Sith

I "made" this shirt myself way back in 1998 or 1999. I had some help from my mom with the hot iron.
When I was in middle school my friends and I were working on nicknames or basically early handles. This was after I had the "Kabopple" handle but that was more my parent's name since we used it for email at that time. I was "Sith" and my friend was "Valor", we may have had others but I don't remember that well. I chose to make this to encourage the elite-ness and individuality of my friends and myself.
You can barely make out the design here today. It has been sooo long since this was made and it was one of the first shirts that I ever used custom iron-ons for. The quality of the ink, paper and adhesives aren't as robust as they are now. The shirt is a large, which was gigantic back in middle school, but it fits now. I think we bought large because they were cheaper and in case they shrunk in the wash or through the ironing process somehow.  I had to use a white shirt because those are the only ones that work with these types of iron-ons. I am so grateful for the current level of quality and ability to apply prints on black, it was a lot more complicated back then.
For the design of this shirt there were only two things that I needed: the nickname and its namesake.  Dead center is the concept art for the character Cait Sith from FINAL FANTASY VII -pretty much my favorite game of all time-. When this shirt was brand new it was in full color and looked pretty flawless at the edges since any part that is not printed on is transparent. Unfortunately, all that is left now is red/magenta. The name is cool and edgy -I thought so when I was like 13-. It says "SITH" at the bottom. I thought I was so cool with underlining it so that all the letters connect and make one shape. The text is in red too for an overall white and red look.
I used to wear this at school with my friend. It shows that I am a gamer and that I have a unique persona. I am trying to associate myself with popular culture and characters. I ended up wearing this for a while, maybe a year or so before I dropped this handle. Once that happened this shirt got shelved up until now I think.

The whole point of this shirt was visibility. People ask about what it means, either the character or the saying. When I used to wear this I could explain the nickname or the character or both. Mind you I wanted everyone to know about each, that I chose this awesome handle and that I played this awesome game. When I wore it today it was nearly impossible to see and I didn't get any comments on it. However, I did get some mentions of my new hairdo, which I am pretty stoked about.