#was it a personal thing he just happened to be shredded when that dumbass script crossed his desk what's the story!

[jimmyspades]

Related to that last ask: it’s so funny how jacked Jimmy is in Supernova. Where the hell did that come from why did he do all that

[bippityboppitybibuck]

Scarred Bark, Broken Heart

15x18 coda/alternate ending of sorts || WC 2580, also read on AO3 here

MCD, depressed Dean, (Tree!Cas ???), brief mention of suicidal tendencies, open but hopeful ending, part one of a two part series, Canon divergence

Dean doesn't know what made him decide on the tree. They didn’t have a body to burn, not this time. They didn’t have a six-foot hole to dig and he felt odd putting a marker over unmarred earth. So when he stumbled upon a tree in the woods surrounding the bunker, one with a beehive tucked nine feet up he didn’t even realize he had popped out his pocket knife and started carving until the first three letters were written in the wet bark.

His throat burned as he worked. The same knife sliced skin wide so that protection could be painted onto a door that was never going to hold. Cas was always ready to bleed for him, always ready to do whatever he needed to keep him safe.

Tears threatened to ruin his work by blocking his field of view but each time he tilted his head to the sky and tried to breathe through it.

The squared-off letters seem to mock him once he finishes, if Cas’d been here the letters would have been beautiful, a burst of power and it could have been script etched into the wood. Instead, it's his blocky ugly writing.

Something hideous rears its head in his chest, and staring at the letters, staring at the name. He always deserved more than Dean could give him, than this world could give him. He deserves more than a scar in some bark in a forest hardly anyone treks into. He deserves more than to die without knowing—to die thinking he wasn’t loved.

Dean doesn't look to the sky as his eyes fill again. Sam always said he needed to let himself feel. That ignoring your trauma isn't the same as dealing with it. But he worries that if he gives into it fully he’ll never resurface. Drowned in his own mind with the pain and regret, the fear and the sadness that washes in like the tide when his guard drops.

So he doesn’t let himself sink, he treads as best he can, hearing Bobby’s gruff voice in his head just like when he was a kid, ‘keep your ears above water son, that’s the only way to make sure you stay alive out there’, it’s like Bobby knew exactly why he needed that information. Like he knew it wasn't about swimming.

He’s not sure how long he spends looking at the carving, or when the wind picks up and shakes shivers through his body. He’s not sure when the tears dry and the wracking sobs take over.

Cas looked at peace when it came for him, and it ruins him to know that. To know that loving him brought him to the one moment of true happiness. Loving a worthless, broken, fucked up killer—no. No, Cas said he wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a monster or a tool to be used and thrown aside, and yet he killed another hadn’t he? Killed him by doing nothing at all because that's what happens, that’s his legacy, people get close to him and they get killed. They always get killed.

Dean’s not sure when he heads inside again, or how he finds himself at the tree almost every day, week in and week out.

For the longest time he can do nothing but look, words that fight to break free, stay trapped behind the years of burying what he always felt, stay tapped behind the last dam he has standing in his soul the soul Cas saved—a good lot that did. He knows the dam won’t hold forever and all he can do is imagine the damage when it does finally break.

He doesn't always go alone either. Sam takes trips to the tree by himself sometimes but mostly he goes when Dean does. Jack trails after him every once in a while too but they usually let him go alone.

The first snow of the season begins to fall as he stands at the tree, the beehive long since gone dormant, its occupants burrowing in for their months-long sleep. And God how Dean envies their ability to escape reality for longer than it takes to sleep off a hangover.

It’s early for the first snow, weeks too soon but the world has been colder since—well since.

It’s been a while since he last talked while he visited, the dam broke finally or rather the levels grew too high on one side and it began to leak. Still, back then he hadn’t said much of anything.

He tries to talk now, he tries to do the same as what he did at his father's grave all those years ago trapped in a djinn dream, trapped in a world that seemed so perfect until he peeled back its layers. Kinda just like the one he actually lived in.

“Ca-s,” his voice breaks before he manages to speak the single syllable. No one is around to notice though, no matter how much he wishes he was speaking to a person instead of an unfeeling unrelenting piece of wood. Still though, it's easier to talk when no one is there to hear it, he doesn't have to hold as much back.

“Cas, I-,” Dean lets out a rough hum as he collects himself. This speech is going to be different. He can feel it, the emotions within him seem to grow choppy, spilling over the dam wall more and more and he just knows that whatever happens, he won’t be returning to the bunker whole.

“I keep thinking, y’know, back to that night you walked into that barn in Illinois, you told me that good things do happen, and I mean it’s not like I expected you to, but you didn’t believe me when I told you that nothing good happens to me. I don’t know if in the time from then to no—I don’t know if you ever figured out that I was right or not but I think that the one good thing that happened to me was the worst thing to happen to me too.” Dean stares at his name, willing it to actually be him. The cold bites at his fingers and his nose. His toes grow cold in his boots but he doesn’t move to leave he barely even feels it anyways.

“When Chuck told us that you were the one who never listened,” he chokes out a broken laugh, “it honestly made perfect sense, you did always say that it was our story, that we were the thing that was real in a world of manufactured realities. And when he said it I swear it was like I was standing in that ratty kitchen, minutes before Lucifer rose, minutes before you di—died for the first time. And I thought as Chuck went on and on how maybe I wasn’t dreaming it up, maybe it wasn't Chuck’s doing, and I was going to try to talk to you about it, after a shit ton of booze mind you.” He’s quiet for a long time, the snow begins to blanket the space around him and he thinks about how he’ll never get to brush snow off of the lapel of Cas’ stupid trench coat.

Just the thought starts a domino effect, his mind rushing through everything he wanted and everything he’ll never get now and it’s so overwhelming it sends him to his knees. Of course, because he clearly will never be able to catch a break all it does is remind him of the last time they were in purgatory together, the fear and heartbreak that shook him to his core, the devastation of Cas brushing off what he wanted to say because fuck it was so much more than his prayer.

“You beat me to it though, and then—well we both know what happened next.” His fingers are ice when they wipe the tears from his eyes. They jolt him, a shock to his system.

“You never gave me a chance to respond, didn’t even give me a damn moment to process any of it. And you’re a selfish son of a bitch for that because that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t—. I needed you to stay, I needed you to hear it too. I won’t ever be able to stay mad at you because I never have been, not for any of the shit you pulled in the past. But that? That was a new low.” He sniffles from the cold or from his tears he doesn't know but he does it all the same.

“Y’know if you were here right now you’d tell me to go inside because humans catch colds so easily and you don’t know how fucking much I need to hear that now Cas.” His heart plummets in his chest again. He feels sick all over again so he clenches his jaw to keep from heading too far down that road.

“I remember the first time you got sick, god you were a nightmare the entire time and I dealt with Sam getting sick every year since I was old enough to open kids cold medicine,” Dean laughs thickly, tears lodged in his throat. The strain of holding it all back shreds at the muscle and it screams with every breath he manages to shake into his lungs.

“I remember everything Cas, all of it, every fight, every drink, every goddamn time we looked at each other. And yet I can’t recall a fucking thing because I thought I had more time. After everything we’d gone through, I still thought we would have more time. It's all broken and jumbled and set to static and I can’t handle it because it's crystal clear and as muddy as anything because I thought I’d be able to make more, replace what got muddled. I thought you had more time.”

He shuffles around and presses his back against the trunk of the tree. His ass is uncomfortable as hell what with the roots and the wet cold earth below him but his knees appreciate the switch.

“I’m having a hard time this time because a part of me thinks just like it did after the whole leviathan fiasco. I swear you’re going to come back, that this is all a mix-up, that if I wait just a little longer, hold on a little longer, put my gun down just one more night that you’ll be back. But it’s been weeks Cas and nothing’s changed. I wake up and I go to sleep in a world that doesn’t have you in it and I was always okay before because you were just there even if I didn’t have you like I wanted I still got to see you, watch you, lo—be with you. But now it’s all empty, and no matter how ironically appropriate that is given the dumbass move you made a year and a half ago, I’m hanging on by a thread man. And Sam doesn't know how to help, even with all his dead girlfriends as experience to draw from.” He’s quiet for a long time, chewing on his lip, flexing his fingers together as he just sits.

“He says I need to stop making jokes to cover it all up but that's all I know how to do. I mean you can’t mourn your mom if you have a baby brother to take care of so you joke. You can’t talk about what the internet says is PTSD because there are monsters to hunt and people to save so you joke. You can’t let yourself be vulnerable because that means death so you joke. You can't tell your best friend what you need to so you joke. You hide behind something safe because no one wants you to show what's really there.” Dean's mind is a mess right now, jumping from one point to another, skipping ahead and falling behind. He has so much he wants to say and it’s like he’s trying to say it all at once.

He can almost hear Cas’ voice admonishing him for thinking that he didn't have a support system, that he didn't have people who loved him and wanted him to be okay and it strips him raw. Because it’s only been a few months, how could he already be forgetting his voice, or which way he tilted his head when he didn’t understand some random human action, which foot he started with when he stood up from a chair, if he liked smooth or crunchy peanut butter better even if it was all molecules to him, what his arms felt like wrapped around him, how he sighed when Dean was being an idiot, what his smiles looked like as he sat at their kitchen table talking with Jack.

How was he already forgetting all of the little things that made him fall for the fallen angel, heaven's most loved, heaven's most corrupted.

His chest is cracked so wide every part of him falls inside, his very soul falls into the pit, tumbles down and down and down because there are a million things that he and Cas will never get to do but there are a billion things Cas will never do again.

Sure Cas’ll never learn to dance but he’ll never smile again. He’ll never have the chance to memorize the words to the songs Dean showed him but he’ll never feel the sun on his skin again. Or laugh or cry or sleep in late. He’s never going to make another milk run, be it a monster hunt or an actual milk run. He’ll never watch another bee documentary or hug his son again.

Cas lived hundreds of millions of years and yet there was so much he left unfinished, he’s been around for eons and yet he still died too soon.

It takes him a moment to remember that even if Cas had been around since the Cambrian explosion in reality he’d only experienced humanity for eleven years. And all of it was spent fighting, shouldn't he get a fucking chance to just live for a fucking second. Let himself relax, shake the weight off his shoulders, just be finally?

Dean turns and looks from his position at Cas' name, the angle is atrocious so he can barely see the etchings.

There are a billion things he’ll never do again, a million things he’ll never get to experience. And for someone who's given all that Cas has given to this world, that just won’t do.

“You told me love drove me, you said that I fought for everything because of love, that I taught you how to and fuck Cas I don’t know how that's possible. But I’ve fought for nearly forty years because of love and there's no way in hell I am stopping that now. I’m going to fight for you, I’ll fight Chuck for you, I’ll fight against the anger that still lives inside me and dammit I’ll fight to get you back because no fucking way am I losing you forever after that speech. If love drives me Cas then you, you…” Dean takes a deep breath. “Happiness is in just saying it, but I can’t tell a piece of wood, so I’ll wait until you are back, because I will get you back. I don’t care what it takes. You need to hear it, you deserve to hear it. You deserve to know.”

I’m working on a rewritten ending for Supernatural that is set after this little alt ending to 15x18 because the actual ending... left a lot to be desired. Turns out spite was in fact enough to get me writing again! So that’s good right??

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER PRE-GAME 9/30/2020: 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE/CONFESSIONAL (2019)

Spoiler alert. Or whatever. It’s not going to matter, you don’t care.

So, I've been away for a minute. Just about any reason to be away from Tumblr is probably a good reason, but I have an especially good one. I'm finally working on a "real" writing project, which demands, and deserves, all of my attention. My social media abstinence isn't just a matter of time management, though. Once I had a long term obligation on my plate, I became very aware of how the short term satisfaction I get from posting mindless rants was eating away at the fuel I have available for sustained efforts. When I wind myself up with a 500-1000 word blog post, it generates a lot of electricity, but I blow it all as soon as I experience the catharsis of posting it, and I'm further pacified by ego-stroking likes and reblogs. Not to sound like a sanctimonious luddite--I mean, I'm still here, after all!--but it turns out that the staying focused on the long haul has been surprisingly revivifying. In fact, I haven't been talking about my big fancy project for the same reason; I don't want to lose any of the juice I've been storing up by wasting it on the shallow pleasure of describing it. Also such things should probably be somewhat confidential until they're approaching the publishing stage, but I digress! There is an actual reason I'm saying all this, that has more to do with this blog.

(Don’t get all excited, I’m not doing EVIL ED right now, I just need a relatable image.)

As I got deeper into my experience of "real" film writing, I started to reflect on the meaning of my personal writing. Like, the point of it. I tend to write in a sweaty, compulsive, sadomasochistic haze, in which I'm sometimes hyperbolically generous, and sometimes--perhaps more often, unfortunately--as nasty as humanly possible. Sometimes the movies deserve it, when they're lazy, pretentious, or otherwise demonstrate an open contempt for the audience aka ME. Often, though, I'm just creating an opportunity to vent my generalized rage and frustration. That can be very entertaining for myself and (hopefully) my teensy-but-devoted readership, but lately I've asked myself whether there isn't some negative tradeoff for all this amusement. In this phase of my life, it's reasonable to assume I'll make more and more friends and acquaintances who create things I don't always care for, but I don't necessarily think they deserve to be abused for it. As much as I have a right to say whatever I want, technically, I'd be embarrassed if I were caught just jacking myself off by making fun of their work in public. And more to the point, I don't necessarily want to contribute to the growing atmosphere in which people feel more afraid to try and fail, because the public so commonly misidentifies sarcasm and mean-spiritedness as intelligence and superiority, and that form of petty darkness spreads across the internet a lot faster than a movie can reach a wider audience. After all, I'm in the process of potentially turning myself into one of those well-meaning failures right now. I could stand to be a little more deliberate about how I speak, and about what, in general.

My father is an art critic, and once in an extra petulant moment, teenage-me asked him in an accusative tone what he thought the point of his profession was. He replied calmly that he wouldn't publish any comment that he didn't think the artist could make use of somehow. I don't know if he always stuck to that policy, but the thought sure stuck with me.

So anyway, over the last few months I've been giving myself a bit of an attitude adjustment, through a combination of personal reflection, and hard work on something meaningful/not for the internet. I've been feeling all proud of myself and shit, but today reminded me that any path to enlightenment is always marked by setbacks, doubt, and temptation. For today, in complete innocence (or at least a melange of innocence and ignorance, as I very much invite this type of problem), I managed to watch TWO (2) movies about an academic film-cum-psychology project, focused on a gang of college buddies who inevitably reveal what bad people they are under the unique conditions of the project, and then the project turns out to be run NOT by its presumed-dead originator, but by the originator's even-crazier lover. It's amazing how particular something can be, and still be utterly obvious and cliche. In my defense, I really tried to turn the second movie off, because it was...just instantly terrible, but the seed of suspicion had taken root--is this randomly selected movie ACTUALLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE PREVIOUS MOVIE?--and I just had to find out if this could be true. I suffered, deliberately, for another hour and a half, to confirm my awful hunch. I don't know how I would have felt if I had turned out to be wrong (better? worse?), but I don't have to worry about that now. Now I just have to worry about my overpowering impulse to be as ugly as possible about what I have personally subjected myself to.

(The completely deceptive poster for our not at all witchy or eerie opening feature.) 

In need of a passable time-waster this afternoon, I put on 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE. Released in March of 2019, Caitlin Koller's claustrophobic black comedy feels oddly like a product of 2020. A group of estranged, middle-aged college pals of the BIG CHILL ilk--which one of the characters calls out, out loud, just so ya know--come together for a fallen comrade's funeral, only to find themselves trapped in his widow's increasingly creepy cabin in the woods. Said comrade was driven to suicide by the failure of a psychological experiment he conducted that plunged its subject into madness, and if you don't realize right away that the obnoxious and unstable cast are the new subjects of their not-quite-dead friend's renewed project, then you're firing a lot slower than 24 frames per second. The dialog is often decent, aiding a handful of funny, natural performances...but it's hard to forget that you're just waiting for the conspicuously crazy widow to reveal that the "unexplained events" in and around the cabin are part of a controlled attempt to get the guests to devolve into their worst selves, which isn't such a difficult task considering the undesirable state they all arrive in.

It just made me ask myself, what was the point of this? Why do people make movies that are entirely predicated on the shock of the twist, knowing that if the twist isn't so shocking--or is baldly obvious from the start--then the whole experience just falls apart? Why not hedge your bets with a little more depth, or purpose, or style, or really anything more reliable than a smug attempt to prove that your script is smarter than your audience? Even if you do manage to pull off this dubious accomplishment, it reduces your movie to something like the experience of having somebody jump out of a closet and scream in your ear to "get" you. I've always felt concerned that if somebody ever tries to "get" me like that, I might just automatically punch them in the face. But anyway, whatever shred of good will this movie could have accrued with its plucky performances is blown away by the final insult, when the cops arrive to clean up the inevitable bloody mess. The responding officers are hilariously unimpressed and unsurprised by the byzantine scheme that has resulted in a shocking act of violence, because the cabin's "guest book", which our heroes all filled out, was actually the signatory page of a complicated waiver form granting full permission to the hosts to, like, do whatever the hell they want to everybody. Presumably this shit just goes on all the time, leading the local law to shrug off anything that happens to or because of the dumbassed lab rats who frequent the cabin? I dunno. I mean, what can I say? ACAB, I guess!

At the time, I managed to resist the urge to take to the internet and decry the crimes of this lame-o party joke. I really don't like the sensation that a movie is just trying to trick me into thinking something that isn't true. But, this isn't, like, an affront to cinema. People make annoying, below average movies all the time, and maybe you kinda have to, if you eventually want to make better movies. I imagine myself in the shoes of the people who actually put some elbow grease into this production, having to wade through the rantings of internet ghouls like myself while they're trying to see how their efforts are paying off. Making a movie is probably a lot harder than I think it is.

But that's part of the point I'm heading toward. I'm always amazed by people's willingness to pour huge amounts of energy and capital into something to which there is ultimately very little point. I mean, I have bad, unoriginal, boring ideas every single day of my life. But I almost never DO any of them. I have a hard enough time convincing myself to just get out of bed in the morning, let alone devote blood, sweat, and money to deliver unto the world material evidence of my personal mediocrity. I can't imagine thinking it would be worth it, for myself or the unfortunate people who are subjected to my project, to actually execute on my bad ideas. I'm being judgmental, but honestly, I don't even know if my attitude makes me better or worse than someone who accomplishes the task of completing and selling a movie that's mainly a waste of time. Movies are so complicated, and realizing them requires the consensus of so many people, that it's sort of incredible that there are people capable of making one that doesn't have a powerfully compelling motivation behind it. People who are able to do such a thing obviously have something that I don't, and it isn't just "consideration for the audience."

So, I could probably stand to be more forgiving--or just, less eager to absolutely flay someone alive on my dumb little blog because they so opened themselves up to my arsenal of elaborate insults. But like...not all the time. Sometimes, a movie really fucking asks for it, and in revealing itself to me, it has effectively signed a waiver giving me patent freedom to do whatever I want to it. CONFESSIONAL is the latest movie to give me such a gift. After the final credit rolled in 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE, I looked for a little palate cleanser. As little as I like movies that put their single egg in the motheaten basket of a "shocking twist", I also have a problem with what I identify as canned theater. Not that I think all movies have to be lavish productions, but I think they should try to do something that is natively cinematic. It's very rare that I'm impressed by anything that is literally all talk. So, I went in search of some more familiar form of trash to help me recallibrate, and trash is definitely what I got.

(Me crying over my own bad decisions.)

To be fair, I kind of should have known that I was in for a challenging experience. The 2019 found footage thriller CONFESSIONAL is more or less based on the "confessional" part of sleazy reality TV shows, isolating each cast member in a soundproof stall so they can spill the rotten contents of their guts. Unfortunately, I spotted a review suggesting that the movie succeeded, against all odds, at remaining visually dynamic despite the unchanging scenery, and I was intrigued. The reviewer was correct, impressively; the monotony of the coffin-like environment with its dark foam walls was the least of my concerns. Other problems superseded that threat, immediately. The plot concerns a group of college pals who come together to remember a recently deceased friend--a filmmaker who expired mysteriously while completing a psychology-tinged project in which she recorded all of her friends' most shameful personal secrets. Now, somebody else has taken over the project...someone who "has never been identified", according to an early title card in this movie-within-a-movie (EVEN THOUGH THIS PERSON WILL BE EXPLICITLY IDENTIFIED AT THE END OF THE MOVIE SO LIKE WHY), but who seems likely to be the decedent's ex-lover...who continues to expose their subjects' most shameful secrets on film. I mean, what the fuck? Did I somehow manage to pick a second movie with almost the exact same plot??? I couldn't believe it. I didn't know if I could take it. My prospects only got worse when the cast showed up and started talking. I tried to turn the movie off. I backed out and walked away from it, twice. But I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know if it was really the same movie.

CONFESSIONAL concerns characters who are contemporaneously in college, which actually goes a long way to making everything worse. Each of these walking cliches is connected in some way to Amelia, a film student whose mysterious death has created a campus scandal, leaving shattered hearts and lives in its wake. The living have each received a blackmail-flavored invitation to speak about the deceased in a tiny "confessional booth" somewhere on campus, where, predictably, they find themselves locked in until they confess whatever they know about Amelia, and their classmates. I don't know why practically every single movie about young people has to be so miserable, but this is one of those. I assume that it has something to do with the fact that youth is simultaneously so desired and so ignored. People in their teens and early 20s are so sexually coveted, yet so easily dismissed as individuals, that we wind up with all this media that panders to them relentlessly (or at least, panders to the legions of ticket-buying perverts who enjoy watching them prance around), without almost any consideration of how they actually think and act, and look. Movies like FAT GIRL and  WELCOME TO THE DOLL HOUSE may be accused of their own form of pandering, a venal form of voyeuristic schadenfreude, but at least they reflect something of the awkwardness, isolation, and incompleteness of adolescence; something more than the dissociated, pornographic fantasies of adults who have long since forgotten what it was like to be powerless and ignored, or desired by people who don't even like you.

Not that CONFESSIONAL is supposed to be a work of grim realism, but it is most definitely rooted in a fantasy about college life that makes its contrived, message-y plot a lot harder to take. With almost the sole exception of "the nerdy one", every single character looks like a Bratz doll, oozing an exaggerated indecency that belies the movie's pretentious insistence on addressing the sex & gender Issues of the Day. What you get is a really good example of what happens when millennial characters are modeled, not on any actual millennials, but on other forms of marketing that are aimed at millennials, which are themselves just based on other preexisting youth-targeted commercials, et al ad nauseam. Even setting aside the deliriously slutty wardrobe choices, makeup appears to have been laid on with a trowel, coating each actor in a thick creamy layer of spackle that only makes any scars, pits, or other evidence of individuality look utterly bizarre. Accordingly, everybody preens, pouts, and generally behaves as if they're about to take off their clothes, which might be a huge relief given the profusion of chafing, cheapo mesh and straps they're laboring under.

So, ok, not every movie can have a great costume department, but the dialog here is a perfect match for the disastrous aesthetic decisions. Actually, this is the real reason I almost walked out on CONFESSIONAL. If I may ramble briefly, without substantiating any of my broad-ranging claims: Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s, horror cinema seemed to suffer a degenerative slide away from genuine thrills and chills, and into a version of the genre that is best characterized as the Slutty Halloween Costume approach. Any sense of existential dread, revulsion, or bodily vulnerability was widely replaced by a cutesy, Hot Topic-y preference for fast fashion and sex appeal, in which bloodshed more facilitated an informal wet teeshirt contest than any real fear induction. Horror's new mall goth look came with an equally shallow, boring verbal affectation: a sullen, sleazy, tooth-sucking sarcasm, that ushered in a new era in which, instead of making fun of the scummy coked-out dialog in porno movies, we now expect everybody to just talk like that, because it's hot. There's probably a line to be drawn between this unfortunate development, and the boneheaded real-world trend of identifying "sarcasm" as an important personal selling point on dating sites, but I won't try to prove that here. For now, I will just say that as soon as I heard the CONFESSIONAL characters start to speak, with their sneering, insinuating tones, with the vocal fry, with the head wagging, the jutting jaws, the smoldering gazes, the juvenile dragging-out of horny grownup words like de-bauch-er-y...I almost lost my nerve. Listening to these little creeps hissing and spitting for 84 minutes is a lot like being hit on by some barfly who continues to bludgeon you with his hot breath and corny lines without ever noticing that you've thrown up into your pint.

Uh, anyway. So what actually happens in the movie. Why would anyone ever allow someone to record video of them revealing the ugliest, most embarrassing parts of themselves? Especially a kid, for whom popularity and reputation are often a matter of life or death--literally and specifically, in the case of this story. The flimsy reason is that the late filmmaker, Amelia, was the most awesomest girl ever. Everybody loved her, because she was so sweet, and so smart, and so cool, and so nice, and so deep, and so original, and so talented, and so sexy, and just like, the bestest most perfectest girl in the whole wide world. N.B. "The greatest of all time" is, perhaps counter-intuitively, a really bad quality that makes for really shitty, boring characters. For better or worse, Amelia is rarely on screen (and when she is, she's no Laura Palmer, frankly), so it's up to the viewer to just sort of imagine a type of person who could make you act against your best interests on account of you just like them so much. After all, so many of the characters were obsessed with her in some way, that it's like they're here to help you clap your hands and believe in this seductive, compelling part of the movie, that just isn't actually there on the screen. The anonymous antihero behind the confessional booth scheme slowly extracts from each character the selfish, destructive behavior that in some way contributed to the tragic loss of the most amazing person of all time--and part of the result is, if not a very interesting excuse for Amelia's death, then a story so wacky that I really wish they had centered the movie on it, instead of on the tawdry soap opera we're locked into. Even if that imaginary movie had been really bad, and it probably would have been, at it would at least have been entertaining.

Part of what leads up to the death of Amelia is the existence of a secret school fight club, led by a stereotypically sleazy gender studies major, named Major, who is out to prove men's inherent superiority. The club is called CFB, or Cock Fights Back, which is somehow a garbled pun relating to cock fights, and Trump's famous line of "locker room talk": "grab'em by the pussy" > "pussy grabs back" > "cock fights back". CFB is different from your ordinary fight club in that the fights are always between girls and boys, and the boys are always blindfolded, in order to prove that a fully-abled female is no match for even a handicapped male. To complicate things, a new designer amphetamine is gaining popularity on campus, called "odds-on", meaning that it makes you the odds-on favorite in your CFB fight. As awkward as that is, it also seems that men are never the guaranteed winners of these fights, which makes you wonder why Major insists on continuing to host them. As much as I would have preferred to watch a stupid movie about this stupid idea, I'm stuck instead with a movie in which Major is such an aggressive MRA because he's secretly gay, and he thinks that hating women is a great way to hide that...as if that isn't what we all openly suspect about aggro MRAs. Secret gayness is a big part of this movie, involving multiple characters, although it amounts to very little other than the perpetuation of some stale, harmful cliches about how unfulfilled homosexual urges lead to suicide, sexual abuse, and murder. CONFESSIONAL is just as reliant on this grim vision of gay life, as it is on its weirdly obtuse discussion of drug addiction, for the suffocating sense of self-importance that it uses to try to elevate itself above its porn-y trappings. None of the movie's hot button issues are given any real thought, but are only dragged through the mud to create the illusion that there's a point to all this, thus relieving the film of any sense of innocence that could have made its condescending sleaziness forgivable.

Admittedly, I can't really remember all the details of the film's tortured intrigue anymore, even though I basically just saw it. A lot of its meandering revelations just left me thinking, "Why did I need to know that? Why should I care?" I do know that about half way through this ordeal, I became really anxious about whether it would turn out that CONFESSIONAL did NOT have exactly the same plot as 30 MILES FROM NOWHERE after all, and I put myself through all this for nothing. But no, I was right to begin with. The wonderful Amelia's ethically dubious film project has been picked up by the unhinged lesbian character who loved her so much she wanted to become her, and killing Amelia and usurping her confessional project was apparently the best way of doing that. I guess exposing all the dark, violent secrets of all these tangentially involved characters was just an added bonus, or whatever. Ultimately, this ugly, ignorant PSA about something-or-other only deals itself further damage by relying so heavily on the potential of its clumsy twist to blow your mind, which it does not at all.

So that was it, that's how I burned a whole afternoon allowing my mind to implode-not-explode under the ponderous force of TWO (2) movies about exactly the same exhausted cliche that is still being peddled by certain pretentious assholes as fresh and exciting, and beyond the capacity of the audience to anticipate. There's probably a whole slew of other movies that employ this overly familiar "surprise", but I don't have it in me to dig them out of my long-suffering brain. Feel free to contribute in the comments. For now, I must prepare myself for the ordeal of Blogtober, during which I will *hopefully* choose my screening selections and words more thoughtfully than I have in previous years, when this blog was motivated by just as much abject misanthropy as these movies, which do nothing but willfully insult the audience's intelligence. Maybe today's detour into degradation will help me go forth toward more additive experiences, having purged several lungfuls of meaningless venom from my system, and this season will bring with it more interesting, provocative posts than the last. Or maybe not! In any case, I promise to keep trying my hardest to make it funny.

PS I actually love both FAT GIRL and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. I’m “just saying”. 

[casual-eumetazoa]

mmmmmmmmmmmkay... gotta say Words about the episode, I guess

things I liked:

the show looks good, I’ll give them that - visually/aesthetically very pleasing, the music is amazing (I still miss Gold but I am starting to like this new guy a lot), everything seems modern, expensive, high quality

the theme music is wonderful and the title sequence slaps; love that shit! feels classic and brand new at the same time, and very Doctor Who; probably my favorite title sequence combo of the entire new run

the TARDIS design is gorgeous, like I cannot stress enough how much I love it; again, probably my favorite of the entire new run, and definitely top three of all that were ever made; it feels like a hybrid between Tenth’s TARDIS and Eighth’s TARDIS - bold, creative, beautiful design; on a related note, loved that “fixing the TARDIS” bit; I hope the fam will spend more time inside the TARDIS this season

the actors are giving their best; I feel like C was a huge waste of Stephen Fry, but perhaps it was a deliberate decision (because maybe Mr Fry wanted a cameo but did not have time for more scenes); 

Whittaker is good - idk if that was a move on her part or the writers/directors decision, but her Doctor feels calmer, more natural now; she is still quirky and mysterious and herself, but she feels more like a person, you know, and not a bunch of facial expressions and voice inflections thrown together

the companions are good too - Yaz is finally getting attention, and God, Graham and Ryan are like my favorite thing now! their dynamic is just a pleasure to watch; you can make a ‘comedic duo’ compilation just out of this episode alone

the new monsters are definitely my cup of tea; strange, spooky, not full on horror movie scary but still threatening... *chef’s kiss* I loved the twist of them getting through the TARDIS door - that has never happened before, I like that; I like how the Doctor quietly freaks out about it as well, cause she hates not knowing something and hates not being in charge; that scene where she keeps asking the creature and when it finally replies it is just mocking her? good shit right there; wanna see more of these guys for sure

and after some reflection, if you take it in isolation, I do love the final airplane scene; like if I just look at it as a piece of TV/storytelling, I think it is a really good scene; it’s loud, it’s chaotic, yes it is kind of all over the place but it is engaging, and the reveal was out of nowhere and predictable at the same time but I still enjoyed it; and yes it is a stupid cliffhanger but like... it’s Doctor Who! it has always had stupid cliffhangers and I for one respect that decision

things I didn’t like:

oh God... the writing; like I am sorry, okay, but that writing is bad; and it is so confusing to me cause the story overall was good in my opinion - the pace was okay, the events made sense, it has an actual plot, etc - but the writing is still bad? I think the dialogue is the worst by far, but the way the scenes were stitched together is really awkward as well; it feels like it has been written by a talented but severely inexperienced writer who understands more or less how a story is supposed to work but has no idea how to edit

specifically what annoys me is that the dialogue and, to a lesser degree, the sequence of events feels very superficial and forced; it’s not elegant, and it’s not surprising, and it doesn’t feel natural at all; the actors are giving their best but how the hell can you have a good delivery of those lines??? 

I wanna rewatch it already to give particular examples but the two things that come to mind are C explaining the whole deal with the aliens (telling instead of showing anyone? especially after you’ve already shown it???) and the interview with Lenny Henry’s character (again, telling instead of showing much?); and idk, the dialogue in general is just... eh, it annoys me that I can’t quite put my finger on why it is so bad - but it is so bad, that initially that thing alone made me dislike the episode 

and this is double annoying because I know that Chibnall is a good writer and can write excellent dialogue and put scenes together with no problem, and also because, traditionally, Doctor Who has always had great script editors that should have fixed this; like how do you give a dedication to Terrance Dicks and not fix these awkward fucking lines?? I am confusion

things I am unsure about:

the whole spy thing; initially was very excited about it, because I thought we would get a very Third Doctor era thing, but no, that was just a straight up James Bond knock-off; like, don’t get me wrong, Thirteen in a suit gives me life too - but they could, idk, Doctor-fy the whole thing a little bit? throw in some gaffs and alien words and the Doctor going “oh I was a spy so many times”; instead it felt kinda, idk, not integrated enough; like it made sense for the story, but not for the show overall

also I think that the episode had too much action; that car malfunction at the beginning? entirely unnecessary, could have replaced it with a conversation (Thirteen trying to get info out of the driver for example) and get better results; the motorbike chase? looks very cool, also unnecessary and could have been cut to twenty seconds easily; like, come on, this is Doctor Who! I want good dialogue, not Marvel-level action scenes

and now the most controversial thing... the Master; ufff, I have very complex thoughts about this

I’m not gonna lie, I do like that they are back; I think it was too early to bring them back, and it feels like a solely “for the views” decision with little to no creative thought put into it, but damn I love the character; the actor is great too - that being in disguise with no physical disguise bit? love it! like, in retrospect I can see how much he (the Master) must have enjoyed playing the sweet innocent bloke; and that switch in the final scene... that’s some good acting right there

I am kinda conflicted about his style in general, like I would have preferred for him to lean more on the Delgado side of things - more gravitas, calmness, but still with strong chaotic dumbass energy - but I do understand that the Master has to mirror and contrast the Doctor simultaneously, and this sort of more Simm-like delivery (more in the direction of bananas) works better for Thirteen, especially now that she is less awkward and more calm and collected; I like the homage to classics as well, like that tissue compressor thing, that was really good; and yeah the Master is hot again... nice

also the whole “the Doctor is still being secretive about her past” thing is really working for me - I’d love to see the Master slowly destroying whatever image she has built for herself and thus creating enough conflict between her and the fam to go on for the entire season

but having said all that, if we come back to the decision to bring them back... is Chibnall sure about that? because from what we have seen so far, it feels like we have cancelled out everything that Moffat has done with Missy; we’ve had such an amazing character arc with her in Capaldi’s era and now it’s all gone? now we’re back to blowing up planes and killing the Doctor? why? 

I am still holding on to hope that this is an earlier, pre-War incarnation of the Master that somehow slipped in to this timestream, but that seems unlikely; another way I could digest that was if the Master has lost their memory and doesn’t remember being Missy, which would make for a nice eventual reveal of the memories coming back to them and him being like “oh shit” - but if Missy’s entire character arc has been retconned, I am definitely not a fan

also, overall, I feel like Chibnall retconned one thing about the Capaldi era that I really loved - he brought Doctor Who from a proper serious drama (as one part of the show, obviously) to all cheesy, goofy, silly sci-fi nonsense; and like, has Doctor Who been cheesy in the past? definitely, and for most of its history, and I won’t complain about that; but this? this feels too cheesy, especially in contrast with Capaldi’s era; like please, Chibbers, can we please see some drama? if you’re going for the whole quality TV show feel, can we also get proper good dialogue and heightened emotion and higher stakes? cause I think you can overdose on ridiculous in Doctor Who

summary:

honestly if the writing - especially the dialogue - was actually good, this would have been a very good episode, an 9 out of 10 at least; but as it stands, those lines are spoiling it a bit too much for me, so I’ll give it a solid 6 out of 10

I know it is a part one of a two-parter so I won’t make any solid and final judgments yet, especially about the Master and the feel of the series overall; all I can say is that, again, if you ignore the dialogue (which I hope is a random fluke and will go away), this sets a benchmark for series 12 higher than series 11; so I am cautiously optimistic about it, and actually excited to see the next episode, but God do I have high standards now, having consumed a lot of Doctor Who media...

and now that I’ve said approximately 563 highly controversial things, feel free to rip me to shreds I guess - or agree with me, who knows