so SAG-AFTRA finally released some official guidance for fans, viewers, creators/influencers, critics, and more during the strike. here's what you need to know:

2. they're asking regular viewers and fans to DONATE TO STRIKE FUNDS, SHOW UP TO PICKETS IF YOU CAN, and please do NOT boycott streaming services or movies in theaters.

3. influencers, content creators, cosplayers, and anything in between is still a bit of a grey area, but they're asking people to use their best judgement. "organically" means UNPAID promo (like an invite to a premiere without being paid, being sent a publicity box, letting the company's social media post a photo of you in cosplay, etc).

obviously this doesn't answer every question, and isn't hard and fast rules for fanworks, but it can at least inform how you personally choose to move forward when posting online and moving publically. i hope this helps!

just a reminder that you do not know the names of most of the people in SAG-AFTRA. They are not multi-millionaire A-Listers, not even beloved D-listers with a cult following. They are ordinary people struggling to make a living, living paycheck to paycheck just like the majority of WGA members. The push for SAG to strike was from the bottom up and that is who we have to thank for this moment of entertainment labor solidarity.

Donate to the Entertainment Community Fund to support those striking, as well as teamsters and IATSE members affected by the strikes

Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: That she was a greedy bitch who didn't respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word "ableist" was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed. What was literally in her contract!!! And where everyone who took more than a couple minutes to actually look into and think about the situation could figure out that her issue wasn't with streaming itself, but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors. But of course, a lot of people just saw the chance to dunk on a rich woman, and didn't think about it beyond readying some snarky tags and hit reblog. And in doing so, threw their support behind a much wealthier, greedier studio head who is already using similar language to describe the current strike.

Anyway we're going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined with the WGA and it's easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don't fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you're a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something decades ago but haven't done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don't get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about wealthy celebrities. Focus on the real enemy, the truly greedy fat cats who care more about money than people and art: the studios.

Allow people to like you, to enjoy your company, to want to be your friend. Allow them to compliment you, allow others to think you're cool and funny even if you think you're not. It is not up to you to tell others how to feel, and remember that people might see the positive things in you and qualities that you have been failing to see while being too self-critical. Allow yourself to be liked by other people, even when you don't see why they should. Don't self-isolate because you think you are not good enough for other people.

The legacies people leave behind in you.

My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.

I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.

I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.

I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.

I learned to love books because my father loved them first.

How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.

~Edit~

Yikes guys I didn’t expect this post to blow up.

I’m grateful it did though. Looking at all the comments and tags really takes a stab at my heart because it just shows how wired we are for connection. If life has any meaning, then it’s that.

This concept really sunk its teeth into me as it reassures the notion that no one is ever truly gone. Parts of them just change into you.

That teacher I talked about inspired me to become a teacher myself. This was my first year teaching. Here’s to a new generation of curved i’s.

hey queer people,

there is nothing unnatural, wrong, predatory or unlawful about your attraction. your love is safe, beautiful, natural, normal and healthy.

there are various taboos when approaching queer love and attraction. a lot of this is because we don’t learn or talk about it enough growing up, or because the messages we do hear are negative.

part of it is also that we have an extra layer of fear in confessing our attraction that it could realistically not be reciprocated because the other person might not also experience queer attraction.

none of these things make you wrong and i hope you always carry that truth somewhere in your heart.

gay love and attraction is so cool and i will normalise it by being gay every day!

I want to say that with trans folk now being at risk of the fucking death sentence in Florida....

The time for community is Now. The time to start planning and organizing how to get our rights back is NOW. bring it up at your local LGBT craft events or book club or support group or whatever. Tell your friends. Spread the word. And maybe see which ones will have the safety and resources you'll need should a Lavender Hunt happen in your area.

And on the scarier end of reality....

This is fucking terrifying. Lots of people are at risk. Personally, I'm terrified this rhetoric will spread much like Trumpism did. I'm scared for my gf and I'm fucking scared for myself because we know historically that it isn't just trans folk on HRT or drag performers that they go after.

And you have every right to do whatever you need to protect yourself.

I'm not going to shame folks who quit HRT, who take the rainbows out of their bio, the people who start saying partner instead of revealing a gender, or anyone else taking a few steps towards the safety that the closet provides. WE shouldn't.

I fucking love you. And we'll be okay as long as we're together, okay?

We keep us safe

This is what I'm talking about for the people unaware.

I looked up the lavender scare last night and was sadly unsurprised to see that the last time the community came together...was a lavender scare.

Pride was a riot because the government started doing to us then what Florida is doing to us now. It was triggered when a man was fired from his job on grounds of being gay and tried to take it to court.

This is why we have pride. This is why "think of the children" is/was an awful rhetoric to push at leather daddies and drag queens. It's not just a bad opinion or stupid discourse, it's a talking point for the right wing to justify fucking kill us.

It was never "just discourse" it was a right wing psyop to cripple us from coming together to fight against attacks just like this.

Your enemies aren't other queer people with labels you don't like. Those are your allies. Because you know who else doesn't like them?

Nazis.

And they don't like you either even if you have a "normal" queer identity and you don't make it "your whole personality" or whatever.

You're both still queer. And that's all they care about. Trying to placate bigots wont save you. Quit playing the part of "acceptable gay" and throwing everyone else under the bus.

Besides, that they WERE thinking of the children when they started those riots dressed in stuff that makes you squirm. They were thinking of You. Of your life. Your children. Queer children.

Hey y'all please reblog this version so people can see the article and explanation, there are a few confused people only seeing earlier versions that dont explain the connection/threat because it doesn't have the article.

An interstate rainbow railroad.

For those unaware that's this. It's been done before.

A lot of people are scared. And I really, really want you to know that the riots started because someone scared asked for help and people answered

It wasn't organized. It just happened. People decided to risk it at a moments notice.

This is ours. And we've done it before.

Stormé Delariverie, the Stonewall Lesbian that triggered it all.

And everyone who was there for her.

Were just like us

So how do we do this?

I played that level in Mario Kart but that was it. I wanna be there for you, we all do, how do we do that?

I bet one of us could call and just ask. Who doesn't have anxiety. Oh wait it's posted on their site :)

Kinda reads like a How To 👀

Find your niche and offer it.

People need help, you figure out how/who can, and then you follow through.

What can You do?

Because you are not nearly as powerless as they want you to believe, especially with some help.

whenever anyone says they are “okay with gay people as long as they don’t make it their whole personality” it makes me so sad.

firstly, we should not merely be tolerated. secondly, you’re clearly homophobic and your tolerance extends only so far as your comfortability for that which is different. finally, why should we not make out personality who and what we love? i would rather be defined by my love any day than hatred or indifference.

I think we need to get serious about nuclear family abolition instead of the childfree meme culture of "we don't want your snot-nosed gremlins." I love kids. I love their joy, the insight of not yet being acclimated to capitalism and social norms. I had a certain naive wisdom as a kid, making crowns out of dandelions without knowing they were weeds. When my mom tried to explain gender reassignment surgery to me, expecting me to be repulsed, I instead blurted out "cool!".

But despite my love for children and sentimentality for my own childhood, I don't want to "have kids," as it's conventionally understood to mean, nor do most of my age peers. The expectation of children to be the property and sole responsibility of two parents (or as patriarchy would insist, one mother) is a cruel and unrealistic in any historical moment but especially the present. It is cruel, not just to people who don't want to be parents or shoehorned into heterosexual norms, but traumatic to the child. Surely we should know this better than anyone, and come up with a more mature response than just hating kids. There is a stark difference between this response and the queer legacy of mutual aid to support kids neglected by the nuclear family (the House Mothers of the ballroom community come to mind).

My issue with the childfree movement, as it exists online, is that it centers individual choice rather than a structural reevaluation of the family as we know it. We are told that queer life is purposeless and lonely, and that's without a genetic lineage we have no future. These arguments are in fact indictments of a system that has failed to produce collective visions of purpose, social fulfillment and futurity. None of us should be obligated to "have kids," nor tone down our culture or activism in their entirety to be "family friendly." But we should be driven by a desire to support those most disenfranchised by family norms instead of just hating them.

Being a sex-positive personally-sex-repulsed ace is weird cuz like reading about sex? Awesome. Writing about sex? Not much more intolerable than writing about anything else. Sex is good. Sex is normal. Sex is only as important as you let/want it to be. Kinks are natural expressions of sexuality. Sexual purity is a scam. Bodies are nothing to be ashamed of. Sex work is no more exploitative than any other kind of labor. If you touch me I will throw up on you.

Reblogging for pride month

“Wait, there are people blaming the writers?”

Are you surprised? Fandoms have become notorious anti-writer spaces. Studios love you guys. They can cut the budgets, cut the number of writers, cut the wages of the writers, and you guys always blame the writers. “The writers ruined the show!” It’s never “the studios ruined the show.”

I hate to break it to you: more than half the shows you complain were “ruined by the writers”, were ruined by the studios. Studios cut the scenes and arcs you were excited for. Studios cut the budget of the show, or even raise the budget of the show and force a “bigger, louder, bolder” tone on shows that were unexpected hits (this is where we get “the Netflix look” on every show post-Stranger Things and Queen’s Gambit).

You guys do not do your research. Half your fanfics are tagged with bad faith digs at the writers, when a few searches would reveal how strapped that show was and how poorly the writers were treated. Writers are being given a 10 weeks to write 10 episodes. How are good arcs and scenes supposed to happen under that time limit, with a max of only four writers?

Tumblr, the self-proclaimed “pro-union, pro-worker, pro-artist” site is also a major fandom site. You guys rarely practice good faith consumer etiquette for television and film writers, because your fandom salt always turns you against writers. And studios love you for it.

Yeah, individual writers do create bad writing from time to time. But so do painters, chefs, and musicians. Directors and actors sometimes refuse to film certain scenes or follow a show’s projected style and arc, and the writers always get the crap for a bad performance or a poorly directed episode. This isn’t to blame actors or directors; it’s to point out that you guys have one villain, and it’s always the writers. You guys never give writers the same grace you give animators, designers, directors, actors, composers, and editors.

Studios love you every time you say “the writers ruined the show.” Every single popular fandom is guilty of this. View any of the “why did the writers cut this scene, they hate my characters” talk when leaked scenes hit the internet. Writers barely get paid for what they do write. You think they’re writing scenes and then happily throwing them in the shredder? You guys just eat the talk that studios put out. Always have.

i think some people need to realise the lgbtq+ community isnt the fucking oppression olympics. "ace/aro people arent a part of the community because they havent faced as much oppression and violence as the rest of us!" okay but theyre still queer. they dont experience love and attraction the way straight people do. theyre always welcome at pride, lgbt youth clubs, queer safe spaces etc.

people ALSO need to realise that just because you're queer in some way doesnt mean you get to be hateful to other queer people because you dont understand it/ dont think theyre "queer enough"(?)/ dont think they are actually queer.

gatekeeping and excluding certain groups who come to you for support and comfort makes you just as bad as any other homophobe. but in this case you're just hurting your own community.

Due to that post I made re: why it's hard for aros/aces to imagine a future for themselves because society tells you a romantic partner will always take priority, a lot of people (aros/aces and allos alike) are sharing stories about how they have been discarded by their close friends and it's breaking my heart. But allos and aspecs coming in and sharing how they have the same amount of love for their partners and their best friends/siblings is healing it.

Still, there are people in the tags saying that aros/aces can "never offer their partners the kind of intimacy they need" and so they shouldn't be "surprised" when they feel closer to partners than their friends. You guys are missing the point.

The point is that we should NOT be ranking our relationships. People aren't there to be ranked on a scale of "This person is my number one and this person comes after that." The point is that you need multiple people in your life. One person cannot - and should not - be responsible for giving you everything you need. Different people will give you different things that you need in life and you should value all of them.

The idea that a romantic partner will give you every single thing you need in life is a toxic idea in itself and puts undue pressure on said partner and the relationship as a whole. A best friend won't give you everything either. You NEED multiple people in your life and they will all give you a part of what you need, but there is no one perfect person out there who perfectly gives you exactly what you want. We need multiple people and they should all be valued by you. Love is not limited.

I guess that this is as good of a time as any to remind people that WRITERS MAKE THE STORY!!!! I cannot count how many times I see posts praising tv directors for things that are simply not their doing. That iconic line of dialogue? Yeah a screenwriter wrote that. The characters you love? Screenwriter. The places, the plot lines, the developments? Writers.

A show CANNOT happen without a script because a script is necessary for EVERYONE to do their job right. It dictates what set to look for/create, the filming schedule, the casting calls, the costumes and so on. It's not just words on a paper, its the backbone for all of production and and it deserves to get recognised as the integral part of tv and film as it is.

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

it ok to not be ready

Please spread this shit like wildfire. People go on and sit through the whole experience and they’re uncomfortable because they just want to please their partner and they don’t tell them that they want to stop because they are not ready. It’s okay not to be ready. 

notice here that consent is revoked without ever saying no and consent goes so far beyond yes/no!!!!!!

It is ok to say no

Non-lesbians love to act like being a lesbian is restrictive, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Lesbianism is freedom.

Lesbians are not all binary cis women; there are transfem lesbians, transmasc lesbians, nonbinary lesbians of all types, a lot of us even consider lesbian to itself be a gender. And that's only scratching the surface of how diverse lesbian gender expression can be, even within those categories there are yet even more types of lesbians, we play around with femininity and masculinity in so many ways!

Not to mention butch lesbians, femme lesbians, stud lesbians, and stemme lesbians; the latter two being black lesbian identities. Some lesbians are none of those things, and that's fine too! There are lesbians who use pronouns other than she/her; they/them lesbians, he/him lesbians, lesbians who use neopronouns...

Lesbians are not all TME; there are trans lesbians, nonbinary lesbians, intersex lesbians. The lesbian community is more inclusive of trans people than most, despite what others may think.

There are lesbians with many different relationships to their attraction; asexual lesbians, aromantic lesbians, lesbians with trauma around sex or romance, lesbians who don't want to be in relationships, lesbians who are sex workers, lesbians who experience comphet, lesbians who didn't always know they were lesbians and may have been in relationships with men before finding out...

Lesbians are not all white; there are black lesbians, asian lesbians, latine lesbians, native lesbians...

Lesbians are not all privileged outside of our LGBT identities; there are mentally ill lesbians, disabled lesbians, fat lesbians, autistic lesbians, lesbians with personality disorders, lesbians with eating disorders, lesbians with trauma, lesbians who struggle with addiction, lesbians with scars and bodies seen as atypical in the eyes of western beauty standards...

There are lesbians of all social classes and demographics; poor lesbians, working class lesbians, Jewish lesbians, Muslim lesbians, Hindu lesbians, Buddhist lesbians...

There are lesbians all throughout history who have fought and bled and died for who we are, lesbians who continue to fight today for who we are, lesbians who live completely isolated from any kind of support structures and aren't able to be themselves.

The thing that all of these different types of lesbians have in common? We aren't men, and aren't attracted to men; not cis men, not trans men, not nonbinary aligned men. We exclusively love other women and sapphic aligned nonbinaries.

Being a lesbian is not restrictive, and if it feels that way to you, you're simply not a lesbian. Don't try to change who we are, lesbianism is a beautiful and fulfilling identity just the way it is. 🧡🤍💖

saw an anti ace-spec people post on the asexual tag today so I wanted to make a post:

for anyone who fits anywhere on the ace spectrum, no matter how you define sexual attraction and how often you feel it, no matter your past, no matter your other orientations, and no matter how confident you are in it. Have a happy international asexuality day, this day is for you :)

Happy International Women's Day to disabled women, neurodivergent women, poor women, fat women, queer women, women of color, Jewish women, Muslim women, women who are sex workers, women who are addicts, women who are homeless, women who are single mothers. ♀️

#And trans women