day they were properly open, but uh... there was a massive, MASSIVE line for them, I killed time by just using my PSP and phone while slowly inching my way forwards, but like, jesus christ. No kidding, think it took about an hour and a half for me to finally get inside, but once I got in, it was fully worth it, they had TONS of vendors in there selling a lot of cool shit. Stuff like shirts, prints and posters, plushes and figures, stickers and badges, even some kinda out there stuff like coffee and rugs. Hell, some stalls were people selling fursuit heads directly (even if all of them were WAY out of my price range, like the "cheapest" one I saw was still several hundred). There was also food in there but neither me or Oscar bothered with that for obvious reasons, if we didn't eat beforehand I'm pretty sure we would've gotten some food there. But needless to say, we both went on a massive spending spree in there, legit think both of us spent like $800 to even $1000 combined, but considering Oscar said that he heard someone say they spent up to $4000 in there, we were probably on the lower end of people in terms of money spent. :P

But regardless, it let me finally get some much needed stuff like some badges for me to stick on my lanyard, including someone who drew a quick one for me right there (it's the one made of cardboard you can see on some pics of my lanyard on the right), though I think I slightly messed up when I told them that Helena was a Husky when she's a Border Collie, but it still turned out great and accurate regardless, so that was just a me issue. Unfortunately me and Oscar spent so long in there that we missed a panel we wanted to attend (specifically one for Video Game Music, but it is what it is, I had also missed panels for dog furs and a big fursuit photoshoot since I overslept), though we still had fun in there and got a lot of cool stuff. We went back to the room afterwards to drop our stuff off so we weren't just lugging bags around with us all the time, and so we could charge our phones. Though when I was in there I realized my PSP's charger had broken on me and wouldn't charge the console anymore, so that sucked, thankfully the PSP has a somewhat long battery life, but it was still only on like 1 bar of battery by the time I had stopped using it that night, so kinda sucked but again, it is what it is, still got people complimenting me on having a PSP and Oscar had some fun both using it and looking at some of the stuff I had saved on it, so still had some fun with it before it died.

Afterwards, I went back to the game room to kill some time, while attending a panel that was later that day, which was actually ran by one of the guys behind The Cutting Room Floor, was on cut content in retro games (of course), was something both me and Oscar wanted to attend. It was a pretty cool panel, though the last time I went to FWA in 2022 they also had a similar panel, but there was still some new stuff in there to keep in interesting for someone who has previously seen it. Then we went back to the room again, this time to kill time till both of us had something we were looking forwards to, specifically Oscar wanted to go to a rave set (and he REALLY wanted to see Russelbuck especially), while I had a different panel I wanted to attend at 11:30 (it's an adult only panel, hence why it was scheduled so late), I also needed to shower as I was playing Rock Band (of course) and was on drums, though while I was in the shower Oscar texted me that he got turned away from the rave because they don't allow bags(??!?!?!??!?!), so that was lame as fuck, but he went to a dance instead and presumably had a pretty good time there.

As for my panel, it was mainly a meet and greet thing (which is why I bought a Bluey plush before heading up here), though we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the panel. I also laughed a bit too much when the person running the panel said "everyone here has nice outfits on, let's try to keep them on in here" (might be slightly paraphrasing), I also got to see some suiters who's stuff I've liked for a while too which was nice, but admittedly the thing was kinda boring since I'm not THAT sociable of a person, not really the kind to outright approach people, I'm more the kind to BE approached, but still thought it was kinda neat to be in there regardless, plus I got a lollipop after getting a "shot" as you can see in the pic on the right. :P

Day 3 of the con