I see blame being thrown around, at the director, the OC owner, the tagger, but none of them did anything wrong. The only one that should be blamed is the mod that deleted the images originally. I say this as a hypocrite because I was a mod of a booru and tried to delete some mean "fan"art. However actually doing this causes so many problems that are so abusable that it's never worth doing. People don't own their characters the way they think they do, and legally speaking there is nothing protecting them. People making Pokemon OCs or Pony OCs or using anything that is clearly someone elses property should make it obvious, but people really think they own the trademark on their characters. You don't. Anyone can make a pink furred dragon or a robot faced wolf thing. And if you get angry about this, that's your own choice. But you cannot ever be in the right if you get art taken down that you did not make, and call it theft. You don't get to do to draw pikachu without permission, and then be shocked when someone draws your OC without permission. It's the same rule for everyone.

If they did not get permission, then maybe it's not your character. Consider it, and do not then try to claim that similar means stolen because you think you're the only one to come up with such a basic design. Or it IS your character and it's simply fanart, but it's non-canon so who cares what it depicts? In the end the only problem is you and your reactions. So the solution is only with you and your reactions. Do not take a page out of Nintendo's book and be the bad guy. We all benefit from this being the way this works. You don't get special treatment.

I hope this whole thing was a learning lesson for the mod team and that they never delete artwork for looking similar to an OC again. Not even in the rare case that it's hate art, or else you're justifying every company that sent a C&D to a YouTuber that reviewed a game poorly. Fanart is not theft. A similar character is not theft. A pose is not theft. A color of dragon is not theft.

I have personally dealt with someone drawing my character and then trying to sell it as an adoptable to get revenge on me after I called them out for trying to claim ownership of a pose. Thank goodness I had these experiences before this happened and I could laugh it off. If it had sold, there is nothing I could have done, because adoptables are not a legal thing in the first place. It didn't sell and I just got free fanart out of it. But I can imagine this would have been terrifying for most. I wish art and OC ownership was talked about more. This situation with Polar's art being deleted should never have happened.