Btw, what client do you use for your custom reacts, because they only show 'w' for a lot of them. The tag for the emote name needs to have colons around it to be compatible with other clients.
Discussion
I use https://emojito.meme/ it works on Nostrudel (at least the version I use). I'm not sure what's happening, but I keep seeing ghost emojis with double colons at the start and end too (like ::wolf::). I'll try adding both methods. Maybe there's a conflict in how platforms implement emojis.