#also NO PR*SHIP BS goes without saying

[lonniemachin]

hey so im trying to get back into a place where i can actually draw because i both have things to draw for others and just miss not being constantly burnt out and i know every time i did this elsewhere it fell through but does anyone have any small dc/spider-man sketch reqs? can be characters can be ships i love romance. :] whatever

[rwbyconversations]

A summary of the Great Shirt Controversy of August 6th 2019

... because this godforsaken company cannot go one month without a new thing to get everyone pissed off over. Let’s do this.

The offending shirt in question, now removed from existence and presumably being buried beside Atari’s mass grave for the ET game. 

August 6th, 2019. RT announce a new clothes line for female fans that goes live. Barring the disgruntled rumblings of Weiss mains as they realize she didn’t get any new merch (being Weiss is such suffering that it transcends reality I guess) and a very poor translation of Yang’s name into Japanese, people seem mostly cool with the new clothes line. Then people see what Blake got.

Blake’s new shirt was one with Adam that had the words “Lover’s Quarrel” over their faces (well the back of Adam’s head). The crossed out lining over the words was perhaps meant to show that it wasn’t just a quarrel, but it fell flat (a lot of people weren’t even able to see that it was crossed out), with many fans, including even many Adam fans, feeling the shirt to be in rather poor taste or just confusing since it seemed to give off the vibe of promoting Tauradonna. 

On a visual level, that the shirt was just a black shirt with a white square was seen as rather cheap and lazy, especially compared to some of the other shirts Blake and Adam have gotten over the years (seriously go check them out they’re some of the only good shirts RWBY’s gotten in seven years). 

On an emotional level, many felt that the quote was making light of Adam’s abuse of Blake and/or felt that RT were trying to use their relationship in the same way as Harley Quinn and the Joker. What makes it worse is that many people point out the same thing- the shirt was fine as-is barring the wording, all the shirt needed to say was “Nevermore” or include a line from the song and it would be a far more effective shirt. 

In a surprise twist, RT’s PR team were actually conscious that day and not recovering from another binge-drinking session over having to deal with whatever new controversy broke out this week. The shirt was removed from the store and several hours later, the team issued a full apology on Twitter for not being more considerate 

Several hours later, the vulture wearing a human skin called Hero Hei woke from his usual round of masturbatory fantasies about Vic Mignonga and saw the news, rushing out a ten minute video (he pads it by whining about Vic some more) where he accuses RT of having a bias against Adam (he has three other shirts which Hei would know if he did anything resembling research), that RT responded quickly to this case that had small Twitter ratios- yeah he seriously winds up just mocking people having low ratios on Twitter- yet have ignored larger controversies (not anything important like the First price hike, he just means the Vic firing) and that   RT have changed their target market from shonen and anime fans to the slice of life audience because they removed one shirt from their store. He’s a moron. 

RT haven’t said anything on if anyone managed to order the shirt before it was removed, or if they’ll honor the purchase and still ship it or just refund the customer. 

An interesting side effect to this whole thing is that a lot of people are now talking about how utterly disappointing RWBY’s merch options really are (to say nothing of how BS most of their shipping prices are). Calxiyn has a good thread on it here where she highlights a lot of the frustrations people have with how lackluster RT has been with providing RWBY merch. A common thread in particular has been how much they oversaturate with t shirts and how they fail to catch on to what people would actually buy (as in, it took several years for them to make Ren’s apron and Nora’s bomber jacket available). The lack of merch for long-lasting characters like Ozpin, Mercury and... basically anyone who isn’t RWBY, JNPR or Qrow... was also brought up.

Basically, they made a shirt, it may or may not have been stupid, they took it down, please make more stuff that’s not shirts, pay your fucking animators.