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.

This weekend Anthrocon returns to the city of Pittsburgh, with furries from all around the world traveling into the area to enjoy the yearly jubilation. However this year's festivities are forecasted to be covered in a significant haze, even for the sober attendees. This is due to ongoing wildfires in Canadian provinces to the North.

Accuweather's forecast projects that the air quality index will remain above 200 for the early weekend, this is denoted in the lower "very unhealthy" range. In such conditions it is recommended that exertion is kept to a minimum and not prolonged as the lower quality air can impact and irritate lung function. Those with respiratory conditions need to be particularly cautious of the particulars.

Keep safe and have a wonderful convention.

This month in Digging up Positivity, furry conventions raising money for charity, the fandom comes together to help those down on their luck, an upcoming furry comedy, and a lovely interview with this years’ winner of the Good Furry Award: Kite.

And stay till the very end of this video where I reveil the winner of the Pawperty Damage game on Steam, and various other announcements.

This month has been filled to the brink with not just the regular fundraisers, but also a whole lot in the spirit of this rainbow coloured month. Something we, as a fandom, can be very proud of.

So... lets be like a meerkat and dig in!

When Anthrocon returned to the city of Pittsburgh in 2022 after the two year pandemic hiatus, the celebrations in the streets were palpable. It had been a long lockdown, and the city was desperate for a return to some sense of normalcy. The irony being that these people in animal costumes and the chaotic atmosphere of the convention had provided this sense of normalcy since their first year in 2006.

When the time had come to close the doors for the renewed celebration though, a situation had started to cause anxiety amongst the furry population who only hours before were lost in the joys of seeing one another in this home away from home once again. After closing ceremonies had come to an end, unaware furries found themselves ushered from the convention spaces immediately by law enforcement in a manner that caused those on the ground to feel as if instead of welcomed guests, they were instead a group to be distrusted and pushed out as soon as the show was over.

This article will go over these reactions, the underlying causes of anxieties, and how future attendees can take steps to avoid the situation themselves should they seek to. Due to length, a keep it short summary has been added below the fold in order to break the summarize the points in the article without as many details.

On June 9th, 2023 the furry world was baffled by a newsletter from Washington state’s convention Anthro Northwest that has since been removed from the internet. On their social media page this letter was headered with the statement “Something had to be said”. The letter opened as if it is about to take an action that would cause controversy to protect their gathering, but then moved forward with meandering prose about the dangers of ostracizing others based on accusation, which they later refer to be related to a phenomenon that has been deemed as “cancel culture”. However, in its statement it also didn’t really announce any action that the organization would take to combat these issues it deemed important to state are occurring.

This meandering and winding prose about “seeing through the glass darkly” certainly caught a lot of attention. Because of the vagueness and the context of being an official statement it led many to speculate what could have prompted the post that read more like a defensive personal blog. Soon other furry conventions and organizations would capitalize on the public relations blunder by making parodies of their own.

But perhaps at the end of the day, the glass that ANW’s chair, Gabriel Felix, was seeing through dimly was that of the house he resided in. The shattered pieces reflected upon him for a past where he ignored his own currently presented ideals. Because while the chair asks the fandom to be slower to judge and to be more judicious with our actions to outcast others among us, on May 8th, 2019 his convention had banned the Furlandia soon-to-be-chair at the time, Richard “Saphy” Thomas, from being able to attend ANW.

Note for clarity: Saphy was the promoted to chair from vice-chair of Furlandia following their 2019 gathering just after he was banned from ANW, the current chair in 2023 (Rex) is not banned from ANW. To make the story more clear the headline working verbiage around the titles have been updated in the article.

The Transformers movies are hardly thought of as either particularly furry movies, or particularly good movies in general. Because of the latter, nobody has really argued the former, despite the fact that the Transformers are definitely anthropomorphic robots. If, as some furries argue, anthropomorphism by itself is of interest to furries, the near complete lack of said interest in this franchise from furries would seem to contradict that hypothesis.

But, as far as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is concerned, some of the robots turn into animals instead of cars, as is traditional in the series. So, Acadamy Award winner Michelle Yeoh voices Airazor, a giant hawk robot, for instance. So that’s kind of neat.

Transformers: Rise of the Beast is the seventh film in the Transformers series of movies, and the second prequel movie not directed by Michael Bay, this one being directed by Steven Caple Jr. I have seen the first two of Bay’s movies, but tapped out after that.

I didn’t feel like I was missing much need to know information.

It was one of those strange coincidences that makes one think that, if there were a god, he must have a strange sense of humour. Salman Rushdie, who was the target of a 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini that called for his death due to his novel The Satanic Verses and who lost sight in one of his eyes after being stabbed on stage in the US last year, warned that never in his lifetime had freedom of expression been under such a threat in the West. Less than a week later, Fur Affinity announced a new rule banning adult artwork of characters with childlike proportions, later calling out specific pokémon and digimon. I have already written about the importance of free speech for the furry fandom, so here I would like to discuss how increasing authoritarianism is restricting free expression and a simple way to help safeguard it.

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

On May 24th, Megaplex, a furry convention that has taken place in Florida for two decades, had announced that for the first time restricted attendance to those 18 and over only. This was done in response to a recently passed law, SB 1438, which expands the authority of the government to revoke business licenses and impose fines in response to situations where children are exposed to live performances deemed “problematic for general consumption”.

Many have raised concerns about recent changes in Florida legislation. After reviewing Florida SB 1438 it has been decided that for legal reasons and protection of our attendees, our venue, and the overall convention, Megaplex 2023 attendees must be 18 years of age at the time of registration pickup.

Megaplex has welcomed younger fandom members and their families since its inception and making this change was very difficult. The Code of Conduct has been updated to reflect this change and emails are going out to those affected.

While this change impacts the 2023 convention, it is unsure if this will have to continue for future years. It is our hope that this change is temporary and that we can welcome members of all ages back next year. With this in mind, the public decorum portion of the Code of Conduct as well as standards for programming, attire, and behavior in convention space will not be changing and will continue to be enforced as it has been in the past.

This decision has been a difficult one, but Megaplex has not forgotten about or abandoned our younger fandom members and is looking into options for events and activities to include all age ranges and their family members.

Many have also voiced concerns regarding CS/HB 1521. After legal review, it has been concluded that this does not affect us as our convention is held in a private venue. We are talking with the hotel about the possibility of offering gender neutral restrooms in the convention space. If we are able to offer this we will have them clearly marked on our convention map.

If you have any additional questions regarding any cancellations requested, please feel free to contact us at [our registration team email].
Megaplex; May 2023

This week[sic] in Digging Up Positivty:

• Pawperty Damage came out on the 24th and we are having an interview with the critter behind it all: Marig. And that is not all! We will be giving away one key of this smashing game so you can stomp around as well. Stay with us till the end for more info!
• Two huge Australian icons working together in a most adorable dance off!
• The Good Furry Award winners are announced
• And of course we are starting this episode of Digging Up Positivity with various charities all over the world

The winners of the 2022 Ursa Major Awards have been announced! There were 1350 voters this year! (The voting tallies can be viewed here.)

Also a reminder that the Ursas are run voluntarily, and are accepting PayPal donations to help continue running things in the future. Check their website for details!

And now, the 2022 Awards go to... (Drum roll please)...

On May 19th Fur Affinity had announced that it will expand the rules toward banning portrayals of youthful appearing characters, even if the character is addressed as being older in universe, engaging in sexual situations to include digimon and pokemon characters. While situations that portrayed actual young anthro characters in sex (known colloquially as cub porn) had been banned 13 years ago, there were elements of gray area on characters that are determined as mature in age, but younger in appearance that were later expanded upon. This update is a furthering of that expansion.

In the announcement Fur Affinity had noted that there is a method for artists who have posted works that may be in this gray area to discover how they would be handled by submitting trouble tickets against it.

If you have questions as to whether this may apply to your content, please feel free to open a ticket under “NSFW Underage Content” with links to the content in question, and we can verify if the content is in violation or not.

Artists have been informed that the amendment will start to be enforced on July 1st.