In this episode!

• Cool animation news!
• How an actual photographer won in an generative AI contest
• A furry Halloween in Rotterdam!
• The worlds first furry opera!
• How to win this amazing Pride shirt, so fresh, mine is still in the mail.

But first, the latest charity news from the fandom in the June edition of Digging Up Positivity!

In 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin entered the woods of Northern California with the goal of filming Bigfoot. Lucky them: they apparently did.

The Patterson-Gimlin film, showing either a North American anthropoid ape unknown to science or a dude in a monkey suit, is probably the single most analyzed piece of "home video" footage outside of the Zapruder film. Hundreds of experts in biology, zoology and costume design have chimed in on the topic, but cryptozoology-themed YouTube channel Crash Course Cryptozoology brought in a new expert: fursuit maker Chloe Fraser.

The video has never been conclusively debunked; though the fact that in the half-century since it was filmed, nobody else has gotten anywhere near the same amount of luck with Bigfoot (and/or Sasquatch) as Patterson and Gimlin has been gotten it a status of "debunked by default" by sceptics. Even if you're a Bigfoot believer, and they really are out there wandering the woods, it doesn't necessarily prove the footage isn't fake.

"I don't get the joke. Is it dirty, or what?"
-Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States of America (attributed)

You guys remember Bitter Lake?

Way back in the before times, when dinosaurs roamed the land, there was a tiny, micro-budget, barely feature-length "fan-movie" known as Bitter Lake, featuring a cast entirely clad in fursuit to represent its anthropomorphic animal characters, made by furries, for furries.

Before Bitter Lake, I'd never considered this method to realize a furry movie, and after Bitter Lake, well, I still haven't. Noble experiment, sure. Quality movie? Well, we're not reviewing Bitter Lake now, so let's just move along…

Hundreds of Beavers is a sort of outside the fandom take on the "fursuit movie" that, after playing film festivals last year, had a very short theatrical release this year before launching on various streaming services. It is a black-and-white, mostly dialogue-free slapstick comedy featuring newbie fur trapper Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) as he struggles to survive in the wilderness around the Great Lakes region of pre-United States America. Fellow co-writer Mike Cheslik directs. The movie features beavers, raccoons, rabbits, dogs, skunks and wolves, all played by actors in mascot costumes.

Welcome to a packed episode of Digging Up Positivity! The convention season is gearing up and boy does it show!
In this episode:

• Many charities in March, pushing us over the $400,000 raised this year!
• A lovely memoriam for Mark Merlino, also known as Sy Sable.
• Nomad Complex is able to return, backed by the fandom.
• AnthroAir: Virtual airplanes for a real fandom!
• And the Good Furry Award.

Also I am happy to work together with artwork-tee, and there is a new pawtastic T-shirt in the store, for more details on how to get one, stay with us till the end of the show!

In October 2021, I opened a survey about fursuits and fursuiting and called for furries (fursuiters and non-fursuiters alike) to take part. This was to provide information for the next video in my Facts About the Furry Fandom series, Facts About Fursuits & Fursuiting.

It's taken me over a year to wade through the data, write the essay, get it professionally reviewed, and create the next video in the series. However, after all that work, it's finally ready. The premiere is less than a week away; I look forward to seeing all of you there.

Facts About Fursuits & Fursuiting will premiere on YouTube on 1^st March at 5pm (GMT) / 12pm (EST) / 9am (PST)

Some of you might be familiar with my Facts About the Furry Fandom video on YouTube. After it went viral, I decided to make a series out of it, following it up with More Facts About the Furry Fandom and Facts About Furry Meetups & Conventions.

The next video in the series will be about fursuits and fursuiting. However, unlike the previous videos, most of the information I'm looking for isn't easy to find via reliable sources like FurScience and [adjective][species]. Therefore, I've decided to take a different route.

I've created a short survey about fursuits and fursuiting which I'd like you to fill out. Most of it consists of "yes/no" and "choose what you prefer" questions, with a few exceptions. You don't need a fursuit to take part! You just have to be a furry.

Also, feel free to spread the word about this survey in other furry social media!

At the end of the survey, you can enter your name into a prize draw and potentially win $250. As long as you're over 18, and can accept a PayPal transfer, you're eligible for the draw if you complete the survey before the deadline. More details are in the survey's introduction.

The deadline is Friday, November 26, 2021.

The Bone Zone.

Our new Vulturally F'd host Rattles has a unique appetite. He eats terrible movies, looking for that juicy, so-bad-it's-good fermentation of cheesy old cinema. The lair he calls home is the Bone Zone, a hollowed-out corpse of a once mighty beast, nesting in an old video rental store.

With nothing but an old TV to keep him company, he shares his favourite meals with you, and warns you to steer clear of certain buffet items strewn about the floor of his cave. In proper Culturally F'd fashion, all the films Rattles will be reviewing feature anthropomorphic characters at their core. (Show trailer)

If you felt fursuit drama Bitter Lake lacked action, or were looking for more of a horror vibe, High Octane Pictures' Lone Wolf may be the pre-Halloween therian fursuit slasher flick for you.

Charlie, a professional cosplayer that specializes in dressing up in Furry Animal costumes decides to go to the biggest Furry Party of the year with her friends, but the party is soon cut short when she realizes that the party’s host, Leon Fowl known as Lone Wolf, is a murderer who enjoys turning people into real life Furry Animals by sewing the "Fursuit" to his victim’s bodies. Charlie and her friends are now in a race for their lives to escape the clutches of this madman before it's too late.

Billed as 'a psycho insane crazy furry dream', Lone Wolf comes in at 82 minutes, is rated 16+, and is to be available on VOD platforms October 5. Fursuiters Gabrielle the Red Panda, Kanna the Oppossum, Charlie the Cheetah, and Valentina Lynx are played by Kennedy Wunderle, Alexandra Dustin, Jane Gardner and Victorya Danylko-Petrovskaya.

Welcome to the June edition of Digging Up Positivity! This month we cover some animation, of course charities, and our featurette is a Paco Panda from Mexico. This episode you will have a chance to win a lovely hard cover comic book by him.

How? I will explain near the end of the video together with the lucky winner the Fandom bluRay of the last episode.

Disclaimer: This article will not take a side in this matter and is merely a publication of the events leading to the public conflict in question, thus falling under “Neutral Report Privilege”. People’s comments below are their own, and do not contribute to Flayrah’s position on any pending legal matter.

In the first week of February, furry twitter lit up as a furry fan by the name of Qutens posted a GoFundMe page to raise money for a legal defense against the fursuit creating business of Don’t Hug Cacti LLC. The LLC sent a cease and desist to Qutens that stems from the publication of witness testimony of alleged sexual misconduct behaviors of the business’s founder Lucky Coyote that was published in September of 2020 on the below tweet:

Furries are the topic of the first episode of 7NEWS' LIFE: Done Differently, premièring Thursday February 11 on their Spotlight YouTube channel. "Furries Uncovered" involves a visit to Creative Beasts owner Leonardo Balfour, also known as purple-tufted demon Kyah, shown below helping host Ciaran Lyons navigate the streets of Canberra while trying out fursuiting for himself.

A furry is a person who is a fan of animal characters with human characteristics. But it’s a lot more than that. Ciaran meets Leo, who is an out and proud Furry, and is willing to share the truth about the ‘fandom’, as furries call it. Is it just about art and costumes, or is there a more adult side to a life in fur? Ciaran will find out first-hand as he spends the day as a furry in Australia’s capital city.

Picking up from where the 2020 documentary The Fandom left off, Ash "Coyote" Kreis' new 44-minute film, Hero: A Furry Story takes a deeper look into the fandom's disability community, particularly its less-looked-at subset with cancer and chronic illness, where people have found that fursuiting and its networks can create a source of happiness during a time of pain and illness. Hero is the film's star, a canine-identifying fan, diagnosed with cancer at age 22, who receives a new fursuit from the talent at Waggery Costumes.

As viewers are slowly introduced to all of the different people it takes to make a fursuit, Hero's story demonstrates what furry fans have already come to know: affirming that people in the fandom can be as family, loved ones, and mentors. Pulling itself away from the criticism that Kreis received after The Fandom, this new film's attention to disability, illness, and networked connections provides another interesting gateway into something that will surely be enjoyed by fans and non-fans alike.

Hello there and welcome to October's episode of Digging Up Positivity. This month we have a whole bunch of animation news, lovely charity items, and a passionate animated weasel from Estonia. Plus more news from the fandom and beyond!

Video from Thabo Meerkat, transcribed

Welcome to another edition of Digging Up Positivity! This episode is dedicated to the many volunteers that make all those amazing conventions and charities possible. But besides them, we are covering some animation news and other (maybe otter?) tidbits!

I was browsing my Google news feed, as people who read non-fiction writing tend to, and low and behold, a news article from Rolling Stone came up entitled Will Furries Ever Go Mainstream? The reporter reviews his experiences while attending Midwest FurFest last December.

It’s a good piece that poses the question of whether our fan club, that has grown to the size it has in Rosemont, will garner mainstream attention - or acceptance. It's also long, and coming from me you know that’s saying something.

Like most coverage deemed “positive”, they do seem to marginalize the adult aspects of sexual expression in the fandom pretty quickly by saying that it was not the “main aspect of the fandom”. However, like most clever furs they snuck in a risqué quote about foxes:

dozens of six-foot alligators, snakes, lizards, and other assorted reptiles scramble to pose for a group photo.
[...]
On the floor, about three dozen foxes lie on top of each other in a “fur pile,” orange-and-white limbs and bellies knotted together on the ground.

I see what you did there Rolling Stone. You should be proudly ashamed.

But back to the concept of going mainstream. It isn’t a new question within the fandom which can bring excitement or concern depending on who you ask. We claimed it was happening when Disney used the word “anthropomorphic” to describe the world of Zootopia.

However, I would like to claim that, yes, we are entering the mainstream, whether we like it or not. I even have evidence that we may already be there.