#cancellation anxiety

[girl4music]

I thoroughly believe that the main 2 issues plaguing the TV art/entertainment industry today are representation anxiety and cancellation anxiety.

Representation anxiety is the reason why the quality of the storytelling is suffering.

Cancellation anxiety is the reason why the quality of the production is suffering.

ANXIETY is what is ruining TV show storytelling and producing in general. If people were less anxious about the way the story in a show should or has to go, there would be more focus on what actually matters.

There are so many storytelling and production issues in a show because people are not focussing on the overall experience when creating/watching a TV show. Showrunners/creators are not focussing on it because they’re too anxious about providing the “correct” or “best” or “most palatable” representation because if they don’t provide it, their show will just get cancelled.

Honestly imagine the extreme anxiety a showrunner/creator would feel in this day and age of showmaking.

It is a never-ending loop for them of “I must provide the representation that appeases both the audience and the network alike” and then “if I don’t do this as soon as possible, my show will be cancelled and everybody that depends on me will lose their jobs”.

Show disappoints the network, gets cancelled - which in turn disappoints the audience, stops them from watching anything else like it in case it happens to them again - which then makes the network misjudge it as “this kind of content must not be engaging enough for consumers to invest themselves in” but they throw it out for consumption anyway because quantity over quality even though they’re ultimately going to axe it regardless because “it doesn’t sell.”

And then the whole thing happens all over again. 😩

Sounds to me like they should just have better communication with the showrunners/creators and more faith and trust in what they’re able to deliver.

And maybe once in a while CONSULT THE AUDIENCE themselves. Make them apart of the conversation more than with just the standard lazy feedback questionnaires. I’m pretty fucking sure were a BIG WIG network executive to actually take the time out of their oh so busy work week to talk to us about what it is we want and what we don’t - things would be better for all sides. For the networks, the showrunners/creators+team, and for the customers/consumers.

At the end of the day the people I really feel sorry for regarding this is not us. It’s the showrunners/creators.

I feel so sorry for the producers, writers and directors because I know they’re all running rings around themselves trying to please every fucking body and every complaint from either side goes right to them.

They’re the mimimim wage staff at your favourite restaurant where customers and employers alike yell at them over something they’re personally pissed about but they can’t do anything about it other than offer their sympathies and provide other alternatives.

You think we have it rough as the viewers.

The network thinks they have it rough.

No.

Who has it rough are the showrunners/creators.

[positivelyadhd]

reminder that making time for your friends, even when you're tried and socialising feels overwhelming is important to do every so often. it's especially important to do this actually.

time alone can be good, for a time, but humans are social creatures and we need to talk to people, there's nothing wrong with that!!

sometimes the more time you spend alone the more your brain will tell you to stay alone. that's not true, you're allowed to (and should!!) see people that are important to you. sometimes that alone can be surprisingly healing.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Master manipulator vs Master manipulator

 [First] Prev <–-> Next

[emotionaldisaster909]

E’MING INSPIRATIONS!!!

[clowningaroundmars]

POM posted a sneaky peek from the production room of a younger chuck with shorter hair when living back in deluxe and i just........ had so many young muckles feels man.

SO MANY

[frnkiebby]

Idk if you know about Ghouls Day Out in LA but they’re opening up the church where they filmed Helena at and having vendors basically a little MCR fest. Anyways long story short it’s this weekend and my friend bailed on me last minute should I just go by myself I had an outfit and everything ready but idk now 😭😭😭😭😭

I DIDNT??????

tell your friend i’m grounding them for bailing on you and this mcr fest.

but yes. totally still go (if you are up to it) bc it’s still gonna be awesome and you have an outfit put together already. so definitely. go go go~🎃

[oddly-casual]

Mutant Mayhem Spoilers

(Donnie appreciation post, he’s a little instigator)

Okay I’m being a little Dramatic abt the instigator thing, but I think I’m mostly right.

Before MM was released and all we had were trailers I heard a lot of people talking about the potential dynamics of all the brothers, mainly that Raph was going to be the Rebel older brother that Donnie and Mikey follow with Leo being a wet blanket.

And while they were right about Leo being a wet blanket sometimes (it’s the anxiety), I think Donnie takes the mantle for a lot of the rule breaking and planning in this movie.

In the very beginning when Raph suggests staying out longer, Donnie instantly pulled out his phone and put the idea of the Movie in everyone’s heads. Didn’t even wait for Leo to response before he was off and Raph and Mikey followed. Almost like he already had it locked and loaded.

Donnie is the first one to come up with the plan to gain acceptance through catching Superfly, which all his brothers are immediately on board.

In almost every scene when Donnie is driving he’s always pulling some NASCAR, Mario cart, movie logical racing that gets them out of all pinches, and-

Donnie was the one who snapped out of it the quickest when Superfly was threatening to grind them into powder- able to divert attention and make the whole ‘we don’t like this plan’ seem like a joke and even offering to drive by himself so they could be closer to the machine piece.

He’s also the first one who yells at Cynthia when they’re put in the milking machine, which requires some guts ngl-

Almost every plan or outspoken moment or even quick save is done by Donnie. (With Raph coming in second for those quick saves)

I’m just super happy that Donnie got a ton to do in this movie and we can really see his potential.

And Donnie is still the smartest! He wasn’t the smartest because he was a tech master, he was the smartest because he could drive and he’s straight up the biggest opportunist in the film, with his smarts being more subtle then outright. It’s a different take on Donnie’s intelligence and I’m really glad they did it.

[girl4music]

SHELBIE: “We also actually have seen a difference in characters. So there are 80 less characters last year, queer characters, like WLW characters. There are 80 less WLW characters in the last TV season than the year before so it’s kind of like-“

EMILY ANDRAS: “Where’d they all go?”

SHELBIE: “ABC lost 18. Netflix lost 22.”

VALERIE: “Just walked into the parking lot and disappeared.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, exactly. Or they all got on the wrong bus to the greatest party that we can go to.”

NOELLE: “Oh that’s much better!”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, I wish that was true. I wish that was true.”

SHELBIE: “From an industry perspective do you think that there’s - because of the backlash of 2016 - there was an uptick in like ‘Oh, we have to do rep” and kind of now, everybody’s a little afraid of how to tell those stories. Do you think maybe that’s what’s happening?”

EMILY ANDRAS:

*to Noelle*

“That’s such a good question and I’m looking at you.”

NOELLE: “Yeah, I mean, I would say anytime you get a finger pointed at you and someone telling you you’re not doing a good job - especially like from a network perspective where those optics are really important. In the US, they seem to care more than they do here. I would say, not to be cynical but I would say, yeah, that is probably why there were more. But that doesn’t mean that those stories, clearly, were being told more responsibly or in a better way or that those characters were three-dimensional characters who were fully fleshed. I think if you can lose that many, they probably weren’t integral enough to your show to begin with.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, that’s my fear a little bit. It’s almost like this cute trend for some people and I’m like ‘It’s not a trend. These are real people and this is real representation and this needs to be what it is going forward’. So I think there was a little bit of a sense from some networks - One Day At A Time - that maybe it was like, ‘Well we gave you some candy and then you are the candy and now there’s no more candy left’. And I’m like ‘It’s not candy’ and they’re like ‘We love candy. How dare you!’. Um… I think it’s both things. I think it’s both like ‘Well, we can just throw in a bunch of LGBTQ characters and like that’ll feed the masses’. But also the other fear is that I do think there is a little bit of a resistance particularly, potentially from writers who are older or more established that they’re like ‘Well, I’m so terrified to wade in here and tell these stories that I’m just not going to tell these stories or include these characters at all’. But that’s just bullshit. You just have to learn to be better maybe and try harder.”

SHELBIE: “Be more creative.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, be more creative.”

NOELLE; “Retire!”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yes, retire. Yeah, exactly.”

*crowd laughs and applauds*

SHELBIE: “Do you think there’s a way that we can use Wynonna Earp as a little bit of kind of like a flagship saying ‘Listen, you can tell queer stories and you tell them with drama’. What I hear a lot, I feel like from writers is ‘Well, I mean you don’t want to be bad rep, so then we can’t tell any stories because we can’t have any bad storylines’. But Wynonna Earp kind of - you guys have been proving that you can have the drama and you can tell the stories and then still treat your characters with respect. So do you have any idea how we could get that information in to like a more of a way where it could be digestible by executives or showrunners or other writers?”

NOELLE: “Yeah, I mean I think just tell everybody to watch the show. I mean like, come on.”

EMILY: “Everybody.”

NOELLE: “Everybody, tell your everybody. Um… I mean for me it comes back to making sure that your queer characters aren’t secondary or tertiary to the main characters. Like I think the fact that when Emily built this world, you know, um, the queer characters became-“

EMILY ANDRAS: “Team effort.”

NOELLE: “Yes, team effort. Whatever. I wasn’t even here…. Um the fact that you can, you know, have - you can have an episode where, you know, where Wynonna’s sister’s girlfriend can be in the entire A-story with her, like is a testament to the fact that though, you know, Nicole, or if you have a story with, you know, with um, with Doc and Jeremy, like those characters are fundamental to the lifeblood of the series. They’re not just somebody you go out to for kissing scenes so you can tick the box and say, you know, ‘We did our rep. We did a good job’, you know, and pat ourselves on the back. I think if more shows did that then you,… the drama would be inherent. Like if when you created those characters you thought how they related to everybody on your show, not just the person they were sleeping with or smooching with, then I think that would just give yourself more opportunity for drama because, um,… because those characters are real and they matter to more people than just their partner.”

VALERIE: “And then your only options for drama aren’t relationship drama because you have so many other relationships and you can tell so many other sides of the story and it’s a lot more exciting that way.”

SHELBIE: “If they’re actual characters, yeah. If they’re only the ‘gay character’ then you have no other story to tell than their drama I guess. Their relationship drama.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Their sexuality can’t just be their story. It has to be intrinsic to their character - but their whole story can’t just be ‘I’m gay’ all the time, although that’s not the worst.”

NOELLE: “I would also say that I think as writers and, you know, producers and people in the industry, we are conditioned because it’s the way we came up. Because it’s what TV has always been. That the thing that’s the most dramatic is loss and tragedy. And I think we undervalue how much emotion and how much drama a queer audience can get out of a happy ending because it isn’t the standard. You know?

*crowd applauds*

I think we need to put more value in happy endings for queer characters and not just go ‘Well, you know, for straight characters a happy ending - like who cares? We should probably kill somebody’. Like maybe we could have a happy ending every once in awhile.”

VALERIE:

*to Shelbie*

“And to sort of go back to what you’re saying about like Wynonna Earp being a flagship. It’s why like sometimes the running joke on the Autostraddle TV team is like ‘I bet Valerie is going to bring up Wynonna Earp on this roundtable again’”

EMILY ANDRAS: “‘How dare you!.’”

VALERIE: “Because it’s true… yes, I’m definitely biased because I love the show, but it’s also true that there are so many things that you can point to. It’s like ‘Well, okay this show failed us, but look how Wynonna Earp did a similar thing and succeeded at it.’ So it’s like it’s kind of always pointing those things out to hopefully get future TV writers, future people who are reading TV critic recaps, and things now, that will go on to create, like have it kind of in the back of their mind.”

NOELLE: “I hope so.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “I am impatient though, like the one thing I want, which we’re not quite there yet is like, it would be good to have a world where you can also have like queer villains, you know what I mean? Like I want to get to the point where we have our heroes, so then we’re going to have awesome LGBTQ-like villains and complicated people and it’s… we just need more of everything. Do you know what I mean? And then it’s going to be more fully rounded. But I’m not completely sure we’re there yet.”

SHELBIE: “I think Gentleman Jack is making at least a little bit of a stride.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “It is. It sure is.”

SHELBIE: “Because as much as we all want to love her… she’s not exactly the greatest person in the world.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “She’s complicated. Exactly.”

VALERIE: “Villanelle.”

SHELBIE: “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Villanelle. Yup. Fine. I’ll write a gay villain. Okay?”

NOELLE: “But then you get…”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Friends to enemies, enemies to friends.”

NOELLE: “Then you get into the situation though where you’re like, ‘We have this amazing part… and it would be great to cast this character or to write this character as a queer character’, but ultimately the bad guys die, generally, and so you’re like well… so if we’re a show that has really good rep, is it okay if we kill the… if we write this amazing part for an amazing queer character, but then at the end they have to die. So then that’s an added level of, you know, if we had made real sustainable progress since 2016, maybe, but the fact that we haven’t means I don’t know that… I mean it’s-“

EMILY ANDRAS: “Difficult.”

VALERIE: “As of right now there’s still a very fine line between like a queer villain and villainizing queerness.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “That’s so true.”

SHELBIE: “That’s a good way to put that. I think though that there’s, from like a straight statistics point of view - somebody’s going to be crazy, somebody’s going to die, somebody’s all those things. So if you have enough to balance it. I think that’s how you do that. So if you have 4 gay characters and you kill one from like our, you know, objective scoring system, you’d still have a really positive score because you’d have enough positive to balance out… the thing that you’re doing.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Right.”

NOELLE: “It’s still scary as hell though. It still would give me hives.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, I don’t know. We have a super hero that shoots people in the face. So I just like, do not think that’s a good plan at this stage. Like, no, I just like honestly, I just like think about it all the time. It’s like, I just wanted to move faster. Do you feel like that for diversity in general? I’m just like if it was faster, then there’s going to be more times for people who are queer too. Do you know what I mean? Like that’s the other truth. Like the actors I know who are LGBTQ are like ‘I just want to do everything’ right? Like ‘I want to play Bobo Del Rey. I want to play everything’.”

SHELBIE: “It’s an interesting argument ‘cause we want queer people playing queer roles and queer writers writing queer stories. But at the end of the day you want queer actors to be able to just play anything right? The same way that we wouldn’t want anyone else to get boxed in. So that’s kind of a… it’s an interesting argument I feel like that’s happening right now in the industry.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “It is, but at least we’re having it. At least we’re talking about it.”

SHELBIE: “We’re having the discussion.”

EMILY ANDRAS: “Yeah, exactly.”

NOELLE: “And you can’t really ask like, you know? I was just on a show where I was like, it would be great to get like a queer actor to play this role, but you can’t ask so unless you know, and you don’t always know, like… how do you do that?”

SHELBIE: “Yeah ‘cause you can’t not hire them because they’re not queer or hire them. Yeah, that’s tough.”

I had to transcribe this entire question and answer segment from this EH Con Canada 2019 panel because it’s such an important conversation to have and set of questions to address regarding LGBTQ representation in TV art/entertainment. What they talk about is what I’ve been writing about frequently and recently about how to provide better and more positive LGBTQ representation - particularly surrounding WLW characters - and the representation anxiety and cancellation anxiety that so many TV show creators feel over potentially accidentally perpetuating the harmful trope of Bury your Gays and being mistakenly accused of queerbaiting through main characters that can be perceived as gay or queer when they’re not canon gay or queer main characters.

They specifically talk about how to go about telling stories with and about gay or queer main characters that are the same or similar stories that we see with straight, cis and white male characters all the time because there is much less controversy over it when it’s a straight, cis white male main character because those main characters are everywhere and their stories - both positive and negative - in TV art/entertainment are everywhere because they get to be all different types of negative and complicated characters like villains that are abusive and destructive people that do deserve death or other forms of punishment and there’s no resistance against that by the general public because it’s not ever marginalizing or villainizing a specific group or community of people that need representation.

I would recommend you to watch the whole video because it’s all important but I specifically think this part of the panel is the most important and I am so proud of Emily Andras, her entire Wynonna Earp team, and the Earper fandom for spearheading this incredibly necessary initiative in addressing LGBTQ representation in the TV art/entertainment industry. This is a conversation that everybody that cares to talk about this subject needs to have to make a real difference in achieving better and more positive representation for gay or queer characters that aren’t or won’t always be the greatest people and telling their stories where they have a negative or darker character arc than other characters that are also gay or queer that have a positive and lighter character arc.

How do we do this? We need to have the in-depth conversations in addressing this subject together as a LGTBQ+POC community before we go asking for and pitching it to TV showmaking networks that have a sincere interest in providing better and more positive LGBTQ+POC representation but are afraid to because of representation anxiety and cancellation anxiety.

This video is long but it’s well worth the watch. If you don’t want to or don’t have the time to watch it, at least read the little segment that I have transcribed and if you feel like you want to talk about it - I’m here.

Let’s have the conversation. It’s incredibly important.

I will link you to where I’ve written about this before if you don’t understand and want to know more: https://www.tumblr.com/girl4music/743149350219333632

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Magneto had a really great character arc in the 80s which just got completely chucked in the bin because the new editor taking over the title thought that he should always be a one-note maniacal villain, and I'm disappointed to see X-Men '97 doing the same because the ex-showrunner wanted to recreate his favourite issue.

[cloudcountry]

its actually so funny going from quotev where people will only block you if youre the worst type of person to tumblr where people will block you for no reason other than they just felt like it

[relaxxattack]

how come twitter hates knifetrick? i havent read it nor have i ever been involved in any mcyt or adjacent stuff btw

oh man. ok let me explain the story. it was around exactly a year ago the main bit of this shit happened actually

in 2020 minecraft roleplaying (mcrp) becomes super mainstream with the rise of dream smp. in these series, stories are scripted and then acted out live with some improv stuff

in the fandoms there is a LOT of drama over whether it's okay to ship the roleplay characters. there's lots of stances on this. in the beginning, most people say it's not okay to ever ship rp characters, because the youtubers usually just use their own persona as a base for an oc, so it's basically the same thing as shipping the youtubers together. shipping irl people is weird and gross, so nobody wants to do that.

in 2021 a couple of ships start getting confirmed as canon in the rp. characters date or get together or canonically have romantic scenes. this makes the fandom hurt itself in its confusion, because it doesnt understand if it's allowed to ship those characters together.

two guys have their characters literally get married and have a child. the fandom LOVED these characters, they were well written and cute and had a great dynamic. the fandom wanted to ship them and support their marriage so bad. BUT. they were played by real people. those real people (tubbo and ranboolive) were also minors at the time, who nobody wants to risk being weird about obviously.

the mainstream fandom decides that to solve this problem, they will pretend that the marriage is platonic, and ostracize and witch hunt anyone who claims it's not. they draw tons and tons of ship fanart of the two characters, all helpfully tagged as "platonic", sometimes tagging every single use of the word "husband" as platonic.

EVENTUALLY, people start realizing, hey wait, this is roleplay. it's fictional. the streamers are not actually traumatized war veterans who invented nukes, have amnesia, raised a child, are half hybrid alien etc etc etc.

in fact... it's actually really weird to try and make their roleplay relationship the same as their real life one. in the roleplay, they are married and have a kid and act lovey-dovey... why would you claim that's their real relationship? why would you conflate the two? can't we just understand that it's fictional?

most of the tumblr fandom, eventually, realizes that fictional characters and real human actors are not actually the same person. (it helps that the actors themselves state the same thing.)

the twitter fandom however... does not eventually realize this. they stay in their "platonic husband" hell, simultaneously being really weird about shipping and outwardly hating all shippers.

fastforward a bit, there's another mc roleplay series. it's a spinoff series of that first one we were talking about, and it's an athology series-- a whole bunch of oneshots with new characters each time. keep in mind, these characters are NOT EVEN RELATED TO THE STREAMER'S PERSONAS... they make up new ones each time!!

anyway they do one of the oneshots in a cool futuristic city and i was like "man it would be cool to write about this." one of the characters (ran) acts very weird and suspicious for the 5 lines he has total, which leads to a lot of silly theories about what he might be up to in this future city. i think, "man it would be fun to write about him." a different character (jackie) remarks on that character as well; jackie is also one of the only characters to live to the end of the oneshot.

ages after this oneshot was actually aired i thought to myself, what the hell, i'll write a story about ran and jackie. they have literally no existing personality and the futuristic city is not even remotely expanded on- i get to do all that myself!

so i write a comedy mystery action romance novel about an alien assassin (ran) assigned to kill the general of the city's army (jackie) while they try to find some kidnapped kids. keep in mind, i had basically nothing to work with for these characters-- they were side characters for a single episode from a spin-off series, they had around ten lines total. i got to make up basically everything about who they were and where they came from and what they would do myself. the story is also chock full of OCs, and all of the mechanics for the city itself were original and invented by me-- it was a huge labor of love and invention and original work.

the romance wasn't intended to be a whole thing, but honestly it felt very natural (and all the story's fans definitely wanted it), so it eventually happened.

surprising no one, the same twitter fans who believe that fictional characters are somehow LITERALLY the same as their actors started trying to tell me i was shipping real life people. (what? gross?). they told me i was being a bad fan by going against the wishes of irl people who didn't want to be shipped. they accused me of so much, of just trying to "hide" that i really shipped irl people, tons of things. but my story was not about irl people. the characters literally have different fucking names, appearances, personalities, dynamics... EVERYTHING.

twitter users eventually started a "cancellation" of me. i don't even use twitter. but anyway they dug up a bunch of weird innocuous comments or fanarts i had done before, and then pointed to knifetrick, and said i was secretly a gross person, that i was a guy who shipped gaming youtubers, etc. there was a thread about it, idk.

eventually the harassment in my inbox caused me to take a break from tumblr for several weeks. i actually wasn't sure if i would come back. HUNDREDS of people were talking about how terrible i was; people on twitter literally have me and my works in their goddamn dnis. it was such a surreal experience and it caused me so much anxiety.

eventually, several of my friends convinced me to finish the story, because really there was nothing all that wrong with it in the first place. i came back to tumblr.

i added the banner that is currently in my pinned to discourage gross shippers, or people who think *i* am a gross shipper, from coming near me anymore.

as far as i'm concerned, ran and jackie are my OCs. they were from a oneshot-- a oneshot that has not been MENTIONED by its creators for years now-- who i gave an entire story to. i don't want to associate with that fandom anymore, so i don't want the characters i worked so hard on associated either.

they still talk about me on twitter sometimes, kind of as an urban legend of drama. "holy shit you guys remember the knifetrick stuff? that was so gross, how did we let any of that happen. people kept defending it too 🤢". it doesn't bother me as much anymore, because i'm surrounded by people with the critical thinking skills to tell the difference between tom hanks and woody, but it's still sometimes surreal and hurtful.

don't take this as just me complaining though- making knifetrick was incredibly fun, and i still adore all the fans and memes and fanart to this day. you all were incredible and pretty much make those awful episodes worth it <3

in case you're wondering, the steamiest thing those characters did, that people were so upset about?

they shared a chaste peck of the lips for .2 seconds before one of them tried to kill the other.

[thesherrinfordfacility]

✨wishing you all a very happy one week renewal announcement anniversary✨

[kanerallels]

Starting to suspect that adulting is just moving from one trainwreck to the next with occasional naps in between

[lovetriangled]

i need that renewal announcement. running on fumes has never been so exhausting. it's like i'm constantly teetering on the edge of a very very large cliff, looking into the endless abyss below. my spark is dying. my innate sense of joy has been reduced to mere fleeting moments. Please i'm sick please ple

[randomreasonstolive]

Reason to Live #9407

 One of my favorite show got canceled months ago but it got resurrected today. What a great day I'm so happy to be alive!!! – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.)

[alalumin]

I was very bored after finishing the assignment early so I started doodling in Photoshop, but the professor caught eye of if. To my surprise he actually really liked it and told me to use it in my assignment for his other class. This is doing horrible (very good) things for my ego