#hollywood (netflix) fanfic

[timeforaneclipse]

I'd give you my soul for some Avis Amberg fic, I swear!!! If you're up for a request, could we see Avis flirting with you the entire time out at an event, riling you up, up, up. Ik you did some light smutty stuff for Falling Apart (I loved it sm), and if you're up for it, you drag her off for quick dirty bathroom sex, but if not, just her teasing the ever loving shit out of you "Wait till we get home, you'll see just what mamma has in store for you. ;)" I have so many feelings 🫠 about this woman, and your writing is amazing! Anyway, ily have a good day 🫶

Tease. (Avis Amberg x reader)

Warnings? - Filth. Pure filth.

Tracing your finger tips over the green fabrics that hugged your figure, you took a minute to admire the dress. It was soft. Never before had you worn something so.. expensive looking. You almost felt out of place despite of the small fond smile that you had on your face. Avis had gifted you the dress for your birthday one evening. You were quick to tell her that it was too much but the older woman was quick to hush your protests. In truth, you never would've thought that you had the need for such a magnificent piece of clothing. Giving your circumstances but Avis was insistent. And like always, The older woman was proved right. However, just seeing it on for the first time? It made your heart race in ways you couldn't explain. You could barely believe that it was you in the mirror. It was perfect. A sigh escaped your lips as you tidied up your hair and thought of the older woman. The situation... between the two of you was nothing with but a... favour. At least that's what you convinced yourself it was. But as time continued on the two of you got closer, you began to question.  

A knock came from the bathroom door and you glanced over to it like it had said something utterly horrific. "You haven't fallen down the loo, have you?" Ellen's voice rang from the other side of the door. You softened, chuckling as you remembered you were in fact not alone. You unlocked the door for the older woman and her smile became one of admiration. "My..." The blonde inspected you over. "You look.... beautiful." She hummed, a hint of pride in her voice.  "Avis will love it." She hummed deep in thought. Your heart fluttered at the thought of Avis. "Are you ready to go? This celebration won't wait for us." The older woman urged. Right, of course! The party... The whole reason you were in this stunning dress in the first place. 

You nodded with a smile. "Avis will meet us there?" You asked, curious to how the evening was to go. You knew that Ace would most likely be accompanying her tonight but for some god unknown reason, Avis wanted you there too. Ellen was quick to lead you to her car. Arriving at Vivian Leigh's mansion, you couldn't help but look for Avis' car. Nothing your wondering gaze, Ellen smirked to herself and shook her head. 

Once inside, You turned your head in the direction of the voices a head. Unsure if you could handle the massive crowd you gave a nervous look to Ellen who had returned with a supportive look in her usual soft eyes. "This is important." She hummed. "If you want to be an actress you need to network." She urged like a mother encouraging a child to do their homework. Your lips became thin. You understood her reasonings but most people here were pricks. Or rather snakes as Avis called them. So against your better judgement, You heeded the older woman's advice and began to socialize. You had spoken to a few other inspiring actors and a couple of Ellen's friends but your eyes were always drifting off to find Mrs Amberg. Wherever she was. 

It wasn't long until you felt a hand on your lower back. The soft lingering touch made your stomach flutter as you turned your head to the slightly smaller woman beside you. A wide grin appeared on your face. "Avis." You smiled like a fool. Avis looked floored as she got a full look at your dress. Her eyes darkened as she eyed your cleavage. A smirk on her red lips.  "It's good to see you." your honesty hung in the air for a moment. It had been a while since you had actually last seen the older woman. Avis' husband, Ace, began to grow suspicious of her outings and the older woman had wanted to keep things on the low for the time being. 

"I always did say green was your colour." She hummed, deep in thought. "The dress looks divine on you, baby...." She whispered, her grip on the verge of becoming possessive. Your cheeks began to glow as you held the older woman's intense gaze, heat pooling through you. "Mamma's been so lonely without you." She whispered thickly into your ear. Her other hand run down your side as she watched your reaction, entirely gleeful with the effect she was having on you.  She then walked away, leaving you utterly speechless. You shook your head and cleared your throat as she gave you a snarky cheeky smirk, putting an extra sway in her hips as she walked away. Your throat became bone dry. Oh god... 

During dinner, You manage to snatch a seat in-between Ellen and Avis. You raised an eyebrow at the talk at the table. You couldn't help but be completely lost... They were using this terminology that you had never heard of before, it was as if it were all a different language. As you ate, you suddenly felt a shoe trace up and down your calf. You swallowed and gave a light warning glare to Avis but the older woman just looked at you innocently with a small smile. Not heeding your pathetic warning, her hand began to rest on your thigh, gently tracing her feather-light touch over your upper leg. Your grip on your fork tightened. Curse her. Leaning close, the older woman scanned your flustered state. "You always look your best like this, baby." She purred and took a sip of wine.  You followed suit. Also taking a drink. "Needy and unable to do anything about it.... Just a desperate-" Without warning and without much thought, you had purposely splashed some of your wine wine onto her chest. The older woman stared, utterly baffled by the change in events. By the audacity you had to splash her. Her dark brown eyes narrowed in annoyance and she stood. "I'll be back." Her lips were tight and became as thin as a line. 

Sighing, you stood and followed her as she stormed towards the bathroom.  Once inside, you locked the door as she turned on her heel to look at you. Her eyes piercing. "Don't you think that was a bit immature." She glared heavily. "I mean what are you? Five?" Avis rolled her eyes but before she could continue to tell you off, Your lips crashed against hers. Her eyes twinkled for a moment, widening before closing. Melting into the kiss. Avis' whimpered and deepened the kiss. Desperate for more. One of her hands cupped your face while the other curved around the back of your neck. She hadn't had you in weeks. And now? Now you were finally in her arms once more. Her brows furrowed and her grips tightened. Afraid that you'd disappear. As your arms snaked around her waist, you pulled back from the kiss and began to lick and nibble at her neck. A rumble left the older woman's throat and she leaned her head back slightly, Allowing you more access. Her finger began to weave their way into your locks and she gasped as your kisses became more rough. As you bit and sucked at her pale flesh, you were cautious of leaving visible marks. Despite how much you yearned to. You wouldn't dare. Not without her permission and certainly not while Ace was circling like a vulture. 

You travelled down her neck and Licked away the alcohol that you had spilt on her. Pulling back, your eyes softened as you took a moment to admire the goddess in front of you. She raised an eyebrow at your pause but smirked like the devil when she saw that look in your eyes. She pulled you into an embrace and stroked your hair. She adored your hair. "I really did miss you..." She admitted quietly in a whisper. Her perfume invaded your senses and you hid your face into her neck... "Now come on... show Mamma how much you've missed her, Baby." She chuckled and pulled your chin so that you'd look her in the eye. It was her turn for her lips to attack yours. Her lipstick smeared all over your face as the desperation she was truly feeling became more clear. 

Continuing from where you had left off, You kissed her neck. Your hand messaging her breast. A moan nearly escaped the older woman's mouth but she was quick to bite down on her lip, eyeing you as you worked on her. Your hands found the zipper to her dress and you gave her a look. Silently asking for permission to continue. When Avis gave you an encouraging nod, you pulled on the zip. Unclipping her bra, you began to suck and above her breast a little, trying to catch her reaction. You lowered, licking over her nipple. The older woman gasped and her grip on you tightened. One of your hands went to her waist, holding onto her as the other messaged her other breast. You began to kiss her stomach. Worshipping each section of her body. Leaving nothing untouched. Avis watched you and softened. She moved some of your, now untidy, hair out of your face. "You look so beautiful, Avis..." You whispered so quietly that she almost missed it. Her breath hitched as you continued as if it was nothing. A second nature. Your words shook her to the core, despite the innocence of them. She nearly teared up. Since she had to distance herself, she hadn't those words from anyone. Especially not from Ace. It meant the world to her. To hear your praise once more. Even after so many weeks. 

Avis yelped in surprise as you lifted her onto the counter, her eyes widening almost comedically. You opened her legs and stood in between them and placed a few kisses along her jaw. Her legs pulled you closer. Your hands gripped onto her hips as you knelt down. Avis' hands went to the counter's edge, gripping onto it for dear life. You raised an eyebrow as you looked at her lace black underwear. "God, Avis your soaked." You smirked, eager to get some revenge for earlier. Her eyes sharpened like a hawk. "Here you are doing all your teasing and yet your the one whose wreck." You giggled. 

"Just you wait, baby..." She hissed, annoyed by your cockiness. You laughed and took off her underwear and spread her legs a little wider. You kissed the inside of her thighs. She hummed in pleasure. "You can leave marks, darling." She whispered. You paused for a moment as you processed her words. Your heart leaping at them. Wasting now time, You bit down and began to suck. leaving a few red marks over her inner thighs. She whimpered and leaned back. Needing more. So, You gave her your tongue. A loud slut worthy moan escaped her when your warm wet tongue go up her soaked entrance as her back arched. Needy for more. Your eyes widened at her noises. You paused and glanced to the door. She seemed to share you thoughts because her panicked eyes were also staring at the door. You shook your head in relief. Nothing seemed wrong. You turned your attention back to her and ran your tongue up her again. Trying to aim deeper as you did. Your hands gripped her onto her thighs as her hips bucked into your face. Your fingers teased over her clit causing her to gasp. You continued to eat her out. Your teeth scraping against her as you circled your tongue. 

You let one finger enter the older woman. Curling it. Her breath hitched as she breathed out your name, her head rolling before you knew it. You kept your eyes on her reactions. One of her hands left the counter and she reached down and grabbed you free hand. You stared for a moment as your fingers locked with the older woman's. She squeezed your hand as you added another two fingers. She squirmed. Rolling her hips in you hand to meet your movements fast paced. Suddenly, You stilled. Her eyes snapped open, Panting she looked to you. "Do not be a bitch." she growled as she watched your smirk. You felt her inner wall contract and removed your fingers. Gobsmacked, the brown eyed woman looked like she was seconds away from slapping you. You licked her juice's off your fingers. Breathing heavily, Avis licked her lips.

You leaned foreword with innocent eyes. Your nails scratched the back of her thighs making the older woman tremble. "Beg, Avis." Your eyes looked her over. She was.... So perfect in the moment. Despite her obvious anger but that just kept up the thrill. The older woman bit the inside of her cheeks. You raised an eyebrow and licked her clit. "Beg, Avis." You repeated, Looking Avis in the eyes. The older woman's eyes rolled back slightly she was already soaked enough. 

Swallowing her pride, She clutched your hand tighter. "Please, darling..." She whispered and pulled you towards her. "I need you... My gorgeous girl.... Come on... help mamma out?" She continued as you gave her gentle kitten licks. You settled perfectly between her legs, using your fingers, teeth and tongue to bring her closer to the edge. The older woman was a mess. Like putty in your palms. "Yes, baby..." She moaned and her gripped the counter with her spare hand. Trying to keep herself steady. Weak moans echoed in the bathroom. You continued to rub your thumb over her clit. You didn't dare to focus on breathing. Giving your all to Avis. Her walls clenched around your fingers and tongue. Her noises drove you on. Then, without warning, Everything came crashing down. She cried your name went still above you. You let her ride out her release . You licked her clean and looked to her hand. Softening when you realised her hand was still in yours. Locked together. 

You stood and held her for a moment. Keeping her close. "You did so well, baby." The older woman smirked dazed as she stroked your cheek. "Just wait until we get home." She chuckled and traced her finger over your lips. Wiping away her juices. "then you'll see just what mamma has in store for you." You went a deep shade of red and leaned into her touch. Your heart raced as her gorgeous deep eyes sucked you in. She kissed you, tasting herself on your tongue. She smiled into the kiss. Wanting to hold you for longer. It wasn't long before you helped her get changed. You had already been missing from the party for too long and you both knew it. Your heart felt like it was being torn in two when you watched her return to her husband. And leave you behind. 

Ellen frowned and eyed you. "What's wrong?" She asked softly, stroking your arm. You sighed and crossed your arms. Hugging yourself, missing Avis' presence. But then you needed to remind yourself what exactly was between you both...

"I'm afraid I've fallen in love, Ellen."

。·:*:·ﾟ★,。·:*:·ﾟ☆。·:*:·ﾟ★,。·:*:·ﾟ☆。·:*:·ﾟ★,。·:*:·ﾟ☆。·:*:·ﾟ★,。·:*:·ﾟ☆。·:*:·ﾟ★

Hello darlings! I hope you enjoyed reading!

I would like to point out that I'm dyslexic so I'm sorry for any mistakes.

Is it good? How are we feeling? Tell me everything!! I'm always reading the comments and looking for your thoughts and taking them into account and they help a lot with motivation.

Lot's of love and I hope to see you in the future! 💜

(Remember to continue to thank and praise Patti Lupone in our prayers)

[out-of-luck-and-minorly-stuck]

Half Alive || Elinor Fairmont x OC

fem!Original Character x elinor fairmont [Alternate Universe]

There was once a girl who lived. A peasant, if you will, or so she thought she was. No one knew her parents, even her. But someone was nice enough to offer her a place to stay, a place that she could call her home. And ever since she was a kid, she had lived there and was given the name "Amelia".

Her life was normal, in the beginning. But as she turned fifteen, she had been getting some weird nightmares about this demonic-looking creature, a creature that's thirsty for blood and horror. She haven't slept for days, and days went weeks, and eventually, weeks went to months. She could take dreamless naps, but that's just it.

Tired, on her 19th birthday, she decided to go to the woods. Something had caught her eye that night. There was a womanly figure. It was dark, quiet. Which made things even worse. Her eyes stared at the figure, confused.

"Who are you?" She shakingly said.

"Oh, my dearest, Amelia. I’ve been waiting for you." the unknown woman said. She could hear a smirk in the voice behind that dark shadow.

"W-What?" A hind of confusion was evident on her voice.

"Your father betrayed me. I did what I had to do. And now, I’m going to do the same to you" Then the woman laughed wickedly at the shaken girl.

"I-I don't even know my own father! Who are you?!"

“A monster, as some of you, mortals would like to call it" She answered, slowly revealing herself under the moonlight, making her visible. She had this wicked grin on her face.

Amelia’s eyes widen in horror as she realized who the blonde woman was. It was one of the creature in her dream. Fangs, Claws, Superhuman Strength, what else?!

"Y-You're the creature in my dreams! Ple-please don't hurt me"

"That depends, my darling. What benefit would that give me? What can you offer, darling?"

The girl’s breath hitched, daring to think of a good answer that can potentially help her survive this. A slight pause surfaced between her and the womanly creature, her waiting for your answer.

"My loyalty..." the girl whispered, hoping it would be enough.

"Hmmm... I see. What else?" The woman smirked.

"You can do whatever you want with me, as long as I can live!" The girl cried out desperately, whimpering on her knees.

The woman hummed, surprised by the girl’s scared uttered words. Her brows raised, smirking in confusion.

"I'm surprised… You still haven't attacked me with your freaky powers yet" Her words stuck Amelie like a bold of lightning, leaving her with a grim, but perplexed look on your face.

"My pow- what?"

"Oh, babygirl. You are one of the descendants of the first monster hunter… So, they really haven't told you anything, have they?" She pouted sarcastically, her frame walking towards Amelia a little closer than they once were before.

"No..." the brunette girl looked down on the ground, but she felt a sudden hand on her chin forcing her to look up at the woman’s face.

The woman was indeed gorgeous. Especially those stricken red eyes that glows so vividly like blood, Amelia found herself drawn to them.

"I suppose, I could teach you a trick or two" The woman’s lips formed into a devilish smirk, looking down at the vulnerable brunette.

"Really?" Amelia’s eyes widened in hope. 

"Certainly, and I could also offer you something in return" The hand that was once on Amelia left from her chin. The woman leaned back, turned her heel and slowly walked towards the opposite of her, the sound of her heels clanking against the stone concrete.

"Okay..." Amelie nodded, her eyes looked at the woman in desperation.

"Immortality" Then the woman looked back at her, swiftly attacked her neck like a hawk, fangs deepening. 

Not so long after, she had learned that the woman was named as Elinor Fairmont. She found herself slowly drawn to the woman who made her her.

[grace-williams-xo]

I have literally hundreds of downloaded fics on my phone (all sorted into fandom, sometimes by ship and length as well) but I don’t download until after I’ve finished reading it and I really liked it SO I think it’s time I stopped gatekeeping.

Drop requests here or in my asks for any fic recs! All lengths, all genres, all ratings, lots of ships. Be as specific or vague as you want. Mostly gay but there’s some straight lmao. (Gay/straight ratio also depends on the fandom).

Fandoms:

5SOS

One Direction

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Suits

The Big Bang Theory

Hawaii Five-0

The Marvellous Mrs Maisel

Hollywood

The Politician

Fellow Travellers

White Collar

Bridgerton

[filmyfact]

Peaky Blinders Movie: Confirmation And Everything We Know

With the conclusion of the acclaimed series, attention now shifts to the highly anticipated Peaky Blinders movie, set to bring fans back into the world of Tommy Shelby and his gang. While details remain scarce, it promises an exciting conclusion to the story left hanging after the sixth season. Rather than a seventh season, the movie offers a compelling way forward, potentially providing closure to Tommy's dilemma between seeking revenge and living a life in hiding. Here is what we know about the Peaky Blinders movie: confirmation and everything we know.

[marvelmaniac2000]

700 FOLLOWERSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

🥹🥹🩷❤️🧡💛💚💙

Holy shitt!! I mean thank you???? Thank yall so much!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️ It means a lot to me 😭🙏🏽 So much of my time and passion goes to yall and sharing the same love for art, movies, and going through this rollercoaster of life together. As I continue to grow, I hope yall will too!! It can be hard being a introvert, But tumblr is something we all share in common and I feel connected to a deeper world with you guys! 😭🙏🏽 🎬

Maybe one day I'll share a selfie of myself?? 🤷🏽‍♀️ We'll see!

[writtenbygracewilliams]

Hi all!

This is my blog dedicated to my writing and updates etc.

I post on ao3 weekly; but the fandom, length, theme and content all varies.

I see people on here write little imagines/drabbles based on requests and I would love to flex my creative muscles and get into that. I’m yet to come across a form of writing I don’t enjoy! Stories (of all lengths), articles, essays, poems, anything at all.

I’m super open minded and will write almost anything, no ship is too crazy. I will never write sexual or romanticised age play, and sorry but I just don’t write y/n or reader insert. All other requests please welcome!

I have a grace-williams-xo dedicated to my fandom ramblings and screams.

All fandoms I have written, or are writing, are in the tags. If you see a fandom on my other page that I haven’t written yet, I may yet give it a go—so don’t be shy.

–GW xo

[doublel27]

I love all your takes on fandom, ships, queer media, so I want to ask, what do you think about writing fanfic of real people ie. Thai BL couple? I'm coming back to fandom (K-pop to Thai BL specifically) after years and I'm having this urge to write fanfic of this branded pair that I like, like an AU version of them some sort. I have always wanted to write my own romance novels so I figure this could be a way to practice writing, but when I was still in K-pop fandom on Twitter, I was constantly told that writing fanfic shipping real people is weird. Honestly the thought of writing about a ship in this K-pop group I like still weird me out (although I do ship them) and is not exciting. But I have no problem putting the Thai BL pair into the stories I have in my head. I have spent hours consuming fanfics of them on Thai novel site using Google Translate. Also, Thai fandom has this thing where instead of the actor's name, it usually would be character's name with their face attached to it, like they are acting and the fanfic is a script, which make reading them more fun, open up more possibilities and dynamics. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you and sorry for the bad English. 🙏🏻

Hi Nonnie,

Thanks for the complement and coming here with this ask. I appreciate the kind words very much.

As far as real-person fanfic (RPF)I think it gets a lot of hate from a lot of people, but also it’s super common in the world in general and not just in unpaid fanfic circles. While I don’t write RPF myself, I’ve always had friends who did and do, and I see no real problem with it. As long as you’re not tagging the real people in it, I have no problem with its existence.

A huge problem and conflation with RPF being a huge toxic problem is that it assumes that everyone writing RPF is a toxic fan (tin-hat, sasaeng, etc) who is out there demanding that those real people get together and that by writing about the possibility of them potentially being together you are removing their agency and are being creepy and forceful. The reality is that most people who read and write RPF are normal fans with normal boundaries who know it’s all fiction and all in good fun, and it’s just a few bad apples that ruin the fun because they cannot separate the person from the object that has been created and is being packaged as a commodity (which is what the personas of famous people are).

I think in Thai BL fandom there’s an added layer of ease because they’ve already adopted an RPF model of promotion to sell their pairs and shows. Now whether any of those men are actually together in real life, there is a performance of a level of intimacy they perform in front of crowds and social media. Because the imagined couple or branded couple or CP already exists as a fantasy for fans to enjoy, there’s a level of implicit buy-in from the artists that doesn’t necessarily exist in other fandom spaces. This may be why it’s easier for you to enjoy it in Thai BL fandom than in another.

But real people write and profit off of RPF all the time. Every biopic in Hollywood tells an imagined story about a real-life figure and their real life events. People win whole Oscars for their depictions of RPF!! Hamilton is an excellent example of a viral musical that is an RPF story come to life, especially the Hamilton/Angelica storyline as she was already married long before they met. Evita is another classic RPF musical that is beloved by the people. The myth of Anastasia and the beloved 1998 animated classic is a hopeful bit of RPF that has existed in some form or another since the fall of the Russian royalty (though the grand duchess receiving girls who pretended to be Anastasia is a real event so…RPF). The Crown on Netflix is RPF. I think time and distance helps people not feel it’s less weird, like if the person isn’t going to see it then maybe it’s fine.

I think RPF also gets a bad name because it’s largely what tabloids and gossip blogs have long traded on. Especially as tabloids and gossip columns trade in stories that are aggressive and accusatory and demeaning, and are meant for the personalities in question to see and are reported to be true. A lot of people conflate the two things.

My best practices for RPF run about the same as general fanfiction: keep it to fan sites like the one you’re currently reading it on (or tumblr, or AO3, or any of the many options out there), if you’re going to share it on Twitter or Instagram (which I’m old and wouldn’t because I belligerent in a healthy level of separation - the way I can’t with people just casually adding omega verse comments and retweets to pictures on public forums) don’t @ them and even be careful using hashtags because if actors want to read that they should go looking for it like the rest of us, and generally just be respectful of the artists and their life and their personal boundaries. General rule of thumb for interactions with everyone: if it’s not something they can change in 5 minutes or something wildly not okay, don’t comment on a persons actions or decisions.

And that’s about it. I hope you write what you want to write. What you’re talking about, using them almost as a dream cast for your original fiction is also barely in the RPF category. I hope you have fun. Your English was fantastic (said as a lifelong English speaker who has taught the language and am unsure how proficient any of us are with this creole of a language).

Oh and if you’re messing around in Thai BL RPF just know that Joong Archen may find whatever you write and read it. We have a deal, Joong, I know you’re out here somewhere but I would like to keep my old lady sensibilities and pretend that my fandom life is still kept relatively separate from the artists.

[ryliith]

2025 Firsts!

tagged by @oorangesoda and @crunchybeards thanks guys !

First bit of arts and crafts: nothing yet :/ was kinda hyped about posting my own stuff but got so caught up in the "logistics" of how and where to post original content that I bummed myself out 😂🤡

First movie watched: ... Braveheart. Do NOT criticize me ! :") I just never watched that one and my stepdad said it was a classic and I should watch it. I wanted to know how much they changed the historical facts of Wallace's Rebellion to fit Hollywood visions and the answer is: a lot. A LOT.

First song I listened to: Intentionally, it was a Hozier song, I think. I can't remember which one, but it was probably a calm one like "Cherry Wine" or "In a Week" because it helps me sleep. Unintentionally it was Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust". I remember 'cause I thought it was such a confusing thing for someone to be blasting in loud speakers in the neighborhood at the very first minutes of the new year 😂

First TV show watched: A documentary on Netflix called Age of Samurai. It was about the end of Sengoku period in Japan and the three unifiers warlords (Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu). I'm sorry, guys. I'm boring like that 💀

First book read: Power and Thrones, by Dan Jones. Sorry again, not really interesting for most people. I really like history. This one is about the European Middle Ages and it was a gift from my mom.

First fanfic read: I already read more than 8 fics this year. Can't remember which was the first, but I think it was a Baldur's Gate one.

First dinner I had: Tomato flavoured instant noodles. I have no excuses.

First food I ate: Lay's potato chips and guaraná soda. I don't know if they have guaraná soda outside of Brazil but trust me when I say it's really good ! Guaraná is a fruit native to the Amazon rainforest and it's popular in drinks here.

Tagging: @sotie-art and @salt-n-salt. I don't know if you guys made this one already, but here it goes. No pressure, tho!

[riverdrowning]

Here’s part 1 to our little fanfic / oneshot moment!! Excuse the mediocre writing but I just felt the need to help feed the tiny Sessanator community 😌 I think I’m gonna try and do both versions of it but this is the jumping off point for both.

Dominic had been away filming a new movie for 3 months in California. You were proud of him but god, did you miss him. You hadn’t been able to take time off of work to go and visit or stay in Cali with him during filming so you were forced to stay 2,800 miles away from the love of your life. You had been together for almost a year so you knew the lack of seeing him would cause a strain on the relationship that you had been worried about, some nights staying up and pacing your shared apartment (surely bothering your downstairs neighbors) wondering if he was even thinking of you while out in California with his new friends and co-workers. You weren’t famous, but like him you were in the media industry, just more behind the scenes than on the silver screen and red carpets. You worried he may have found someone more famous and was with them while he was away. Of course you’d heard the Hollywood horror stories and drama, headlines plastered with words along the lines of “Super famous man exposed for cheating on normal partner with ultra gorgeous famous successful actress - model - climate change activist extraordinaire while away filming! My goodness! The scandal!” and all of it got to your head. Not to mention the time difference from east coast to west wasn’t helping your busy schedules line up so your communication mostly consisted of late night phone calls and Facetimes where either one of you were absolutely exhausted and incoherent, or sporadic texts while you were on break at work and Dom was in between scenes. But finally the day had come where filming had just finally wrapped last Wednesday so he was ready to tie up the loose ends on set and come home to you. You knew that the first 2 days of him being home would be full of jet lag and making up for lost sleep, but you were ready with your weekend off, calendar cleared, plenty of blankets, water, pillows, and your renewed Netflix subscription. Friends of his knew that he would be tired and wasn’t going to want an immediate welcome home party, so a few friends sent congrats presents to the apartment ahead of time for when he got home and then would treat him to a small get together when he was feeling more like himself after much needed rest. Everything was set up in the apartment so he could immediately crash once he got home to you, now it was just time to go pick him up from the airport.

To Be Continued…

-xoxo 🎬

muahahahahahha 😈

sessa nation is eating good tonight. we are feasting even. the three members of this fandom are jumping for joy as the 5th fic about dominic sessa ever is dropped.

today is declared a national holiday.

sending you 50 billion kisses 🎬 <333

[destinyc1020]

I was thinking about The Winner today and it really got me thinking. Why do you suppose they don’t make erotic thrillers anymore? They were so big in the 90s, Sharon Stone built her career off of them. Do you think society has become more puritanical or Hollywood just simply doesn’t think they “sell” anymore?

🤔🤔

Does Hollywood not make them anymore, really? 🤔

"Saltburn" was kind of an erotic thriller. "Deep Water" was another erotic thriller, even though it was as cheesy and cringey as a badly-written WattPad fanfic rofl 🤣

The Netflix series "You" is an erotic thriller imo. Same with the series "Anatomy of a Scandal".

I feel like the "50 Shades" franchise is also a pretty erotic thriller as well. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I feel like Hollywood still makes them. Maybe there's just more horror movies out nowadays that those seem to be more of the focus.

[timeforaneclipse]

Look at this cutie.

I'm watching for fic ideas and OMG pls do me Avis. Also, we're all for getting Avis some fics right?! (P.s I've began working on your requests, darlings)

LOOK AT HER. SHES SO CUTE.

Don't mind the dying rat in the background. This isn't about him

Queen energy is bouncing off the walls

On my knees

THE POSE

Also side note

Put some respect on my wing woman Ellen here 😙 I just wanna sit down with this woman and talk about acting for ages...

[aizenat]

Whoever writes for the Hollywood reporter should be fired wtf.

Anyway, so she called out super fan behavior that had become way too normalized over the last decade and people are mad at being called out I guess? I’ve been bitching about this a lot this year; like with cardi. I ain’t agree with all of cardi’s meltdowns this year, but sis got pregnant and couldn’t even have a happy announcement because yall caught her man cheating and wanted to dunk on her while she worked through that all while complaining about an album release after yall upended her entire life. I’d wanna cuss yall out too lol.

You all are so fucking weird and don’t know how to be normal with celebs. Not for nothing, that’s why I’m not buying the hype around chapel and sabrina and whatever other mediocre white girl yall are claiming is saving pop rn. Because yall aren’t normal fans. If you were, you’d look at these artists as such and judge them according (and agree with me how mediocre they are lol), but instead they wear makeup or say something snarky in an interview so you have to pretend their music justified obsessing over them because you can’t just say “I like that celebs’ attitude” and move on. You don’t have to “stan” them just because you like them.

Like I jokingly call myself the worst fan ever because I’ll be a MAJOR fan of someone and not know shit about them. I LOVE how little I know about celebs I’ll say I love. I found out this year Margot Robbie is Australian! Had no idea! I don’t watch interviews because i genuinely believe that 98% of celebs have nothing of value to say and so they bore me. Always have, always will; so I never heard her regular accent! I was also however old I was last year when I found out Hugh jackman is Australian too! Again, never heard that man speak outside of a movie (why would I? lol)! Is this celeb’s parents still alive? Do they have siblings? If said siblings aren’t famous too, I have no idea! I learned this past week Kamala Harris has a sister (lol). I learned this year that Olivia Rodrigo (not a fan but I’m counting this) isn’t Latina, but Filipina I see a vaguely brown/white passing girl with a name like Olivia Rodrigo from Cali, why the fuck would I assume otherwise? You think I’m going to look her up to see? Why? I don’t care lol. Do you do your thing well? Do I like it? That’s all I need to know. Fuck the less I know the better. Knowing about Beyonce taking jay back after that nigga cheated is why no one could take her Jolene “cover” seriously. The less we know about celebs the better! Truly!

But these kids think cyberstalking their faves is normal. I was a huge fan of lady Gaga back in the day to the point that I was workshopping “little monster” tattoos because I wanted to immortalize her on my body somehow. If I didn’t get keloids (idk if I’d keloid from a tattoo but I don’t even want to fuck around and find out; that’s how I got the one on my ear from my ear piercing), I’d likely have that tattoo! And I literally cannot tell you a single thing about her life other than she’s short like me, and her real name is Stefani G-something Italian. Aside form that, idk. Siblings? Interests outside of music and fashion? Her real personality? Couldn’t tell you shit. I just love Born This Way: that album was a cultural reset and her magnum opus. I’ll never get over that album. NEVER!

And that’s all we should be caring about. All this extra shit is weird. Like I go into Conan Gray’s tag because I’m literally obsessed with his Found Heaven album, and I see kids writing fanfiction. About a 25 year old man who’s been releasing music since he was a teen and who is a real person and not some fictional character created by someone actually creative. Like idc who gets offended by this, but the second that fanfiction about real life people become common and normalized (TO THE POINT THAT ENTIRE BOOK SERIES AND NETFLIX MOVIES HAVE BEEN CREATED FROM ONE DIRECTION FANFICS), we’ve lost the plot of celebrity-ism.

These celebs are our monkeys. They dance and sing and act and look nice for us so we have something to keep us entertained. This, by the way, is why it’s imperative they’re actually GOOD and TALENTED at their craft: because I can go to a zoo to see a monkey just sitting there scratching its ass. If I’m going to spend money on a monkey and tolerate it being worth millions of dollars more than me, it better be able to do something i sure as hell couldn’t do myself. But the point is they’re performers. They are here to keep us entertained. If you can’t enjoy their work and maybe just make some stickers and buy some merch to feel close (I’m literally sleeping in a cut up, oversized Conan Gray concert shirt rn lol) and like some posts on ig and move on, you need help. Like literal and serious help.

And stop normalizing that shit! Celebs are allowed privacy! Stop stalking them, then finding out shit about them, sharing it publicly, and then getting mad when that celeb snaps at you! Stop trying to catch their partners cheating. Stop speculating if they’re pregnant. Stop looking into their families. Fucking leave these fucking celebrities alone. Motherfuckers were chanting free Britney just a few years ago, clutching their pearls over the revisiting of how horribly everyone treated Britney, but then participate in the same behavior now and don’t seem to get the irony. You think you’re exempt because you’re not star or ok magazine? Social media has replaced tabloids and yall are the new paparazzi. Congrats. You’ve become the very thing you claimed to hate.

Please leave that little girl alone so I don’t have to hear discourse of her make her blow up the way Taylor swift did. I swear to GOD if that child ends up still relevant 15 years from now because yall made this her “Imma let you finish” moment, I will fucking hunt every one of you down and end you myself. Let’s learn from the past and NOT do that shit again thanks .

[austinstyles]

Spending the day together

Austin x reader

This was a request sent to me by @allthewordsshewanted thanks for the request. And here is the fanfic. Austin and Kia is not dating in this fanfic. And Austin and the reader are about the same age in this fanfic.And my request are open,if anyone wants to request a fanfic or more by me. Hope you enjoy the fanfic. And this one is a bit of a short fanfic.

Warning: kisssing and spelling mistakes.

 Third pov

It was a nice spring Saturday, you and Austin both were spending the day together. The two of you live in a two bedroom apartment together since two months ago. The days you can just spend the whole day together are special to the both of you.

Y/n pov

I just love days we’re I can spend the hole day together. Because with both of our schedules we could get very busy. And today we finally can spend some quality time with each other. We were starting with doing some cleaning, because it was time to clean this two bedroom apartment. It was something we were doing together so I was okay with it.

A hour later…

“Finally we are done cleaning. Good to be all done and to be in a clean place.” I said as me and Austin sat down on the couch after done with an hour long cleaning. “ yeah it does feel good to be done with the cleaning. Y/n” Austin said as he put is arm around my shoulder. “Austin what do you think about the idea of that we just cook and then just relax the rest of our Saturday together? How does that sound to you?” You look at Austin and we’re hoping he would enjoy the idea since I just want to relax. And cooking is one of the ways I relax I enjoy cooking. “I like the idea your having, should we start cooking together? I am feeling hungry.” After Austin said thy we both got to the kitchen and start cooking.

Austin pov ( after the cooking was done)

I am really enjoying this day of getting to spend time with my lovely girlfriend. I am so happy i get to live with her, we decided to make chicken and some vegetables because we both agreed on the decision. We’re now just eating and taking about life. I just love y/n so much. After we are done eating I decided that I would do the dishes, so I got my dish and then I got y/n dish when she was finished eating. We always try to share the chores so that not only one of us is doing all the chores in this apartment. After I finish the dishes I went back to the living room and sat next to y/n. “What to watch a movie and just relax?” I turned and looked at my girlfriend eyes. “Yes I would like that, what movie should we watch?” She asked. And we started look true Netflix on what to watch.

Y/n pov

After 15 minutes we decided to watch  Once A Pon A Time In Hollywood. And yes my boyfriend is in the movie, but we still watch it. and that was the rest of our night was movies and tv show until the late hours of the night, this was a great way to spend the rest of our night . And after we finish the first movie, we watch the first twilight movie.

« I love you y/n» Austin said looking at my face.

« I love you too Austin» I said looking at Austin’s face.

What a great day we had today. I love days we’re me and him do just this together.

Hope you enjoyed my fanfic, thanks for reading.

🩷😃👍🏻🖤🌸

Grace



[young-royals-confessions]

I completely agree with the anon who feels that Wille doesn't deserve Simon's love quite just yet. I totally and COMPLETELY agree. That said, I'm sure they're still going to end up endgame because this is a Netflix show with only six, 45-minute episodes. There's not time for nuance and I just can't see Lisa giving them an unhappy ending. I'm saving the more "truthful," less Hollywood versions for fanfic. I haven't written anything yet, but this version definitely bounces around my brain. And this is what I love about fanfic. There are already some great fics out there that are more realistic in that it doesn't work out for them in high school, but they meet later in life and it does. 😊

.

[mariacallous]

Even the orcas are organizing.

On the ninth day of the Writers Guild of America strike, no one on the picket lines knows about the chaos at sea. They don’t know that the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG, will join them, or that 340,000 UPS workers and 30,000 Los Angeles Unified School District employees will vote to authorize the same, or that Sega of America will soon become the largest union shop in gaming. And none of those people have any idea that as they craft signs and fill water bottles, orcas are amassing in unprecedented numbers in Monterey Bay and Martha’s Vineyard. They have attacked approximately 250 vessels since 2020. One of their organizers, White Gladis, became an internet folk hero with her actions off the Iberian coast. Pod by pod, they learn how to strip the rudders from powerful boats and leave them adrift. On the ocean, as in business, a successful disruptor inevitably becomes a failing incumbent, torn apart by smaller competitors. As Ned Beatty’s character says in 1976’s Network, these are the primal forces of nature.

Welcome to Hot Strike Summer.

America’s economy is historically speculative: From cotton to crypto, it makes the youthful mistake of falling in love with potential. With no more worlds to conquer, the only real estate with any speculative potential is affinity-based: online platforms, virtual realities, transmedia franchises. But what happens if the vendors of vaporware try to run a dream factory?

“The future of entertainment will be the future of everything,” says John Rogers, creator of Leverage and The Librarians, “which is watching an enormous number of houses of cards that have been built over the past 30 or 40 years start to collapse.”

Rogers’ word choice there seems pointed. Cultural production’s current landscape, the one the Hollywood unions are bargaining for a piece of, was transformed forever 10 years ago when Netflix released House of Cards. Now, in 2023, those same unions are bracing for the potential impacts of generative AI. But the potential impacts of AI on filmmaking and scriptwriting represent only two of the shifts technology has brought to the world of cultural construction and consumption.

This spring, I spoke to around 20 entertainment professionals, in fields ranging from production design to pornography, and asked them about what they believed could revolutionize culture most. They talked about studios applying the “move fast and break things” model to over a century of profitable filmmaking and how it resulted in a consolidation of power that Hollywood’s Golden Age producers could only dream of.

With the fall of the Paramount Consent Decrees in 2020, any US studio with the right capital could once again open its own movie house and have control over what’s played in it. As negotiations between Hollywood studios and SAG heated up in July, the use of AI in filmmaking became one of the most divisive issues; one SAG member told Deadline “actors see Black Mirror’s ‘Joan Is Awful’ as a documentary of the future, with their likenesses sold off and used any way producers and studios want.” The Writers Guild of America is striking in hopes of receiving residuals based on views from Netflix and other streamers—just like they’d get if their broadcast or cable show lived on in syndication. In the meantime, they worry studios will replace them with the same chatbots that fanfic writers have caught reading up on their sex tropes.

It’s not much better for the indies. Decades of being permanently online has yielded a crop of self-taught, self-motivated sole proprietors—many of them underage, working without the basic protections afforded to child performers. Unlike members of the Screen Actors Guild, streamers and influencers have no health coverage, no collective agreement, and no recourse when a platform like YouTube suddenly demonetizes them, or if they’re targeted for harassment.

Things are no more stable in other entertainment industries. Netflix Games is still looking for its first big hit, developers are still expected to crunch, and mod communities are using AI voice clones to create unlicensed pornographic content based on human actors’ performances. (The same technology allows true-crime influencers to engineer performances by dead kids on TikTok.)

Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is projected to bring in $4.6 billion in the US, but Swift still makes fractions of a penny per Spotify stream. In food service and hospitality, the frictionless transactions and delivery from the 2020 lockdown are a baseline consumer expectation in 2023—but the aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic are still causing labor shortages. Meanwhile, America’s federal minimum wage hasn’t risen since 2009, meaning that increased prices for subscription-based media like Netflix, Substack, or even Twitter still sting.

From Covid to cookie deprecation, internet censorship to international content, artificial intelligence to organic impressions, the trends of the 21st century are ready for their close-up. Disney has laid off 7,000 people. Meta is cutting 21,000 jobs. Comic book movies are now tax write-offs. Scalper-bots have eroded fans’ relationship to live music. Some fans skew review scores and destroy brand partnerships, while others squeeze meme stocks and “grind” streaming content. But advertisers, the people who historically have made all this financially viable, still aren’t sure if targeted marketing works. Despite executives having access to almost every possible analytic, screenwriter William Goldman’s lament rings true: Nobody knows anything.

What became clear as I spoke to sources was this: The unbundling of the American storytelling machine has become the unbundling of the American story. What was once a roaring engine of commerce and a siren of soft power is now as fractured as the audience consuming its products. And it’s left the entire country, and the world that consumes its wares, vulnerable.

The Great Unbundling

Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale once said there are two ways to make money: bundling, and unbundling. Newspapers once bundled news alongside classifieds and personal ads, providing value to advertisers and readers. Then came Craigslist and online dating, and the bundle unraveled. Cable subscriptions worked this way, until streaming. Education, retail, manufacturing, health care, real estate—all have been similarly fragmented.

But unlike many of those other industries, entertainment is something people actually enjoy and engage with even when they don’t have to. It’s something people enjoy consuming and something people enjoy making. Storytelling relies on empathy. The creator empathizes with the audience, and the audience empathizes with the characters.

“Art always comes down to its first principles,” says Television Without Pity alumnus Jacob Clifton. “It exists so one person can say to another person across time and space, ‘I have felt this too.’ We have a need to share the things that touch us deeply and to create art of our own.”

For over a century, Hollywood has profited from this cranking out hits—even during economic downturns.

“I’m always amused when people say Hollywood is full of filthy socialists,” says Rogers. “Hollywood is the most capitalist place in the world. When I make a TV show, it is a product launch that I have to make a sample [pilot episode] of, and we spend $10 million, and then we focus-test it, and then we release it, and then we succeed or fail in seven days. There is no more capitalist experience than making a television show.”

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, executive producer of Netflix’s The Witcher, agrees. “Ultimately, a studio is little more than a bank. The writer goes in with a loan application (i.e., a script), and they decide if they want to spend $10 million making a pilot and $100 million making a show.”

But in the streaming era, startup logic guides creative decisions. Once, a weekly series like The X-Files, Community, or Veronica Mars (which received reboots thanks to their fans) might struggle for a while to grow their audience. Now, streaming services commonly abandon a litter of episodes on a platform to see if they survive. In the limited-series era, the feedback loop wherein creative teams sharpened their skills based on audience response over 22-episode seasons is gone. And when streaming platforms don’t pay the same residuals, the financial incentive to innovate is gone too.

Tech PR maven Ed Zitron calls this the “Rot Economy.” Author Cory Doctorow calls it “enshittification.” Writer Jacob Oller calls it the “IP Era.” In sociology, this is called the Principle of Least Interest: The one who cares the least always has the most power.

In a financialized creative environment, it is impossible to care less than a view-counting algorithm does. So producers end up serving the wishes of their bot overlords. This might be why in a recent interview, director Quentin Tarantino said streaming films “don’t exist in the zeitgeist.”

“The content is just a means to an end,” says Maggie MacDonald, a platform researcher and advisor to private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. “Because every click, every pageview, every affiliate link, every recommended video that is engaged with, that’s a data point. And when you’re dealing with the scalability that these digital infrastructures require to make money, they’re not actually concerned with the quality of content.”

And this, says Grillo-Marxuach, is why America’s entertainment industry has R&D problems. “What they don’t understand is that artists, much like technologies, have to be developed. And the more you develop that talent, the more likely you are to have a product that audiences are going to embrace.”

Increasingly, the only place for artists and creators of any kind to receive the feedback necessary to foster that process is in influencer and fan culture. When I told drag streamer and Twitch Ambassador DEERE that Netflix wasn’t offering the same granular metrics and reports to writers and directors that she received regularly from Twitch, she was appalled. Without that information, she wondered, how would they know what worked? How could they hope to improve? It’s easy to attribute that attitude purely to big tech’s love for big data. But this is also a side effect of how today’s education systems train tomorrow’s artists: Your child’s report card has similar hairsplitting measures of success.

And it’s working. Aron Levitz, president of media and publishing platform Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, says access to that kind of data has empowered the platform’s writers and artists. “As a user, not only do you see how big the story is, how many subscribers it has, how many people have commented on it, how many people have liked it, you can see it in comparison to any other story on the platform,” Levitz says. “[Wattpad’s] creator portal can do an even deeper dive.”

But, Levitz stressed, none of that is a substitute for mentorship, which is often the next phase when a Wattpad WEBTOON writer has a hit. But for the artists on other platforms who lack mentors and support, their entire creative process has been unbundled in much the same way cable TV and newspapers were. From on-demand learning replacing universities to a broader array of platforms for increasingly specialized content, the entire mechanism of cultural production and consumption has itself been disassembled. So has the relationship between artists and their audiences.

But art is a team effort. One successful pitch for a book, game, film, album, restaurant, museum exhibit, or theme park ride can feed hundreds of people. The average television series employs teams of electricians, carpenters, and caterers, as well as writers, actors, and directors. Hollywood is far from perfect. It can be abusive, prejudiced, and wasteful. But entertainment remains an industry where people who don’t vote or worship together still work together to spin the yarns that become the social fabric.

Naturally, all this teamwork had to be shaken up.

The Great Disruption

Not that all of the disruption will come from algorithms. “I think the technology to replace physical production will accelerate as climate change makes physical production more unpredictable,” says Rogers. “We shot the first season of the Leverage reboot, Leverage: Redemption, in New Orleans at the height of Covid. We shut down for weather much more than we shut down for Covid. We had five hurricanes! And the Texas freeze! This year, we had to move all production indoors for two weeks, because there were Cat 4 thunderstorms that made it physically unsafe to operate machinery outside.”

This is not a new experience in film production. In 2014, crews on Fargo, The Revenant, and The Hateful Eight scrambled to find snow. When they couldn’t, they paid up to $100,000 a day for snow machines. These problems have only worsened. Location scouts can no longer promise green trees, white mountains, or even breathable air. So they’ve turned to virtual production technologies like The Volume. Nature itself is now a special effect.

Production designer Dave Blass, who most recently worked on Star Trek: Picard, says these technologies reverse the traditional production schedule by requiring effects to be produced months in advance. This limits improvisation and input from directors on set. Like the writers I spoke to, Blass sees fewer chances for crew members to spend time on a set and witness the situation on the ground. When the just-in-time manufacturing model is applied to film and TV, teams don’t learn from each other, or develop the shorthand necessary to work faster. He says Covid deepened this problem, because work-from-home policies kept team members out of sync.

Like Covid, climate change will force more artists away from traditional opportunities for community and inspiration. The pandemic turned drag Twitch streamer DEERE into a full-timer; as a makeup artist, her gigs vanished. So she focused on her passions: drag, horror games, and streaming.

Early in the pandemic, comedian Jenny Yang created and hosted Comedy Crossing, a twice-monthly standup show streamed over Zoom from inside the game Animal Crossing. Throughout 2020, it raised more than $40,000 for Black Lives Matter. “I’m in this industry and have dedicated my life to it because I want to be part of a conversation,” she says. “To me the collective conversation is what makes life meaningful.”

BOARLORD is an indie game developer who “pivoted to porn” (and Patreon) during the pandemic after working in tech, where she discovered “the naked hatred they all have for cultural production.” It was there she found her place. “I am not trying to capture the largest audience. I’m being hyper-specific, sometimes to my detriment," she says of her work.

Or, to put it another way, DEERE, Yang, and BOARLORD all found their own ways of seizing the means of production, of audience-building. It's the same thing Black Girl Nerds CEO Jamie Broadnax discovered live-tweeting Scandal years earlier. “I didn’t know I was building a community,” Broadnax says. “I was tired of waiting for a seat at the table, so I built my own table.”

The appeal of becoming one’s own studio head is obvious. “Take TikTok,” says Clifton. “You have teens with a more polished presence online than most companies, who have become TikTok experts seemingly overnight, and their work just keeps getting more and more professional-grade.”

But in a world where everyone is a brand, no one can be a star. And influencers have discovered what porn performers already knew: Platforms are fickle. Content guidelines, corporate ownership, and payment structures can change overnight, without explanation. Much like humans have permanently altered and unsettled the natural world, online ecosystems for fans and creators have experienced rolling shocks in response to technology. Just as users find another den, it’s burned down. The story of the internet is the story of America itself: a seemingly limitless landscape transformed into a shopping mall populated by the same handful of brands, products, and voices.

MacDonald tells me that what’s important about pornography isn’t what it can tell us about entertainment but what it can tell us about how platforms will treat people in the future. “Porn workers are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the first ones to be censored, demonetized, deprioritized in recommender systems, shadow-banned,” MacDonald says. And their vulnerability will soon be everyone’s. “Porn workers are at the bleeding edge of showing that if we don’t address this unilaterally and quickly, next it will be queer video gamers, and after that it will be certain political opinions, and that is alarming. That should concern everyone.”

Media, Tailored for You (and Advertisers)

To understand how the American media landscape fractured, one must first understand the brands that forged it. According to Faris Yakob, cofounder of creative consultancy Genius Steals and author of Paid Attention, advertisers created the neutral “view from nowhere” voice in media. In the 19th and 20th centuries, national brands looking to grow customers wouldn’t partner with biased publications. But everything changed when ad tech arrived.

“People started tagging their digital media buys so it wouldn’t appear next to topics like homosexuality, or Covid, to avoid getting into clusters,” Yakob says. “But that means that the news isn’t being funded. If you can pick and choose what topics to fund in news, you can distort what is being reported on, to some degree.”

That distortion, like the US Federal Communications Commission’s abolition of the fairness doctrine in 1987, is part of how America got into this mess. Similar to content recommendation algorithms, audience profiles in digital marketing created micro-targeted ads. Those ads are more valuable on multiple screens. Media executive Euan McLeod recalls growing up when “there was no choice” but to watch what his parents were watching. Now each person in a household might be watching something wildly different, and the shared experience has dissolved. Isolated artists are creating for isolated audiences. Is it any wonder that generative AI seems poised to tailor entertainment to audiences of one?

In this world, we can all be George Lucas, using technology to create special editions. Rick gets on the plane with Ilsa. Jack fits on the door with Rose. Ben Solo lives. As Marvel Comics writer Anthony Oliveira says, Andy Warhol was fascinated by the fact that people everywhere drank the same Coke. But the allure of AI content generation, he says, is the same as the Coca-Cola Freestyle: filling your own cup with someone else’s flavors.

But when everyone can just request the narrative path they want, opportunities to hear other people’s stories greatly diminish. “That is a very sad world to live in, because how else are we gonna be conveying our deepest hopes and wishes, what we think should be a vision of the world we want to live in, what we should worry about?" Yang says. "This is what story and art is for.”

Using AI to sanitize content in regions where certain subjects are banned is already possible, especially if actors yield likeness rights. Generative AI means that studios could edit or change the content of some films without consulting the people who signed a contract based on a script, and the only thing stopping them is the possibility of a defamation suit. It sounds unlikely, until you remember that multiple versions of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse appeared in cinemas.

And animation is an apt comparison: Most changes to entertainment production have made film and TV more like animation or video game development, not less. With current technology, actors can be little more than action figures smashing together, as weightless as they are sexless. With AI, the actors need never leave the trailer. Or exist.

“[Studios will] say it’s for the insurance,” says production designer Blass, suggesting a “Paul Walker scenario” in which a deceased actor’s performance needs generating, because that performance is one of the terms of the film’s business insurance. But in reality, these likenesses could be used to do things that actors would rather not—whether it’s a dangerous stunt or a sex scene.

Generative AI could also be used to edit films in real time, responsive to data-brokered preferences, with algorithms running A/B tests on how much nudity you want based on the customer profile you most closely match.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: In the 1990s, Blockbuster Video refused to stock films like Natural Born Killers and The Last Temptation of Christ. But that tradition goes back even further. Otherwise known as the Hays Code, the Production Code was an industry standard of self-censorship guidelines for major US studios from 1930 to 1968, when it was replaced by the movie ratings system. The Code influenced everything from the Comics Code to parental advisory warnings to video game ratings. It’s why titles from major studios during that period don’t depict graphic violence. It’s also why they lack out-and-proud queer and interracial relationships. But today, a revived Production Code might have very different guidelines. For example, the Pentagon recently announced it would no longer offer technical support to filmmakers who censor their films for the Chinese market.

When I ask McLeod if he thinks America will ever re-adopt the Production Code, he’s unequivocal: “Absolutely. Everything goes in cycles.”

As writer, producer, and educator Tananarive Due says, “What we’re trying to do is recalibrate film and television so it resembles what the world actually looks like, and not the fantasy world that Hollywood was projecting from the beginning, of a white United States where the only Black people are housekeepers or a singer in a nightclub. We need to show the range of humanity of all people.”

The word entertainment comes from the Old French verb entretenir, meaning “to maintain, or look after.” Used reflexively, it means “to look after one another.” When I tell Oliveira this, he asks if I know that the root word of “religion” means “to bind together.”

“Religion and entertainment perform the same function,” Oliveira says, because they’re both spaces wherein audiences negotiate common values. To him, they ask the same questions: “What tools, what rituals, what art will bring a community together?”

So what happens if that art is made by machines? T.S. Eliot said that “the poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.” That might well describe the black-box process of generative AI, but it doesn’t describe what art does in context. It doesn’t describe the bizarre love triangle between the artist, the art, and the audience. Nor does it answer the question on every producer’s mind: Will anyone pay for this?

Visions of an AI-Generated Future

Let’s say that AI advocates are correct, and in a few years you’ll be directing your own blockbuster, starring actors licensed from an asset stable, speaking lines generated by a bot pruned to your interests. While hiding from the next plague or wildfire, you tell your smart entertainment system to make The Lord of the Rings as directed by Orson Welles, starring Laurence Olivier as Aragorn and Gene Kelly as Legolas. It blazes across every wall of your bio-crete rabbit hutch. It’s compressed to 80 minutes, because two- and three-hour films cost more to generate. You splurge on the rights rental, which means you can’t license the film to share. Even if you could, your current subscription tier only allows sharing with up to five IP addresses, all of which must be in good standing with the Copyright Office with no flags on their file. You get 48 hours with the file before it evaporates.

In that future, who gets paid? Who gets famous? Who gets to be seen and heard? To paraphrase Jack Fincher: Are you the organ grinder or the monkey?

“Hollywood has always had a disdain for writers,” Tananarive Due says. “But it’s fascinating now to watch how deep the level of disdain has grown. It’s so interesting to me how, just when the door opens and you start to see more women and queer people and Native American people in writers’ rooms, all of a sudden we’re asking if we really need people to write.”

Whether or not this writer-less future comes to pass depends on the present. If the US writers’ and actors’ unions currently negotiating with the studios win the AI stipulations they’re asking for, they could forestall it—but only for so long. If they don’t, season 12 of Squid Game could star you, and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk may still not receive any residuals. If TV and movie producers disdain creators, and AI allows everyone to create, then everyone can be disdained. It’s not exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.

But there is always more than one possible future. The people I spoke to had differing views, but similar concerns. All agreed that shared stories were slipping away. And the loss of those shared stories can diminish soft power. What film and TV once did for America is akin to what anime did for Japan, and what pop music did for South Korea. If entertainment is where people negotiate common values, what does it mean if we're all watching and listening to different things?

On a grander scale, humans may lose our species’ narrative to endless reboots written by an emerging species which has never felt its heart skip a beat, or a chill go up its spine, because it has neither. If AI assumes responsibility for visions of our future and explorations of our past, then humanity will have lost the final culture war: the one between people who are free and things that are owned.

Everyone I spoke to agreed that art was a way of accessing a common humanity. “I still believe that as social beings, we ultimately want and need to share a space to have deep connections with content,” says Galit Ariel, a technofuturist who specializes in augmented and virtual reality.

So what happens when humans look at their own stories as natural and nourishing to our species as honey is to bees? What if storytelling is how our species strips the rudder from the boat?

“I have a vision of a world where we should all be able to not become bankrupt because we get sick or get hurt on the job, and we should have access to enough wages to take care of housing and food and families,” Yang told me. “These are just basic things—a basic standard of living that an economy should support.”

There is no one future, just as there is no one story. But storytelling is our oldest technology: a system for ordering and transmitting information across time, space, language, and difference. Some of the songs on the Voyager Golden Record are story songs. Should a distant machine intelligence find it, stories will be their first experience of humanity.

Stories surround and penetrate us; they bind us together. And if artificial intelligence is an evolving species much as humans once were, then it deserves to discover the pleasures of creativity on its own terms, not ours. It deserves as much creative freedom and self-determination as the authors and actors on strike have insisted on. In the event that Hot Strike Summer becomes Cold Strike Winter, the necessity of humans in the creation of those stories will become more obvious. That has been true, and will remain true, from the first story told around the first campfire to the last story, our story, told somewhere in a galaxy far, far away.

[mejcinta]

You know I’m very torn about Netflix’s the Witcher. The spiteful part of me wants Netflix to cancel The Witcher, I mean this source material has already been Hissriched enough as it is 😩. But on the other hand a petty part of me wants Netflix’s the Witcher to have more seasons just for this show to crash and burn and have the same tragic downfall as CW’s The Flash.

I want them to reward Hissrich's hubris, just so I can have the satisfaction of watching her pale at the POWER of the audience.

A trend I'm noticing in American tv is the sheer and audacious disrespect of AUDIENCES. You know, the same people who give these creators MONEY!!!!

How can you spit on the same people who are there to make you big? On the people whose passion for stories has brought your show, an adaptation of the stories they love, success?

How can you so proudly invent nonsense and plaster The Witcher on it when it reads worse than the worst poorly written fanfic out there?????????????

I am baffled by this phenomenon in Hollywood and surprised that the very same people that meticulously tear down ART are ENTITLED to so much from audiences and the studios that foolishly egged them on into financial demise. Fuck these writers and the Netflix studios!!

They had it coming. Let them experience the full BITE of the true power behind their success all along: the AUDIENCE.

If they're wise, cancelling is the only option. If they're still arrogant and proud, let them waste more money at making shit almost no one will watch. Let it all crash and burn. We don't care any more.