Overview
Amanda Bannington is a Los Angeles YouTuber and live performer in A Cancellation. She is thirty-four, wealthy, and publicly defined by two successful channels: AmandaHere, her lifestyle and personality brand, and Susie Sparkles, a deliberately abrasive child-facing comic persona.
Amanda lives at 1387 John L. Vega Road with her fiance Andy Field and her live-in assistant Kale Flores. She is described as having long deep-brown hair, dark eyes, a lightly tanned European complexion, and a full figure she knowingly uses as part of her public image. She experiences intrusive images of violence, injury, and death, including a recurring fantasy of being melted alive in acid.
Career and Public Persona
Amanda’s career depends on balancing her own desired image against the higher viewership of Susie Sparkles. Her manager Ken Lang tells her that an AmandaHere music video is artistically good but commercially misdirected because Susie brings the audience. Amanda responds by trying to prove that she can become a broader live performer, celebrity collaborator, actor, and touring comic.
She hires Nam Hae-jin as a camera operator and gradually relies on her for production, emotional labor, and crisis work. A successful Wiltern show convinces Amanda that she has solved the Amanda/Susie double act, and Ken begins arranging a larger tour. She also pursues collaborations with Zeke Nakhla, Sugar Chibi, and other younger creators whose status both attracts and humiliates her.
Collapse
Amanda’s public collapse grows from several overlapping scandals. Maya Wright exposes the Bannington family’s history through a viral video, forcing Amanda to defend her treatment of her twin sister Katherine Bannington and former classmate Susan Cairn. Amanda’s response briefly works, but the same defensive habits later make her public attack on Maya during a live show look retaliatory.
Amanda also develops a sexualized private rapport with Michael Senesky, a high-school sophomore. She sends him a suggestive topless selfie, flirts with him after he buys her red swimsuit, and later meets him in person before fleeing when she seeing his young appearance. Michael’s interview with Sapphire Van Ness for Surviving Amanda Bannington follows shortly after.
At the same time, Amanda is stalked by Henry Owens, who sends gifts and letters as the Phantom. After her brand collapses, Henry reveals himself and offers to attack Amanda’s enemies. Amanda names Sapphire as the target. The crisis reaches Brad Miller’s death when Amanda misleads Brad into confronting FBI agents with a shotgun. Amanda later beats the most serious charges in her criminal case but lives secluded and offline in Northern California.