HowlCon is a virtual camping-themed convention for alterhumans and nonhumans! Our goal is to bring our community together for a weekend of fun and learning.
The con will be hosted on discord and attendance is FREE.
We are often so scattered across the web, we hope to serve as a gathering place for folks to meet others like themselves, make friends and generally have a good time.
Hosted by @nova-dracomon
Our next con will be held October 23-25, 2026
Check out our website to learn more.
Important Links
Artist Directory 2025
2025 Event Schedule (Times are in US Central)
Youtube
Follow our tumblr for con updates and reminders. We look forward to seeing y'all there!
Never want to miss a HowlCon update? Join our newsletter!
It's just another way to get what we're posting on social media without having to specifically check tumblr. It's also great as an additional reminder as we'll email announcements and reminders for important dates to you.
Sign-up link attached! We also have an embedded sign-up form on the HowlCon website.
Hello campers! This year's HowlCon will be hosted on October 23-25, 2026.
Staff Applications - May 2nd - July 1st (Now Open)
Panelist & Artists Applications - July 1st - October 1st
Attendee Registration - July 1st - October 23
Staff, panelist and artist applications will be done through a google form. However, this year attendee registration will be done directly on discord using the server member applications.
We will be re-using last year's discord server. If you attended last year, and have not left the server, you do not need to apply for membership again.
So the mention of nonhuman feminism in the most recent panel made me think that I should write about my intersection of species and gender. I've avoided writing about this because of internet drama, but I'm the only one who can tell my story. Species wise, I'm a dog and a fae. Gender wise, I don't have one but sometimes lean trans masc. I should also note that I'm a member of a system and, because of identity blending, I sometimes get confused what's me and what isn't.
I feel my gender and sexuality are very interconnected. I had a hysterectomy largely because I view my dog-self as spayed. In past lives (yes, I believe in reincarnation), I had pups and was a decent mom. However, I never truly enjoyed being pregnant or having pups and that's not something I want to do in this life. Even when I get dog pups from breeders, I prefer them old enough to have a personality and be house-trained.
Another way that I see connections between gender and species is that I don't think fae have as much sexual dimorphism or gender roles as humans. As a fae, I'm just that. Gender doesn't really apply to me. Neither fae nor dogs have a strong sense of the difference between men and women. What differences there are don't really matter.
I've always been hesitant to talk about this because people on both sides of trans issues blame nonhuman folk for the bigotry trans people face. I've heard too many people say that my “transspecies” (not a word I use for myself) identity invalidates trans people. There appears to be a misconception that we're making fun of gender variety or actively trying to harm the trans community. People also seem to believe that I'm lying about being trans to make the community look bad.
I promise you that I'm completely sincere in all of these identities. Neither one invalidates the other. People are complex. It shouldn't be surprising that, once I accepted I was outside the norm in one way, it became easier for me to realize I didn't fit the mould in others. It also shouldn't surprise folks that these identities influence each other. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this topic. I hope I can inspire more conversation.
How does your gender intersect with your experience of species? Does one influence your experience of the other?
Howlcon got us to finally design kinsonas AND draw us all (mostly) in one picture, goodness. Here they are! The two headed dragon was made during the build a kinsona panel, and was meant to be me (Locust) and Grub.
The panel has lasted 1 million years and is still ongoing. We're trapped forever (It lasted an hour and I'd have stayed longer if I could)
Awoo! The HowlCon virtual campgrounds are officially closed for 2025!
The final activity has come and gone and the con is officially finished! Thank you to every camper that came to hang out with us this weekend! It was a blast and we look forward to welcoming you back to the campgrounds next year! HowlCon 2026 will take place October 24-26, 2026.
🙌 A massive shout‑out to our tireless volunteers! Your behind‑the‑scenes magic kept the embers glowing all weekend.
If you missed any of the panels, fear not! All of them are now live on the HowlCon YT.
Until next time—stay weird, keep creating, and keep howling. 🌕🦊
hello! first: howlcon was great!! i missed a lot of panels but i'm gonna watch the recordings in the next few days. question, since i'm not used to online cons: since the server is read-only now, is the idea to leave the sever and register again next year, or stay in the server until next year?
We're glad you enjoyed the con!
Feel free to stay in the server until it re-opens next year. As long as you do not leave the server, you will not need to re-register as an attendee next year.
Kinsona we made for HowlCon may be a new mains sona for us... it's us as a creature... it's us omfg- Look at us!! AHHH!!! I love this so so much this is so us omfg I love this so much... Us frfr!!
This is our ideal body if we had to share a body and not have two separate ones- She is the size of a giant tiger thing and is venomous and... yeah she's totally us holy shit - Jasper
[Image description: Drawing of a large brown cat with light brown underbelly and darker brown spots, Irken antennae and large canine teeth sitting down and looking up with her tail curled up in an S-shape. Jasper's gem makes up the feline's nose and Peridot's gem is on the forehead. A cutie mark on the feline's flank shows both Jasper and Peridot's gems side-by-side. Her four eyes (one normal-sized eye with three smaller ones below), inside of her ears, spikes along her back and a stringer at the tip of her tail are all colored in an orange to green gradient. Text reads: Jaspidot. she/they/it - gem/feline/canine/spider/Irken/andalite. The background is a faded collage of orange and green foods, a spaceship, a electronic screen and rain against a window. Artist Signature: Jaspidotsys. End description.]
Joining a virtual campfire at HowlCon with campfire ambience in the background cuddling my wife in co-front drinking tea is such a vibe. I love being an alterhuman, being gay, and being alive /gen
Peridot has been so quiet, just cuddled in my lap laughing at the things we're seeing while I actually interacted in chat. It's chilly where we are, and it really feels like an autumn campfire.. This is so nice.
[Image description: Discord screenshots of messages from Jasper (she/they) | The Jaspidot System. The first message, which is written in all capitals reads: This is a gay campfire. The second message reads: Peridot. End description.]
Just finished our first HowlCon!! This ended up being one of our favorite panels to host ever. We just died laughing so many times - we might have to host this again next HowlCon!
My Hyorse from the Let's Build a Kinsona panel at Howlcon!
I already have a few kinsonas, so this was more for fun as a mix of my two theriotypes - horse and hyena.
Created live on stage during our Create-a-Campfire story panel.
Mad Lib Story #1
We weren’t allowed to go in the The Pentagon and we really didn’t want to—it was effervescent and and smelled like mystery liquid.
The steps leading down into the The Pentagon were scrumdiddlyumptious and there was a splendiferous furby next to the thagomizer. It felt normal and we wanted to pulsating.
We imploded toward the The Pentagon, 80085 steps at a time till our wenises defenestrated gayly and we were too scared to meowing. There was always a queer empty soda can coming up from below the onion and we weren’t brave enough to honk it.
One day there was a thumping sound. It was coming from the The Pentagon. We wanted to know what was making the sound, but we were afraid we might die. We kinned and twerked, but each time the fear would dissociate over us, and we would back away, terrified.
Finally, throckmorton decided to face the fear and go down to the The Pentagon. When we didn't hear gayming, we became encouraged and followed behind, praying we would not be gambled by whatever it was that bonked and egged down there. When we made it to the very bottom, we punted, paw beans wrapped tightly around each other, barely awooing.
Then, we saw it. It was therianthropic and it was brohoofing boobily. We moved closer, we couldn’t breathe . . . It was Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way gerrymandering the rats in the soup.
Mad Lib Story #2
One day in Unethics, after the early morning draws were resulted, I announced “The pending log is now based” Immediately, everyone in the lab looked at me with fear.
“Never say that out loud,” warned Satan.
“You just cursed us!” cried Big Bird.
“Anything that happens now is your fault,” Fiona (the rabbit) growled just as the lab phone started to ring. I answered it.
“This is Heinz Doofenschmirtz. I have a patient that fell off her house and broke her peritoneum. We need 1 morbillion uncrossmatched units in the ER,” the voice said. After getting the patient’s information, I hung up. Immediately the phone rang again. Annoyed, I answered it.
“There is an order for the fitness gram pacer test on the patient in room 1 william,” Nurse Dr House said.
“Someone from the lab needs to redraw this because you hemolyzed the first tube.” I explained that hemolysis is often the result of a incompetent blood draw as I handed the uncrossmatched blood request to one of my coworkers.
“But I dissect really hard on the syringe while drawing so it wouldn’t clot. I know it’s your fault,” the nurse explained. This was followed by a 69 minute conversation before I was able to get the patient’s medical record number and enter the draw orders. The second phone line was stabbing before I could hang up. I handed the redraw orders to Elmo and answered, with a bad feeling in the pit of my a wisdom tooth.
“I have good news and bad news,” Dr Pepper said on the other end of phone.
“Dr. Abode will not be to work for the next <3 days because their pet blue wolf fursona has Lupus. I need someone to fill in, and it’s your turn.”
“What’s the good news?” I asked.
“It’s Lab Week, so there is Baja Blast Pie in the break room!” she chirped, sounding overly exotraumatized.
“At least my work fursuit is loose so I don’t need to worry about the extra apples,” I thought as I made my way back for a snack. As I entered the break room, my coworkers were finishing up the last scraps of soup leaving just a few crumbs behind.
rough kinsona idea i came up with during the kinsona creation panel of howlcon 2025!! gonna give him a rollator and maybe some hair clips in the future. bad image quality cuz i used my tablet camera
name is bones, pronouns he/xe/zir and wolfdog-themed emoji pronouns!
[Image description: Colored pencil drawing of a grey wolfdog with a white underbelly and a large red salmon tail. He is wearing a green hoodie and has curly brown hair. End description.]
More copied writings form the discussion threads at HowlCon! Here's one I have complicated feelings on, but have never written about specifically: Being Human.
--
The prompt:
"Full human, partial human, human hearted, humans from another world, tell me what you love about being human!
What does being human mean to you ?
How do you experiance Human-ness? And whats your favourite parts 🙂"
--
My response:
Asking "What does being human mean to you?" is, to me, a bit like asking a demigender person, "What does being your gender mean to you?"
I only ever feel "human" in shifts where the kintype's species was, indeed, human. And it's quite a departure from normal for me! To look at my human shape and say "yes, this is the right form/color/shape". But I do!
As Ryou Bakura, I was a mostly perfectly normal human, genetically speaking at least, with a hint of magic in both my personal practice and my life. I had nightmares, flashbacks, memories of a past life that distressed me so much, I used magic to suppress them. I believed in ghosts and magic, of course, and I was right that there were ghosts and magic in that world. (I wrote to my deceased sister, and I was haunted by a ghost.) But I only wanted to interact with it on my terms. I never felt quite like I was normal, but I wasn't transspecies in any way, either. It didn't bother me to be a bit odd, though! I still felt like a human.
So when I'm in a Ryou shift, being human means games and magic and friendship. I wouldn't have met my friends if I wasn't human, after all! It also means getting to study history and the occult, which animals don't do, as far as we can tell. (Who knows if pigeons think their "pigeon prayers" are magic? It could certainly be argued to be magical thinking…)
Anyways, as Harrowhark, a necromancer, I was born into humanity, but a little to the left. (With necromantic abilities that would come to define so many aspects of my life.) There were ghosts in that world, and spirits, and monsters, but I was not numbered among them in the strictest literal sense.
In Harrowhark shifts (which I try to prevent because they're mentally very taxing), I actually feel like ten times the usual euphoria from wearing long, draping black clothes and makeup. It's like a comfortable costume, an armor, the persona I'm most comfortable wearing. Being human means having power, and having an effect on the world.
Being human, to me, is a malleable state that I can leverage to my advantage and effect change. (That sounds so cold… Let me try again.)
Being human means I get to interact with the world and make a difference. I find fulfillment in reaching out to other humans and doing what I can to help, to share their experiences, to find community. To give my life more meaning than food and allogrooming and shelter, to decide for myself, to stand up against power and not let discomfort be steamrolled by instinct. It's my vehicle for activism and standing up for the underdogs of this planet, the species that cannot stand up for themselves.
It's stewardship, in a way. There are some Blue Diamond feelings tied into taking care of this planet; I once thought of it as belonging to someone I dearly loved. Someone to memorialize. But of course it isn't mine, and it isn't hers. It's all of ours, and as humans we have the power to change it more greatly than any other species that we know of in this world.
If I was more inclined to power trips, I could easily get on one, being human. ;P But for me specifically, it's tempered by having been so much MORE powerful in past lives!
And my favorite part? I get to make friends and I get to study and understand the world on a level animals can't! I can travel to the other side of the planet in 8 hours and look at the incredible art in Vatican City! I can take words and put them together in a way that has never been done before, create meaning that is unique to me and my words! I Can delight in reading stories of others doing the same, an write my own addendums in the form of fanfiction and analysis!
It's wild, isn't it, how completely UNIQUE art is for humans?
