Previously on Guardians of the Galaxy ...

Only your letters, and, mostly, your support can bring it back for a third try ... now somewhere in the black holes of Sirius Major there lived a young boy by the name of Rocket Raccoon ... the fact that it really doesn’t make a lot of sense is part of its charm ... it basically retcons Rocket’s original mini-series out of existence, positing it as a false memory ... it’s a good time to be a fan of raccoons with rocket launchers ... Blam! Murdered you! ... I couldn’t find a picture of Rocket Raccoon wearing a party hat ... ooga chaka, ooga chaka, ooga ooga ooga chaka ... we just get a glimpse of his scarred bare back, which implies that his transformation was painful ... I am the fox you've been waiting for ... Rocket is fine. He's fine. He'll be fine. It's fine ... oh, I'm definitely putting copyrighted Avengers music in this ... at one point, the "snap" apparently reached out into the real world and even claimed their director, but it's okay, he got better ... now you’re just making it sad.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the third and final instalment of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy of movies, featuring the adventures of the titular group of spacefaring superheroes. James Gunn returns to direct, and the movie stars Chris Pratt as Peter Quill (a.k.a. Star Lord), Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, and, last but certainly not least, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket.

The votes have been cast and the winners of the 5th Annual Good Furry Awards have been selected by the furry community!

Grubbs Grizzly, the awards' administrator, will go live on Facebook this May 13 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time to make the announcements. The grand prize is a handsome trophy and a check for $500. There will also be 3 honorable mentions who receive trophies, too!

This will also be the second year for the Lifetime Achievement Award, which last year went jointly to Mark Merlino and Rod O'Reilly (founders of Confurence). While the Good Furry Awards are selected by the general furry community, the Lifetime award is picked by a select committee of greymuzzles. The winner receives a handsome trophy.

For those who are not on Facebook or cannot watch at that time, announcements will be made on the www.AskPapabear.com website, and a video will be presented on YouTube.

A brief press release made by IndyFurCon on April 27th announced that Cassidy Civet would no longer be their Guest of Honor at their 2023 gathering slated to happen at the end of August this year. No reasoning was given by the board for the decision in their press release.

Cassidy, in response, took to social media to express her shock at the announcement:

I feel completely blindsided. Being asked was such a rush, I canceled my Furrydelphia 22 to attend and be announced at closing ceremonies at IFC 2022. Then complete silence from the con for months, I reached out, then today the rug got pulled out from under me.

I’m in shock.
-Cassidy Civet - April 27, 2023 7:03 PM

Quiet month! Contributors include dronon, earthfurst, and GreenReaper.

Welcome to a new episode of Digging Up Positivity! This month we feature Kijani, a truly wonderful role-model, and straight up lovely lion. We also cover a bit of animation, but first, all those wonderful charities the fandom has been supporting!

A proposed amendment to a Montana bill to protect minors from pornographic materials, and assist in the lubrication of civil lawsuits against corporate adult entertainment entities, has updated the language to include in the restricted materials to include materials that deal with the concepts of transgenderism and also “transspecism”.

It makes this amendment in a clunky manner, basically placing this “transspecies” word under the umbrella of “transgenderism” and never adding how Montana would define what “transspecies” itself means within this law. This can be found in Section 7 [Glossary of terms], section D [Material that is defined as harmful to minors], subsection L [“Transgenderism”]

(l)”Transgenderism” means a person being in the mental state of believing to the person is transgender or transspecies.

Dissident Signals is a compilation of post-apocalyptic furry fiction published by FurPlanet and edited by NightEyes DaySpring and Slip-Wolf. The individual stories are (very) loosely linked by short paragraphs, written by Slip-Wolf, that relate all the stories as broadcasts intended for any survivors of the ruined world to use to understand what went wrong and how to rebuild. It's an idea which would've been more effective had all the stories been set in the same universe but which does serve as a nice bookending device.

There is a lot of variety in the stories themselves: while most go with a science fiction premise, others include aspects of magic or worlds that barely differ from our own. There are stories where humans and furries coexist (to a certain extent), worlds which are completely furred, and even one story where all the characters are human and the furry aspect comes in a very unique way. Despite all the variety in settings, ideas and originality, nearly all of them are excellently written, though most are quite bleak.

There are a few stories which really stood out to me and which I would like to highlight for various reasons. I will present them in the order in which they appear in the compilation.

The fifth annual Good Furry Awards voting is now open for all who wish to participate. There are 30 nominees to choose from, including four group nominees. Voting will remain open at our website through May 5, 2023.

The awards are designed to acknowledge furries who are active in the fandom who are helpful to their communities and are examples of the true spirit of the fandom.

Four prizes will be awarded based on voting, including three honorable mentions who receive trophies and a first-place winner who receives a trophy and a check for $500 from sponsor Uncle Bear Publishing.

Is In a Dog's World set in a dog's world? Well, yes and no. Humans have vanished from Earth, and several species are now "uplifted," gaining human-level intelligence and an anthropomorphic form. The story focuses on dogs and cats, which are now the main inhabitants of North America, and there, if you'll pardon the expression, dogs rule the roost.

Everywhere she looked in the world, it was dogs on top. Politicians, CEOs, the biggest celebrities, even the most innovative scientists -- they were all dogs.

Our main character, Katasha, is a tabby point Siamese cat, preparing for her high school prom and awaiting the results of her college application. She is not happy with the status that most cats have and wants to be a success. As dogs are successful, that is her aim: not to be a dog but to be a part of their world. She wishes to emulate the traits that dogs possess, wants to go to a predominantly dog college, and desires to date a dog.

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

This episode of Digging Up Positivity we feature charities, animation, and this time our featurette is a short documentary about Kitwana, lion, role model, and more. Do stay until the end to find out who has won that Thabo T-shirt from my Artwork Tee store. But first, lets hop into the charities.

March has been quite a maddening time for the hard working staff at furry conventions. Two of the gatherings, Vancouver’s Vancoufur and Detroit’s Motor City Fur Con, both came under attack during their respective activities when a false report of threat, known as swatting, was committed and caused the need to temporarily evacuate the facilities. Toronto’s Furnal Equinox, meanwhile, had a scare in the region of the convention during the early morning hours that caused witnessing staff to recommend sheltering in place.

We will start with what occurred during Furnal Equinox as it was a different situation than the other two. Then we will go over what occurred at Vancoufur and Motor City.

The Adventures of Peter Gray (Written Dreams Publishing, $16.99) is the first novel by Nathan Hopp. It's told from the perspective of the titular Peter Gray, a young wolf living on the streets of an alternate history New York City in 1899. The Adventures of Peter Gray invites us to experience the city through the eyes of one who loves it and see how both it and Peter's life changes over the year.

I want to start off with the biggest weakness of this book [as a product]: the blurb. The problem with it is that it sets up misplaced expectations and reading then becomes frustrating when those expectations aren't met. The first paragraph of the blurb is fine, but then it makes the whole book sound like it's about Peter's quest for a family and the Newsies' strike. The Newsies' strike is introduced and finished in fewer than 30 pages; the book has 240.

Ignore the blurb and appreciate the book for what it is: a collection of adventures of a young, orphaned wolf in the big city. There is an overall arc to Peter's story, but it develops slowly and organically while many smaller incidents build up to the climax. It's a good structure that works, making the whole book very suitable for quickly picking up and reading without having to worry about forgetting what happened last time.

Nearly all the chapters are self-contained. We meet new characters that stay with us but each chapter has a distinct story. Maybe it's Peter having a picnic with his friends, maybe it's a time when he deals with bullies, or maybe he goes to visit the Statue of Liberty. The various adventures are entertaining and reminiscent of the carefree days as a child. However, that carefree feeling is tempered by the reality that Peter is an orphan, homeless, and broke.

There is an old saying that those who live in a house of glass should not throw stones. This can be seen as true for one furry who has been making a wave in the furry YouTube community for all the wrong reasons. In a video she posted, she shows herself filing copyright takedown requests of furry videos frivolously.

Copyfraud is the false claim of ownership over a work, it is something that the claim site on YouTube warns against doing due to the legal issues that can come with falsely claiming the work of someone as your own. In the mostly automated digital world it has become a common action to utilize false strikes to attack content creators.

But the greater irony was that in this video of the self-admitting copy-fraudster flagging these videos is that there is a grating and sped up music of some description in the background. A closer listen to the first song of the video at the eleven second mark, and slowing it down to half speed and lowering the pitch a bit, reveals it to be a copyrighted song: David Guetta - Turn Me On ft. Nicki Minaj