I think Ill just add my opinion here too, not that it matters much.

simple example, consisting of two month. Event A is in month 1, no event is in month 2.

Player A is subbed for both months, paying the monthly fee. He completes Event A in month 1 and gains an emote.
Player B isnt subbed for month 1, comes back for month 2 and resubs, paying the fee for month 2.

Now player B wants the emote, that Player A has, too and complains that he has to pay money on the cash shop to get it. But he doesnt realize, that Player A actually paid for the emote by paying the monthly fee for the month on which the emote was awarded for an event. He then comes to these forums and complains that he gets offered a chance to even get the emote, because most games are like "you werent here, then you dont get it".

Sure player A paid for the sub in month 1 and got all the month to play the game for that, but it is also very possible that player A did pay for the sub in that month but didnt even get time to play except for the event. And similar to this there are many many more possible scenarios like that. So saying he paid to play the gae and not to get the emote isnt entirely correct here. The emote doesnt even cost one month of sub, but I havent really checked the price on that.

So instead of complaining, be glad you even get the chance to get it. If you had subbed that month and played the game, you would have the emote now, so you couldve subbed for that single month OR you can just "sub" in retrospect for that month by paying in the cash shop.