CONfabulation 2019

The Third Annual CONfabulation was held September 26-29, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. It was located at SpringHill Suites Chicago O’Hare, 8101 West Higgins Road, Chicago, Illinois, 60631.

The charity raffle raised $646.36 for Howard Brown Health.

2019 Panels/Programming

Programming items typically run 50 minutes with 10 minute breaks in between in order to allow time for participants to chat or visit the restroom, with enough time for them to make it to the next item or panel that they’d like to see. There is also an hour-long break for lunch.

Programming items are divided into two tracks (Panels & Group Discussions/Workshops) with a room dedicated to each track.

Fandom-specific Programming:

  • Five For Licking (also: Fighting) – (Hockey RPF)
  • Get in the Car, Angel: Being a Panel of Certain Episodes on Amazon Prime in Accordance with the Novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – (Good Omens)
  • It’s a Real Bisexual Alien Blast Around Here – (Roswell, New Mexico)
  • Press X to [insert clever video game pun] – (Video Games)
  • Rebellions Are Built On Hope – (Star Wars)
  • SPACE! A Fandom Odyssey – (Space fandoms)
  • The Umbrella Academy: Super. Dysfunctional. Family.
  • There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done? – (Supernatural)
  • Whatever It Takes: The MCU from Iron Man to 2019
  • Why Bryn Is Obsessed With Young Hercules (And You Should Be Too) – (Young Hercules)

Fandom-generic Programming:

  • Alternate Universe Fic: Small (or not so small) Changes, Amazing Fanfiction
  • Crossovers in Fandom: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
  • Five Miles In The Snow. Barefoot! And Both Ways! – (Fandom history)
  • Heavenly Bodies – (The fat experience in media)
  • How To Mourn A Fandom
  • Invisible Unicorn Petting Zoo (No Petting Allowed) – (Marginalized sexualities, genders, gender expressions, and intersectionality)
  • Nuttin’ More Important Than Family: Incest in fandom and mainstream media
  • Reccing the Oldies – (Older fandoms)
  • Remakes, Reboots, and Reimaginings
  • #robotfeels – (Robots and A.I.s)
  • Thirst for Your Fandom
  • Wait, Where Does The Baby Come Out? – (Mpreg)
  • Whump: Why We Hurt the Characters We Love

Workshops Programming:

  • Fandom Stitch ‘n’ Bitch – (Knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, etc.)
  • Makeup For People Who Don’t Makeup (And People Who Do) – (Makeup Q&A)
  • Plushie Workshop III: The Search for Sequins
  • Superhero Cross-Stitch
  • The Art of The Graphic – (Graphic Design)
  • Writers Support Group II: Dialogue and Action

Other Programming:

Overheard at CONfabulation 2019

Collected from Twitter:

  • “We have a smaller skyline but I like it. Less is More.” “Not to be a size queen, but sometimes Bigger is Better.” (Columbus vs. Chicago) #confabcon #Overheard @ConFabcon
  • “We need to know how many inches…” #CONfabcon
  • “Home is where nobody shames your kinks.” #confabcon
  • “Monsterfucking and Incest is our brand.” overheard @CONfabCon #confabcon
  • “Maybe that’s why I like space so much. In space, nobody can hear the manbabies whine” – overheard at #CONfabCon
  • “Tell me about this ‘Star Wars’ you mentioned. Are the stars at war?” – overheard at #CONfabCon
  • “Hannibal can be anywhere.” #confabcon
  • How to Mourn A Room Key #ConFabCon
  • OH at #confabcon: “We’re voting you off this threesome.”
  • OH at #confabcon: “Click click, motherfucker.”
  • “You still have clothes on so this is not the right video.” #confabcon
  • “There’s no penises out yet” #confabcon
  • OH at #confabcon: “I’m not THAT monofannishly maniacally obsessed.”
  • “I came out here to be attacked, and honestly I’m having such a good time right now.” #confabcon
  • “There’s a Dominant fandom and a submissive fandom” #confabcon
  • “Same hat!” “Same hat?” “Same hat.” #ConFabCon #CrossOver
  • “they love each other so much and it’s fucking gross” aka the fandom story. Overheard @ #CONfabCon
  • “Gotta have a sparkle, bitch” #confabcon
  • “The whole point of this movie was to watch this idiot Hufflepuff fall in love with everyone he meets.” Re: Solo #confabcon
  • “Girls do it differently sometimes” OH at #confabcon
  • “Rage Bog is adjacent to the Bog of Eternal Stench” #confabcon
  • “Your head WILL pass through the side of your body!!” #confabcon
  • “I just almost fell off the chair!” “That’s how I feel about watersports too!” OH #CONfabcon
  • “I love the fish tales!” “I can’t tell if you’re talking about porn or hair.” #monsterfucking #braidsbyisweedan #confabcon
  • “I have read Merry/Pippin/Treebeard.” “That would take…so long.” “The kink you have there is edging.” #monsterfucking #OH #CONfabcon
  • “It’s plant shaped” #confabcon
  • “You don’t know how xeno we’re going til the pants come off” #confabcon
  • “one of these people only have a certain number of limbs…” #confabcon
  • “A friendship was just made and ended in five minutes” – overheard at #CONfabCon
  • “it’s as furry or not, as you want it to be.” #confabcon
  • “I was wrong, the voodoo one *does* have ghost mpreg.” #confabcon
  • “Lizard brain says knock that one up.” #confancon
  • Who knew cross-stitch was so porny? #crossstitchorporn #CONFabCon #CONFab2019
  • “you’re not knotting anything.” #confabcon
  • “If I liked coffee shops, I could read a thousand fics by someone who knows how to use spellcheck but because I like mpreg I’ll read grammically indecent fic so I can get to where the man has the baby come out.” OH at #confabcon
  • OH at Confab: “stop non-con caring about me, dammit!” “sit still and let me groom you!” #confabcon
  • “Okay, go make your waffle while we talk about cannibalism” – overheard at #CONfabCon
  • OH at #confabcon: “Uncle Fester is not appetizing.”
  • “I’m not here to judge.” “I mean, you kind of are.” “Oh shit, you’re right!” #ConFabCon #BadFicIdol
  • “Pants are for genitals” #confabcon
  • “What part of ‘I don’t watch the show’ was vague?” Overheard @CONfabCon #confabcon
  • “How?! How do you get it out of your crevices!!!?!” #confabcon
  • OH at #confabcon: “Just because they look hot in their uniforms doesn’t mean we need the EMTs to visit us.”
  • “I couldn’t make a mashed potato hedgehog cuz they’re too chunky” #confabcon
  • “So, you know how Clex is allergic to women?” (they actually said “lemon”, but I misheard) Overheard @ConFabCon #CONfabCon
  • “I mean those people wanted to fuck pianos it wouldn’t surprise me they got excited fondling a liver.” I know I didn’t get that quite right but you get it. #confabcon
  • “That’s why Bucky is my little black dress.” #confabcon
  • “…you’ve got this nice veneer of space lasers” #confabcon
  • “When I was a kid butts didn’t work that way.” #confabcon
  • The queer alien tentacle buddy cop book is getting recced!!!! #confabcon
  • “Anthony Bourdain goes to Narnia” #confabcon
  • “I try not to patronize dudes because dudes are patronizing enough.” #confabcon
  • “Where they’re stepsiblings? You mean the coward’s incest?” “All the joy of incest without the birth defects!”#confabcon
  • “No ao3 offended user has ever spelt bestiality correctly.” #confabcon
  • “There wasn’t a massive outbreak of incest when everybody watched Game of Thrones.” #confabcon I would read that. Everybody catches the nicest flu.
  • “Put your username in your raffle ticket. Not your real name, because there’s too many Sarahs.” #confabcon
  • “That is NOT how you ride the feelings train to fandom town.” #confabcon
  • “It wasn’t a marshmallow pillow, it was a pudding pillow, and it felt wrong.” #confabcon
  • “Nothing on my back door, the cats already smile.” #JeremyRenner #Nomad #ConFabCon
  • “That’s wrong and bad… and yet, aesthetically pleasing…” #ConFabCon