First of all, thanks for the follows. I had noticed a slow trickle of follows during my period of inactivity, but while I do appreciate those, it's nice to hit the next big milestone while I'm actively doing stuff here. That's right, I hit... 249, which is still fine, it just makes this first paragraph look a bit silly. Alas, my follow count dropped by one in the hours since I first typed this journal out, but regardless, my feelings still stand. I suppose it's not a particularly big number for an artist who's been uploading for years at this point, but it's the most interest in my work I've managed to build up in any space, and it feels good knowing I made it here without compromising on my personal preferences, even if they can be pretty niche at times.

Secondly, and the last thing I wanted to get to before I start rambling away, lately I've been feeling like it'd be nice to chat more about TF and related subjects. I do have my telegram chat for that, but that's focused around my own work, whereas I think what I want most is a more general place to chat about it, and to get to know fellow TF artists a bit more. So, I've made a discord alt specifically for this kind of thing. I probably won't make my own server (though as I type that it feels like it could be a good starting point), but maybe you'll see me around in other artists' servers in the future, or more general TF-themed servers if they exist. I doubt I'll be super active, since I already spend a lot of time on my main discord account, but I look forward to having more places to chat when I'm in the mood. As you'd probably expect, my handle there is rezi_lin.


Now, to address the elephant in the room. (Have I really not drawn an elephant TF before? I should get on that...) Over the past 18 months or so I've gone through a lot of introspection, and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster at times. One thing that came to mind on a fair few occasions, both as I re-evaluated my views and feelings, and as I made efforts to make progress with outside projects, was what I wanted to do regarding my presence here. There were times where I felt like I'd figured myself out, that actually I had much more vanilla tastes after all and all this TF fascination was just a product of repressing my identity. There were times where I thought about my past and wondered, given how much I've changed over the past decade or so, if there was anything wrong with some of the things I draw or fantasise about. There were times where I felt like this was it, it was time for me to fully devote myself to my outside work, and I couldn't allow a continued presence here to risk affecting said work. All in all, my prevailing feelings, especially for the first half of 2024, were that maybe I should give up on this, stop uploading new art, maybe even scrub my presence as Rezi from the internet entirely.

Fortunately for you guys, my eventual realisation was that no, this is part of who I am, and it's not going away, and if I try to suppress it, I'll only end up causing problems for myself. I enjoy drawing this stuff too much to give up on it entirely, and it provides valuable practice for my outside art, too. Sure, I could just keep it to myself, but I've spent too much time hesitating when it comes to interacting with the furry fandom. Hell, I'm almost 30, and I've never been to a furry con, despite it having always been something I've wanted to do sometime. When dwelling on my identity, a prevailing thought was that I should just be myself without worrying about being judged or treated differently for who I am, and why should this be different? Sure, I'm still keeping it strictly separate from my outside work and personal life, and keeping it to spaces where this kind of thing is appropriate, but putting an end to it entirely doesn't seem worth any potential benefit. Having this space is probably for the best, as making this account, talking to people from here, and having dedicated separate spaces to talk NSFW, have all helped me to keep that part of me out of spaces where it's less appropriate. Back in the day, I had a serious issue with keeping NSFW topics to NSFW spaces, because I spent a lot of time, especially in my late teens, in spaces where there was no real boundary. Ever since I started doing this stuff separately as Rezi, I've gradually solved that issue, and part of me worries that if I no longer had a space for NSFW it might start to come back.

All in all, the main purpose of my presence as Rezi is to express this side of me, to let out my personal fantasies rather than keeping them bottled up and risking them seeping into my personal or professional life, to explore themes too sexual or fetish-fuelled for my outside work, and to get to know likeminded folks and make friends within the fandom. In an ideal world I could split myself in two, have one do this stuff while the other focuses on outside work, but unless that somehow becomes possible (which would be a dream come true, if you can't tell by my having multiple 'sonas), I just have to compromise. Also, in the event I for some reason give up on my outside work, or find myself in a precarious financial situation, this is the only real backup plan I have, and it'd be risky to throw that away.

Now when it comes to other spaces and such, I probably will keep my more public presence to FA. Having a single space for this stuff makes it easier to manage, especially in the event I eventually decide it is too big a risk to maintain this presence after all. I doubt spreading things out would work out anyway, as I've learned from attempting a similar thing with my outside work. I also just generally enjoy the vibe here, from my experience it's been pretty relaxed and I've never had to deal with troublesome folks. I could never put my art on a place like e621, as just the thought of seeing a piece I'm proud of get a negative rating is too anxiety-inducing for me. As for the alternatives closer to FA in nature, I guess my issue is either they don't seem active enough to be worth the effort, or they're more general art spaces where the risk of my work leaving its target audience is too high, and I don't like exposing fetish stuff to people uninterested in it. If FA ever goes down I'll probably start over on whatever website seems like the best replacement, but until that day, I'll just stick to here.