Tauriel

I was approached by individual #1 through DM claiming that aspects of my art were borrowed from a piece done for them:

Here they state I had previously reblogged the commission, something which I will admit to having done, after I searched my blog for evidence to their claim. However I would like to note the date I had reblogged it:

It was on June 13, more than 4 months ago. Can you remember where you were or what you were doing that long ago? I can barely remember what was going on at my job at that time, let alone what I had reblogged on Tumblr. Sure, I tag things because organizing gives me satisfaction; but I don't look through my blog history. My time for Tumblr is alloted to my dash. This site makes up a miniscule part of my life, and it feels like a rather obscene expectation to place on someone that they would keep track of the posts they reblog from a third of a year ago. Not to mention the twisty logic they would have to reach for, to justify their assumption that I had revisited the post for my own ends so many months later.

And since we are on the topic, to respond in advance to a later screencap stating the image was posted on Twitter as well - I do not use Twitter. I very much dislike social media, and Tumblr is the only platform I use, which as I've said, I keep my activity at a minimum.

Credit to the Massive Monster art design team of Julian Wilton, Jimp (James Pearmain), and Jay Armstrong for the original sprites of the Lamb and the Goat, of which I did a just-for-fun reskin of Martin and Sanguine respectively. And my explanation here is what I say on the tin - I'd been doing some CotL parody AU pieces a few days before my face study post. Thorns and roses felt the most fitting replacement for certain Lamb details. Sanguinite Martin was an afterthought as I wanted to present more parallels between young Martin and my OC, and since the CotL drafts were fresh on my mind I thought it'd be fun to translate that into a more semi-realistic design.

Here, I'm put on the spot, and need to make a choice. Do I continue to stand my ground, and risk turning the conversation volatile, risk the issue escalating and breaking containment? Or do I simply concede, and placate them with their request to save everyone a headache, so hopefully we can simply live and let live. With their instance, I was starting to doubt my own memory: had I come across this piece more recently? Maybe it was a subconscience inspiration, given the small pool of Sanguinite Martin designs out there?

If it had ended here, I wouldn't even be making this post. I respected the individual's civility in the matter, and assumed with this new post with what they'd requested that it would smooth over and we can both move on from it.

However, I was wrong.

A third individual, different from the claimant and the commission artist, reblogs the post with this. Not only do they feel the need to seemingly "correct" me with a more clear reference, but:

They decide to tag the post with some more broadly popular tags. I have cause to believe this is a cognizant act by them, hoping to spread their post to a wider pool; in doing so, they are intentionally escalating a situation that could have been contained and resolved in the previous DM discussion.

The fact that the person who I was speaking to proceeds to reblog this person's post, thus promoting the invitation of harassment such a post will inevitably cause, demonstrates that they had turned back on the final message they had sent me. Not only that, but they also vague post in the tags of them reblogging the commission artist:

(I would like to add a distinction here: the artist themselves seemed unaware of the situation until it was made public. They were not the one who DM'd me, nor the one who made the reblog to wider tags; they were the one who said "I don't know what to say" and made this post above, which I should also note that it in itself was not inflammatory, it was only the claimant's vague tags that incite any sort of escalation. I encourage you to read this valuable insight made. I apologize for not further defining each individual's place in the matter for those who read prior to this addition. I still do not condone any negative retaliation towards any of these three, but would like to actually encourage that you support the artist's works; I do not want to see their career hurt over this issue.)

In these actions they exhibit, they directly contradict their own statement of putting the matter to rest and their hope to steer clear of such conflicts in the future. This leads me to have viable cause for concern that they were deceptive about their civility from the start, and their insistence on me not deleting my post was for their intention of putting me on blast, out in the open, most likely knowing that they can weaponize their comparatively larger following.

Additional Receipts

My download folder from early June to early October. Note especially the two images at the bottom right - these were the two detail references for thorns and roses I used for the Sanguinite Martin.

My Martin reference image had been his in-game remastered appearance, shown in the corner of the left image.

Finally, I'd like to show a prior example of my honesty with crediting in fandom interaction