#I'm realizing that apparently I need some amount of People Time per day or else I start to lose my marbles a little bit

[teacupchimera]

I...sad

[jade4813]

Jade, how are you? Did you peep TF FB page recently? there is a lot a hate towards Iris there, in every post I saw most of people shitting on her and I honestly think it's even worst now than in the previous seasons 😩 do you think due the backlash the network could made the producers kill Iris off or sideline her? because I don't think the producers would do that but we all know that C*W is trash 😒 since you have a brother that works w television do you think I'm overthinking?

I wouldn’t worry about it. I think they know The Flash’s Facebook page is just a cesspool of hate. And if you look everywhere else - Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. - there’s a lot of love for Iris.The Internet has been around long enough for show runners to learn that one website’s opinion isn’t indicative of the fan base as a whole. To be frank, the Internet’s opinion as a whole doesn’t necessarily speak to the general fandom. Remember, the people online who talk about it every week and dissect and get really into it? We are the outliers. If the show runners wrote the show based off what Online fandom says, they’d be cancelled in a year. If there are 3,000 passionate stans Online, there are ten times that who never talk about it on the computer. They just watch week to week. That’s the majority of the audience. And do they have passionate love or hatred towards Iris? Probably not.I mean, think of the shows you watch casually - the ones you might tune into every week, but you don’t talk about them after or really even think about until the following week. The ones where you might remember all the characters’ names but maybe not. You may have characters you’re more “meh” about than others and some you’re more “aw, I like them” than others but either way, you just kind of move on. You aren’t screaming for them to be killed off. You aren’t screaming for others to get their screen time. You also aren’t yelling about how they need a whole arc about X, Y, or Z. That kind of fan is the one the show runners are writing for. That is the general audience.As far as online, they care people ARE talking but most show runners aren’t caring what they’re saying. Because, again, it’s a small subset of their audience that cares that much anyway, and the way they dissect and the things they care about may not be what the general audience cares about. And even if they did pay attention to what was said online, Facebook is a cesspool, but every other place online has a huge amount of support for Iris. Why would they think one site’s toxic/racist opinion was more important than the overwhelming love elsewhere?So what do the show runners pay attention to? First...ratings. However they measure that figure. For CW, they’ve had to move past traditional ratings and focus on online engagement too. Flash is still #1 for the network - apparently on both. And while it’s true the overnight ratings across all networks and almost all shows have dropped in the last couple of years, 1) they are aware of that trend in the landscape, so Flash falling too isn’t a big surprise or deal, 2) Flash is in its 4th year, and ratings generally decrease over time so that’s not a surprise either (nor will it be a surprise if at some point another show becomes the new #1 for the network - in fact, the network desperately wants and needs another hit), and 3) apparently Flash is consistently a show that about doubles its ratings with streaming views, so it’s still going REALLY strong for the CW.Also, if they pay attention to what people are saying, it’s going to be to critical reviews. Not because they care what EW thinks of Flash, per se, but because reviews can bring in new audience members or drive them away. And while you will never get 100% consensus on anything, there’s been a lot of praise for Candice and her acting (and Iris) in critical reviews.Frankly, I don’t think you have to worry about them being so freaked out by Facebook that they do away with Iris. Here’s the thing. Take a step back and look at the trend of how the marketing and the show has handled their non-Grant cast since the beginning. In particular, look at Candice’s trajectory.When the show started, there was all this buzz about Danielle and Caitlin and how great it was that a woman was in STEM. They patted themselves on the back for it. As for Candice...well, she had several critical outlets outright ignore her and a few others call for her to be fired. Finding a shot of Iris in trailers became like a quest to find the Fountain of Youth. There was a lot of looking but very little finding - and when there was a shot found, it was often from the back so we had to analyze “is that her or a random extra?”Then 2A happened. These were dark days. Little screen time. Little buzz. She wasn’t even the one consistently invited to panels and cons. Remember the Heroes and Villains discussion panel where she wasn’t even invited though almost everyone else was? Yeah.If we were still in that position, I’d tell you it’s prayer time. But then look at what happened. Earth 2 Iris. Remember, leading into the episode, it was pretty clear they did NOT expect for Iris to be anywhere close to a draw. They thought the audience would be like “well, that’s nice...but KILLER FROST...” (Also remember that Caitlin-heavy or even centric episodes were getting pre-screened for critics, expecting to generate a lot of buzz.) But what happened? They pre-screened and critics were like “okay, it’s good to see Killer Frost. But IRIS...we have to talk about Iris because THAT WAS AMAZING!” And after the episode, what got an astonishing amount of buzz? Iris.So they were like “oh, maybe we should do more with her” and started playing her up a bit more. Through end of S2 to first half of S3, they have her more to do and critics noticed. Again, there was a lot of talk about her acting ability and how she nails each scene. And the show played her up even more. To the point where it’s Grant and Candice who are consistently talked about at cons and in interviews and who are invited to panels. Weren’t they the only ones invited to something like Paley last year? If you have a show where someone comes in and the EXPECTATION is that they’ll generate a lot of buzz and then they don’t...or if you have a situation where an actor or character is given every opportunity to steal the focus of buzz and attention (by marketing and promos focusing heavily on them, for example) but they just don’t manage to do it...if the show had started with her being treated like female lead but another character kept stealing her thunder and buzz...then you can worry about what the show may do with their character under X or Y circumstance. Or think trolls on Facebook will matter. But Candice has had the opposite. Even CW marketing often ignored her and treated like she wasn’t the female lead (remember the Women of CW banners and such?). Well, DP was somewhat better known at the start. So they treated Candice like they didn’t think she’d be a draw or people would care about her. And then time and time again, when the show expected someone or something else to be the focus of attention and discussion, the chatter has been about Iris. Positive and negative, but she’s a character people talk about. She gets attention. And how many times has it happened that an episode was clearly geared towards getting chatter on something else (or the expectation was that it would) and yet it’s Iris/Candice/Westallen that gets the chatter they expected that other character/plot to get?And you can tell they’ve noticed. Look how they’ve increased her prominence. Look how they focus promos. We had a whole promo teasing the Westallen therapy humor. Could you imagine her getting a promo like that in late S1/early S2? I sure as hell couldn’t.So the people in charge clearly think Iris works for them. They’ve increased, not decreased, her show profile. And not because “well, of course we expect she’ll be popular so we’ll set her up for success at every turn.” They didn’t expect her popularity - they were in fact often surprised by it and shifted THEIR approach to give her focus based off the positive response to HER. Not the other way around (she didn’t get her positive response because they were giving her the focus). So, look. Things can change in another 6 years. But they clearly think Iris and Candice are a draw. And not because they always assumed she would be and are acting on that assumption. But because they came to realize she was and could be and began to capitalize on that. So is one site like Facebook going to overcome the combination of factors that led them to realize that they needed to give her more prominence and focus? That made them realize there was a benefit to treating her like female lead, sending her and Grant to cons, making her one of the main female faces for the network? I doubt it.And also notice that Facebook has hated Candice and Iris for years with a ludicrous amount of vitriol. But every time people call for her to be killed off, what does the show do? “The focus of the season will be on saving her and you can suck it.” “Oh, you want her dead? How about she becomes team leader instead?”They clearly know there are those who hate her. They clearly also don’t care what those people say. They keep doubling down on her because they have reason to believe that doing so works for them. So I’m not at all fussed about Facebook. I suspect the show runners don’t care much about the trolls on Facebook either.(And being honest, most of the time they know that their show IS being discussed but they neither know nor care what is being said. They know Iris generates buzz. Good and bad. But in the new landscape where online chatter is calculated with ratings, WHAT’S being said is less important than the fact that week after week, people can’t keep Iris’s name out of their mouths. Facebook may be spending time bringing her up to say they hate her, but week after week, Iris’s name is being said at least second most on that site. And THAT’S what they are paying attention to. People can love her or hate her...as long as they keep talking about her!)

[frogsandfries]

Saaadd

I just realized, if I'd stayed in Arizona, I'd have been there one month shy of a year. I would've stayed, too. I should've stayed. I didn't stay, but I can always go back. Even better, I can get my license, get my van, and go back and be entirely independent. I can build new social networks of my own. I can make friends with different kinds of artists and crafters, vandwellers and makers. I should do that here, but I don't even know how I would make the time.

I'm currently very hungry, very tired, and it's raining. I'm still on my first bus and I still have to walk through the rain from the bus to the house. Soon enough, it won't be rain anymore. It'll be snow. If that's not incentive enough to tighten my belt and save fastidiously, I don't know what.

Tomorrow and Friday, I don't work, which is a relief. It gives me time to do some embroidery. With two days off, I'll definitely finish this frame. Then I'll have to devote a few days to writing a few more patterns. Maybe get to twelve or thirteen patterns before I stitch my next frame. I keep saying I want to build a backlog. I really should have a proper protector on my tablet, but honestly, at this point, I should get a new tablet. My tablet hasn't gotten an OS update in like a year, year and a half, which is honestly fine, but I think it definitely spells out that my tablet is too old. I need a higher quality display. It's not high on my shopping list, but might be for thesis purposes.

I know, I know, I'm basically obsessed with finishing my degree. I don't want to be back in Wisconsin. I didn't want to come back here. But if I'm going to be here, I might as well make the best of it and tie off all the loose ends. Plus, I don't know how else to scrape up the motivation to kill myself on this project for a year, let alone do I know how to share this project with thousands of strangers, and engage in dialogue about the project in a way that will inspire people to support me and share my project.

If I'm going to suffer one winter, if I'm going to owe this utterly massive amount of money, I might as well go all in, and trade a second winter for my degree, and get a one-to-one benefit per winter.

I might as well hold on to something to look forward to, something that I'm passionate about.

My biggest problem is, if I'm going to obsessively blather on about this project, I obviously don't really actually write anymore, and niblets of time like this, where I'm on lunch at work or on the bus (so, for me currently, that's an hour and fifteen minutes, since I can absolutely type on my walk TO the bus, and about the same on the way back, plus a thirty minute lunch break and a fifteen minute break, both of which are shorter than that actual period of time, but a few minutes where I could be actually piecing out my story instead of just rambling about what it will be, in the future.

Even like right very now, when it's raining, and I have to wipe my screen off every couple minutes. I could absolutely start yet another new blog (I bet I don't have nearly as many as some of you), since apparently Tumblr is my newest writing place. I think currently, the hardest part is, I don't currently have complete access to my latest draft, and it feels more official to write the absolute final draft by hand, and put it all in just one place. My current problem is that once place is never good enough anymore, to fill cover to cover.

Again, the tablet is a pretty good stand-in/ replacement for these issues, but my distinct fear is damaging my tablet by toting it around everywhere. That tablet is the only place the absolutely final draft exists. Maybe every five or ten pages, I'll save a pdf copy to my ATC folder or something.