I kind of misuse dA's features, and it's come to my attention recently that some of this can be interpreted as fishing for pageviews, which I would like to clarify IS NOT MY INTENTION AT ALL. I don't really care about them, I'm not active enough on here to ever expect them to be at all high, so as a result I mostly just don't notice them.

ANYWAY.
1. +watching. I generally don't, unless I know you from elsewhere. I treat it mostly like a friendslist - however, I will occasionally +watch someone I don't know if I'm in a weird mood. I don't really like the system; I prefer to go through a person's gallery in one sitting, rather than just get alerts on changes. I'm also uncomfortable with +watching strangers because it seems kind of creepy to me. I know -I- get a little weirded out when random people I've never heard of +watch me. Instead, if I like someone's work, I will....

2. +fav. I treat my favorites as something like my watchlist. I keep it on 'random' on my profile simply because whenever I visit my profile page, I will usually click at least /one/ of the favorites that come up, then go through the artists' entire gallery. So basically a +fav from me is equivalent to a +watch, and it usually means I've gone through your entire gallery (or the first 5 pages if it's unreasonably crowded) and I intend to go through it again the next time your picture comes up which is fairly often (seriously, more so than you'd think). I figure this system is, overall, preferable to you, since while no one but you and I will know I +watched you, but a +fav has the chance to be seen by anyone who stumbles across my gallery. For this reason I tend to only +fav one or two pictures by someone, at least in one sitting.
(tutorials are a special case, bee tee dubs; I tend to +fav/collect any decent tuts I come across because my personal philosophy is that they should be spread as much as possible through the internets. Friends' works are also generally exempt from the '1 or 2 per person' rule.)

3. Commenting. For the most part I don't, unless I have something particularly insightful to say. I wish I was better at writing good comments, but I'm not, and since I hate insincere/banal comments ("it's so cute : D") I tend to avoid them on the whole. If you get a comment from me feel special :0 Note that this also applies to replying to comments - this I honestly feel very bad about, but I really am uncomfortable replying to them. I read them and I <3 you very much for making them but whenever I click the reply button my brain freezes D:

Oh, by the way, the likelyhood of me +faving something of yours is, roughly, inversely proportional to how many comments/+favs it has already recieved. Mostly I don't +fav anything with over 1000 +favs unless it really speaks to me personally or something like that. I'm more strict with this now than I used to be.

So there. I hope that was informative. :0

Honestly, the amount of deviations I get spammed with per day is just staggering. It makes me not want to come to DA just because I feel like a jerk for ignoring them but I'm also not really willing to sift through 100 pictures a day, let alone COMMENT on them.

So I'm removing pretty much everyone. Like, seriously I'll probably only keep like 10 people max. Only close friends/absolute idols (who don't draw every single day xD) get to stay, and also people who update rarely get to stick around too :0

No offense if you didn't make the cut xD

(this isn't permanent, by the way - I'll probably add a bunch of people later, I just want to get it under control)

my characters are gone
since this afternoon
this has never happened
not in my 11+ years of having characters

... a forewarning. On the scale of character obsessiveness I'm about medium-high. I'm not *quite* at the level of Otakukin stuff (believing that they are in fact real people and they just speak through me) but I'm pretty darn close. To quote my Kori app: "I am very attached to my characters, but I don't consider them my friends, nor am I some passive oracle. No, I am their merciless god, able to control their fates but not to change the essence of who they are." I'm also of the belief that characters behave differently for different people (which is why, Ed, I get so snappish when you tell me how my characters "really work"). If you are not of this mindset you will probably think that I am batshit insane. This may be true. I don't care.

I've always been mildly in touch with my characters. I mean they are /constantly/ there. And I'm usually thinking about them to some degree, unless something else has my full attention. That's what's freaking me out - I don't feel them any more. It's just me alone in my head now and it's so empty D:

I think it has something to do with this: [link] because I wrote it last night and I actually found it very unsettling. I haven't really felt right since, even though I had this basically planned in my head for quite a long time. Onyx is what's bugging me in particular. She starts off as a fun character and then abruptly turns deadly serious and... well... even though I didn't actively come up with it (I have some control over my characters but for the most part they write themselves) it felt wrong in some inexplicable way.

but why all of them? D:

I don't know what's going on. Could such a severe change in a character's personality have snapped the subconscious illusion that they are actual beings, causing me to lose all connections with my fantasies? I've always felt attached to Onyx in a weird way (like "man if she was a real person I would totally be BFFs with her") so maybe it's just having her die freaks me out on that level? (I've dealt fine with killing off much more major characters though, like Kiyah and Khemet) Or maybe it's wrong, maybe I should substitute another character for her. I've always had a problem where, if I "channel" characters for too long I get a weird feeling in my chest and then I can't do it any more for a few days. Maybe this is some sort of extreme version of that?

It kind of feels like they're mad at me ._.


I feel physically sick now. I'm not kidding. I'm actually shaking.

my mom is going to come home soon and ask why I didn't do my scholarship application. I didn't do it because I'm upset about this but that's not really something I feel like explaining to her (she has never really approved of my characters and I stopped telling her any more about them once she made fun of Aikre).

I think I'm just going to go to bed.

I'm trying to be at least slightly more active on this site. In other words I'm going to actually pay attention to comments and people on my watch list and such. I have a couple questions about dA etiquette for you though. (these are, by the way, legit questions. I'm really asking. o.o Not sarcasm, sorry if it comes off otherwise)

1. Replying to comments on deviations:
If someone replies to every single comment they receive on a picture, do you consider this polite, or just trying to inflate comments? I don't mean answering questions or thanking someone for a particularly helpful or well-thought out comment, I mean exchanges like "Cute! =^^=" "Thanks!~" Is this polite or annoying?

2. Commenting on others' art:
Which would you prefer: someone leaves a simple comment on all/most of your deviations (like "nice picture! good job!" stuff like that), or occasionally leaves several-paragraph comments on maybe one or two of your more exceptional pieces? I don't mean critique, by the way (or at least not as in constructive criticism), just a lengthy explanation of why I like the picture (I'd like to leave comments like that on every picture but I don't have the stamina and, anyway, I'd have to BS most of it anyway ). In other words, which is better - comments on everything I look at or really meaningful comments on 1 or 2 pictures?

3. +faving: I tend to just +fav one or two works by a single person. Do you think it's better to do that, or to +fav basically anything decent that my friends put out? It feels to me like I'm cheapening it a little - after all, it's a "favorites" list, not a "here's a copy of my friends' art galleries" list. But I dunno. Am I holding it to too high a standard?


...
I HAD MORE
but I forgot them.

I AM IMPATIENT AND IT HIT 4300
THAT'S /GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME/

Now let's go see who won!

..


...
OH LOOK ED DID xD that's kind of anticlimactic(like how her dream man dresses >3).

Hey Ed you watch me so I'm just going to say it here: what do you want me to draw?

(10 bucks says it's B'Nute)

The message one is up to 1940 by the way. 10 more says the winning thingy for that will be a journal, since that's what 99% of those are anyway.