#◆ BLAME IT ON THE MOVIES

[creatureshrieks]

Blame it on the movies ! || Kurt Kunkle Scream AU

The Story: Kurt Kunkle is your average, everyday, friendly neighborhood 23 year old with no accomplishments, no talents, and no redeemable qualities. Sure, he’s ‘nice’. Polite, as much as he can be. But it’s always twinged with just a little bit of desperation, a little bit of ‘too much’ at all times. He’s desperate for attention, for someone to look at him. For someone to see him, not through him. But, he’s got a plan for that, you know? Sure, his parents never gave him the love he craved and he never had friends growing up... but hey, that’s okay! He’s got a phone, he’s got the internet, and he’s got the drive. He’s got the hunger for it - He can become famous! If he records himself every day, every second, and posts about his life and hops on all the latest trends he’ll get famous in no time right? Right? It’s been years, of course. He’s been doing this since he was a kid, begging for attention. He just doesn’t get it, what’s he doing wrong? Why can everyone else get famous but not him? Even the next door kid who’s only talent is screaming as he fucks up playing video games gets more views than him. But he’ll still try you know? He’s got to. He needs to and, hey, movie reviews are popular right? So he’ll just go see the newest Stab movie. He’s heard their good, at least, and he likes horror. So he goes to see it, sitting in a dark movie theater all alone while the endless stream of victims falls on screen. The credits roll. Based on the novels by Gale Weathers. And that’s when it hits him. Oh, that’s it. That’s right. These aren’t just made up stories! Well, for the most part. These are movies based on real life. And who doesn’t know Sidney Prescott? Who doesn’t know Ghostface - Or the ones who carried that title? Billy Loomis, of course. Stu Macher, the originals. It’s been years, but their name still holds so much weight. So much history.  So much fame. So he returns home and he runs to the internet, delving deep into Stab forums, blogs, video essays. He reads all the comments, all the opinions. He watches all the movies, even the shitty ones. He read the novels, front to back. He becomes obsessed. And it’s easy to see why these names are still known. Why Ghostface is more than just a cheap Halloween costume. People love a good horror story. So why not give them one?

The Motive:

Kurt wants fame. Simple as that. He wants the fame Ghostface has, he craves it. He needs it. He’s obsessed with the idea of Ghostface, of the weight and name and fear it carries. Of the attention it brings. He’s obsessed with the killers. But, there’s a small difference. Kurt knows the ending of every story. He’s read them all, you know. He knows the way they all end: Ghostface dies, in the end. Every single time they’ve been killed off, desperate to escape with their crimes. Desperate to pin the blame on someone else. But that’s not for Kurt, you know? He doesn’t want to be the lone survivor, he doesn’t want to be the poor little victim. He doesn’t care, you know? Kurt’s always been depressed. Suicidal. And you know, even the killers get remembered for how they’ve been slain. And Kurt doesn’t care if he lives. If he dies. And If he kills Sidney? If he kills Sam? Oh, that’s just a bonus. Something the other Ghostfaces could never do. Killing off the final girl? That’s never been done before. But you know what he really wants to do? He’s got a plan. The record for the most kills is, oh... 13? Oh, he needs to do better than that. Much better. He needs to kill 20, 25, 30. 50. He needs to kill more than any other Ghostface ever has, more than any ever could, just to get his name immortalized. Kurt doesn’t want to be the victim. Kurt wants to be Ghostface.

TL;DR: Kurt Kunkle is obsessed with attention, something mom and dad never gave him. So he tries to turn to the internet, he’s been doing this shit since he was a kid, but now he’s 23 and has nothing to show for it. But you know who does? Billy Loomis, 18 years old. Jill Roberts, 17. They became immortal, even in death, their name loved and loathed by all. And it’s always better to be hated than to never be known at all. So he gets obsessed with the murders and Ghostface and attempts to become the Ghostface. He has no issues killing, in fact he begins his spree by killing his own mother. Kurt, however, is slightly different from the others. Unlike his predecessors, Kurt Kunkle has no interest in becoming the victim, he has no interest in cunning schemes to pin it all on the final girl or someone she knows or some other bullshit side character. No, Kurt Kunkle only wants to be Ghostface. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies because he is, in fact, suicidal and knows that even if he dies, if he kills enough he’ll still be remembered. So he needs to kill, more and more, just to get his name out there. He’ll play Ghostface until he’s literally cornered and killed, unable to stab his way out of it.

[bethhxrmon]

Alright, it’s time for an analysis that no one asked for! So, starting off I would like to say that the “Which Kurt Kunkle Are You” instagram account has done a far better job of analyzing the movie and having humor in a similar tone to the movie than I have. I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel here, if you want some real in-depth and good analysis plus some fun memes and good art, check it out!

This is going to be a combination of a critique on Billy Hargrove and Kurt Kunkle’s characters as well as the audience reaction. Keeping in mind that I’m not an expert and it’s been a week since I’ve seen Spree and over a month since seeing Stranger Things 2 and 3 (double majoring and doing online uni is time-consuming). I might miss things and I might interpret things differently from you. That’s just how it’s gonna be.

So let’s start off with the whole Billy vs Kurt deal that one lovely anon decided to bring to my attention. My first point is going to be that comparing Billy and Kurt is like comparing apples and oranges, they’re both fruit. In this case, they’re both villains. That’s where the similarities end, unless you wanna bring up that they’re both from California lmao.

Kurt is the main character of his respective movie (whether he’s a protagonist or if that’s Jessie can be up for debate imo), whereas Billy was intended to be the human antagonist (pretty sure that’s what the Duffers said) of season 2. Obviously this opens up Kurt to be a more well-written character. He has lots of depth and development as a character and a true, complete arc. His death was, frankly, unavoidable. I say this as someone who likes his character.

Meanwhile Billy is a side character and one of the least important characters of the entire series. His job is to be a road block in season 2. He was also used as a way to prove the show acknowledges racism in that time (it’s very blatant and there’s no systemic racism in the show but that’s an essay for another time). This is something that since the season’s release, Dacre has tried to backpedal on. I’m not faulting him for that, I don’t know the guy, but it sucks that the show is essentially trying to erase its own antagonist. Anyways, his death isn’t a shocker. What was a bit surprising (more disappointing actually) was that the third season doesn’t acknowledge his actions at all. Billy has no character arc aside from the fact he has a shitty dad and that he used to have a mom. Wow. His death was also unavoidable, not much to be done with his character. I don’t blame the Duffers, they have plenty of characters to work with that are actually enjoyable.

Now, let’s get into the audience reaction/fan bases. Let me just say it here: if you’re attracted to Kurt or Billy or any other antagonist in a physical sense, good for you! I hope you’re living your best life either way whether I can relate or not. What becomes an issue is when you don’t acknowledge the bad things the fictional character has done.

In the case of the Spree fandom, to my knowledge (I’m not an all-knowing internet being, I can be wrong about things), there aren’t any “Kurt deserved better” or “Justice for Kurt uwu owo” posts. The fandom on the whole has determined that Kurt deserved what he got. He is a shitty human being, he killed people. In other shocking news, fire is hot. No one in the fandom actually wants to date or marry Kurt Kunkle. No one is genuinely trying to imagine a healthy relationship with him. Why? Because that’s not how his character works! “Stanning” him, and my one-time use of the term “Kurtslut” is meant to be funny and a joke. It’s in the same vein as the satirical, sarcastic tone of Spree itself. 

So I’ll admit it, I don’t intentionally go into the Billy tag very much, if at all now that I think about it. His character doesn’t intrigue me at all. However, since people love to come on anon and give input no one asked for, I’m aware that some people refuse to even acknowledge all of Billy’s misdeeds. They think he deserves better and shouldn’t have died. This entirely misses the point of Billy’s canon characterization. If people like his character so much, then they should accept him for what he is as a character. Otherwise, do you really like that character? Or do you just feel bad because his dad’s a shithead?

Also, this is a bit of a side note, but most of my beef with this side of the Stranger Things fandom has come more from the Harringrove end of things (I have a whole post on that). It’s a screwed up ship. I’m only saying this to cover my bases because this should go without saying, if anyone started to ship Kurt with one of the canon characters in Spree, I wouldn’t be here for it. That’s that on that.

To conclude if you made it this far, no one is stanning or glorifying Kurt. Some of us are just attracted to a fictional character. It’s not that deep. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!

[creatureshrieks]

We can blame it on the movies !

[creatureshrieks]

I had a dream last night about being Ghostface so I got spurred to finish my Scream AU, lmao.

(Not spoiler free if you’ve never seen Scream) This AU follows the Scream franchise timeline- though, theoretically, it can take place between any of the movies, my ‘canon’ for this AU will be after 6 just to keep inline with the story. If anyone wants to play during a specific time frame, I can plot around it. That said, to better understand how Kurt works he’s basically a mix between Mickey and Jill. Mickey wants to be the star of his own film and Jill is poisoned by social media and her own family’s fame, wanting it for herself. So, he works kind of like them with his desires. He doesn’t actually care about the state of the movies (Unlike Richie and Amber) and has no personal investment against anyone (Unlike Richie’s family and Billy/Stu), and he’s focused entirely on gaining fame via using the Ghostface Killer persona. However, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect his source material: He knows what he’s doing, what he’s basing himself on. He’s going to follow the rules: Voice modulator, scary movie trivia, phone calls, taunting. He idolizes the idea of Ghostface. He’s the perfect model, really- Ghostface knows how to get famous. Ghostface knows how to kill. He wants to become Ghostface, wants to attach his name to that title and be known, loved, and hated. He doesn’t even care about the ending: he knows how it always ends. Knows he’ll die, he knows no Ghostface has ever survived the final girl. But that’s okay. Because they’re still famous. And it’s better to be famous and dead than a nobody and alive.