Digging up Positivity - Furry charity and good news - February 2020 (Transcript)

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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!

Furcons

First of all, I’d like to thank Dixie Lioness for keeping track of many of the charities in the furry fandom. I know we've worked together for a while now, but that doesn’t make my gratitude any less. You are truly an inspiration for many!

AnthroExpo

In the US we had Anthro Expo, where 607 guests raised over $6,000(US) for WildCare Oklahoma. A place where you can bring native wild animals which struggle to survive, and where they’ll be helped to make a safe return into the wild.

Fangcon

This month Fangcon, also in the US, did their best effort to help Tigers for Tomorrow.

Fursquared

And Fursquared raised over 15 hundred dollars for the Humane Animal Welfare Society. [Editor's Note: Fursquared raised far more than $1,500, the $1,500 figure comes from this tweet which is just one piece of art from the art auction.]

Nordic FuzzCon

In Sweden we had Nordic FuzzCon raising money for Katthjälpen i Malmö

Anthro New England

And the last of our conventions, but certainly not least, we had Anthro New England who raised for not just one, but two charities: NEADS and the ALS Association. Who will share the grand total of $25,700(US).

Charity news

ALS

Up until February 15th, Mark’s Barks and his friends had raised money for the ALS Association of Western North Carolina. As I am recording the video, they already broke their initial goal of $15,000(US) by more than 5,000, but I am curious to see how far they can go with this wonderful fundraise. You all are awesome!

EF: Charity

As for upcoming conventions, my ‘home’ convention: Eurofurence is proud to announce their charity of this year: The Cheetah Preservation Foundation. Their mission is to promote and fund the conservation of cheetah and other endangered species through captive breeding, research and public awareness’. Together we will try our best to top the $46,711.29 we raised for the Lutreola Foundation last year! But no matter the outcome, our spotty friends will have a friend in us.

Health benefits of charity work

This brings us to an MSN article. They published something that many of us already know: Doing volunteer work generally makes you happier. In a study published by the Dutch Bureau of Statistics, 91 percent of volunteer workers claim to feel happy, against 85 percent of people that reported feeling happy that do not work for free.

In 2018 almost half of the Dutch citizens of 15 years or older have done some form of volunteer work. 3 out of 10 even said they have done so recently. While this study reflects on Dutch citizens, I often see many people doing volunteer work on various conventions, from Furry to Anime, to Comics and whatnot. And most of the times they are happy to do so, finding joy in making their fandom a better place!

Changing Colors

Fursuit makers are a creative bunch. And often I have a feeling it is almost like race of innovations. We have protogens with WIFI capabilities, 3D eyes, robotics and whatnot. But recently Skehigh Studio’s has made a fursuit with fur that can magically change color. Well, if you count temperature changes as magic. But awesome nonetheless! I am curious how this will hold up at a warm furdance or furwalk. Or in the snow!

Retweeting

In North America, many do enjoy the lovely tweets of the black-capped chickadees, or red breasted nuthatches when they enjoy their walk down the street or in the local park. But not many know that these tweets serve a purpose. According to Erick Greene, an Ecologist at the University of Montana, they are made up of words, but if you take that literally (ha, pun intended), a linquist might be angry. Its more that the chickadee has a vocabulary of about 50 sounds to communicate essentials like “danger”, “feed me” or “I am single!”.

Greene and his colleagues have found that nuthatches eavesdrop on these chickadee warning signals and ‘retweet’ them to their neighbors. Kind of like a nature version of twitter!

However, in new research it shows that the nuthatch does something that internet twitterers should do more often. They will repeat the general chickadee alarm, but they don’t vocalize more specific information about the predator until they can verify it.

Klaus

Last month we had the Oscars. One of the categories I do check out every year are the animated feature film and best animated short. It was not really a surprise Toy Story 4 won ‘Best Animated Feature Film’, but I was happy to see Klaus was nominated. Released last December as a Christmas feature on Netflix, it was renewing 2D animation in a way I honestly did not expect to see anymore.

Tom Preston on YouTube has provided a lovely video on how the depth and nuance that usually is reserved for 3D animation has been achieved.

Sonic

In the last years it has become all too common that big studios who made adaptions of various movies did not listen to their core audience, and even blamed them when the finished product was not resonating with them. But now we have a positive example! Sonic the Hedgehog had their trailer released last year, and it was— not received well, by friend and foe. But the co-creator of the sonic movie; Jeff Fowler promised to do better. And then— things went silent.

Then the second trailer hit the screens, and the new design was so much better. I was still a bit on the fence when it comes down to the movie, but it seemed they had listened to the fans. And with me were many other fans of the blue hedgehog.

Would this be further proof that the time of the ‘video game to movie adaption curse’ was slowly being lifted? I mean, we already were wowed by Detective Pikachu, and yes, I admit, I went to the cinema being a little bit skeptic, but boy I was not disappointed! We had a fun family movie, with a lot of homage to the old fans, and plenty of fun for the more casual crowd. And the numbers did not lie! With a 85 million dollar budget, it opened big with over 58 million dollar in its first weekend in the US, and after 2 weeks its still going strong, passing the 200 million dollar mark.

From the post credit scene strongly hinting at a sequel, combined with these numbers, it is not only a big chance we’ll see more of our friend in the future, but more Sega video-games may be converted to the big screen.

When Sonic dashed along on the SEGA master system, he was little more than a hedgehog going for rings. The lore was massively extended when the Archie comics of Sonic and Knuckles were released. A majority of these comics were written by Ken Penders, and he also introduced many characters in these comics.

He is not without criticism, despite being a major influence. Especially regarding his legal disputes with Archie Comics, till today still grounds for many passionate arguments among Sonic fans.

The YouTube channel Midnights’ Edge, known for their analysis and coverage of the behind the screens shenanigans of Hollywood had the pleasure of interviewing Ken where he tells his side of the story. The first of 3 parts is linked in the description!

Cardboard Faolan

For many, Eurofurence has several dancing highlights, not just the ever so popular fur dances, but also 2 dance competitions. One of them being Paws On Fire.

Every year this event garners a lot of attentions, and they have their fair share of regulars. One of them is Faolan. And at Eurofurence 24 he was unable to go. Much to his own, and his friends dismay. But, Faolan has a bunch of pretty weird friends, who decided to print out a cardboard version of him. Which resulted in hilarity along the convention. He was everywhere, including Paws on Fire!

Cardboard Faolan even made a sneaky appearance in this show on the background. However, cardboard is not everlasting, and slowly our once mighty Faolan bent and crumbled under the weight of his own activities. But little did he knew, that this would have an interesting development. At Eurofurence 25, he appeared in the charity auction— as a dakimakura!

News of this new hot item of course spread like wildfire, ending up in the hands of an ever so mildly confused cockroach named Uncle Kage, who managed to sell him for over 150€ to an amazing fellow from the US and thanks to this amazing tiger, Faolan is still travelling the world, popping up on various furry conventions. Maybe you’ll run into him!

Outro

Thanks for watching the Feburary episode. Next episode will be on the 28th of March, just before I will be going to Motor City Furcon in Michigan, US. I am looking forward to that trip.

A special thanks to these special people for sponsoring this channel: Ishnula, Els Deckers, Taross, Tsiica, Kitako, Falconeo, Hanzana, Cosmik with a K, and Score Chaser. See you next month and stay awesome and all the hugs!

Stay awesome, and many hugs!