anarchiccamelot

[anarchiccamelot]

(link to article)

To understand stuff, hers a discussion in the comments:

[anarchiccamelot]

I think people tend to forget that as an artist and writer, it can be mentally fucking taxing and that being paid a fair wage for your art and creation is something that is very important—

It takes me hours to do a portrait and or things with color, and major drawings and comics take a LONG ASS time, not accounting world building and scripts. Writing for shows is taxing. Art is taxing. Comic writing is indeed, really taxing.

"We appreciate it when people enjoy our work, but also deserve a fair living wage for the things we do because we worked hard on it and it's something that's apart of our living, we pour our heart and soul into this" should not be a controversial statement in fandom spaces

this is about the WGA strike.

[anarchiccamelot]

WGA and SAG together would be a force to be reckoned with

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Bonus: Throw is DWA too, and you get:

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And the DGA bear is being poked, so they should really, really want in:

What's he talking about? This:

[anarchiccamelot]

Hell yes! Workers keep the world running, and capital always loses when confronting this fact. In response to this inevitability, corporations do their best to conceal it via various forms of violence, ultimately culminating in employing the police or military to threaten workers into submission. It's a form of power, yes, but a hollow one that requires workers to be alienated from each other. The working class is still divided on numerous lines, but action like the WGA strike gives us opportunities to form bridges of solidarity that create an ever more class-conscious populace. Cynically tearing down these bridges helps no one but the capitalists.

When will the WGA strike end?

ANGELINA BURNETT is on the WGA Negotiating Committee. View their thread here.

[anarchiccamelot]

Florida, SB 254, total HRT ban for adults: 5/25/2023 update

FLORIDA HRT CRISIS DAY 8

Note that in the span of two days, we have had to revise this policy map from including one last way (green) for adults in Florida to get refills (no new prescriptions) from an MD/DO, to removing the one last green endpoint, and replacing it with red/yellow stripe. It actually is unknown whether even refills can be prescribed by MDs/DOs; and because of that unknown, MDs and DOs are choosing not to provide refills either.

There are now NO ways for trans adults in Florida to even obtain refills of their established HRT prescriptions.

This is based on the reports we're receiving of trans people's current experiences attempting to fill their established prescriptions since 5/17/2023 - in a complete vacuum of any information for patients who just lost access to their medication, whether from state agencies or even from the state LGBT organizations that were supposed to protect us from exactly this happening to us.

This shouldn't come down to us alone. WE NEED YOU TO STEP UP.

TRANS ADULTS IN FLORIDA ARE NOT ABLE TO GET THEIR HRT PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED OR REFILLED ANYWHERE.

WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DO SO SINCE WEDNESDAY MAY 17

IT HAS BEEN 8 DAYS

THE CLOCK IS RUNNING

The next in-person meeting of the Boards of Medicine, to draft highly restrictive "emergency rules" further regulating adult HRT, is next week!

Florida Board of Medicine/Board of Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee

THURSDAY, JUNE 1 - 2:45 PM The Westshore Grand 4860 West Kennedy Boulevard Tampa, FL 33609

And by the way? DESANTIS HIRED THE FLORIDA HATE GROUP THAT WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR A LAW FIRM'S $15,000 HIT JOB ON WPATH SOC

DESANTIS APPOINTEES ON THE BOARDS OF MEDICINE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR PROMOTING CONVERSION THERAPY AND INVOLUNTARY PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALIZATION OF TRANS PEOPLE

The Florida GOP and the DeSantis administration are directly responsible for a crime in progress against thousands of transgender Floridians!

GIVE US BACK OUR PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS NOW

[anarchiccamelot]

baby

[anarchiccamelot]

This 100%. The concept of perversion centers deviation as a source of shame, not enacting harmful behavior. But this framing means that those who enact violence in ways that do not deviate from the norm are still considered to be acceptable and worthy of defense. Eventually, harm that enforces hierarchical values will be redefined as acceptable behaviors without any recognition of the actual harm that they cause. It's not like it's deviating or anything.

i do think that maybe there does need to be some rehashing of super basic feminist theory on this web site because i've got a lot of pushback on saying 'marxism leninism should be for perverts' to the tune of 'but what about perverts who violate consent & expose unwilling people to their sexuality' to which i just have to say over and over again 'listen buddy i've got some really bad news about the normative cultural ideals about heterosexual sexuality in our society. you might want to sit down for this one,'

[anarchiccamelot]

Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.

People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.

First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.

Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.

The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.

So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.

Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.

I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.

[anarchiccamelot]

[anarchiccamelot]

[anarchiccamelot]

Hi- er, this is my first-ever writer's strike, how does one not cross a picket line in this context? I know how not to do it with things like Amazon and IRL strikes, but how does it apply to media/streaming?

Hi, this is a great question, because it allows me to write about the difference between honoring a picket line and a boycott. (This is reminding me of the labor history podcast project that's lain fallow in my drafts folder for some time now...) In its simplest formulation, the difference between a picket line and a boycott is that a picket line targets an employer at the point of production (which involves us as workers), whereas a boycott targets an employer at the point of consumption (which involves us as consumers).

So in the case of the WGA strike, this means that at any company that is being struck by the WGA - I've seen Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC, Paramount, and Sony mentioned, but there may be more (check the WGA website and social media for a comprehensive list) - you do not cross a picket line, whether physical or virtual. This means you do not take a meeting with them, even if its a pre-existing project, you do not take phone calls or texts or emails or Slacks from their executives, you do not pitch them on a spec script you've written, and most of all you do not answer any job application.

Because if this strike is like any strike since the dawn of time, you will see the employers put out ads for short-term contracts that will be very lucrative, generally above union scale - because what they're paying for in addition to your labor is you breaking the picket line and damaging the strike - to anyone willing to scab against their fellow workers. GIven that one of the main issues of the WGA are the proliferation of short-term "mini rooms" whereby employers are hiring teams of writers to work overtime for a very short period, to the point where they can only really do the basics (a series outline, some "broken stories," and some scripts) and then have the showrunner redo everything on their lonesome, while not paying writers long-term pay and benefits, I would imagine we're going to see a lot of scab contracts being offered for these mini rooms.

But for most of us, unless we're actively working as writers in Hollywood, most of that isn't going to be particularly relevant to our day-to-day working lives. If you're not a professional or aspiring Hollywood writer, the important thing to remember honoring the picket line doesn't mean the same thing as a boycott. WGA West hasn't called on anyone to stop going to the movies or watching tv/streaming or to cancel their streaming subscriptions or anything like that. If and when that happens, WGA will go to some lengths to publicize that ask - and you should absolutely honor it if you can - so there will be little in the way of ambiguity as to what's going on.

That being said, one of the things that has happened in the past in other strikes is that well-intentioned people get it into their heads to essentially declare wildcat (i.e, unofficial and unsanctioned) boycotts. This kind of stuff comes from a good place, someone wanting to do more to support the cause and wanting to avoid morally contaminating themselves by associating with a struck company, but it can have negative effects on the workers and their unions. Wildcat boycotts can harm workers by reducing back-end pay and benefits they get from shows if that stuff is tied to the show's performance, and wildcat boycotts can hurt unions by damaging negotiations with employers that may or may not be going on.

The important thing to remember with all of this is that the strike is about them, not us. Part of being a good ally is remembering to let the workers' voices be heard first and prioritizing being a good listener and following their lead, rather than prioritizing our feelings.

[anarchiccamelot]

All of this. #WGAStrong

[anarchiccamelot]

I was on a plane this weekend, and I was chatting with the woman sitting next to me about an upcoming writer’s strike. “Do you really think you’re mistreated?” she asked me.

That’s not the issue at stake here. Let me tell you a little something about “minirooms.”

Minirooms are a way of television writing that is becoming more common. Basically, the studio will hire a small group of writers, 3-6 or so, and employ them for just a few weeks. In those few weeks (six weeks seem to be common), they have to hurriedly figure out as much about the show as they can – characters, plots, outlines for episodes. Then at the end of the six weeks, all the writers are fired except for the showrunner, who has to write the entire series themselves based on the outlines.

This is not a widespread practice, but it has become more common over the past couple of years. Studios like it because instead of paying for a full room for the full length of the show, they just pay a handful of writers for a fraction of the show. It’s not a huge problem now, but the WGA only gets the chance to make rules every three years – if we let this go for another three years and it becomes the norm? That would be DEVASTATING for the tv writing profession.

Do I feel like I’m mistreated? No. I LOVE my job! But in a world of minirooms, there is no place for someone like me – a mid-level writer who makes a decent living working on someone else’s show (I’d like to be a showrunner someday, but for now I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and my husband and I are trying to start a family so I like not being support rather than the leader for now). In a miniroom, there are only two levels – the handful of glorified idea people who are already scrambling to find their next show because you can’t make a decent living off of one six-week job (and since there are fewer people per room, there are fewer jobs overall, even at the six-week amount), and the overworked, stressed as fuck showrunner who is going to have to write the entire thing themselves. Besides being bad for me making a living, I also just think it’s plain bad for television as an art form – what I like about TV is how adaptable it is, how a whole group of people come together to tell a story better than what any of them could do on their own. Plus the showrunner can’t do their best work under all of that pressure, episode after episode, back to back. Minirooms just…fucking suck.

The WGA is proposing two things to fix this – a rule that writers have to be employed for the entire show, and a rule tying the number of writers in the room to the number of episodes you have per season. I don’t think it’s unreasonable. It’s the way shows have run since the advent of television. It’s only in the last couple of years that this has become a new thing. It’s exploitative. It squeezes out everyone except showrunners and people who have the financial means to work only a few months a year. It makes television worse. And that is the issue in this strike that means everything to me, and that is why I voted yes on the strike authorization vote.

[anarchiccamelot]

If you really want to know more about what our lives our like as professional television and film writers, why we’re striking, and why this myth that being a writer is easy, glamorous, and profitable is the biggest fucking lie then read this:

[x]

This is our reality. We spend YEARS working for free only to eventually be paid pennies and subsequently disrespected by suits who only see us as monkeys who press keys on a computer.

And this is just the process for features. For a film you have to figure out ONE story. I've never gone out to pitch a show that I didn't have 3-4 full seasons broken down because no one will buy a show if they don't know where it's going. They typically also require the pilot to be written which is six months to a year of work in itself. So to sell a show you normally need to have a written first episode, every single character arc figured out for the first season, and then multiple subsequent seasons.

If you're lucky enough, at some point you finally sell your baby...this thing you've spent years on, and six months later you're on food stamps because the check you got was miserable and the buyer decided to shelve the show because they didn't like it anymore. But, plot twist, now they own it because they paid you money for it and you signed it away so you can't do anything else with it since it's theirs. Now it's fated to sit in some metaphorical vault forever. You just wasted three years of your life and have nothing to show for it. Now your best hope for another check is to sell one of the other fifty things you've been developing for free for years, but you're broke and while you wait to see if that happens, you - a writer with probably years of experiences under their belt - has to start driving Uber to be able to afford basic necessities. All this while the last show you worked on as part of the writing team in the writer's room is making some some streamer millions and winning them awards that the CEOs who didn't do an ounce of work then get bonuses on.

THIS is the reality of being a film and TV writer. And THIS is why we're striking.

[anarchiccamelot]

So, basically, Disney is demanding writer-producers do the writing work which is necessary during post-production, even though their union is explicitly forbidding them to do this during the strike.

In the email shown in the article, Disney admits that writer-producers who do this might be fined by the WGA. There is no sign that Disney is sympathetic to this or willing to pick up the cost of those fines. They also hint that while they don’t want to replace someone to stands by the strike and refuses to do such duties, it is a possibility.

I have to love the line about being coerced by the WGA. The letter is an exercise is coercion, carrying with it the message, “Do what we say or you may lose your show.”

This is only the first item like this. Expect more to becoming

[anarchiccamelot]

Nothing I’ve read has changed me more than “you do people a favor by accepting their help” like I repeat this constantly to so many people because it’s true!!! People like to feel useful, they like to feel kind, they like to feel like they have an ability to impact people’s lives so just let them!! Not everything is a thing to be owed back — accept people’s kindness without making a competition out of it

[anarchiccamelot]

Yes of course ChatGPT and AI art will make a lot of people lose their jobs. Photoshop put a lot of illustrators and photographers out of work. Digital audio workstations like FLStudio have put a lot of composers and studio musicians out of work.

Even if laws against AI art were actually enforceable in any way (which they aren't), it seems like what we actually need to do is create a world where peoples' livelihoods are not gated behind doing a certain number of labor hours, and then people could just make art for fun and use whatever tools they want.