Oh, look, another Zootopia review!

It's been six years since Zootopia was released to theaters. In that time, a lot has happened. America has managed the change to two different presidents. Across the pond in the UK, where the movie was known as Zootropolis, they've managed to beat that turnover rate for heads of state with four new prime ministers, plus a new monarch. That's kind of prescient for a movie where the titular city burns through two mayors over the course of its plot.

In all that time, Zootopia has managed to remain popular with furries. It also, perhaps a bit surprisingly, has managed to remain popular with non-furries. It is one of only three Disney Animated Studio movies to break into the billion dollar club (the other two are both Frozen). It also managed critical and industry awards accolades to go along with the commercial success, giving it the hat trick of movie success criteria. So, a lot of people would probably not be averse to a sequel, right?

Well, how about a series of animated shorts released over half a decade later with little fanfare to a streaming service, instead?

As a giraffe detective and his hippo sidekick are called to an island by an old friend to join a party where he wanted to make a grand announcement, they find themselves showing up to the scene of a murder. In Lord Winklebottom it is up to you to search for clues on this island and find out who killed the head of the household, and why.

In it you will find a rogue's gallery of suspects: a feline journalist, an alpaca seer, a pelican actress who is hard of hearing, a walrus priest, a chameleon scientist, a goat maid, a sloth butler, a slug gardener, and a toad lawyer. Yes, this game is very, as Fred Patten would put it, zipperback. These characters could very well be replaced by human counterparts, but where is the fun in that?

In spite of the animal characters, though, I could not actually recommend this as a game. If you do enjoy detective stories this one is kind of forgettable, if you enjoy games this is not much of a game. If you do like quirky animal character adventures, this one is passable but there are better options out there these days. If you like playing a story that has light interactivity then this may actually be your cup of tea. As long as you don’t put the tea in first — or was it don’t put the milk in first? Either way the tea is just okay.

On October 28th, 2022 a deal that had been in discussions for half of the year finally completed. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, closed on his purchase of Twitter and took it from a publicly traded company to a private venture. The final price tag of $54.20 a share gives out a total of around $44 billion dollars. He had put in this offer back in April of this year.

After taking over, the new owner is moving quickly to shake up staffing and push for proposals such as making the verification check mark be a paid McGuffin at an $8 recurring monthly payment rather than a measure of someone being of social import and prevent people from scamming others by pretending to be that person, as the tool was originally designed to do.

In an interview with the Baron Fund, Musk indicated that the monthly subscription would prioritize ‘access’ to paying feeds over non-paying users on the platform. It has yet to be seen how this subscription process would have safeguards in place for those with money and means to use a bunch of verified accounts to promote their products or political causes inorganically.

These proposed changes have caused concerns for those in the fandom that believe that moderation will be biased toward those with capital or those who hold social influence with Elon, taking a public square and making it into a gated community. Those who believe so have begun to look for alternatives.

There are strange things that you can collect in the story mode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. VHS tapes, newspapers, maybe even the concept of diaries have since faded in a world where information is stored and shared nearly instantaneously in a digital format. However, it appears the mean reptiles in green have remained a constant when it comes to providing good 2D brawlers. 3D ventures, maybe not so much.

It’s been thirty years since the release of one of my childhood favorites, The Manhattan Project, for the original NES. In those three decades, many things have changed, but the fact that the TMNT franchise lends itself so well to the brawler genre remains consistent.

Happy Hallowe'en! Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, and GreenReaper.

Welcome you amazing critters with another episode of Digging Up Positivity, stay till the end to find out who won that lovely paw pillow, but we also have our monthly dose of amazing charities, animation news, emotion support animals, and our special guest of this month is Sherbert! Do stay tuned for that little ball of chaos but first, a trainload of charities amongst other things!

In October, Biggest Little Fur Con announced that its future 2023 convention will be held in the autumn season as opposed to its usual spring time schedule. This means that four of the largest furry conventions have now settled into time slots to correlate with the four seasons of the year.

The dates for these now include an early December gathering of Midwest Furfest in Chicago for winter, the spring event in Furry Weekend Atlanta, the summer with Anthrocon in Pittsburgh, and now the fall going to Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno. Given this chronological spacing there may be more ample room for these larger conventions to grow in attendance without stepping on one another’s toes.

Before 2022 these four conventions were the most attended furry conventions in the world. However, just this year Furry Fiesta was able to pass Biggest Little Fur Con sliding it back to be the 5th largest convention. The Texas convention having 5,494 this year and the Reno gathering at 5,234. Anthrocon, Midwest Furfest, and Furry Weekend Atlanta retain the top three positions.

Then go. Kick butt, rip and tear, boop snoots — or whatever it is you kids say these days. Just find your dad and sister and bring them home.
-- Kao’s Mum

Kao the Kangaroo is a bit of a niche character in the animal platformer genre. If you had played his games back in the day, and were fond of the kangaroo, I’m sure you already played the new one that came out this year and are only reading this review to fulfill your curiosity. If you don’t have nostalgia for this series, then is this a game worth playing?

If you really enjoy 3D platformers, then this one is decent enough. It's fun, colorful, though not really challenging. If you're looking for the cream of the platformer crop, this one may disappoint, as there are some rough edges. It’s no Sonic Boom of a disaster, but there was at least one glitch that caused me to soft lock at the end of a level.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, and GreenReaper.

This year's Tails and Tornadoes convention, held at the Marriott Tulsa Hotel Southern Hills of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is only the third furry convention I've been to. Previous conventions I have attended were Oklacon 2004 and Anthrocon 2017, and I only made it all the way to Pittsburgh due to being nominated for an Ursa Major award and wanting to attend the awards presentation (I ended being late and missing the announcement of my category, but I lost anyway). Tails and Tornadoes, like Oklacon before it, had the advantage of being cheap and nearby, as I am a local Oklahoman.

As I live only an hour from Tulsa, I made the decision to just commute daily to the convention, as I calculated that the price of gas would ultimately be cheaper than staying at the hotel for me, not to mention cutting out the hassle of actually booking a room and possibly even finding a roommate for the stay. So, I have no idea how the late night atmosphere of the convention was, or the reality of the room situation there. The truth is, that part, the social aspects of convention going is just not for me, despite the fact that it seems a primary draw for just about everyone else. Hence my relatively low total life convention attendance.

Hello, and a big welcome to the September edition of Digging Up Positivity! These months are the height of convention season and it shows! So many events, both online and offline.

Last premiere I was at Eurofurence together with FoxAmoor, the guest of the previous episode. But when I got back to the Netherlands, merely half a day later I was on the road to Splinter, an amazing four day event in the Netherlands. And after that, we were guests at the Stork Run in The Hague, more about this all that later. And at the end of the episode I will tell you how to win one of these amazing Thabo paw pillows from my artwork Tee merch store.

But first, the astounding amount of charities since last episode!

Perlimps (trailer) is a Brazilian 2D animated film, the second from animator and director Alê Abreu. After seeing his earlier film, Boy and the World (O Menino e o Mundo, 2013), I really wanted to see what his next project would be like. I wasn't expecting to wait nine years!

Abreu's films definitely do not adhere to typical Hollywood narrative structures, veering towards the artsy without being self-indulgent. Boy and the World, for example, has no dialog at all, and conveys things entirely with sounds and visuals. (As well as being an abstract statement about growing up and the poverty that comes from the exploitation of labor.)

Perlimps is way more approachable in comparison. On the surface, judging by its trailer, I thought it was going to be another film about the devastation of the environment by humans. It does some of that, sure, but that's just surface stuff.

The rest of the film's surface is all in the trailer. Claé (an orange wolf) and Bruô (a blue bear) are secret agents from the opposing kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon, trying to find the Perlimps, mysterious entities who can help save the forest from the encroachment of man.

Before the coronavirus shut down many furry conventions around the world, a strange thing occurred at Furry Weekend Atlanta in 2019. The popular electronic dance group Mystery Skulls performed a musical set at the convention. This is a pretty mainstream group, well-known for their singles such as Money and Ghosts.

When in-person events started happening again, Furry Weekend Atlanta's new headliner was again more known for their mainstream work than for their ties to the fandom. FRND, also known as Andrew Goldstein, is not quite as well-known as Mystery Skulls. After having worked with many mainstream musicians (such as Maroon Five's Beautiful Mistakes as a co-writer), he started to work independently and created his own singles.

Now in late 2022, FWA is giving a wink toward Little Nas X, a very well-known rap artist, born and raised near Atlanta. He's known for stirring up moralistic controversy with his music videos. I guess that's how you know it's real rap.

As FWA's drive towards mainstream musical talent has continued, furries have become a lot more pointed in their questioning of the convention. But whoever's been in control of FWA's social media account has continually dismissed such criticism. For instance, during the FRND announcement, they responded to one critique by posting a gif of Clauhauser calling the critical poster "cute". At the time, this post only drew more attention to the critique. FWA later deleted the tweet and apologized for their behavior. In response to the threads that appeared after the Little Nas X announcement, they have started to use their social media tools to limit responses to no one but the artist in question.

In this article, we'll be going over what defines a work as furry, why this is separate from how furry music is defined, and how Furry Weekend Atlanta may be able to help mitigate future concerns for their furry attendees and the musically talented within the fandom.

Since its debut in 2019, Tails and Tornadoes Fur Con (TTFC) has striven to create an atmosphere welcoming furries from around the world to Tulsa, OK each year. This year's theme, "Ren-Fur" was chosen in 2021 by attendees and staff during the closing ceremonies; influenced by renaissance stories, it included custom artwork and theming courtesy of TTFC Artist Guest of Honor Boltie.

Fursuit maker Guest of Honor Heads & Tails Studios worked closely with the convention and new official TTFC charity Animal Rescue Foundation of Bartlesville to produce charity auction items, such as two brand-new fursuit heads, one which was raffled for charity and the other that was auctioned off. The result of ARFs' charity fundraising was a convention-wide contribution of more than $16,000.

TTFC also had some notable moments, including an all-new dance competition and floor wars program that included one of THREE marriage proposals during the weekend. In addition, TTFC's programming included performances from Citrine Husky and many more! Barring the unexpected brief power outage during closing, TTFC was able to close out 2022 with a smile on everyone's face.

Our journey starts near Frankfurt am Main's main train station, where I pick up a friend. We head to Czechia, buying a vignette at the Czech border; arriving at Hauenštejn Castle, near the German border, after a four-hour drive.

This is it! A medieval castle, some parts of it still in restoration; furries with all their luggage waving to us and welcoming and greeting us in excitement. They are just as excited as we are.

We go to registration; they speak English to us, because shitty, a member of their orga team, recognised me from another convention called KRAZ.

My friend Alexis and I are sponsors of the convention and got a T-shirt, along with a wooden logo of Furrstein and its theme, which is Harry Potter this year.