GENERALLY, im having a great time with artfight as i always have! 6 years and have never had any big issues... until now. lol

It's a weird situation to be in for sure? Someone, a good mutual of mine, drawing a beautiful revenge piece against me. The problem being that they shipped two characters of mine that super are not supposed to be together. One of them being my sona, a dnd self-insert. i certainly was not comfortable with having a drawing of me with a character (sueno aka fairy AU varian) i dont want to be shipped with

Granted the character's bf (droom aka fairy AU hugo) does look like me a little bit i guess (lanky, pale, same hairstyle and same stupid round glasses on he head). but... the right character IS linked under varian's description? with permissions explicitly stating NONE of my characters are ok to ship with others UNLESS it's with their canonical partners

It was not done with malice, I know it was just an honest mistake on their part. So I made sure to say I was not upset, that the piece was beautiful, that im genuinely really grateful for it AND that they can even keep it up on artfight so as to not lose any points. but I also requested it be either cropped to be just varian on instagram, or just removed from instagram

This did not go super well. They did respond to me asking what I would like out of the situation (which is where I mentioned I have no issue with it staying on artfight but would like to have the instagram post altered). They said they needed to think about it, which I was fine with (and, once again, made sure to say it's still really nice and I appreciate the understanding). Next thing I know both the post and attack are deleted and I'm blocked on instagram and artfight.

I did catch that their story on instagram was them venting about not wanting to do artfight anymore, that people have repeatedly nitpicked and been ungrateful for the free, full rendered art they create. and that does SUCK... but why am I being associated with that, yknow? they made this right after I tried to voice being rather uncomfortable with being paired with a character while making it clear i was NOT upset and still super grateful and that the art was stunning etc etc etc. They even drew vent art of themselves looking at their phone all shocked and sad about my message? agh

I'm bummed out I've lost a cool mutual over this. They're a great artist, I've commissioned them I think three times now and enjoy artfight with them, I was looking forward to more commissions/trades but that's not really in the cards anymore. Along with that I'm kind of just... confused? As to what happened? And a little hurt by their reaction to all this. It seems unfair to me.

Like I said. weird situation all around. It started the night before yesterday so I'm less anxious about the whole thing at least, but obviously still feel the need to vent because wtf is going on lol. It's not impossible I'll delete this journal later, but I wanted to share this somewhere and this is a good place since I dont have nearly as big of a following as I do other places haha