I don’t even know when I posted on here last. I could easily look, but I’m afraid to. I could blame it on any number of things. I’ve been dealing with chronic pain and depression from some mystery illness, but only for about nine weeks. That doesn’t cover the necessary time frame to act as sufficient excuse.
The truth is, like many things in life, it’s simply a case of intention outpacing my action. I meant to post here. I love to write, it’s my favorite thing. I still identify as a writer above all else. It’s just that I don’t do it very often.
You get sucked into TikTok. Instagram. YouTube. The podcast. Facebook. I plan to start streaming Twitch. I shovel my creative coal into the burning maw of the algorithm, pray at its altar. It’s ravenous, insatiable, but it pays the bills.
I can make videos about the decline of reading instead of, you know, writing.
Consider this my recommittal. Renewing my vows.
This is the podcast of a killer, Bella.
We’re beginning coverage of Twilight on Streaming Things next week. I’ve been unashamed in my love for the films for a long, long time but I’m reading the books for the first time. I’m trying to finish the first novel and Midnight Sun by this coming Sunday. My wife is foaming at the mouth to see what I think about Edward’s perspective of the first book’s events.
You can see my interview with Kristen Stewart, by the way, (as well as Dylan Meyer and Alia Shawkat) on her press tour promoting her new film The Wrong Girls.
This was a huge moment for me, you already know that if you follow my work, but that’s so obvious it’s hardly worth mentioning. I want to talk about the press tour itself, the unintentional humiliation ritual they so often become. So many interviewers seek viral clips and sound bites with the same dismissive detachment a fan might seek a selfie instead of a human interaction. There is so often no interest in hearing the answer to the question.
Kristen Stewart is, arguably, at a point in her career that is more interesting and ripe for exploration than ever before and she’s constantly fielding questions like “Would you really direct a Twilight reboot?” and “So, are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?”
When she says “I don’t give a fuck,” it’s treated in the comment sections like some sacrilegious rudeness when it should be obvious that of course she doesn’t give a fuck. She’s in her 30s, promoting her new film written and directed by her wife and working on producing and directing her second feature film.
All of these press tours go this way. Half of the internet laments the lack of any questions of substance (but most of them would never watch a deep-dive interview with nuance) and the other half is parsing through every twitch and shrug with the detail of hardboiled detectives trained in microaggressions and body language, primed for a manufactured scandal completely divorced from their body of work.
I’m going Rogue on this one
I’m well aware that I’m grumpy. Perhaps the abdominal cramps and pseudo heart attacks have simply cranked up my cynicism but I’m watching (not on purpose, I’m scrolling and scrolling and it’s all that I see) hordes of people tearing down Inde Navarette now that she’s been cast in a big Marvel project. Everyone is suddenly an expert on dialect and deep comic lore. No, no, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her being a woman.
Like we don’t constantly see a young woman achieve deserved success only to be time-and-time-again pulled apart by parasocial pitchforks from every direction, parsing through every post she’s ever liked on Instagram, every recorded word she’s ever spoken, combing for controversy. Brittany Spears, Brittany Murphy, Hayden Panettiere, then on to the next with nary a lesson learned.
When something dark happens to a star people turn out with candles lit and say, “The Hollywood machine smothered another bright light.” Certainly it did—we know enough of the neglect, abuse, and exploitation that goes on behind the scenes now to safely assume the worst—but I imagine it’s the West’s deep obsession (pun intended) with shallow celebrity that sets most of the traps around the Home Alone house of fame.
We don’t fucking know these beautiful talented people, except that they’re people. Flesh and blood beings that crave love and acceptance and forget to take their vitamins. Comment on their work, and put some thought into it, and leave the rest to God, damnit.
I know what you’re thinking. “Did you come back to your Substack to treat it like a diary, dude?” Umm…sorry for the rant. Hey, at least I published something, right?