although sometimes an avatar shows what we are: a hellfire, an angel, or anything between. I found them to be a staple in BBS systems, and don't mind them. Actually I find looking for a picture rather than a name is better when quickly looking through a thread for a certain post, you can just look for that user's avatar, other than looking at small white letters.

I could help out by hosting the avatars themselves on another server but my servers are either down or do not allow outsourcing. See what happens when I try?