Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode in 2026 of Digging Up Positivity!

In this episode we have quite some animation news, an interview of the man behind The Friendliest Skunk, a really awesome video game, and of course a ton of charities by our wonderfully weird fandom!

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

Zyly the Fox has released a video for the edutainment YouTube channel that interviews furries from Latin American countries such as Mexico, Columbia, Venezulala, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Uraquay, and Argentina. In it it explores the similarities and differences that furry fans have when celebrating their animal characters in their respective countries.

Fursuiters bring inflatable horses to ANE 2026 for its theme of ‘Westerns’. (Flayrah/Eberra Wolf)

Boston saw thousands of furs congregate earlier this month, some donning cowboy hats, others putting on cowboy boots and throwing on ponchos. Anthro New England 2026: It’s a Western! brought a massive 7,284 attendees to the convention this year, pushing the square footage to its limit and outside the range of comfortable.

Masking requirements were relaxed this year. Only the dealer’s den, art show room, and gaming rooms were masks mandatory. In past years, the policy was that all convention spaces required a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other airborne diseases. Like last year, though, face masks were given out at the safety office, and Covid Safe Furs distributed N95 masks and tests on Thursday for those needing them.

ANE was once again bookended by the Hanover Insurance Group’s annual ‘Ignite’ conference and Mathworks’ Sales Kickoff. On Thursday, I spoke to a Hanover employee named Nancy, who noted that more furries were arriving on Wednesday evening as compared to last year, an indication that the convention was growing massively.

A new The Muppet Show special will be released on February 4, 2026, on Disney+ 12AM PST, and ABC tv 9PM EST/PST. A teaser trailer for the special was released on Jan 2, 2026. An official trailer was released on Jan 23, 2026.

The original The Muppet Show series, created by Jim Henson, ran 1976-1981, and aired in over 100 countries. In 2026, The Muppet Show will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

“The hope is for the Muppet Show special to serve as a backdoor pilot for a new season of the iconic series".

Sabrina Carpenter has been announced as special guest star, and the special also guest stars Maya Rudolph and Seth Rogen.

This special is directed by Alex Timbers (also an executive producer).

Veteran Muppet performers Bill Barretta, Dave Goelz, Eric Jacobson, Peter Linz, David Rudman and Matt Vogel will perform the majority of the Muppet characters in this special, supported by additional performers. Dave Goelz has performed with The Muppets for over 50 years.

We are now in the fourth year of reviewing the dramatic shorts category based on the recommendations submitted to the Ursa Majors along with random ones I may have seen during the year, or items that maybe the algorithms caught that only get recommended at this time of year for some reason. The choices here are, once again, polished and only one or two in the whole list had missing elements. Without you all curating your choices these lists would not happen so thank you for your efforts this year.

New to the format this year is that I’ll lean toward sectionalizing so that the text before the video doesn’t go too much into spoiler territory and any text afterwards will go more into elements I liked that address the content itself as to not spoil any desire to view without being painted by those thoughts.

(Prior Years: 2024, 2023, 2022)

The Monkey King (trailer) is a 96-minute 3D animated film produced by Netflix along with several studios in East Asia. It was directed by Anthony Stacchi and written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Rita Hsiao.

When the film came out in August 2023, supposedly it was the most streamed film on Netflix that month; but IMDB rates it a 5.8 out of 10, and Rotten Tomatoes gives it 56% / 63%. For animation and visuals I think it should score slightly higher; story-wise I think that's a good assessment.

When I used to live in Wichita, Kansas, I loved watching movies at the Warren Theatre West, and I have a specific memory of one movie I saw there, less because of movie itself, but because of an interaction with the ticket seller.

The movie was Wes Craven's My Soul to Take, and she helpfully informed me that if I walked out in the first thirty minutes, I would be refunded. Not exactly reassuring me about my ticket choice that evening, but I had to wonder what people, exactly, were expecting from a "Dead Teenager Movie" from Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven.

I did not refund my ticket, and though I can't actually recall much from the movie (other than a bizarre scene involving a pooping papier mache condor), I still remember it fondly. It was fun, but what else did I expect from a Wes "Scream" Craven slasher picture?

Anyway, he's dead now.

But we're not here to review Wes "Music of the Heart" Craven's My Soul to Take, but instead director Emma Tammi's Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which currently has a paltry 16% "Rotten" rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, which is somehow almost, but not quite, half the score of the first Five Night's at Freddy's, despite being a marked improvement. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

Nominations for the fandom's 2025 Ursa Major Awards are open through Thursday, February 5, 2026! Login on the website, and you can nominate up to five things in each category.

There's a new category this year: Furry Streamers!

And, for the 25th anniversary of the Awards, there's a one-time extra category this year: Anthropomorphic Video Games!

On January 10th SoFurry released a post indicating that they are back online for the first time since early July of 2025. During this downtime they had moved servers and finalized updating so that the new Beta version will now fully replace the original style of the site. The beta will remain in place until bugs are fleshed out with the public transition.

The line for badge pickup at last year’s ANE on Thursday night. (Flayrah/Eberra Wolf)

Anthro New England will be capping the fursuit photo and has been in need of staffers to control lines. Announced the other night on a new page on their website, the convention said the photo will be capped to 800 fursuiters and be moved to Friday instead of the traditional Saturday. Throughout the past few weeks, the convention has also repeatedly asked for staffers, especially ones to work in line control.

Furry literature features no shortage of smaller folk standing up for their own existence. Watership Down, Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, or some of you may even recall The Roquefort Gang from its animated appearance on CBS Storybreak. It’s a safe bet that these works, and so many like these, inspired David Petersen in the creation of Mouse Guard, which heads into its 20th Anniversary this year.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, EberraWolf, and Sonious.

Oh man, 2025 surely has been a year. But, a lot of critters from the furry fandom has been doing their otterly best to make this world a better place. Some events with charities are known far and wide like our virtual friends from Furality raising over $100,000 dollars for the Center, or the various teams raising money for ALS in honour of Dogbomb. However there are so many more, from Chile to Taiwan, from South Africa to Belgium. Together with a small team of diggers and critters who submitted charities we ventured all over the world to check them out, resulting in this years’ Furry Charity Index.

Before we start venturing all over the world, let’s start with a few numbers I kept on being asked for. What kind of causes do we as a fandom support? We have a couple of main categories:

• 15.09% went to LGBTQ related charities
• 29.07% went to humanitarian efforts
• 55.84% went to animal welfare charities

And the final numbers with the difference from last year I will share with you after this wonderful list. Together with the people who made all of this possible. But for now, come travel with us!

[List of Charity events for 2025]

Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia (trailer, pronounced "Gibberish-ia") is an 80-minute 2D animated children's film from 2022, a sequel to a 2012 film previously reviewed on Flayrah. They're part of a larger franchise based on a book series, that later got a TV series and a couple of specials.

Originally produced in France, it's been dubbed into English by GKids, however this new film has a completely different set of directors and writers. The producers and studios remained largely the same. In French the title was Ernest et Célestine: Le voyage en Charabie, based on the French word "charabia" that means gibberish or gobbledygook.

You can watch this film without having seen the first one! Ernest is a grumpy, kind-hearted musician (a bear), who adoped Celestine (a young mouse), despite bears and mice not typically getting along. The story begins with Ernest waking from his long winter sleep, when Celestine accidentally breaks his prized violin. Trying to make things right, she embarks on a journey to Ernest's hometown to get it repaired. In panic, Ernest chases after her, and they arrive in Gibberitia together.