On May 2, 2023, the Writers Guild of America went on strike to demand fair wages, appropriate working conditions, and to secure the future of the profession in the A.I. age. While I support them fully, the panic that followed put me into a serious funk. Writers are the backbone of Hollywood and without them, I knew the projects I had been looking forward to for months would be halted indefinitely as our greatest wordsmiths flocked to the picket line. This meant no new American work to write about, no new press interviews to watch, and ultimately less to look forward to which proves especially detrimental as life gets harder and harder. I lamented. I worried. I,I,I. All the while, the strike continued as the AMPTP refused to come to the table and recognize the writers demands. What the hell is taking so long? Anime summer is months away what am I gonna do? At this point you’re noticing a theme to my concern I hope? Then, the other shoe dropped and SAG-AFTRA went on strike. “Wahala we are finished!”, I thought, “This is really it for Hollywood, O!”. This feeling of despair only sunk in deeper when the list of demands and the studios horrendous response began circulating on Twitter. Both unions’ asks were completely reasonable and if anything, I thought they should be asking for way more. Like wdym ‘Rejected’ to paying people on time? Then on TikTok, my favorite actors began coming out clip after clip showing how little they make in residuals. Amounts as low as 3 CENTS. 3 actual cents for making a beloved show even better with their performance. It’s also come out that most of the members of SAG-AFTRA don’t make enough to qualify for health insurance. Dear reader, the threshold is $26,470 annually. Can you imagine having to live in one of the most expensive areas in the country, perform to the best of your ability consistently, have to deal with being famous or semi-famous, and be flat broke?! People the world over think you really got it like that and the whole time you don’t even make enough to rent a room. You could get nominated for the Emmys one moment and rejected from a job at Target the next it makes no feasible sense. Meanwhile, some CEO somewhere in a badly fitted button up who couldn’t create any art to save his own life makes tens of thousand a MINUTE on your labor. It’s absolutely gross and then the final straw. Word got out that AMPTP doesn’t plan to return to the table. They plan to ‘wait them out’ and let writers and actors lose their homes in the process, then they assume that both unions will be too broken to fight and except whatever terms they have, even if that means the end of both professions. Suddenly, all those postponed projects and canceled press junkets. Any apprehension I had about the strike completely evaporated along with my misconception of people in Hollywood having it better than me. In fact, I could intimately relate as someone who has worked for so many jobs that expected too much and paid too little, all while disrespecting me as a human in the process. As someone who knows what it’s like to look for quarters under the bed in the hopes that I can find enough to buy myself lunch because even though payday is tomorrow, I need to eat today. So no, I don’t care how long it takes, or how little I may have to write about, or even what I might ‘lose’ as far as TV shows and movies go, I can just learn to deal because this is so much bigger than any of that. If the unions lose this fight, this will be the end of Hollywood run by real people for real people and it’ll tell every other soulless oligarch that they can destroy all of our livelihoods with little fight.