So I noticed that wildcards in search queries can retrieve aliases. For example, *thro_only retrieves the same results as anthro because anthro_only is aliased to anthro.
Which is great for me, because I often use wildcards to search for artists' work of their original characters with the query <artist> *_(<artist>), and if wildcards work this way then this query will also retrieve character tags which avert it, as long as they have an alias in this format.
In practice however, this function seems more limited than I had hoped. For example, gwen_martin has the alias gwen_(joaoppereiraus), but isn't included in the search *_(joaoppereiraus).
I know that wildcards have a top-40 tag limit, and João has more than 40 character tags in the wildcard format alone. So it seems to me like the wildcard checks regular tags before aliases, with both being subject to the same limit. Can anyone clarify this for me?