itscritiquegeek

[itscritiquegeek]

when i don’t like a female character on a tv show i treat it like homework. like i know she’s right. i’m the problem. i just have to try harder

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I’ve been crying over two fictional gay men having a happy life together for over 24 hours now hahaha I’m never gonna have a love like Bill & Frank’s and I’m gonna die alone

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Somehow I neglected to share these on here, but a few weeks ago my friend and I did a Femmelock photo shoot to celebrate the last of the Sherlock Holmes stories hitting the public domain. Long live the era of gay, autistic, genderbent Sherlock and her girlfriend, Jane Watson. 

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What :D 

I joke that once per quarter since the finale something Supernatural related happens that makes me regret ever seeing this show and I’ve never been able to predict what the event will be but I truly don’t know that anyone could have called Jensen Ackles creates Supernatural prequel in order to bring Dean Winchester back to life and proceed to have him do time travel.

[itscritiquegeek]

A rant for freelance writers

My fellow writers, you are being grossly underpaid. I’ve been freelance writing intermittently for over a decade, and during that time the rate for freelance writing has dropped. Yes, you read that correctly. Dropped. 

I’ve returned to freelance writing during the pandemic because I need the schedule flexibility and work from home perks (thank you, health issues). I was offered a role that paid $10 per article. Yes. $10. I have over a decade of experience and have worked with some pretty big company names, and yet I was offered the same rate I was given as a new college grad with literally no experience a decade ago - and that was considered painfully low back then. In 2013 I made $10/article, but by 2014 I was making $50-$75/article. By 2015 I was averaging $100 per assignment. 

Needless to say, I declined the $10 role. 

Content farming websites like Comic Book Resources, ScreenRant - basically every publication under Valnet, amongst others - are taking advantage of you. Here are the rates I was told for an entertainment writer role at CBR. Again. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and have a Master’s degree.  “The compensation rates for this position are based on a combination of rates for pay-per-post (PPP) and pay-per-view (PPV).  PPV rates are applied after every 1,000 views. News: $10 ($10 PPP) + $0.33 per 1k views Flash News: $5 ($5 PPP) + $0.25 per 1k views”  When pressed for the average views per article, I was told anywhere between 2,000 to 200,000. Which means you can be earning as little as $10.66 per article, while $76/per is the top end. I made $75/article in 2014 with just over a year of experience. The math ain’t mathing.  This issue isn’t exclusive to Valnet, either. Time and time again I’m seeing roles for writers listed at minimum wage. Some of the higher paying ones are still only offering $25 an hour regardless of experience level. Yet they receive hundreds, if not thousands of applicants. 

We can argue that this is just another symptom of wage stagnation, inflation, the recession we’re in that may or may not be manufactured. But, I worry that the rise of AI has led to the devaluation of the writer, much as it threatens the digital artist. Why pay actual humans what an AI will do for free? Just plug in the topic and some old articles and watch as your content is repurposed into something fresh. No one will be able to tell. 

In the age of AI everything, the economy has come to undervalue good writers. Our creativity. Our humanity. 

I do not have a solution here, except to suggest that folks fucking stop working for Valnet because they’re exploitative. Even then, I don’t hold it against you if you do work for them. As I sit here filling out applications for roles that pay far less than my ending wage at my last position, I’m forced to swallow my pride simply because times are tough. Jobs are harder to come by, even though ‘everyone is hiring’. The longterm effects of COVID are real, and limiting.  I have no solution, but I want you all to know that you deserve better. Your time and expertise have value. Writing is hard. 

You deserve fair compensation. 

[itscritiquegeek]

‘if sherlock is public domain than bbc sherlock—’ NO. I don’t want to hear it. if any of the bitches gonna kiss it’s gotta be them

[itscritiquegeek]

it is past time we jettisoned the useless false dichotomy of introversion vs. extroversion and just accepted that everybody has a minimum amount of social interaction, failing which, they get really weird. and everybody has a maximum amount of social interaction, exceeding which, they get really weird. these levels are different for everyone, for a variety of reasons, and have no moral dimension. and that is all.

[itscritiquegeek]

the sexy girlbots are returning. nature is healing

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they should invent joints that don’t hurt

[itscritiquegeek]

Human bad take generator I must interact with regularly created another bad take every day I wake up

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Modern adaptations of the Addams Family don’t seem to get the family dynamic that we associate with the Addams right anymore.  Made a TikTok recently about some of the issues I had with Wednesday (overall an okay show, doesn’t really do anything new for the genre, but entertaining enough). My #1 criticism is that it, much like the recent animated films, it puts Wendesday in conflict with Morticia. When I pointed this out, I was met with a chorus of “of course, she’s a teenage girl it’s natural” and “every family has conflict”. That is, in fact, the point.

The Addams Family is the antithesis of the “normal” sitcom family. Parents that love and support their children no matter what. Children that, in turn, respect their parents because their parents respect them. Their weirdness doesn’t come from the fact that they’re goth so much as the fact that they’re functional when dysfunction is seen as the norm. Other pushback I’ve seen is that it’s based on the comics, not previous adaptations, so we can’t judge it by those. Cool, but Jenna’s Wednesday is based on Christina Ricci’s. Catherine Zeta Jones’ Morticia pulls from Anjelica Huston’s and Charlize Theron’s voice work. Fred Armisen’s Fester carries over elements of Jackie Coogan’s. (Which is also why everyone is comparing Luis Guzman’s Gomez, which feels like the most original take on the character, to previous performances). Whether we like it or not, it builds upon every previous adaptation, and by significantly including the other family members, the show opens itself up to comparison. In a show where they could’ve gotten away with anything, subverted any trope in any way they’d like, they chose to play by the book. That’s what’s disappointing about it. Anyway, Jenna Ortega killed it, though.

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Me all hyped up after watching the Andor finale: 

It’s literally the best thing to come out of the Star Wars franchise, and you can’t change my mind. 

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Perfection. Drop your babygirl Nemo fan art here, folks. I wanna see it all. 

I get back on Tumblr and everyone is obsessed with Dracula, I look away for a bit and now we’ve moved on to Goncharov. Have tumblrinas latched on to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea yet? I, for one, would love to see the babygirlification of Captain Nemo (also it’s very gay). 

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Me and "The Fonz" at premiere of Goncharov (1973) at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

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there is something so darkly comical about tumblr potentially outliving twitter

tumblr, which is held together with duct tape and madness, run by three raccoons in blood stained Yahoo! hats and a handful of crabs, its only discernible source of income the sale of shoelaces from an inside joke so inside no one knows the original source anymore and fake blue checkmarks... that website still lives on

truly the cockroach of social media and I love it for that

[itscritiquegeek]

Love to be on a website where I can join such hit 2022 fandoms as "century old public domain novel being read very slowly" and "half-century old mafia film that does not actually exist."