The fighting game series Mortal Kombat is a venerable title in the world of video games, with over two decades of history and even a dedicated competitive scene (of which the furry fandom's own SonicFox is a champion player). However, what really set it apart from the slew of other arcade fighter games back in 1992 was its ultra-violent "finisher" moves, known as Fatalities. Variations soon followed, and Mortal Kombat 3 introduced Animalities, basically allowing the characters in the game to violently maul each other with their fursonas.

The most recent game, Mortal Kombat 1 (actually the 12th mainline title, but part of a continuity reboot of sorts), will be releasing a series of DLC known as "Khaos Reigns". Besides a new story line and a few new characters (none of which are particularly furry), Animalities will be returning to the series September 9 of this year, as a free update. The trailer for "Khaos Reigns" is available on YouTube, and only YouTube; it is age restricted, and therefore unembeddable, for extreme, over the top violence.

In this episode!

• An exclusive interview with the force behind Brok the investigator
• Last month's furry charities
• What makes a fursuit really stands out!
• The results of the Pride Shirt give-away and how to get one yourself

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

If you have time this summer, now is a good time to try out some furry games. Below is a list of items that I found that are all available on the Steam platform with a short blurb on each one. Click the title text to open each game's page.

Following a hack by a self-referred "gay furry hacker" organization named SiegedSec, the Heritage Foundation found that two gigabytes of their internal data leaked to the internet. The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank within the United States known for their stances against trans rights and abortion. The organization has recently published a manifesto for America known as Project 2025 which catalyzed this hack.

At first the Foundation denied the attack and indicated that the only information obtained was public facing, per a Cyberscoop article, while ironically still calling the action as criminal.

[SiegedSec] stumbled upon a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public-facing website owned by a contractor. The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of both Heritage and non-Heritage contributors, as well as article comments and the IP address of the commenter.

[The story of a hack] is a false narrative and an exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.

Mostly-furry imageboard e621 has banned explicit art of human and essentially human children:

Due to challenges stemming from changes in the political and legal environment, both offline and online, we have had to adjust our content guidelines to preserve access to our site. As a result, any content featuring young human or humanoid characters in explicit situations is now prohibited and will be deleted. This change also applies retroactively, and we have already removed all existing submissions featuring such content.

Administrator NotMeNotYou later clarified that "busineses partners" had demanded the change, which related to their ability to make money, and that on-site adverts were not the issue:

There is no single law we can point to as the tipping point, and while we were sitting pretty unaffected by most things, the same can't be said to a bunch of our business partners who did not appreciate the heat we attract. And since we can't function in a vacuum we have had to adjust.

Things change, they were okay with it previously and now they aren't. They want to continue making money and we're stuck with the consequences. And no we can't just stop business with them, there's no way in hell we would be able to cover the gap that would cause, be it donations or otherwise.

Guess what put pressure on some of our partners? That's right, governments.

Guess who would like to continue doing business in places where those governments are? That's right, our business partners.

romaniaglory said:
The last thing you ever wanted to admit was censoring your website to appease advertisers.

Nah, all our ads are handled directly by us and as far as I am aware none of them had any issue with the contents we host.

Furality finished its eighth gathering on the second weekend of June 2024. When the VRChat-based congregation had finished it had shown continual growth hitting 21,000 attendees registered and raising over $42,269 for charity. It has shown that in spite of the naysayers who thought that online only furry events would die down in the wake of waning 2020 pandemic restrictions, online conventions held in virtual reality spaces show no signs of slowing and are now clearly a new staple in fandom activities.

Being in attendance myself this year, I go over the strengths and weaknesses that these events have over their real-world counterparts. The article will also cover some highlights of the events such as the eclipse and firework show. In short, what we find is that while Furality has taken events and formats inspired by in-person conventions, it is clearly an entirely different beast.

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

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!

Before we even begin, what is some of y'all's problem with Chris Pratt as a voice actor?

He's a fine actor who can do comedy sidekick (his breakout role in the sitcom Parks and Recreation), character actor in supporting role (he had small but important roles in Best Picture nominees three years in row with Moneyball, Zero Dark Thirty and Her), full on movie star (he's great in Guardians of the Galaxy and, remember, I liked Jurassic World), and, yes, voice actor (The Lego Movie). And by all accounts he's a nice guy people like working with, and that does matter. He's hardly the only guy who does a lot of voice work, either. Since theaters like to play ten trailers before a movie before, I was able to notice a lack of Chris Pratt (or another personal favorite who people like to complain about online, Awkwafina), but not Keegan-Michael Key, who is way more ubiquitous as Pratt in voice work, and is often even in the same movie as both Pratt and Awkwafina, but who never gets this sort of backlash when cast. And, not to be too mean to Key, who I mostly like, but I've already noted Pratt is actually a pretty versatile actor and Awkwafina has a Golden Globe, while Key is the half of Key & Peele that is starting to look like he got carried by the other half. I'm sure he'll actually be great as Bumblebee, though.

But, to bring the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing into the picture, I really do not get why people were upset Chris Pratt was cast as Garfield, because, come on, it's freaking Garfield. Bill Murray voiced the role in 2004, and Murray went on to bash the movie in his cameo playing himself in 2009's Zombieland, picking it as his life's greatest regret. On the basis of that, if you don't like Chris Pratt, you should be thrilled he got the role! Garfield's creator, Jim Davis, has always been a pretty open about the commercial aspirations of the character. I mean, kind of like Keegan-Michael Key, I like the character fine, but he barely stands out as a comic strip and Saturday morning cartoon star, mediums that are known for producing mostly safe, crowd-pleasing pablum. And that's basically this movie.

Hoooo boy do we have a long list for all you readers out there! Don't feel like going through 1800+ games to see which ones have furries, animals, creatures, and other wonderfully fluffy, feathery, scaly, or otherwise exciting anthropomorphic qualities?

Well, wonderful GF staff member Valraven did! She's compiled an absolutely crazy list of all the games we could find that had an ounce of furry in em, or some sort of animal focus.

We'll continue to look through the games and see if any slipped through, but even so, this is a big list of games that feature some potentially awesome games in them. Steam links and the image for them provided for easy access!

We'll be playing some of these demos this week and next, hopefully providing some previews, reviews, and developer interviews as many of these games progress through development! We also have an actively-updated Furry & Animal Games list over at @GamingFurever on X that you can follow and get constant updates for lots of indie titles with tons of lovely furry characters.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth movie in the current continuity of the Planet of the Apes series of movies, and the tenth overall. It follows the adventures of intelligent chimp Noa (performed with motion capture technology by Owen Teague) some generations after the last movie, War for the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Wes Ball, it features a variety of apes, including gorillas and orangutans in addition to chimps (gibbons are also mentioned in passing).

It begins with a quick prologue to the funeral of Caesar, the ape protagonist of the previous trilogy of movies. I felt like those movies came to a definitive end with the last movie; Kingdom is less a direct sequel to War and more the start of a new story set in the same world, so it feels a bit like the proverbial cake that you can both have and eat, too, as far as previous trilogy endings are concerned.

Contributors this month are dronon and GreenReaper.

• Furry convention in Atlanta raising 100.000 for charity!
• Spotlight on several awesome women in the fandom!
• How accessible is our fandom truly?
• Animators working together!

And much more!

Furrlough is an anthology series specializing in anthropomorphic comics. It has returned to its original publisher, Antarctic Press, with Furrlough #194 in shops on April 24, 2024. PreviewsWorld search says #194 "may be available now at comic shops or can be ordered quickly for you if not in stock." The order code for #194 is JAN241389.

The publisher's page for #194 says, in part:

Cover artist "Holly Daughtrey"/"... COMICS' LONGEST-RUNNING ANTHRO­POMORPHIC TITLE! ...

"Blinth" (Jason Dubes, Noel Serrato): The fallen angels have rebelled and now look to their lord Lucifer for guidance. However, the cat goddess Bast and the dark lord Anubis withhold information from their leader, something that will give rise to a potential new deity.

"The Chosen One" (Charles Brubaker): Fox boy Dewey DeSmall is tasked by an ostrich to save the day from a great danger. But what can a small librarian's assistant do?"

The only future issue listed at distributor Diamond's website is Furrlough #195 (with order code APR241265) with an in-shops date of June 26, 2024. Since it won't ship for a month, your local comic shop should hopefully be able to do a late pre-order.

Diamond's website has a page for the Furrlough series, which had a monthly publication schedule from 1993 to 2008. It was published by Radio Comix starting April 1997.