“If this hurts my shows I’m gonna riot” “they better not cancel my favorite show” “this is so selfish I NEED this show” “what about my mental health now that they—“

So you agree. Show-writers are important to you and to the industry and should be compensated accordingly for their important work.

Moon Kiss.

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.

I explained this to a young writer recently. They could not understand why the WGA might go on strike, and worried that it would hurt younger writers.

They had worked in TV for 4 years, been on 3 major TV shows, primarily in “mini rooms”, had their name listed as cowriter on one broadcast episode and had never been on set for any of their shows. Had never seen anything they wrote being filmed. They knew next to nothing about the actual process of getting TV made.

I explained that we weren’t going on strike for people like me, we were going on strike for people like them. Because we need more writers to be there, to work their way up. We need a generation of showrunners to take over from us, and to, I hope, have an easier time of it. We need the young writers to be properly paid, not to be on a six week writers room once a year, and a crack at having their names on a script.

Their reply: “So they are basically asking for all the things I could have really done with in the last three years”.

I said, yes, and sent them a link to the WGA pattern of demands, as I link for you now:

There will never be a fandom experience like supernatural. What the hell is it about that show?

tired of dating apps. when will someone grip me tight and raise me from perdition.

LAW AND ECONOMICS BABEYYY

happy Thursday the 20th

I’d have to wait months or even years for another chance to reblog this, so why the fuck not?

next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

You know, just in case you wanted to set your queue for the next 6 years

TODAY

Since it’s now August 20, 2020… The next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th:

If you wanted to set your queue for the next six years.

I love that Tumblr just celebrates days. Just random days. Because we can.

the idea that your friends won't like you if you're too weird is wrong for example one time I told a friend whenever I was losing my mind I laid down on the floor under my desk and stared at it until I was better and next time she visited me she taped a bag of salami snacks to the underside of my desk with a message saying "going insane all by yourself, handsome?" which I only saw months later when I had a breakdown. that's friendship.

im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!

an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.

“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids

Favorite ship dynamic

@matzahball

For a second I didn’t realize it meant “high” as in a stoner--I thought “High Geologist” was like a rank of geologist or something and he was insulted you would challenge him to naming stones

great poast every one👍

I have drawn him.... The High Geologist

Can’t believe he’s ace

He is now And here’s the photo evidence:

hey guys...https://twitter.com/MatthewLillard/status/1322648148364324864 so does this make it canon?

the high geologist has ascended

every time i see this post it gets.... better? but also weirder.

Genuinely and unironically my philosophy abt music has expanded to “stop writing off music because it’s from a specific genre” and I think that could be applied to most mediums actually

Neil Gaiman, “The Sandman”

]

Happy March 32nd, everyone!

you can only reblog this once a year