#peipur

Today I received a very strange set of notes from a gallery page that was started in 2010 and claimed as 'abandoned the fA community' with an Icon that said 'Kthnx Bai'. They still followed several artists that I was familiar with, and found me through that way, as they claimed. When they showed me their initial gallery,

I was stunned.

The art was from "Paperghost" otherwise known as Manaberry or, as I like to have called her for over 12 years of idolizing her, "The Gaia Breedables Queen". Her adoptables on the gaiaonline community were well known, to the point people would literally claw to get at the chance to get one. She was the inspiration to me to even become a digital artist in the first place after stumbling across the breedables section way back in 2004. She worked with several other art sites with bit and pieces such as yaydigis.net, and a few more that I can't recall due to, well, 12 years man.

The user in question found me through fA through an account - Captain-Mc-Lovin. They claim they found me through Poofylion (an artist I have commissioned often)'s page. Their page is completely disabled now, which is further proof as to the fact they were bold faced lying to me to try and get free art.

Their gallery consisted of adoptables and art taken from the MANA AE Breedables shop, and Michelle S. / Paperghost / Peipuru / Peipur / Manaberry's accounts. They even tried offering me an adoptable from blue-whisper's account, all in which were direct saves and apparently messaging me through a phone. They complained constantly about autocorrect and typo'd often, while Peipuru has shown that, though energetic, she does not typo very often at all.

The skype account they added me on was arayazing. They go by Caleb on it. They're even using a picture of art Peipur completed as their icon (A purple skinned man with horns, probably a demon). The example in which the design they wanted me to do from was taken from another user named "irath__x" for the photobucket, a character called "Avery" which was a glider adoptable from furaffinity. The character belonged to ireth and the account attached to the photobucket was hers as well.

They claimed their art is now kept 'private' and they haven't been on gaia in years, but http://spiral-ix.tumblr.com/ http://manaberry.deviantart.com/ http://peipur.deviantart.com/ http://www.gaiaonline.com/profiles/peipuru/136384/ Have all shown recent activity within the last month and a half.

Their offer for the trade at first was I would be completing my half of the trade completely, and then they would start on the trade on their end. I wouldn't see wips prior to completing my end, and when I refused those terms due to past scam artists (Thank god I was smart and didn't just roll over in hopes of getting pretty things only to be scammed, my paranoia saved me in this part.) they linked me to a tinypic gallery under the name of "Pepita".

When asked about adoptables shown in a tinypic gallery that are listed here as sold, their reasoning was, "If I don't see any recent activity from the owners and don't see them treating the characters fairly or see neglect, I'll take the character back without warning. Any design I make are like children to me, and if I see them neglected I'll be very upset/angry. If you prefer and are worried about getting in trouble there is one character I owe that K rarely use. i*."

I purposely made sure to say I was interested in adoptables that all were certified and sold to active users that I could contact via a different website to test if this person was legit, and it came back, to my horrible chagrin, that they were, in fact, a complete fraud.

When asked for a note for verification via dA from a known account, they refused, "I've been through this before. I've been spammed with hurtful messages people saying I'm a fake or that I am lying about who I am. It should be enough just to tell someone that I am who I am. I have never lied or never will. But, to be honest, I'm not going through this again, being accused of being a lair. I tried and if backfired as usual. Have fun with whatever is going to happen with the sketch."

For the record, I lied in how long it took me to do the sketch - the entire time I was stalling finding as much information as I could for contact reasons and had already contacted the proper accounts that this user was doing this. The sketch I showed them that they fawned and gushed over took me ten minutes out of the five hours I spent talking with them. 

Take that, you dangly little so and so. 

I warned them I'd be warning all of my friends and users from the shop that their adoptables were being resold to other users regardless if the person was Peipur or not because as an artist, that's just bad business practice and against the law to take back characters someone paid for already to give away again for profit. 

I was able to reach Peipur through her main account on dA and she confirmed this was, in fact, not her and was absolute garbage as this person was as well.

So, if anyone has any adoptables purchased from that gaia shop, or has ordered commissions recently from Paperghost, please check this tinyimg gallery out to make sure that your characters are not listed there. If they are, keep an eye out on furaffinity.net for reposts of them. I believe the reason that they didn't link me to a public gallery was because they knew that Peipur's style is extremely recognizable - I haven't touched a website that she'd been on in over four years and I still knew it was her.