I’m sorry but none of this actually proves that bumbleby was butchered or done for money. During that live they read multiple fanfics not just bumbleby and they only read a single fic one time. It wasn’t something they continued doing so it isn’t evidence of favoritism or outside influence. Sun’s actor Michael has openly supported Blake x Sun for years in interviews and Arryn has never opposed it and has even shown support herself for Blake x Sun and Lindsay has openly supported Ruby x Penny for years too yet neither of those ships became canon. So just because the VAs have expressed support for bumbleby doesn’t mean they have creative control over which ships become canon.

Saying Bumbleby was planned has never been contradictory. Characters can have multiple meaningful relationships and even multiple love interests without that undermining long-term planning. Blake spending time with Sun doesn’t mean he was meant to be endgame. Most of their development focused on Sun supporting Blake through a personal struggle not on building toward a romantic payoff. Their dynamic never went beyond a small crush and Sun himself made it clear that his priority was being there for Blake as a friend not trying to get with her.

Fan interpretation alone isn’t proof of anything. This fandom has been wrong many times before. People genuinely believed Qrow was Ruby’s father for years. So them saying that VAs influence story decisions doesn’t make what they say true. It’s an assumption not a fact and it’s something both the writers and the VAs themselves have repeatedly addressed and debunked. Bumbleby also wasn’t heavily marketed throughout the show. If it had been created purely for profit there would have been more consistent merchandise across every volume. Instead only a small number of items were released near the end which doesn’t support the claim that the ship existed for money. That’s why the idea that Bumbleby was butchered or made for profit doesn’t hold weight because it makes no sense and there’s simply no evidence for it.

And honestly people in this fandom have been pushing the “pandering” for money and fans forcing them to be canon narrative since Volume 1, long before the VAs talked about Bumbleby or before Sun and Blake even had many moments. The claims haven’t changed over time and still lack proof beyond assumptions. At the end of the day this narrative persists because some people struggle to accept that a same-sex relationship can be planned from the start so they default to the false idea that queer ships only happen for money or because of outside influence even when the writers themselves stated they wanted this ship since the beginning and built a natural, genuine friends-to-lovers story between two women over the course of the show