Pardon the burner account, but I refuse to do this from my main as to avoid actual harassment from the gaggle of individuals participating in this nonsense.
The Situation.
@hlghlycorroslve , @catfire13, and co. have been childishly publicly vaguing and hounding @lyss-butterscotch for a "stolen Unparalelled Innocence design." After claiming they "attempted to resolve this privately" they took to making a public callout post, linked here.
I'd like to also preface this with the statement that I don't know Lyss. I don't even follow her. I am not her friend, or her, doing this. I am also not associated with anyone who has made any public comments about this situation. Do not implicate ANYONE in the name of this blog. I am someone who has seen your actions from afar and found you rude, alienating, and overall just bizarre.
The Design.
Everything about these two designs are almost entirely different. Yes, they both wear ponchos. But when half of the iterator population wears ponchos, you cannot act like you're entitled to your design wearing a poncho. Especially when they have significant design differences, and the entirety of the rest of the outfits are completely and wildly different. Yes, Hicor originally made their UI purple long before the concept of purple UI became dubiously canon, but even the concept of a pale purple belonging to Hicor and Hicor ONLY is just not true.
The concept that Lyss stole Hicor's color palette also just doesn't hold true. Yes, they are similar by virtue of both being purple, but again, purple UI is especially not exclusive to any one person after Downpour.
Lyss commonly uses desaturated and/or pastel colors for her designs. It makes complete and total sense for Lyss to have desaturated the bright neon purple on the new overseer to match the rest of her designs palettes.
Admittedly, the antennae are the only part of this argument that holds any weight. Yes, they share similarities, like the fact that they both have three points. That is about where the similarities end. The silhouette, color, and everything about the antennae is completely different. The only thing they share is that there is 3 of them. This argument completely loses all of its weight when you put these two designs side by side and realize just how actually different they are. There are more differences between both designs than similarities.
Rain World is a very art oriented game and community. Especially when it comes to a character with no canon defining characteristics, it's normal and common that artists are going to find inspiration in their fellow peers. Inspiration is not a crime. The inspiration is derivative enough that it's not theft. None of this is theft.
The Conversation + Posts.
In the callout post, catfire13 shares screenshots from their private messages with Lyss concerning the situation. After approaching the situation by immediately claiming that Lyss was stealing someone's design, catfire is still intentionally vague about the entire situation even when trying to directly communicate with Lyss. Previously, catfire and co. had spent the past day making vague posts about Lyss, spam-reblogging them, and going into a popular Rain World fan-community server to vague and badmouth Lyss even before having contacted her.
(Although this is a public server, I am censoring those responding to catfire unless they are directly involved in this situation. There is no reason to include these people by name in this conversation.)
Catfire also made a post about this situation on their OC sideblog about the situation BEFORE they ever contacted Lyss. This screenshot was taken after Catfire had finally contacted Lyss, but the original post was made before.
While not directly saying Lyss's name, this is still a public callout. You are still publicly vaguing and calling someone out, even without saying their name. As well as being completely wrong in your final comment, by the way! Lyss has never once stolen art. Why you decide to paint Lyss as an art thief specifically is beyond me, because that is a straight up lie. Catfire, Hicor, and their gaggle of friends all spam reblogged this post, and other vague posts, multiple times while leaving cruel comments in the tags.
You were having people in your inbox leaving threatening messages to Lyss without even knowing the entire situation, which now that you have made a public callout post that paints Lyss in a highly negative light for no reason, I wonder where these threatening messages are going to end up?
This image from the callout post highlights so much, but says so little. You are demonizing Lyss for not knowing what design she was supposedly stealing from before you gave her a single hint as to what you were talking about, of course anyone would be confused in this situation. You use Lyss's initial confusion turned confession into being inspired as if she confessed to committing a federal crime. You hold onto her phrasing of "color shift" so hard because you have no arguments without it.
You also rag on Lyss for the redesign "not being good enough" and as far as we're aware, you made no further contact with Lyss to express your dissatisfaction with the redesign. May I remind you, in your OWN screenshots, that Lyss makes a comment about changing the design until it's separate enough. There was nothing stopping you from approaching Lyss again and stating that you still felt like they were too similar, but you didn't do that. You resorted to making a public callout that makes you look incredibly entitled and foolish.
Conclusion.
You do better. You and your friends want to talk about respecting artists and what they make but you clearly have no respect for Lyss, or a majority of Rain World artists anyways. You point out that Lyss is a "post-downpour" artist for no reason, and many of this groups blogs are filled to the brim with posts and tags about how much they detest new Rain World fans, how they don't respect them, or how they even flat-out dislike them. You are not entitled to anything because you've been a Rain World fan longer than other people. Stop going on the Fandom website and complaining when there's Fandom.
