Queen Bitch

wait, are we STD shaming in here?! Sorry for fuckin' partying.

Also holding the AMY bag with you. At this point I'll just ride it to zero. Shouldn't take much longer

I'm not saying the gentrification of the east side is the cause, but its rise certainly correlates to the death of Old Austin imo

Wish we'd gotten to play for it all, but I'll always welcome a top 3 finish, especially considering the past 10+ years of dumpster fire.

Aww, they almost came back! That's so cute.

Oh, they’re gonna blow their load alright

Do they stand during the spring game, ready to nobly jump into action should a 12th man be needed???

I also find myself torrenting these days. After what they put us through for five months, these motherfuckers aren't getting any of my money for the time being.

lol at the dude who just went through the past few pages and negged my posts from the last few months — cool Thursday you’re having!!

So deeply proud of my sister union. They stood strong and got what they deserved. (Hopefully at least, no one has seen the deal.) Contracts for IATSE and Teamsters are up next summer, hopefully they get fair deals and we aren't doing this shit again in eight months

It’s always a three year deal. Just how it works.

Strike captains are PARTYING tonight. D-day vibes. Every good bar in town is wild. What’s the word for “blackout but much stronger”???? UNION GODDAMN STRONG. SOLIDARITY FOREVER AND EVER, Y’ALL!!!!!!!

Hearing it’s imminent.

Rumors on the line are WILD today. Everyone saying it’s a done deal, heard from a friend in the room or a high-places senior exec, blah blah. Hell, our waiter at Swingers just said she heard it’s over. We’ll see….

Cautious optimism indeed exists on the lines. The guild and the studios released a joint statement yesterday that talks would resume today, which was a pretty big shift. They agreed to something publicly -- we'll take it! Most folks, myself included, have a hard time with the CNBC article stating "the deal will be made today" because it continues by saying "and if it doesn't end TODAY, the strike will continue until the end of the year." (Read: more baseless threats to scare us into taking a shit deal.) So yeah, it reads like something the studios planted. (That being said, why CNBC? They never leak there. Strange.) We're also still pretty far apart on several issues, so two days of negotiations to get on the same page sounds like a stretch... but this has never really been about money for the studios. So who knows? Either way, I'll be on the lines later this morning, and then lunch is on Drew Carey. (For those unfamiliar, Drew is the patron saint of the strike, covering meals at two local restaurants. Yes, a lot of us go basically every day.)

Bullying works.

After nearly a month waiting for a response from the studios, they've agreed to return to the negotiation table next week. Collective bargaining works, but it's brutal when dealing with bratty billionaire toddlers who've never not gotten their way. Also, go get y'alls contract, UAW. Maybe we just went first and I'm really blowing up our self-importance, but I hope our guild has helped pave the way this year for other unions to demand what's theirs and refuse to back down.

I won't lie -- frustration, fatigue, and anxiety are really piling up. Folks are getting nervous that this thing will drag into the new year. Solidarity and our collective resolve, however, sure seem to be intact. Case in point: I was in a meeting with guild leadership a couple nights ago when a hack article dropped suggesting an alleged showrunner defector group had tried to set a meeting with the guild to demand an end to the strike, but leadership had allegedly refused to meet with them. (This is basically what ended the '07/'08 strike. Google "the dirty 30" if you want to read more about it.) Leadership calmly explained what actually happened. I'm omitting details here, but I'll copy/paste some nuggets from an article that dropped days later that tracked with everything they told us. And -- as you'll read below -- another emerging foe in this story? Our own fucking agents. Lotta bad actors forcing us to fold and take a shit deal which, sorry, but we're not doing that. Anywho, the cherry on top of the alleged "showrunner defector group" bullshit? There was a showrunner solidarity picket the very next morning, and several hundred showrunners came out to support. The trades are *salivating* for signs of a rift in our lines, of pitting the most successful writers among the least of us... but it's simply not a thing. Not yet, anyway. There was also a massive SAG march yesterday from Netflix to Paramount. I didn't have it in me to attend, but the pictures I saw showed a pretty massive turnout. And Fran once again spit fire in her rally speech. TL;DR: The studios think they can wait both unions out rather than cut a fair deal, that they can pit the 1% writers against the working class writers, but they've made things so bad for ALL writers these past few years that the strike's hardships are justifiable given the otherwise unsustainable status quo. Also, be wary of agents. https://theankler.com/p/friend-or-foe-agents-wga-and-the

WBD announced today they could lose upwards of $500m this year on the dual strikes, after bragging last earning's call that they'd saved $100m. Fun reminder that the WGA estimates the cost to WBD to agree to the writers' terms would be $47m PER YEAR. https://deadline.com/2023/09/warner-bros-discovery-earnings-hit-hollywood-writers-actors-strikes-1235536463/

Yes, the studios took their offer directly to the media after the WGA refused the offer *as is*, which possibly violates labor laws (not that the govt is going to go after them for it, no CR.) The WGA publicly told its members the offer was "not nothing, but not nearly enough." Basically, their offers on room minimums and AI among other things have loopholes you could steer a yacht through.

Happy fuckin’ Labor Day. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-08-31/wga-sag-aftra-strike-studios-amptp-surrender

Hey thanks. Appreciate that. Anywho, this is what corporate greed looks like:

There were 3000 people at the Disney picket yesterday for National Day of Solidarity. We are going nowhere without a fair deal.