January 2017
Newsbytes archive for May to December 2016
Posted by earthfurst on Sun 1 Jan 2017 - 15:44Due to Earthfurst and Dronon having to reconstruct these Newsbytes from Twitter, Facebook and the archive.org Wayback Machine, the formatting may have been changed from the original links. Hopefully everyone has been attributed correctly! A few URLs have been replaced because the original ones stopped working.
Contributors during this period include Acton, aquariusotter, Ahmar Wolf, crossaffliction, dronon, earthfurst, Fred, GreenReaper, Greyflank, Huskyteer, InkyCrow, Kakurady, Patch Packrat, Rakuen Growlithe, RingtailedFox, Snow The Fennec Fox, Sonious and TyphonDog.
VancouFur 2017 drops art show after failing to find new staff
Posted by GreenReaper on Sun 8 Jan 2017 - 19:55
Canadian furry convention VancouFur will have no art show at this March's event, due to a failure to replace departmental staff who resigned mid-October.
We are very sorry to announce that VancouFur's Art Show has been cancelled for 2017 due not being able to secure adequate staff and leads for the department. We thank everyone who put time and effort into the department this year and we hope that it can resume in future years!
Artists who paid for panels in the show are being contacted to arrange refunds.
The news follows the resignation of art show lead Mesa and her partner Silvermink, following their attempt to get a fan alleged privately of attempted rape banned from VancouFur, which led to intense debate for several weeks.
Review: 'The Secret Life of Pets', Cute and colourful fluff
Posted by Wakka on Wed 18 Jan 2017 - 22:34
The Secret Life of Pets [trailer] is the first of two animated movies released in 2016 from Illumination Studios, most known for its films Despicable Me and Minions.
Compared with their competition at Disney and Pixar, Illumination relies less on strong storytelling and instead leans more heavily towards pure charm to make their movies successful. In the past, they've accomplished this with cute and colourful characters, and a child-friendly sense of humour.
With that history in mind, The Secret Life of Pets continues its studio's charm offensive, compensating well for a bland and forgettable story.
Spike "Boss Pony" Nico, founder of club Rainbow Tiger, passes on
Posted by Sonious on Wed 18 Jan 2017 - 23:39On Janurary 13, Equino Faukland, a friend of Spike Niko, posted about the passing of the founder of Rainbow Tiger to the club's group:
Hello my friends from Rainbow Tiger. I wish I was coming to you with something other than bad news, but with a heavy heart I must inform you that yesterday Spike Nico, the Boss Pony of the Rainbow Tiger passed away. Some of you might know that Spike was sick back in June with some lung issues and was in pretty bad shape. However, always the fighter Spike pulled through and was in full recovery. However his illness resurfaced this winter with a vengeance. He died in his bed yesterday from complications of his illness.
Time to nominate the 2016 Ursa Major Awards!
Posted by dronon on Fri 20 Jan 2017 - 23:11
From January 12 to February 28, 2017, it's time to nominate your favorite furry creations for the 2016 Ursa Major Awards!
Is there a furry comic, story, movie, video, podcast, or anything else with furry content that brightened your day last year? Nominate it – don't put it off until the last minute!
You can nominate up to five things in each of twelve categories. If you're unsure what to nominate, check out the 2016 Recommendations… and you can nominate titles that aren't on that list! It's there to give ideas, to help you find furry stuff that you might not have heard of.
Sometimes, a Nomination or a Recommendation feels like it fits into more than one category. You can browse previous years (like the 2015 Recommendations) to see where something should go. As of 2016 there's a new category: Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work.
Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic licencing woes caused cancellation fears
Posted by RingtailedFox on Fri 27 Jan 2017 - 22:00
Freedom Fighters Emblem / Archie Sonic Online, by DrawLoverLaLa
A mainstay of the Sonic and Furry Fandoms for the past quarter-century was feared no more. The Sonic the Hedgehog series of comic books published by Archie Comics Publications since 1993 have not been cancelled, thankfully, only delayed. As of December 2016, the comic has reached 290 issues, and is the longest-running licensed comic in history (surprassing Conan the Barbarian's 275 issues), the longest-running sci-fi comic (surpassing Star Trek's 212 or so issues), and holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest-running comic book based on a video game.
Editorial: Furry - Our deliverance or our destruction?
Posted by Sonious on Sat 28 Jan 2017 - 11:30When perusing written news articles about furries written outside the fandom you’ll usually run into the typical faire. Some articles will talk about furries and try and introduce their unknowing audience to what the fandom is. Others will talk about the local convention in town and why the denizens will be seeing all these costumes about. Heck, some will not even be about the fandom at all and will just be using the term to talk about pets or the band Super Furry Animals.
However, 2017 has started off on a very interesting foot as two articles showed up on the feed which don’t take the tired and treaded routes. Both looked at pieces of the fandom and their relationship to the recently inaugurated president, Donald Trump and what he stands for in society in general.
One article from Slate covered a Kyell Gold book and discussed how the virtues with in could counter Trump. The other, from Motherboard, describes another piece of fandom and their alt-right tendencies and pondering if crass anonymity can lead to crass actors acquiring power.
So let’s go over these two articles and what they have to say about furry fandom.