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February 2021

Newsbytes archive for January 2021

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Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

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

Digging up Positivity - Furry charity and good news - January 2021

Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

Hello, and welcome to the first episode of Digging Up Positivity of this new year. January certainly was a thing. But plenty of good things happened too. Starting off with one of our favorite avians, we will go through some awesome animations, and more, ending with our featurette, TK Wolf! One of the driving forces behind Furs4Life.

'Done Differently' series to lead with Canberra fursuit-builder

Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (7 votes)

Furries are the topic of the first episode of 7NEWS' LIFE: Done Differently, premièring Thursday February 11 on their Spotlight YouTube channel. "Furries Uncovered" involves a visit to Creative Beasts owner Leonardo Balfour, also known as purple-tufted demon Kyah, shown below helping host Ciaran Lyons navigate the streets of Canberra while trying out fursuiting for himself.

A furry is a person who is a fan of animal characters with human characteristics. But it’s a lot more than that. Ciaran meets Leo, who is an out and proud Furry, and is willing to share the truth about the ‘fandom’, as furries call it. Is it just about art and costumes, or is there a more adult side to a life in fur? Ciaran will find out first-hand as he spends the day as a furry in Australia’s capital city.

Don't Hug Cacti sends cease and desist to furry; alleges defamation

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (15 votes)

Disclaimer: This article will not take a side in this matter and is merely a publication of the events leading to the public conflict in question, thus falling under “Neutral Report Privilege”. People’s comments below are their own, and do not contribute to Flayrah’s position on any pending legal matter.

In the first week of February, furry twitter lit up as a furry fan by the name of Qutens posted a GoFundMe page to raise money for a legal defense against the fursuit creating business of Don’t Hug Cacti LLC. The LLC sent a cease and desist to Qutens that stems from the publication of witness testimony of alleged sexual misconduct behaviors of the business’s founder Lucky Coyote that was published in September of 2020 on the below tweet:


Dragoneer buys back Fur Affinity from IMVU

Your rating: None Average: 4 (13 votes)

FA Logo Fur Affinity is now independent once again after five years under the management of social gaming company IMVU. This comes as IMVU is looking to restructure their company to be called Together Labs, and take on major investment from Chinese company NetEase. Dragoneer repurchased Fur Affinity, for more than he originally sold it for, and now owns it under his own company (Frost Dragon Art LLC) once again.

They also made a new logo for the occasion.

'Redwall' adaptations coming to Netflix

Your rating: None Average: 3.6 (20 votes)

Rights to Brian Jacques' Redwall series of novels have been purchased for adaptation by Netflix; there are plans to create a feature movie from the first, Redwall, as well as an "event series" based on the character of Martin the Warrior. The movie is being written by Patrick McHale.

Redwall Size Chart 2018, by mongoosefangs

The series spans 22 books (with a few picture books thrown in for the Dibbuns); if the first movie and/or series works out, Netflix has plenty of material to use. Redwall is popular among furry fans, as its entire world is filled with dressed, talking animals. The stories usually center around the titular Redwall Abbey and the adventures of its (mostly) rodent inhabitants, though the world is not limited to this one setting.

Movie review: 'Dragon Rider' (2020)

Your rating: None Average: 3.8 (10 votes)

Dragon Rider (trailer) is a 2020 computer-animated children's film, a German production (Drachenreiter) whose UK English dub was recently released online. Adapted from a best-selling children's book by Cornelia Funke, it's the story of a young dragon in the modern-day world, searching for a refuge where dragons can stay safe from mankind. Short version: You can skip this one.

The film was directed by Tomer Eshed (Flamingo Pride) who doesn't seem to have worked on anything this big before. The production company, Constantin Film, appears to have outsourced the animation to several studios, so it's not clear if there was a unified vision. The screenplay was adapted by... John R. Smith? Who, according to IMDB and its scoring system, is the genius behind Gnomeo & Juliet (5.9 out of 10), Sherlock Gnomes (5.2), and The Queen's Corgi (4.8).

Given that The Queen's Corgi is also the rare recipient of a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's a bit of a red flag. Dragon Rider's IMDB score currently sits at 5.5.

Movie review: 'Mosley' (2019)

Your rating: None Average: 4 (4 votes)

The movie poster for Mosley. The tag line reads 'Stand upright'.Mosley (trailer) is a 2019 computer-animated children's film that showed up on furry fandom's radar about six years ago as Beast of Burden. Written and directed by American animator Kirby Atkins, it was a labor of love that had been in various stages of development for over 15 years. The movie was finally brought to life thanks to a collaboration between animation studios in New Zealand and China. I enjoyed it!

The story takes place in an alternative, pre-industrialized Earth, that includes "thoriphants", an intelligent, quadrupedal, elephant-like species forced into servitude by mankind to do labor like horses and donkeys. Fully sentient and able to talk, Mosley, along with his pregnant mate Bera and his young son Rue, are the property of a disgruntled farmer. When Rue discovers a cave with drawings of bipedal, anthropomorphic thoriphants, Mosley must confront the possibility that the legendary tales of the "Uprights" might be true. Soon he'll be on a quest to find out.

Movie review: 'Tom & Jerry' (2021)

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (8 votes)

Fairly early on while watching this movie, I came to an epiphany: I really don't like Jerry.

Seriously, he's a jerk. I mean, it'd be one thing if he violently thrashed his onscreen partner, Tom, because, after all, Tom is a cat, and cats eat mice. It'd be self-defense. I don't hate the Road Runner when Wile E. Coyote gets squished yet again, even if do feel sorry for Wile. But Tom rarely seems to have any interest in eating Jerry. Neither is Jerry like Bugs Bunny, who doesn't go looking for trouble. In the old shorts, Jerry frequently attacks Tom first, without provocation.

Take, as an example, how Tom and Jerry meet in their latest movie, released this weekend. Tom is busking in New York City's Central Park, when Jerry rudely interrupts him. Now, Tom is not without his own flaws; he's pretending to be blind to attract more customers, which is not cool. But Jerry doesn't seem to be bothered by this; his beef with Tom is clearly that Tom is making money, and he's not. So, he tries to steal his crowd, and then, in a bout of inevitable slapstick violence, breaks Tom's keyboard, which is clearly important to Tom beyond just a means of money. I'm on Tom's side, here.

Well, anyway, Tom & Jerry is a movie about Tom and Jerry. Tom is a cat. Jerry is a mouse. They starred in a bunch of cartoon shorts together starting in 1940, meaning that 2020 was their 80th anniversary. This movie was supposed to commemorate that milestone, but, well, COVID-19. It's mostly a live-action film; only the animals are animated (it wasn't submitted for consideration in the Academy Awards' 2020 Best Animated Feature category, which it would've qualified for under the extended "awards year", which implies the filmmakers consider it live-action). Besides Tom and Jerry (who are basically mute, and charmingly credited as "Themselves"), the movie stars Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña.