thanks for the clarification! honestly i think its strange that as stated by Keith that:

this literally makes no sense lol esp since the site is profiting off of them

I thought it was more regarding the lineart than anything else ("It's fine if we experiment with line art for site items, not you.") But I too am someone not heavily invested in the CW market. Maybe I am missing some outdated art that gets through.

A very fair point and I forgot you'd said that you did have mask in the name of that. It definitely seems very strange to me considering what types of things have been approved for that to have been denied =/

this literally makes no sense lol esp since the site is profiting off of them

I think the comment was actually there other way around. There's been several comments in the thread that mention newly released site items looking cheap/old/muddy because they've moved to grey linearts, while CWs have an actual quality standard much higher than official items even this year that have officially been put through. why they can't keep a small handful of official artist up to a standard that thousands of users are iron clad locked into is beyond me, and a big point of contention.

(not all views are mine, I'm just paraphrasing the thread and plenty of others that point out the hypocrisy, and honestly I feel I side more with them than against...)

thanks for taking the time to explain! i just think the standards should be equal across the board lol

Then you're as confused as I was/am =/ I knew of a couple full head mask CWs, knew of the TV heads, combed through the rules to make sure this was OK since there were no similar CWs I knew of, and submitted a full head horse mask as my reference. All I would like is the rules to be posted clearly in one place so other people don't have the same dumb experience. Don't care about anyone else's personal wishlists for rule changes. Doesn't even matter to me if that mask is never an acceptable CW.

The only reason it was even on my mind is a friend of mine was recently poking me to ticket about it, because holy crap she has an unquenchable desire for a disturbing hikei mask.

Fair enough haha. It's definitely something that needs to be clearly posted for sure.

I can't agree with that because the "4 changes" rule should fix any possibility of copyright litigation. And also, I cannot possibly freaking fathom how, if they were ever seriously out there trying to sue the universe, there are so many people getting away with ACTUALLY violating their copyright. Been on Redbubble lately?

I'm not saying I support people doing that, and also I know copyright law is different in different countries, but as it stands in America, where both Hussie and Subeta are, selling orange horn designs for fake currency doesn't remotely qualify as making money off his IP.

While I agree with you, I can understand why it would be easier to impose/require a more uniform standard to hundreds of user contributors rather than allow every artist who makes Custom Wearables to experiment with a style that may clash with the overall style of the rest of the wardrobe items. Staff artists, whose styles other staff members (and more of the userbase) are more acquainted with, may be exempt from this, not only as a special privilege, but also because they can consistently deliver in these styles (e.g. and the wardrobe items which lack internally black inlines -- not singling her out in particular, it's just that her style is very distinct compared to the others. The style has always been like this, devoid of very black internal lineart, but it's just more pronounced in recent years), as others have already pointed out.

If I am misremembering the artist and it's not actually Pie, I apologise in advance!

Yes, I also agree with you now! I was just explaining a possible reason why staff (and other people in the fandom) may have come up with that interpretation of Hussie's statement at the time. I remember What Pumpkin having a partnership/contest with Redbubble as a partner in the past, so I just assumed that fanmade merch there actually abides with Andrew Hussie's requests.

Granted, I know next to nothing about IP law as it applies in the United States, so I do hope staff will reconsider their decision regarding items that may be interpreted as/are actually Homestuck/MSPA tributes.

i totally see your point! once again, thanks for the explantation! like i said i dont submit myself so im just an outsider watching this lol and everything is a bit more tricky since subeta has a userbase which the staff interacts with unlike another ... petsite haha

Gonna add my two cents here, as someone who is a frequent buyer of CWs and who talks a lot with and also hears a lot from many releasers. CWs are amazing and probably one of the main reasons I've stayed on this site since I joined last year. That said, the process even to just buy them is completely opaque from the outside, let alone the process of making one! I don't think I could ever sell CWs just because I don't have the energy to maintain a forum group and the threads about slotting, keeping track, making a good looking shop, etc. I see people talk about denials a lot and honestly, systems that feel arbitrary (which this one does, considering sometimes things get through with a trait that others get denied for) make me uncomfortable and angry. If there's going to be a set of rules they have to be transparent and obvious and easy to access. The pricing also feels too high, especially for the releasers, who seem to generally make a loss on selling CWs on site? Maybe? It's unclear, everything is. Subeta already gets money every time someone buys CSC (besides morty cards and bathhouse csc) could they afford to lower the amount they make releasers pay them? I feel like if CWs were a little cheaper they may end up more accessible to more people, meaning there'd be more people buying. (feel free to prove me wrong on price things, this is baseless guessing)

Nothing useful to add to the convo, but I agree with Valiska about the homestuck tribute items. Hussie don't care and won't be hurt by it, and if it follows the site rules for all other tributes it should be fine, there's no reason to pick on a specific fandom to disallow tributes for, ESPECIALLY when there's already official site tribute items like the candy corn horns!

I personally think that one of the biggest problems subeta has in general is a lack of communication between staff and the userbase. It's reassuring to see Keith chiming in here, knowing there's oversight going on, but most of the big questions have not been answered. If you don't have an answer yet for a question, there's no harm in saying so! Explaining that the site staff are discussing the best way to deal with a problem is MILES ahead of ignoring a question entirely, especially repeated ones! If you cannot give us answers, at least tell us we've been heard and are being taken seriously.

Tangent from CWs time, honestly I wish they would force staff artists to follow the CW guidelines or at least get closer to them. Does ANYONE like the gray lineart? It just makes already dull colors even muddier, and because no CWs can follow it and I assume other staff artists don't use it, you can really only reasonably use them with each other because they don't match anything else! I love the realism to them, they're beautifully detailed, but that lineart (especially combined with the incredibly muted colors of the recent shengui guo releases) is just aaaaaaaargh.

(Also have there been revamps that haven't been announced? Is that a thing? I feel like ive read things that imply that, and if so, pls announce these things)

Hopefully this is all coherent

My comment on the rule was not meant to say that it should be enforced as written. Just that it should be worded more clearly to reflect what is actually accepted and denied. I believe when I commissioned the I wanted to give it a name that implied the actual wearable was a sword, but I had to re-name it to reflect what the CI was instead. Not a huge deal, but still it was not made clear to me before I submitted the first time around and then I had to do the "are you sure you still want this / sorry sorry" ping to everyone who had slotted.

I think you're thinking of welovefine, or whatever they're called now, not Redbubble. I remember that partnership!

Redbubble is a site that lets you upload your own art and sell it on T-shirts, phone cases, mugs, whatever. I have approximately 33988343894728397 items from there, mostly decorated with a) pictures of thylacines; b) Gravity Falls fan art, usually of Ford, sometimes of Pacifica; c) Steven Universe fan art, usually of gay space rocks.

Redbubble doesn't seem to give a shit whether you're drawing fan art of something licenced as long as you did the art yourself. They are also based in Australia so they are probably hard to sue, but I'm sure it could be done by say, Disney.

Could you perhaps clarify what you mean by moderation process and what you would like users to be moderating?

I agree with you. I'd rather have the pertinent rule revised so that it's reflective of current approval practises, as you mention! That's a dilemma I've had with some of my submissions, as well, which is why I go for item images that allow me to still give an idea of what the overlay will look like. The unintended side-effect is unwieldy, long item names, but it's a compromise that I've learned to accept over the years. If I were looking for that sword/weapon in the wardrobe, I'd certainly not find it with its current name...

Ah, WeLoveFine is indeed the site I was talking about! I'm out of the loop when it comes to these unofficial/fan merchandise websites, so I appreciate you explaining the difference between the two websites to me!

Very reassuring, thank you for letting us know that you're all looking into this! I'm also curious to know more about the moderation process.

You have 9 pending upload(s). Click here to view. You have made payments on 42 item(s). Click here to view.

could um. could the queue move please I have a masquerade event planned and i'd love to have the items in the site, or at the very least have the denials so i can work on them asap.

Hey, would this investigation happen to cause the CW approval queue to be hindered? A lot of us cw releasers have noticed the queue has slowed down considerably, and have had items stuck in queue for weeks, and we're wondering why. A fellow releaser has like nearing 30 items stuck in queue, which is unusual and especially inconvenient because of the holiday. Even a brief 'hey we're doing things behind the scenes, or staff are busy creating holiday content, or we're slow because of corona' explanation or some sort of clarity would really put us at ease and be extremely appreciated.
I'm sure staff are overwhelmed with everything going on in the world right now and then some, and I don't need to mention that users are too, so it'd be great if everyone was on the same page so nobody's feeling like they've been left in the dark.

^this

we can be understanding if you give us the reasons, or preferably let us know beforehand, instead of leaving us in the dark and wondering how we should do our own events when we have no idea when the items will be in

(also, the fact that the queue has more than often approved more recent items before older ones is a bit unfair)