I strongly believe that watchers on FA aren’t as valuable as people think—at least, not in the same way that subscribers are valuable on YouTube.

Why Watchers Don’t Hold Much Value
For some reason, FA doesn’t even display a user’s watcher count prominently. You’d think it would be shown next to the date they joined, but no—you have to scroll past their shouts to even see the number. And at that point, who cares?

Why? Because FA prioritizes the art itself over follower numbers. A quick glance at someone’s gallery is enough to decide if they’re worth your time, unlike YouTube, where video quality isn’t always obvious until you actually watch something. That’s why subscriber count matters more on YouTube—it acts as a quick signal of credibility.

Favorites Are More Valuable Than Watchers
Unlike watchers, favorites are displayed prominently on someone’s page under the Favorites tab. In fact, if you scroll down a user’s profile, you’ll see what they’ve favorited before you even see their watcher count.

Favorites are one of the best ways to discover new artists because:

Browsing someone’s favorites exposes you to multiple different artists in just minutes.
If a person has favorited multiple pieces by the same artist, you get a better sense of that artist’s style, increasing the chance of gaining interest in them.
There are three main ways to find new art on FA (aside from the browse section):

Seeing an artist’s work offsite and following the link.
Using the search bar to find specific content.
Browsing someone’s favorites—which, I’d argue, is the most common.
If you’re reading this, comment below and tell me how you found my page—I’d love to see if my theory holds up.

The Power of Favoriting
But what really makes favorites more valuable than watchers is their infectious nature:

I favorite something.
You see it and favorite it.
Someone else sees it through you and favorites it.
The cycle continues, spreading an artist’s work far and wide.
Favorites are a means of not only supporting peoples pages, but supporting any artists said pages have taken commissions from. As favoriting a commission from a commissionees page not only helps spread their page, but it also advertises the artist who made the commission/adopt/ych.
This organic "pollination" of art is why I disagree with those who private their favorites. That said, I understand if someone’s embarrassed about what they favorite and doesn’t want to share it.

Final Thoughts
People have told me that watchers matter more than favorites, but I strongly disagree. I can favorite a few of your posts and help spread them around, but if your overall gallery doesn’t appeal to me, I’m not watching. And no amount of asking will change that.

But you are very welcome for the favs. <3

FA’s blacklist system is absolute garbage. It took them forever to implement, and even now, it feels like a half-assed afterthought. But honestly, the root of the problem isn’t just the blacklist—it’s FA’s entire tagging system, which has been broken from the start.

The Tagging System is a Mess
FA doesn’t have a proper structured tag system like e621, where tags are standardized and enforced. Instead, anyone can tag however they want, meaning:

There’s zero consistency in how things are labeled.
Searching for something specific is a nightmare because people use random tags—or worse, don’t tag at all.
Even when people do tag, they’re limited by FA’s arbitrary tag cap, making it impossible to include all relevant details.
To make matters worse, descriptions count as tags. So if a single word appears once in a post description, it pollutes search results with irrelevant junk. How is that useful?!

The Blacklist System is Useless
Long before FA even thought about adding a blacklist, I used Filter Affinity, a browser extension that let me completely block unwanted content. One click, and I never had to see certain posts again.

But FA’s official blacklist? It doesn’t even remove posts. They’re just blurred out. Which is completely useless when I’m trying to filter out posts with a specific word in their description—because those still show up.

And somehow, the blacklist ends up hiding more posts I actually want to see than the ones I don’t, thanks to FA’s ridiculous tagging habits. YCHs and adopts are the worst offenders—people just throw in every tag imaginable, even if it’s misleading.

FA’s own rules say:

"Keywords must be directly related to the content of your submission. Misleading or abusive keywords are not permitted."

Total bullshit.

I’ve seen joke tags.
I’ve seen SFW posts tagged as NSFW for no reason.
I’ve seen tags that have nothing to do with the image—just completely misleading nonsense.
FA’s Design Choices Have Always Been Awful
For the biggest furry art site, FA has always had some of the dumbest design choices—inconvenient, unnecessary, and outdated. But this blacklist system is the worst of all.

Now, thanks to FA’s recent username update, (at least that's what I'm assuming is the cause,) my Filter Affinity extension no longer works, and I’m stuck with their broken tagging and useless blacklist. So thanks, FA. Glad I barely use this site anymore.

(No, I didn’t move socials—I’ve just been way happier in VR RP than I ever was in 2D art RP.)

There is a strange phenomenon I'm noticing where a lot of YCH accounts with very similar styles will just pop up out of nowhere. You can take this as free advertising, but I wanted to make this to document such accounts cause I find it interesting.

Astarga
Akadashi
BrightPhoenix
Belsamore
Divergo
Demiamaret
DoranBlacky
FoxyBashBang
Furachi
OsleepyEvil
SeraBlum
Helshy
Krinvil
Cubewolf

Whether its the way the art style is, backgrounds are utilized, or how the facial expressions/finished product looks, all these YCH accounts have a thing in common. At first I thought it to be a single person running them all, with (, , being the first 3 I found.) But then as I noticed new accounts springing up like , my previous assumption felt less possible. It is still a possibility that some of them could be one person, as it would make for a smart business move to run multiple accounts like that for a higher chance in sales, but I don't really like to assume that since it seems rude to combine the possibly hard works of multiple people into one person.

This is not me criticizing any of these accounts or their YCH's. I just wanted to share this cause I found it very interesting. But maybe there isn't some deep mystery to be solved about this. Maybe its as simple to figure out as asking one of the creators. Still interesting though. If I find anymore of these similar YCH accounts after the post of this journal, I will put them below in the updates.

Updates:
Curaska
BlackMorsa
BestyGlows
ZeraMortelis
Beilorgosh
AzariFox
Coralla
Ngrass
Halenwels
Dragaska
SFishdBorn
Zenwaran
Krokozan
Deynholt
CrumpyCat
Lanpaska
TwilightShad
Rowhalt
CursedAsh
PenguinGoo
Showbear
Noatolse
SinKarso
Kotkrabon
AlonaCatty
Amberlock
Giozellrus
OlyDollo
Adamantithe
Warzoga
ShallyBlue
Azmorite
Wezaraje
Jobfosra
BlackynWolf
UncoloredSoul
Erwalzy
FirebirdCherry
Bardelansh
GoldenBlair
ShikenBird
CronaLoa
Ebissdaimi
Sculdersh
Scoldharwell
Dellariato
Bernald
Koshna
Berdash
Wratheord
Seibalin
DenWardo
Lucilmore
SinKarso
ArchKat
Vicksbosch
Arlabello
Azberlyshg
Keizdu
Krezka
GunpowderJoe
Lodemard
FelenKron
Gelzemed
CherryDemigod
Askali
Andariel50

Edit: I've added more artist to the list already established because I already knew them, but either forgot about them, or couldn't find them when making the compilation. I'm also pretty sure I've got it mixed up with which three artist I first came to knew with this "genre" of YCH's, thats how similar they are. lol. I also forgot to mention that some of these accounts upload coincidentally the same time as each other sometimes. And some of them posted at least one NSFW specific YCH all at the same time, which helped support my theory its all one person.

Edit: Another thing I've noticed is that they will always post in sets of two. Not one account posting two things, two accounts posting one thing.

My birthday is exactly in one week! J-15th! Oh boy am I excited. ^^

Out of curiosity, I wanted to ask for yalls opinion... Who should I get more art for? You vote! :D Out of all my characters, who would YOU like to see more art of? Everyone is HERE. I'm also trying to improve my art skills, so who ever gets voted most may also get an art piece by me. :3
Aerrez - 0
Arkamese - 0
Asher - 0
Abby - 2
Baleey - 0
Bucky - 0
Covid - 0
Cui - 0
Donte - 0
Duke Grizzly - 0
Duke - 0
Dean - 0
Damian - 0
Emrod - 0
Eelaijah - 1
Grey - 0
Jester - 0
Jango - 1
Kewby - 0
Karter - 0
Kalimba - 1
Krampus - 0
Leevaithen - 0
Maclin - 0
M.O.Ds - 0
Remy - 0
Redgy - 0
Rat - 0
Remy Roo - 0
RJ - 0
Scrappy - 0
Spyke - 0
Stadik - 0
Syler - 0
Viper - 1
Wardy - 0

I have Covid. It sucks.

And a Happy New Year to you all! ^3^ Hope you all are doing well for the holidays. (: <3 <3 <3

My cat used to absolutely hate people food, meanwhile the dog loved it. I'd always feel bad, so I would try and food him people food, only for him to grumpily reject it. Slowly over time, he started eating more and more meats, then milk, and then cheese itz. So on and so on. Now he begs more than the dog, is jumping up on the counters, and reaches for the food when I eat. I've created a monster, plz help. 😭

PAWS ARE BETTER THAN FEET, CHANGE MY MIND

I've realized the amount of times my skull is inconsistently drawn is fucking hilarious. The original design is a vampire bat, but now I've pretty much accepted that my skull may have slight shapeshifting properties instead of being fixed on one design. I don't mind this, and think it's honestly pretty cool. Lol. I think no matter the iteration, it will always look unique enough for me to not get called a Skull Dog. There isn't a time where I've looked at a version of the skull and gone, "ehh this don't feel right..." I love em all! :D

So I got a notice from FA a few hours ago. It stated that my submission "New Allie Bunny" has been removed due to it being AI generated, which violets the terms. (Apparently). So, um. I just want to ask... Has the administrative team never put "Midjourney" in the facking search bar?! Also, it is worth mentioning that I had to heavily edit and alter the original AI made image to better fit the design I was going for. I didn't just upload it raw.

Hmmm... So as it stands, my Rule of Diamonds post is my most popular post. I didn't expect it to gain so much traction, which is why I didn't put much effort into it because I thought it was just a shitty little diagram to express my opinion. Maybe I should make a Rule of Diamonds part 2? Refine the original? Or just leave it alone all together and let it sit there is the famous shitty little diagram on my page that caught peoples interests? Hmmm...

3/13/2022. I started collecting the FA's of artists that I like. I would copy their link and paste it into a specific Discord channel for myself. For the longest time I've kept them there, only visiting the FA's whenever I felt like checking up on them. This was the system I had ran with for awhile.

8/8/2022. I am now taking it upon myself to not only watch every artists I have saved, as a little way to give back, but also to go through every artists FA, and favorite any pictures that I like. If you look at my watching, you can see I am watching quite a few. Going through every FA and favoriting every picture that I like, is going to be a painstakingly long process that I have decided to commit myself to, and complete over time. I want to share as much love and support to all these people as much as I can. If you're an artist I am watching, and you are reading this, no need to thank me. But thank YOU for existing, and giving me the inspiration to start an FA of my own.

Despite my account being fairly recent, this isn't my first rodeo with FA, and I've been around the platform since at least late 2016. I've kept eyes on various artists, and was always inspired to try living the life as a Furry, and FA user, for the longest time. It wasn't until recently when I finally decided to actually do something about though. So thank you, artists that didn't even know they've helped me! I'm glad I've saved your accounts, so I could give back to you all. There will of course be artists of whom I can't remember, artists restrict themselves to other platforms I don't use, or artists that are long gone by now. But I at least I can still give back to those I can. Even if you are not an artist, and just pay for things, still, thank you for having incredible characters to get art made of, which still inspired me.

If you are still reading this, I guess I just wanted to take a bit of time to say: Thank you, to the Fuzz Butts and Scale Heads of Furaffinity, for inspiring me to become a part of this community. (:

Alright I got a conspiracy for yall fuzz-butts. Ready? We were all chipped at birth/hatch to type emoticon smiley faces as :) and not (: and I was the first one to break the system. Escape the matrix. And now I'm trying to free you all too. Alright, alright. Hear me out. How do you type a smiley face? Admit it, you do it like :) is there ever a rule that's said you must type it that way that you can remember? Did someone say doing it any other way is incorrect? No. At some point in your life, you decided to start typing :) Because it's the chip! I mean come on. It only makes sense, right? And now that you're thinking about it, your probably thinking, "Huh, this weird skull bunny guy is right. I have put :) my whole life. And so has my friends. And my family. Have I ever seen anyone put (: before?". Admit it, I just blew your mind with that revelation. 😎

So there's some thing's about my ref that wasn't added but probably should've been, and I hope will be added in a future ref sheet. But for now, here's a short list of the thing's that was missed. I don't expect all of this to ever fit inside of a ref sheet, but at least some important info could.

- I am 6 foot and 1 inch in height.
- Skull is hard enough to instantly shatter any material. Punch me and you can say bye bye to your hand. (:
- Despite the skull being so sturdy, it can also bend at the jaw to express further emotion of need be. Like a cartoon.
- The tail is so long and heavy. The purpose of this is for balance, as my tiny bony feet wouldn't stop me from crashing forward. However, the weight and length of the tail does not stop it from being wagged, or stop me from being agile. In fact, it feels weightless to me. And my magical abilities can help me keep balance if my tail is raised for too long.
- Back of the throat is a dark void that eats up all light. But it still functions as a normal throat when something is eaten or shoved down it. But from the outside, it will look as if things will disappear into the darkness.
- Tongue is prehensile, and can extend out of the throat up to a foot long. Tongue can be used to wrap around food and pull it in, though this isn't needed and more for showing off. Because I do not have lips, I use my tongue to wrap around things for sucking, like a popsicle. Saliva is sticky enough to hold onto small objects like small berries, cereal, etc. But not sticky enough to hold onto anything larger. That's where the prehensileness of it comes in.
- It's hard to see, but my feet have only two toes. Each toe has a sharp boney toe claw.
- Eye sockets and nostril is hollow, and the space is filled with a brownish smokey like chemical. This chemical always stays within the confinements of the skull and never trails out. Things are capable of passing through the eye sockets and nostril. This does not cause any discomfort to me, or any individual that tries it. Though, it will cause me blindness for as long as the object stays within the eye sockets. The chemical taking up the space of the skull is a mixture of Dopamine, Serotonin and Oxytocin. These mixed with my magic helps me sentient to make up for the lack of a brain.
- It is possible for me to receive an injury, but it will quickly heal due to the gems inside my body. (Read my bio for more lore on that.) I am not invulnerable to damage.