Chronologically Frozen

She offered to renegotiate her contract at the point the decision to release on Disney+ was made, and Disney refused, that is what lead to the case.

The overwhelming majority of actors, even actor’s working for Disney are not millionaires, I know that because I am a jobbing actor, and I earn less in a year then either of my siblings, both of whom have office jobs.

When you get a film or television job, in addition to what you’re paid at the time you also get something that in the UK is called royalty fees, and in the US is called residuals. This occurs when the show or film is shown or licensed on another channel or network, almost always for a set period of time, although Netflix has started buying the rights to small indie films outright.

Royalty checks can be hilariously small. A friend I trained with once got one for £2.07 because their show had just been licensed to be shown on a Thai TV network, but more often they are a lifeline for actors. Most actors work minimum wage jobs in between acting gigs, and when you also have the cost of Headshots, Self Tape equipment, travel to auditions and lost wages whenever you have to take time off to prep and travel to auditions, you understand why equity wages are so high for individual jobs, because that one episode in a soap you got paid £800-£1200 for (minus 10-20% for your agent), could be your wage for 2 months and you would be considered a fairly successful working actor, even if it was your only acting job in that time period.

The case isn’t about a multimillionaire quibbling over how many millions she is being paid, although it’s likely that had Black Widow had a prepandemic release Scarlett Johansson would have been paid closer to 200 million than the 20 million she is being paid. Although Disney is pushing that angle hard so I fully understand why you’ve fallen into their propaganda trap. It is one of the very few opportunities for actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, directors, and all the other hundreds of creatives involved in the filmmaking process to challenge some of the status quo with streaming services and really ask questions about how royalties will work in the future.

There is a reason that the unions are backing the case and that’s because the other way around, breach of contract is a huge deal, there can be penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars for contract breaches, often on jobs where you are paid a fraction of that, and believe me, Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Universal all persue those payments, and in certain circumstances even go out of their way to blacklist the artist.

If breach of contract is a big deal when actors and other creatives do it, it should be just as big a deal when studios do it, but it isn’t because Capitalism is rarely about rewarding artists and all about bottom line profit.

Well that's exactly what disney is doing with this "ScarJo is being horribly insensitive about the global pandemic we're in" and their "we were merely being socially conscientious and kind to let people stream our new movies instead of having to go to the cinemas for them" campaign.

This suit isn't actually about ScarJo. Quite aside from the fact that it IS a breach of contract to do a dual release and not hand over any of the profits from the streaming release (which she is absolutely entitled to), its actually about every single actor and writer and voice actor and etc that has similar contracts with all production companies, most of whom do not have the resources that ScarJo has.

Disney knows that if ScarJo wins this, they will be forced to equitably distribute income from their streaming service to those who have the right to such things. They do not want that.

They want you to pay your monthly subscription and your $36 early access fee, and they want to pocket all of that money, even though a portion of it should be going to the actors and creators of the film.

They know that if ScarJo wins, they will not be able to hoard as luck money. So they are running a discredit campaign.

"Oh look how heartless ScarJo is, for wanting MORE money even tho she already got $20m, and EVEN THOUGH we're in a PANDEMIC and there are people DYING. Its so HEARTLESS of her."

And guess what!! Its working!!!!!! People already aren't huge fans of ScarJo, for a range of reasons, but mostly, people are falling prey to the propaganda campaign.

Don't do that. Don't be the person who thinks an old woman who wants her crazy high medical bills paid because she was handed a poorly secured cup of boiling water is actually just a money grabbing idiot. Don't be the person who spreads Disney's "we're the good guys in this actually" bullshit. Don't fall for it.

They are trying to say they are paying her in exposure.

I got inspired by this beautiful art from rokudemonyai on Twitter.

Red strings were a fact of life.

Everyone had one, tied in a neat small bow around the pinky finger of one hand. Everyone could see their own string and a gifted few saw all the strings, running all over the world, linking two people together. 

They existed on another plane, visible but without substance, and everyone went about their lives accepting their vague presence.Some claimed they could always feel the string, humming with energy. Some forgot the strings were there because they never felt anything from them. 

You could try and follow your string, but it almost never worked: without being able to hold or touch it, you would lose track of it as soon as you were interrupted by someone or something else.

But when you encountered the person on the other end of your string, you knew. You had found the person you were destined to be the closest to in your life. You could see by the amount of string how long you could be together.

Shiro had ignored the presence of his string, like most people. There was one moment, when he was fourteen, when there had been a sudden and sharp pull, a feeling of profound despair and grief. 

He had told his grandfather, worried that something had happened to his soulmate, that he would never have the chance to meet them. His grandfather reassured him. The string was still there, still visible to Shiro. His soulmate was out there somewhere and if the fates were kind, they would meet one day.

That day was today.

Shiro barely heard the teacher’s words as she introduced him to the class. The string was pulsing around his finger and he felt a little dizzy. His eyes followed the loops and whorls of red to the neat bow on the hand of a boy in the class.

But the boy didn’t look back. He showed no reaction at all, but continued to gaze out the window, deliberately indifferent to the activity in the classroom.

Shiro frowned, trying to understand what was wrong, but the other students were clapping and he had to begin his speech.

Once outside, as the students took turns in the simulator, he watched the boy. He stayed apart from the others and no other student acknowledged him. The teacher made no effort to approach him and draw him in. He sat on a bench, his back to the action, shoulders hunched in the thin red jacket, hair falling to hide his face.

Shiro took another look at the string, now piled up in the space between them. A long string supposedly meant a long life shared, which made Shiro’s stomach twist bitterly. But he couldn’t figure out why the boy was showing no reaction to him at all.

And then he saw it, almost buried in the jumble of threads. A cluster of knots, large and snarled.

The boy had closed himself off.

Shiro’s heart ached at what this boy must have been through, to isolate himself so much that his string had done everything but break. He glanced around, seeing that all the other students had finished the game.

Time to start untangling the mess.

“Looks like you’re the only one who’s left. Think you got what it takes?”

The boy looked at him with wide astonished eyes and the knot twitched, just a little, as one twist loosened.

Shiro smiled at him.

Shiro & his new friend Lotor got drunk and decided they’d go kill Evil King Zarkon, but first- “Can we make one lil quick stop down to the dungeon? I wanna see Keith…”

or, the sheith!Galavant AU aka the adventures of Shiro The Hero, Prince Keith Akira Yorak Kogane of Marmora, & Matt.

“Is it supposed to burn?”

“Uh,” Keith says, consulting the box in his hand. “It doesn’t really say.”

“Because it does,” Shiro says, his nose wrinkling as he sits stock still with a sheet draped over his shoulders and smelly gel piled in his hair.

“You want me to rinse it out?” Keith asks, worrying his bottom lip at Shiro’s discomfort.

“How long does it stay on?” Shiro asks, a little plaintively.

“Twenty minutes,” Keith says, momentarily consulting the long page of instructions that came with the box.

“I think I can handle it for that long,” Shiro says with a resigned sigh, “just come over here and distract me.”

“Distract you how?”

“Let me look at you,” Shiro says.

Keith impatiently presses his lips together. “It’s fine Shiro.”

“Let me see,” Shiro insists.

Keith sighs and grabs the other chair from the set his dad made so long ago. He drags it across the faded throw rug covering the scuffed wood floor and sits down in front of Shiro.

Shiro’s steel gray eyes study his face. He lifts his hand, the only one he has left, and gently tilts Keith’s head to get a better look at the scabbed over wound marring his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says finally, dropping his hand.

“Technically, you weren’t even there,” Keith reminds him.

“I may not have been driving at the time,” Shiro says in that dark wry way of his, “but I still feel responsible.”

“It doesn’t even hurt anymore,” Keith says, and it doesn’t, well not much anyway. It stung like a son-of-a-bitch at first, the heat from Shiro’s… Clone Shiro’s plasma blade had been so intense it had burned a welt across Keith’s cheek without even touching his flesh. It continued to burn for several days after, though Krolia kept slathering it with some sort of Galra ointment. It was weird having someone besides Shiro fussing over him, nice, but weird.

“I just hate that you were hurt,” Shiro says, eyeing the yellowing bruises still covering Keith’s face.

“Well, what about you?”

“What about me,” Shiro says flatly.

Of course he’ll never admit it, but Keith knows Shiro’s been struggling with living inside a body that isn’t the one he was born wearing. After he’d recovered from the initial shock of… resurrection, he’d been completely freaked out at the way the tech from his artificial arm had expanded to cover his shoulder. It was how Haggar had controlled the clone, and Shiro wanted nothing to do with it. He’d made Hunk strip him of every component, giving up most of what little flesh and blood his arm had left in the process.

“I should’ve saved one of the other ones,” Keith says softly. “They hadn’t been… They were perfect.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shiro says.

“Like the color of your hair doesn’t matter?” Keith asks. “Because it really doesn’t you know.” Keith tried tinting Shiro’s eyebrows as well, but he doesn’t know how well the coarser hair will take the dye.

“I just wanted to feel normal again,” Shiro murmurs.

“We should wash it out,” Keith says, springing from his seat and taking Shiro’s hand.

He rinses the dye out over the bathroom sink and washes Shiro’s hair with the little foil pack of shampoo that came with the box. Then he helps him towel it dry, because it turns out to be a pain in the ass to do one-handed. Shiro stands and regards himself in the mirror over the sink while Keith silently watches over his shoulder.

“What do you think?” Shiro asks, his eyes shifting to Keith’s reflection in the mirror.

Keith smiles. “It’s like looking back in time,” he says softly.

“Looking at you is like flashing forward in time,” Shiro says wanly. “I hate that I missed your twenty-first birthday.”

“It was a good birthday,” Keith assures him. He hadn’t spent it alone, like so many before. He received the gift of a mother and a space-wolf and two years to get to know them. Probably his best birthday ever now that he’s thinking about it, or it would’ve been if not for one thing. “Even though I missed you,” he adds.

Shiro smiles. “Oh, that reminds me,” he says, leaving the room. Keith watches him go, comfortably relaxed in jeans and a plain white tee, the right sleeve empty and flopping from his missing arm. The Olkari offered him a new one, more advanced than any tech the Galra had. Lighter and stronger too. Shiro had passed. He wanted to feel like less of a stranger in his new skin before he thought about fusing it with machine parts again.

Keith follows after him and finds him in the main room fussing with a white garment box. “Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” he says, handing the box to Keith.

“What is it?”

“Consider it a belated birthday present,” Shiro says.

Keith shakes his head. “You didn’t have to–”

“I wanted to,” Shiro tuts firmly. “Well, aren’t you gonna open it?”

Keith eyes Shiro suspiciously and opens the box to find a leather flight jacket inside.

“Is this?” he asks, holding it up and admiring the way the soft caramel colored leather shines in the sunlight.

“Yep,” Shiro says. It’s the flight jacket he was wearing the day Keith met him. The day he came to Keith’s school looking for new recruits and wound up teaching him how to pilot a hoverbike instead. “It doesn’t fit me anymore, and I know you’ve grown out of yours, so I thought maybe you could use it.”

“Shiro, I can’t take this,” Keith says anxiously. “It’s yours.”

“And I want you to have it,” Shiro says. “Go ahead, try it on.”

Keith hesitates. Shiro breathes an exasperated sigh and plucks the jacket from Keith’s slack hands. He drapes it over Keith’s shoulders and pulls a face. “A little help,” he says flatly.

Keith scowls at him and slowly puts his arms through the sleeves. Surprisingly, the jacket fits. It fits really well actually.

“Perfect,” Shiro says, smiling as he smooths down the collar and unexpectedly caresses Keith’s face. Keith throws his arms around Shiro’s neck and presses his head to his chest in a fierce embrace.

“What if I hulk out again?” he says anxiously. When he’s the paladin of the black lion he means. What if he shows his galra stripes in front of the others and they despise him for it. Keith knows Shiro understands. There’s always been an unspoken shorthand between them.

“Keith,” Shiro says, in that tone he uses when he’s about to say something wise, “we all have parts of ourselves we struggle to understand. All you can do is try to embrace everything you are and trust that the people around you will try to do the same.”

It should be Shiro out there, piloting the black lion. He’s the one everyone really wants, but he needs time. He spent eighteen months trapped inside the black lion’s head and he needs time to remember who he is separate from her before he can even think about piloting her again. Keith gets it. It’s just, he’s not Shiro and he never will be.

“What makes you think I can do that,” he says.

“Because I’ve seen for myself what you can do when you put your mind to it,” Shiro says softly and Keith can hear the smile in his voice, “and because I love you. I love every bit of you. No matter what. There’s nothing that could ever change that.”

Keith smiles and listens to Shiro’s heartbeat, still strong despite everything he’s been through, or maybe because of it. It’s possible Keith doesn’t need to be Shiro to be the black paladin. Maybe it’s enough just to have his love.

“I love you too,” Keith says.