did emily gwen actually steal the sunset flag design? a post about hex codes.
maybe you've read the google doc going round about Emily Gwen and you saw some arguments presented about how the hex codes are the same and that means she intentionally stole it. this post aims to clarify and analyse what the hex code values actually mean and whether or not that can actually be used to definitively prove malicious intent from Emily Gwen.
This post will not be addressing the identity, fraud, or scamming allegations; you can read the Google Doc addressing those points yourself.
here i present thee a comparison of Olivia @shapeshifter-of-constellation's lesbian flag design from July 2017 colourpicked using Windows PowerToys Colour Picker to show the hex codes of each stripe. the same has been done to emily gwen @sadlesbeandisaster's design from June 2018 (timestamps are from my melbourne timezone btw lol)
as you can see, every stripe has the exact same hex code. theres over 16.5million different hex code combinations. it would be extremely impossible to independently, by pure coincidence, each pick the exact same hex colour 7 times in a row.
wait. but Olivia and Emily have both mentioned a butch & femme flag. is it possible they did both have the same idea of splicing two flags?
it's true - the three orange stripes on both Emily and Olivia's designs match the butch flag design by @butchspace. hex codes to boot. you can check yourself.
So what about the white & pink stripes?
Olivia herself directly credits the butch flag in her original post, as well as the lipstick lesbian flag (originally created in 2010 by Natalie McCay)
the picks are hard to see in the LLFlag screenshots, but we have a few matches! the middle-pink stripe (#b75592) and the white stripe (#ededeb)! so now we have to analyse the differences.
darkest pink stripe:
LLFlag: #a40061 SunsetFlag: #a50162
and the lightest pink stripe:
LLFlag: #d063a6 SunsetFlag: #d162a6
okay cool! theyre clearly different codes. But what this actually means will require a deeper understanding of Hex codes.
What are HEX Codes?
hexadecimal codes are representations of output values for Red, Green, and Blue respectively. hex codes being 6* characters long for three outputs means they are read in pairs; two characters per R/G/B value, #RRGGBB.
*hex codes can actually be 3 characters long (if the pairs are identical characters; #112233 can sometimes be written as just #123, or the full code can be 8 characters if youre including transparency/alpha values, but that doesnt matter or change any of this analysis.
the hexadecimal scale goes from 0 at the lowest end, to F at the highest; 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-A-B-C-D-E-F
pairs of characters each convert to output values ranging from 0-255 00 = 0. 5A = 90. 5B = 91. 5C = 92. FF = 255.
think of these outputs more as percentages; FF or 255 is 100% of that colour. 5A, being output 90 (out of 255), would be something like 35%. (which is why #5a5a5a converts to HSL as 0°,0%,35%)
so the HEX code #000000 tells us there is no red, no green, and no blue, therefore there is no colour; #000000 is black. if you know your colour theory, that's why #FFFFFF is white. it tells us "MAX red, MAX green, MAX blue"; all colours mix to make white. You can get all the true neutral greys by evening out all the values, say #5a5a5a, which would give you R 90 G 90 B 90. #FF0000 gives you bright red, #00FF00 gives you bright green, #35465C gives you tumblr blue.
so; what do the two different hex codes in the sunset flag tell us?
L Flag: #a40061 vs. S Flag: #a50162
L Flag: #d063a6 vs. S Flag: #d162a6
you might have noticed each value in each pairing that is different is literally only one value off. translated to RGB outputs, this means the output for that colour is exactly one value different also;
L Flag: #a40061 = R 164 G 0 B 97 S Flag: #a50162 = R 165 G 1 B 98
this kind of difference is completely minuscule; its less than half a percent of a difference. its easily attributable to differences in compression for wherever they may have actually sourced their version of the LL Flag.
it being one value off does not point to either Olivia or Emily actually changing the colours from the original Lipstick Lesbian flag at all; as Olivia said in her post she spliced the LL Flag with the Butch flag together. contradictory to how the Google Doc frames this, that's actually exactly what looks like happened here.
but in the google doc they list different hex values than you have here
web compression is a whole beast that i will not be tackling in this post; I can colourpick their images in and get both completely different values to theirs listed, but even completely different values to my own, but they all still have the exact same ratio of difference; ie. one or two values.
lets use the codes they have written for the darkest pink stripes:
L Flag: #951D57 S Flag: #971E60
the blue is actually like 9 values off (57-58-59-5a-5b-5c-5d-5e-5f-60) but that works out to be an output from 57=87 to 60=96, or if you will 34% blue on the L Flag to 38% on the S Flag.
yes, its extremely hard to independently choose values this close; no its not impossible for colour values to shift that much in upload compression. it would actually be weird if Olivia had only changed the colour a couple of blue percents. these are miniscule differences that no human would consciously make.
(its worth noting that if i colourpick the image right now the hex codes are closer to being only one or two values difference across the L & S flags. the 9 jump from the docs findings could be attributable to misreading the code, or accidentally hitting an outlier pixel (something something compression artifacts))
right so... did emily gwen steal from olivia or no? (TL;DR)
idk. its actually totally plausible that both Olivia and Emily decided completely independently to merge the stripes from both the Butch Flag and the Lipstick Lesbian flag.
sure, Olivia's post from 2017 directly references its sources of inspiration. but Gwen's post from 2018 does still reference the two flags, just extremely vaguely with "the pink [flag] and the orange [flag] flowing into each other."
the evidence on this one is just. inconclusive at best. if there werent 8 million other things to potentially criticize emily gwen for then id write a more uplifting conclusion.
