#so they've got a lead

[pynkhues]

Hi I was wondering what your thoughts are about the WGA going on strike? Would like to know what you think the effect that would have on media and what that actually means when writers going strike.

I unequivocally support the strike, anon.

To say that the negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have broken down would be to imply that they ever got anywhere at all. Pretty much all of WGA’s proposals have been met with rejections and no counter offers, effectively resulting in AMPTP forcing the WGA’s hand. You can read the summary of the negotiations here if you’re interested, but in essence, it boils down to five factors:

Increasing wages and base residuals

Establishing viewership-based residuals and transparency around audience

Preserving the writers room through minimum staffing + more secure contracts as opposed to freelancing

Every staffed writer to get pension and healthcare

Regulating use of AI, ensuring AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, can’t be used as source material, and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI.

Pretty much all of these were either outright refused by the AMPTP or seriously lowballed, which not only hugely devalues the writing industry as a whole, but is outright insulting when you see the producers and CEOs of these major corporations taking pay packets of between $40-$230million while writing residuals have dropped so much as to not even cover a writer’s monthly rent for an apartment anymore.

For some context on that, and those five factors I summarized above, I’d highly recommend watching this:

So, how did we get here?

This is partially answered in the above video, but ultimately the erosion of the writers room and writing residuals comes from streaming. The ways in which corporations make money off TV shows and movies has drastically changed, particularly around international sales (which I talked about a bit here) and re-runs, as international streamers have effectively killed both. What this means is that sales which used to lead to backend payments bolstering network profits, advertising sales and residuals for the creatives are all diluted.

This dilution is then obscured by corporations such as Netflix and Amazon Prime being deliberately vague about viewership, subscribers and more, creating a new industry culture that utilizes lack of transparency to ensure corporations make bank, while the creatives involved in various shows see increasingly less of the backend profits of their work.

This devalues creative talent, particularly writers. It’s company over content, it’s brand over story, and it’s profits over people.

A quick note on auteur TV

This is neither here nor there for the strike in particular (and really feels like a whole other post), but I do think that the focus on auteur-driven TV from streamers has also had a huge impact on dividing and conquering writers, and making certain writers complicit in the system that devalues their artform as a whole.

The streaming wars saw a huge uptick in auteur driven shows, as snapping up creative talent effectively took Hollywood back to the old studio system (which is fascinating in and of itself), but while these writers got big deals (The Duffer Brothers reportedly got a nine-figure deal) it saw budget reduce for writers rooms generally. There’s notorious industry gossip about the Duffers’ making their writers assistant redundant and replacing her with an unpaid intern, for instance, a story that’s becoming increasingly less and less surprising with auteur showrunners. The diminishment of junior roles in the writers room has a huge tap-on effect to the industry at large, limiting career pathways, creative experience, and flattening the writing ecosystem.

While it's about snapping up creative talent, I also do think it's about these corporations having something they can point to to show they're not the only ones making serious money, but showrunners like the Duffers' are red herrings, and often not paying it forwards to the industry they're treated as giants in. Again - whole other post though, haha.

 So what happens now?

Kind of a lot of things, actually. Late night’s shutting down, as is SNL, and all shows that were still actively writing will cease production. Yelllowjackets, Abbott Elementary, Big Mouth, Good Omens and more have been stopped, and we’ll likely see pretty much everything else stop too in the coming weeks, especially if crews go on strike in solidarity, which is looking like a real possibility. I also imagine AMPTP will probably want the strike to go for 45 days themselves, because that’s when the force majeure parts of existing deals activate, meaning they can cancel development on shows and movies they’d previously greenlit and effectively scrap their development slates and start over.

The Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are about to go into negotiations with AMPTP as well (the WGA deadline was 1 May, DGA and SAG-AFTRAs is 30 June), and given the hardline the AMPTP took with writers, it seems like the directors and actors are poised to strike too, which would have a lot of implications.

Matthew Belloni, a longstanding, very legit entertainment journalist, posited three potential outcomes in his newsletter this week after talking to industry insiders. He said:

If there is a strike, here are three different scenarios for how it could play out, based on conversations I’ve had this week with labor veterans:

1. The July Scenario: If both the DGA and SAG-AFTRA make deals at the end of June, the writers will find themselves on a lonely island and will likely settle. 2. The September Scenario: The fall broadcast schedule is impacted, the movie pipeline begins to suffer, the Emmys are threatened, and the companies feel they have made their cost cuts over the summer and can justify giving a little to make a deal. 3. The December Scenario: Everyone, including the streamers, begins to run out of scripted programs, the substitutes and unscripted fare aren’t generating equivalent viewership, and people start canceling subscriptions. Both sides panic, get together, and make a deal.

Here’s hoping for either the September or December scenario at this point, as they’re what’s going to give the writers leverage in negotiating, but yeah – it does mean we’re in for the long haul.

In the meantime, I think the media landscape is going to be a lot of unscripted shows and probably a lot of foreign imports. We're just going to have to wait and see.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Am I the only one that didn't hate season four?

[ruporas]

hello hello! I hope you don't mind me dropping by but I just want to say I love your art so much, the way you draw vashwood is just so sweet and tender but can I just ramble about the way you draw Vash especially? More specifically, the way you draw his expressions when he's looking at Wolfwood???

I just LOVE the way you draw Vash's expression because the way you make him look at Wolfwood is so soft 😭😭😭. There's just something about it that's so tender, like whenever I look at Vash's expressions in your art I just think "that is genuinely someone who loves another person with all their heart" and it just mends and breaks my heart at once, you capture Vash's love for Wolfwood in ways I can't explain 👏

It's unbridled love mixed with the fear of hurting Wolfwood in their relationship. It's wanting to spill so much affection but holding back in fear of messing up. He looks at Wolfwood like he's longing for him so earnestly be it pre-relationship or even when they're already dating it's just so??? 💕💕💘💞💖💖💞💕

There's just something so tender and heart wrenching at the way Vash looks at Wolfwood in your art, it gets me really emotional and I hope you have a lovely day/night for real <33!!!

ouuuuu thank you so so much for your kind words and for taking the time to tell me this T_T !!! i'm glad my expressions for vash's longing gazes at wolfwood is well done enough to have this sort of response to it…

he's the kind of person that has to hold back in both words and touch when it comes to love, when it comes to wolfwood, but i think it's a difficult emotion to restrain, especially when wolfwood is kind enough to let it be.

ultimately, what they're allowed to have is the inevitable shared spaces during their travels, it's the other's physical presence, being next to wolfwood, being able to take him in through the way he simply exists. smelling smoke, seeing smoke, seeing the cigarette between his fingers, seeing the crosses littered across his person, the rosary snug around his neck, his scruff at his chin, messy bangs, messy hair, tired eyes, the canine that peeks when he speaks, and a voice carrying heavy words, but honest, and kind, and one vash could never get tired of hearing, like how he'd never be tired of just looking at wolfwood.

it's of gratitude, it's of sorrow, it's of grief, it's of love, praise, adoration, it's desperate and it's full of yearning. at first, it's a gaze he feels he has to be satisfied with until he's learned that he's allowed for more and at that point, when wolfwood has given him so much, how could he look at him in any other way?

in any case, i def like to make it known and parade around vash's deeeeeep deep deep feelings of love towards wolfwood, so i'm very happy to know i can express that clearly through his expression alone. i Also just love wolfwood so maybe the projection goes from the heart of the artist to the heart of the art.

i ended up collecting a few caps of his expressions just out of curiosity for myself :3 i have much to improve still, i'll keep on drawing vash's loving self until i can get the ultimate loving expression down!!

[thlayli-ra]

So uh... Drew and Bobby Lashley, huh? They had a perfectly regular feud. Nothing raunchy at all!

[hella1975]

i cannot stand the aot fandom this is not a new take at all they are universally intolerable but oh my dayssss u are FORBIDDEN from making ANY take about the show it's actually insane to watch. 'aot is perfect' no show is perfect. 'tell me you didnt get the show 😂🫵' people have different opinions/interpretations about things. 'eren is a good guy they could never make me hate him' i think there's actually 4 seasons and two movies explicitely using him as a tool to show that no one is 'good' or 'evil' they are only trying to survive. hello. the fandom r all so far up aot's ass that they actually discredit its writing in the process and it would be laughable if it wasn't so frustrating

[maeamian]

Well the shoot themselves in the dick brigade got what they wanted let's just hope they were right.

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is having not a single fucking clue what to say when your coworkers start talking about relationships. Like how am I supposed to contribute to this conversation. I can’t tell you about my nonexistent partner. I can’t whine about how I haven’t found anybody I don’t want. I can only say “oh that’s cool” and “damn sorry about that” so many times. And now I look awkward and standoffish.

.

[anthromimicry]

[boyfriaends]

what if you could date a ghost?

[jocasta-nightstrider]

Been thinking about Governor Kalen and the ways the fandom wants to see him get justice a little bit lately and forgive me for being capital P Predictable but I have an Opinion. I've seen many a "Reaper Squad hunts down Kalen" posts, I've seen a good few "Team Sweet Flips hunts down Kalen" posts, I've even seen some Lucretia and other npc posts about it. And I just want to say those are all awesome and I love them and I enjoy fics about that a lot HOWEVER. To be autistic about this I know in my heart if anybody were to hunt down Kalen it would be miss Jocasta "gave up nearly everything she's worked for in life to un-retire from adventuring because if she can't go out and fight for what's right and bring comfort and safety to the world and her loved ones via Shooting People With a Crossbow she will literally crumple up into a ball and die of sadness" Nightstrider. She would love hunting down that sack of shit so he can't hurt Magnus or anybody else ever again I know it in my heart so so much

[karinyosa]

okay the website of my local church w the pride flags out front actually really slaps they have like 5000000 choirs and a page on their specific beliefs that is pretty slay actually, unfortunately for the part of my brain that thinks choosing to do this is insane for me

[dabruzzy]

I just realized the Reboot kept giving other characters’ roles to Lyle. Mon-El and Brainy invented the flight ring? Actually it was Brainy and Lyle who did that. Cham was the leader of the Espionage Squad? Too bad, Lyle’s the leader now.

[yeonban]

I'm watching the Pacific Rim anime since I want to give Tobias a PR verse & I've already seen the movies (so this anime has the last few things I need to know about the PRverse) and Tobias is in the back of my head going "wooow, stellar decision" every single time the mcs do ANYTHING bc they keep getting themselves and everyone around them into INSANE danger. They even managed to get 3/4 of the people they've met killed

[july-19th-club]

how to make a character who sucks so bad and nobody likes him but he is genuinely a good protagonist (good as in interesting, maybe on a rare day good as in decent but also, just like, an incredible jackass) . i need to make him worse i need to make him MEANER!

[moe-broey]

Moe is a Normal Guy with No Problems moodboard loreboard (early on, getting to know you)

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

feeling very weird about the last two episodes of Miss Scarlet (3.3 and 3.4), because I... actually really loved them?? and I know it was largely because of the absence of William.

which I find odd, because I actually DO like him!! he's a complex and interesting character, he and Eliza's spark off one another is really fun (and also lbr, infuriating, and that's a large reason why this show works; hence the title), and I just... genuinely do like the character. he's irksome as all get-out, he can be entirely insensitive and a touch misogynistic and sometimes I really do wanna break his nose. but I still like him! he has a part to play in this story and I understand that for what it is within the narrative, I really enjoy it!

and yet... I've felt like these last two episodes were some of the most genuinely well-written and especially well-character-written ones for a good while.

I guess it's just because, with the Duke out of the picture, other characters aren't constantly being held up to him in one way or another. Moses, Detective Fitzroy, Mr. Nash, Detective Phelps--they're all given a chance to be developed as characters in their own right, instead of just supporting William/William and Eliza's relationship. and even Eliza grows and is a far more multi-faceted and, I think, genuinely enjoyable character when she's not reduced to simply her reactions to and against William.

I'm intrigued, to be honest. I know he's back in his usual spot as the second lead in the next episode, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens given the ~revelation~ in the very last scene of episode 3.4... but I'm already kind of sad that the rest of the characters I've so enjoyed getting to spend more time focusing on are going to once again be cast in the shadow of 'Miss Scarlet and the Duke'. despite that literally being the entire point of the show.