I didn’t watch this in the cinema, and I had a bit more to say about it than my usual one-line movie review format, so it didn’t fit into my monthly round-up, but I do want to wholeheartedly recommend you...

Location: Electronic Resource- 

With all due respect to Greta Thunberg and Billie Eilish, nobody had a better 2019 than Baby Yoda. The real star of the Disney+ flagship Star Wars series The Mandalorian, the little green puppeteering/CGI marvel (aka "the Child") might be the most adorable creature ever created.…

This indefinite break from sports due to the coronavirus pandemic can be an opportunity to reconsider how we view women and sports.

The internet was seen as a major catalyst for the furry fandom finding one another during the times before we held conventions. During that earlier period in the 1990s, conventions and meets were rare, and finding one another was done mostly through the chat rooms and message boards of the past. There was no bandwidth for video or sharing major animation projects, therefore most of our intimate conversations were textual.

For many younger furries, it was a time that was lost in the annals of a distant history. Instead they found themselves joining in amongst a wave of growing conventions being held in various places around the world on any given weekend. Ones where those in custom fursuits march out in the streets openly rather than feeling a stifling isolation of being cooped up in hotel spaces, with a handful of home made creations, being wary of a hostile media looking for a freak show.

Coming out of 2019, it seemed that the time where furry was just an internet thing was fully behind it. However a series of unfortunate events were in line for 2020, a year that has led humanity to be forced into their rooms by an irate Mother Nature as an easily spread virus has forced governments around the globe to take drastic measures to slow its spread and put strict limits on social gatherings. A situation which has forced both the furry fandom, and the internet that brought it together, back to their roots.

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Mumbai-based Prajakta Koli may be one of the country's most popular digital personalities, with over three million subscribers to her YouTube channel MostlySane, but she has still not forgotten the very first YouTube FanFest that was held in 2014.

"It was an intimate amphitheatre [at Bandra fort] with around 300 to 500 people. And now we're expecting a crowd of 15,000 to 20,000 coming this weekend," she tells us, referring to the upcoming edition of the festival that bridges the gap between video personalities and their fans — getting both parties at one venue. The Mumbai edition will be held at JioGarden.

Creators walk the red carpet, there's a meet-and-greet for fans who have managed to grab the limited tickets, but most importantly, the event is live-streamed for fans across the globe. This year's line-up features Koli along with Internet personalities Lilly Singh, Amanda Cerny, Gaurav Chaudhary aka Technical Guruji and Bhuvan Bam.

Lilly Singh and Prajakta Koli 

"It's crazy. More than the festival, I've seen creators evolve with every fest... it's like you can't map where this is going to get in the next few years," Koli says. After winning multiple awards in the past three months, she will now collaborate with Singh for the fest. "When I started doing videos four years ago, I wished that I could meet her, and I did twice. Luckily, she doesn't remember the first time, when I was working as a radio intern and I had gone to interview her," she recalls, proceeding to talk about Singh's upcoming late-night show, which will make her the only woman and LGBTQ person to host such a show on a major network. "It's setting the bar high for creators; imagine if a Superwoman vlog can have such an impact all over the world,
what will a late-night show do?"

Koli maintains that the festival will bring in lots of surprises, and popular vlogger Nikunj Lotia aka Be YouNick concurs.

Amanda Cerny does comedy sketches

"The biggest takeaway is going to be the great experience. This shall be my third appearance at the YTFF, but nothing can be compared to the feeling I had the first time, when I hadn't even performed," he says, stressing on three key points that added to the success of his channel — a great script, perseverance and copious amounts of chai. "If I were to start afresh today, I'd spend less time worrying about technical nuances and focus on producing better scripts," he shares.

So, if you're a budding creator, you can forget about the pressure of having to go out this weekend and tune into your screen instead.

ON March 30, 6.45 pm to 9.15 pm
LOG ON TO www.youtubefanfest.com

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Dewey Library - PN1995.9.A8 Q84 2019

Dewey Library - PN1993.5.I8 G47 2019

Hayden Library - HM621.A57 2019

Duffett, Mark

Hayden Library - GV1469.3.F36 2017

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Lewis Library - ML421.B4 M57 2020