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

The Great Wolf Pack ®: A Call to Adventure is a 45-minute 2D animated mini-movie produced in 2022 by Great Wolf Resorts, an American chain of family-friendly hotels featuring indoor waterparks. Most of the animation was outsourced to Mexico, directed by Chris Bailey and written by Kent Redeker. The IMDB page mentions an additional writer I couldn't find in the closing credits, M.J. Offen.

The movie is for young kids and can pretty much be skipped. There's a group of young animal friends in the forest: Violet the wolf and Sammy the squirrel (action girls), and Oliver (a raccoon tinkerer who always talks using the most loquacious and unnecessarily wordy vocabulary), who are joined by newcomer Wiley (the coyote wolf), and finally Brinley, a young bear with self-confidence issues, who of course gets chosen as the Special One by a spoon-wielding spirit and is given the Magical Rock to guide them on their quest.

I’ve said before that it may be impossible for me to dislike a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but that does not mean that I don’t recognize that some TMNT movies are better than others.

The two gold standard TMNT movies, at least for me, are the original live action version and the original animated version. Going the other way, I think the most recent live action movies, plus the third movie in the original trilogy, are a bit over-hated, but still weak. Meanwhile, the movie that most resembles the newest movie, Mutant Mayhem, at least in my reaction to it, is The Secret of the Ooze. They’re both fine, and a lot of fun, and I think a lot of both casual movie-goers and series fans will enjoy them. But they’re not my favorites in the series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, directed by Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears, is only the second animated feature for the Ninja Turtles (at least theatrically; various feature length spin-offs of the animated series have gone direct-to-video/streaming/television, but I’m ignoring them), which is surprising, because if there’s one franchise that feels like it just needs to be a cartoon, it’s this one.

Recently I attended CanFurence 2023 in Ottawa, Ontario. It was a good time! Previously I'd gone in 2016 for its first year, then later in 2021 and 2022. There's a really good established core of staff and volunteers that make it happen.

It's been growing at a decent pace, now with 1107 people, up from 863 last year, and it's the fourth-largest Canadian furry con. The cons up here are in two clusters. March is when Furnal Equinox and VancouFur happen; while Fur-Eh, CanFurence, Wild Prairie Fur Con and Camp Feral are all during July and August. We also may soon have another camping con, Camp Mani-Toebeans.)

The Amazing Maurice (trailer) is a 93-minute UK-Germany computer-animated film released in late 2022. Directed by Toby Genkel and Florian Westermann, the screenplay by Terry Rossio (Shrek, and many others) is an adaptation of the 2001 children's fantasy novel The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett.

"One day, when he was naughty, Mr. Bunnsy looked over the hedge into Farmer Fred's field and it was full of green lettuces. Mr. Bunnsy, however, was not full of lettuces. This did not seem fair."
-- from Mr. Bunnsy has an Adventure

Set in Pratchett's Discworld comedic fantasy universe, The Amazing Maurice is the story of a cat (Maurice, voiced by Hugh Laurie) and a group of rats who have acquired speech and intelligence. Together they travel from town to town with a young human musician named Keith, running a pied piper scam. Maurice wants them to make as much money as possible, but the rats would like to move on and find a place where they can live in peace and harmony, finding inspiration in their revered text, Mr. Bunnsy has an Adventure.

Lackadaisy, from Iron Circus animation, based on the webcomic by Tracy J. Butler, has put out a teaser trailer for a first season of episodes. This season of episodes will be crowdfunded through BackerKit, which has currently reached the million dollar total donations mark, which is enough to fund the full goal of five episodes.

The comic Lackadaisy (sometimes known as Lackadaisy Cats) tells the story of the titular speakeasy in a fictionalized version of St. Louis, Missouri during the Prohibition Era of United States history. The cast is comprised entirely of fictional cats, so it is furry. The crowdfunding campaign is prominently mentioning it's 2011 nomination for an Eisner Award in the category for Best Digital Comic, but it also has won the Ursa Major Award for Best Graphic Story. A pilot episode of the show was released earlier this year to YouTube.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, GreenReaper, and Rakuen Growlithe.

Welcome to the July edition of Digging Up Positivity! Time flies when you are having fun and fruit flies like a banana. This episode is filled to the brink with charities, because boy, you lot have been busy! Our guest is one of the most known mice from the Netherlands: Miesdo Mouse.

We have a few announcements and if you like the British furs, you DEFINITELY want to watch till the end of the video. From now on you can become a member of this channel and usually you can see the episodes a wee bit earlier just like my other supporters. But of course, you know the deal: Like and subscribe. I would love to spread the positive goodness from this fandom a bit further thanks to your help!

And now, on with the charities, because boy, there are a lot of these this month:

How about a trailer for a movie that comes out early next month this time?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is seventh theatrical movie to star the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and either the fourth or fifth cinematic continuity, depending on whether you count 2007's TMNT as a continuation of the first three Ninja Turtle movies or not.

With Neopet’s previous owner Jumpstart Games closing on July 1st, the virtual pet site’s ownership has moved around quite dramatically once again. After briefly moving over to an old JumpStart subsidiary, Fluffy Dog Studios, Neopets is now officially under "World of Neopia, Inc.", a new independent company created following a management buyout deal with JumpStart’s previous owner, NetDragon. The group made a press release to Medium on the 17th of July.

The studio behind the furry Secret Life of Pets and Sing duologies, Illumination's next movie after their super-successful Super Mario Bros. Movie (well, at the box office, anyway; less so with critics) will be a movie about ducks called Migration.

After Anthrocon finished its closing ceremonies this year, it came in with 3 more than last year’s Midwest Furfest’s last year’s final tally. With 13,644 attending 2023’s anthrocon this July, Anthocon has shown a 40% gain from its 2022 count of 9,720.

Other larger furry conventions have also shown significant increases in attendance this year as well. Texas Furry Fiesta from earlier in the year had a 33.5% increase. Furry Weekend Atlanta has also shown significant growth for the year at 43.2%.

While the post-pandemic growth in fandom gatherings is hardly isolated to furry, it has shown the rhyming echo of the 1920s after their world war and influenza pandemic within our own 20s era a century later. The parties we are throwing are getting larger, and people are doing what they can to celebrate after surviving through the past three years.

Newsbytes Note: For the next little while, if you have an interesting link for the Newsbytes, if there's an alternative URL to anything posted on Twitter, that would be helpful. As of the end of June 2023, people without Twitter accounts may not be able to follow the link; and people with Twitter accounts may be limited to the number of tweets they can view per day.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, GreenReaper, and Rakuen Growlithe.

With the (very delayed) release of episode 8 of Helluva Boss to YouTube June 24, the first season of the show is now officially over. With eight episodes released, beginning Halloween 2020 (plus a pilot episode released November 25, 2019, which will be part of this ranking even if it's not officially part of this season), the show is the creation of Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano, and is produced by SpindleHorse Toons.

Set in a version of Hell, the main cast consists of Brandon Rogers as the titular "boss", imp Blitzø (the "o" is silent), leader of demonic assassination business Immediate Murder Professionals, or I.M.P.; Richard Steven Horvitz and Vivian Nixon as Moxxie and Millie, a married couple of imp employees; Erica Lindbeck as Loona, his hellhound adopted daughter and I.M.P.'s receptionist; and Bryce Pinkham as Stolas, a member of Hell's ruling class who serves as a sort of silent backer for I.M.P. while also becoming romantically entangled with Blitzø.

The show's second season is up to its fourth episode, out of twelve, and a third season has been confirmed. Currently, Helluva Boss is only available on YouTube, though completely for free; there are no rumors or even much desire for a physical media release.

British furry Tim "Gamepopper" Stoddard has released his new book, Furtannia: The History of the Furry Fandom (Barnes & Noble US, Amazon UK) in the United Kingdom (Uncle Bear Publishing, 2023).

This well-researched book was written by Stoddard after many furries asked him whether he had written a book related to his history talks he has given at ConFuzzled. The resulting tome covers everything you wanted to know about furries in the UK. The book covers the following elements:

• How early British children's literature influenced the fandom.
• The rise of house parties and conventions such as ConFuzzled and Scotiacon.
• Information about key figures in the British fandom such as Simon Barber and Ian Curtis.
• A tour of the successes and failures of various cons.
• The connections between the U.S. and U.K. furs.
• Relates how the media have received and portrayed the fandom over the years.