Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote anything, hi.

But what a time that I picked to do so as well, under the veil of a major policy change. It's part of the reason I'm writing this in the first place but I suppose this is a good opportunity to write about myself for anyone that may follow me on this platform.

My last journal was written sometime in 2019, it seems (I'm looking at this from the Previous Journals pane on my right, so I don't know the actual date), but I guess not a whole lot has happened in that time. Some of it is personal and I do not wish to talk about it publicly. But I was never really gone from FurAffinity, rather it's just a place I regularly check for uploads and to keep up with my friends (among other places), along with the occasional art dump that... I've once again neglected to keep up on. I guess the correct term is "lurker," and it doesn't really help that I can't get myself to upload to FA at the same time I upload to DeviantART. When it comes to art as well, I've been inconsistent with it. Much of my art had restarted in 2020 when I had gotten back into it, likely helped following a desire to play Pokémon games throughout the first half of 2019; the games become more fun to play when you can create characters out of the creatures you catch and raise. 2021 was also an active art year but both 2022 and my activity this year have faltered heavily, and feels very slow now especially following the passing of my Grandma back in February. I've been missing her dearly ever since and have been doing my best to continue on without her. She moved closer to me back in the mid-2000's so I've been very fortunate to have her as close as I did for much of my life and for as long as she lived. Had she lived another week, she would've turned 88. My Grandma was the epitome of the title, and she held it in high regard. She loved everyone who came into her life, and treated them as family. She was my best friend, someone I loved dearly and I will forever miss her.

However, as jumbled as this journal may sound, it's main purpose is to also share my stance on Policy 2.7, something I've noticed has taken over almost my entire journal notifications pane as artists I follow have it filled up with their opinions and announcements of their plans moving forward, most to all appear pessimistic. From my understanding, this updated policy is meant to address visually-underaged characters in NSFW art, in an attempt to curb presence of it on the platform, and one of the biggest targets appears to be Pokémon. This is a grossly simplified version of what I understand the policy to be, and I would recommend checking out FurAffinity's post of the policy to [try and] get a better understanding of its effects.

Now, in my time on FurAffinity, which is nearing 10 years at the time of this journal, I do not utilize its NSFW abilities for any artwork and do not intend to at all. The only times I may use the NSFW tag is for Mature works, which I may label for what I might consider suggestive, which I have not felt applies to anything I've uploaded. However, I understand this may change once the policy goes into effect at the end of next month. After all, much of my content involves Yoshis and Pokémon, so while all of my uploaded art is SFW, I'm not entirely sure if it is safe from removal, such as Dot, a Togepi, which is a baby Pokémon. I may take a good look at my gallery and remove things that may be necessary, but ultimately I may not do much. If it gets taken down, I will allow them to do so. FurAffinity has always been a secondary platform to upload my art onto, and with the likes of Twitter (despite its current status) taking stronger precedent as something I check and use regularly, I feel as though if I am kicked off of the platform because of art I neglected to take down or refused to, however they see it, it's not a loss for me.

While I am not as involved in the FA community as others are, and in the best way I can say, I feel that Policy 2.7 has created a great deal of backlash for something that honestly seems a little difficult to maintain properly. I think between now and July 1, there's probably going to be more adjustments to the policy to make it work better with users, or possibly a restructuring of it altogether. All I've seen regarding this announcement is nothing but negativity and I don't think it should continue in its current form, until it can be rethought out (if it absolutely has to) and issued again later. We'll have to wait and see what the staff chooses to do.

Should I be removed from FA for any reason, you can still find me in the two places I frequent and upload the most:
https://www.deviantart.com/ikyle
https://twitter.com/Doughisaur
All of my artwork is visible on the former and I dual-upload on both platforms whenever I make something new. If nothing happens here, then I'll make an effort to upload here as well whenever I make something new.

I kinda wish I wrote this journal a little better than I did, I felt that I knew what I wanted to say but much of my typing tonight is not as concise as I like to be. But I hope I got the message across. Thanks for reading, have a good one!