Give users the ability to make a "follow list", similar to the blacklist, where you can specify Artists, Characters and Pools that they want to be featured.
New Images from followed Artists/Pools would then show up above the other images on the 1st "/post" page for the respective user when they're logged in.
Maybe make it possible to toggle the display to accomodate for people who are not interested in utilizing it.

Fully agree with this, made an almost identical post about 3 minutes ago before checking to see if someone posted the same thing. Being able to Favorite an artist would be most convenient, and save me many hours of searching when I forget an artists name. Who else has gone the the frustrating quest of trying to find an artist by looking up the single picture you remember they made by using a slowly expanding list of tags and many backtracks along the way?
I've actually been hoping this feature would crop up for years, I finally decided to run to the forums and someone beat me to it.

Me three. I have stories I like and would follow but checking all of those for new contend gets tiresome after some time. And following artists is just not possible.
You could do a set for it with one post of said artists but keeping them maintained would become tiresome, too