My luck with Fa is pretty bad, every time I decide I want to get active again, the rules change and make me not want to use it all over. In the upcoming months, FA plans to ban all artworks that depict characters without 'adult' proportions. This really screws with people who have chibi art styles and Pokemon fan artists, since a lot of the time, a character not having 'adult' proportions can be subjective and/or up to the viewer's perspective.

I'm going to have to remove a lot of my older porn pieces specifically, since back then I had a chibi art style, and possibly my recent Pokemon stuff as well. The latter is all on Inkbunny anyway, but I'm not sure I really want to re-upload the older artworks. I'm not so attached to them, but they do include a certain Zelda Wind Waker comic which may probably be affected by the ban. I'll most likely want to post these on Inkbunny or e621.

But seriously, use Mastodon or Weasyl or whatever instead of this site. Find me on Aethy at https://aethy.com/@frustratedsquirrel (I post cub stuff there, so be warned though)

FA didn't have folders when I was last here, so I'm going to be doing some sorting of my gallery/account to make things look more cohesive going forward. You guys might see some older artworks get deleted or move around, so here's how I'm going about sorting things:

Any artworks from image series that involve hard kemoshota themes are going to be moved over to my Inkbunny unless they are solo images of adult characters in those settings. I wouldn't be able to post explicit content for most of these characters here anyway, so they're not going to end up here unless they are completely sfw. The only exception is going to be N'thuuhan's portrait because that one is supposed to be more of a tasteful nude and doesn't have an explicit description. I am currently working on a big reboot of Toybox and Ruff and Randy's Gayhappy Adventure, the latter of which will NOT be posted here, but single images of the adult characters that fit FA's guidelines may, since that story takes place as part of a bigger setting involving multiple characters. For that reason I'm not going to make a folder for R&RFAGHA specifically and have removed the original concept art for this story.

Now I'm kind of anal about trying to keep things looking cohesive when it comes to world design, and one of the things I don't like to do is match characters who have different anatomy styles together in the same universe, unless there's some way to explain it that makes sense to me. Eg: If I have a horse character with plantigrade feet and humanoid junk, I wouldn't want to put them in the same setting as another horse character that has equine-style junk and digitgrade legs. UNLESS the humanoid-bodied horse is some kind of forest spirit or demigod or half-orc, etc. Kinda silly but that's what I like to see.

For that reason, my story series tend to be grouped into two universes. Type 1 (more humanoid) and Type 2 (more bestial). A character from universe Type 1 isn't generally going to be able to canonically meet or be referenced by a character from universe Type 2 and vice versa. They may have counterparts though. I'll be trying to group my folders based on this rule as well as whatever individual story/world the characters are from if that makes sense.

My older artworks from before this point are going to go into an 'older art' folder unless their designs have not changed and they're still relevant. In that case they'll go into the appropriate folders. Anything in the older art folder could be considered non canon, outdated or iterative. I may take characters from my older artworks and repurpose them. Fanart is going to go in its own folder too.

And finally I'm deleting old journals because they are basically all 7+ years old and mostly status updates that aren't relevant anymore, and also deleting anything that was co-created by someone I no longer have contact and clear permissions to post. There is a lot of REALLY OLD CRINGE at the tail end of my gallery that I hate to look at. This might get its own folder.

I realize it's been 6 years since I've used my account here, but hi everyone who might remember me. I want to start updating again, or at least try to get back into a rhythm.

My absence has mostly been due to a combination of fatigue, working/trying to develop new skills for work, and being a sole carer for aging/immobile grandparents and a fairly large but old home. For a while I didn't want to support FA either due to its stifling policies on fetish content, but we haven't gotten that many good alternatives since then.

I've also had to deal with long time friends taking bewildering actions against me due to the current political climate in the fandom, and my pretty moderate principles. I'm someone who doesn't make money from my work outside of special circumstances, I don't do commissions and I'm not some super popular comic artist trying to skirt around Patreon's rules to foster a big community that'll fund my work. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned and I still believe in moderate concepts such as separating artist/artwork, freedom of expression in fiction, and bullying being bad. There used to be a time where this fandom was exceptionally tolerant and had a very healthy approach to consuming uncomfortable content: don't like it, don't look at it, as long as no real people are actually getting hurt.

I purposefully make a point of mentioning that I do draw kemoshota content on a different account in my profile here, because I don't believe in trying to be deceitful about these things. I do believe in problematic content being fine in the context of fantasy and I respect that this view can be controversial, so for that reason I don't want people getting invested in my drawings and then being disappointed when they find out I'm not someone they want to have associations with.

Within the past few years, I've had friends I've known for 10+ years choose to stop posting my work and cut off any ties they've had with my artwork. I have over 40 artworks in a folder on my ipad dedicated to helping a long time friend with their indie game's character designs, but I will never be credited nor acknowledged for my dedication and loyalty towards the project. I've had another long term friend recently scrub their gallery, yet still continue to use character designs I offered them as gifts (with their written direction of course), commissioning other artists to redraw the characters using the references I created, removing any traces of my characters from collab commissions, etc, not because they disagreed with my activities, but because they were afraid of being ostracized by association. Another person I've only ever tried to be kind towards, who quietly ghosted me over my opinions, has now recently crawled out of the woodwork to try and discourage others from reposting my work by recounting our relationship in the most unflattering (and in some cases outright incorrect) way possible, without attempting to communicate and seek a resolution at all. A choice of theirs I must respect, even if it's been leaving me feeling hollow for the better part of 2021 and on. Give up on principles and ideologies I truly believe in, or drift away from friendships I love and miss. I suppose it's meant to be 'righteous' to shun an artist who might draw taboo content these days, but I don't think being unaccredited for work and passion projects is very ethical, just imo. When did this community become so thin skinned and uncomfortable with being uncomfortable? I like to draw the occasional edgy thing, I don't condone any of that stuff irl. It should be that simple but for some reason it isn't anymore.

It's all pretty exhausting and petty, so on top of everything else I've had to deal with, I haven't exactly felt terribly enthused to be active the last few years when I could just dedicate to learning 3D modeling or refining my fundamentals and hanging out with regular friends.

Doesn't mean I haven't been drawing though. I have a lot of unfinished stuff just laying around and I've decided that I'm going to try and chew through it and start posting again. The furry community's still one of the best for creatives, I'm still passionate about what I do as a hobby. I do appreciate those who still send me notes and ask how I'm doing, so I'll be sticking around.