postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

wait are we combining plans

[Ah yes, Jay thinks, this is why he never engages in social interation. He's getting stressed out over a movie night.]

how many movies are happening tonight

you said it'd be less awkward if there was more than one person

wait
no
i meant

it's less awkward if its more than just yknow
me
alone
in front of a tv watching a movie
one person

but we can combine plans sure

is that ok

i mean
we don't have to

i'm just not really the movie guy
you know

[Alright, now this is slowly creeping back toward familiar territory. Tim's not the movie guy, and Jay guesses that, in absence of Alex, he is.

He scrolls back up, to where Tim described him and Clem's plans. Bad movies. He can do bad movies.]

sure

you want me to pick out one, or should i get i dunno
a pile so you guys can choose

do you know a lot of bad movies

[There's a joke about Marble Hornets in there. But they're both probably better off not thinking about Alex Kralie. Not right now.]

[Ha-ha. Yeah, he would, wouldn't he?]

side effect of studying this stuff

or just hearing alex complain long enough

or just who i am as a person i guess

[He can't blame all of this on Alex, but at least a few of the ones he knows are his fault. A few others were ones he picked up from overhearing other classmates talking. Most just came from the internet.]

there are worse things to be

[He could be Alex, yuk yuk]

are you sure?
seriously we don't have to

[Tim's giving him an out, which is...startlingly nice of him.

[Is he sure?]

[...]

[Screw it, why not.]

nah let's do it

you have a genre preference?

just
nothing psychological

i guess

[It's too much like his life.]

[Yeah, that...makes sense.]

got it

shouldn't be hard
the kind of bad movies people watch on purpose aren't like that a lot of the time
a lot more monsters and bad special effects, a lot less
weird disturbing navel gazing
if that makes sense

[Jay has a couple "auteurs" he'll be sure to avoid. Mostly because their stuff's actually "good", he guesses, from a stars-or-thumbs-or-whatever perspective, but also because it sounds like Tim wouldn't take them too well.]

should be fine
but if anyone starts talking about loops of unhappiness i'm gonna throw up

[...Jay is now wondering whether or not there's a copy of Alex Kralie's Marble Hornets in the library.]

gonna steer clear of anything involving a college guy going back to his hometown
just to be safe

are there a lot of those

it's not always a guy and it's not always straight out of college but i guess you could say there are a lot of them yeah

there's even one with an assassin

[Jay oh my god]

are there other plots to bad movies out there
or is that just the go-to

there are others
thank god

there's more "bad" movies out there than "good" ones
so at least some of them have something that makes them worth looking at
even if it's just that it's so bad it's funny

easier to make something people hate than something everybody likes

what did alex tell you that?

[...]

never mind
forget i said that

[Jay Merrick will not forget you said that.]

some of it

he told me he didn't have time for the bad stuff though
yeah i know ha ha but that's what he said
i dunno i guess i
feel like every movie's somebody's hard work
even if it's shit
there's usually something in there that makes it worth watching
some of this stuff just gets totally lost
goes out of print and nobody preserves it or anything and it's just gone
and tape decays yknow
dvds do too like really fast

never mind i don't even know how i got on this

because i asked.

[Let's not mince the blame here. He knows full well why it is Jay got on this tangent, and it's because Tim couldn't keep his fucking mouth shut.]

guess i never really thought about it that way
didn't know you knew about stuff like that

[Because he didn't ask.]

[He asked about Alex. He didn't ask for Jay's opinions on archiving or film preservation or any of that. It's pedantic bullshit is what it is, and nobody wants to hear it, least of all from a guy who couldn't even get a job as a boom operator doing local news.]

didn't really study it but you pick stuff up

[There were a couple months junior year when he thought grad school was an option. Some schools had film archive programs. He could've moved. Wasn't like he had any major ties to home.]

[Didn't care enough, though. Didn't even manage to take an elective in it. Just kept on the same track he always did. So he doesn't know about stuff like that, not really. All he has is a bunch of weird, useless trivia that sticks around when everything else gets wiped out.]

[Jay rereads Tim's message. "guess i never really thought about it that way." Most likely just something to say, because what the hell do you say when someone just...goes...like he did? But maybe his rambling bullshit wasn't a complete waste of a message, if Tim got something out of it.]

[Is this how conversations are supposed to work?]

did you and clem decide on when all this is happening

[He doesn't wanna get into it. That's fine. Understandable, even. Probably bringing up all sorts of unpleasant and unwanted memories and goddamnit, fuck, this is absolutely his fault for bringing up Alex in the first place. Couldn't think before you stuck your foot in your mouth, could you, Tim?]

[No. God fucking forbid.]

[Jay changes the subject. He lets him.]

not really
why you have a preference

just need to know when to get the movies by
and where to bring them

[Back in familiar territory. They're making plans, keeping the conversation limited to what's concrete. What time. Where. Who's driving. How long before we turn in for the night.]

[Tim doesn't want to hear it. Tim doesn't want to hear it. Tim doesn't want to hear it.]

[But Jay has to make sure, doesn't he?]

did you know the stuff they used to make old nitrate film with was the same stuff they used to make flash paper and guncotton

[He could've just left it, but no. Had to keep going, had to goad Tim further, until he actually says it.]

[They're back on ground Tim knows how to navigate for a fleeting moment, and he figures he should probably shoot Clem a text to let her know that, yes, she is indeed doomed to suffer through what is bound to be the most crushingly awkward movie night of all time. If they're going to put anyone through it, at least it's someone who doesn't necessarily have a metric by which these things usually go - which is kind of a dick thought to have, so he tries to scrub it out.]

[Fortunately, Jay helps by sending him that little fun fact right the hell out of nowhere. Tim blinks a few times to process it, grateful at least for the barrier of text between them. If he takes too long to answer, Jay might - ]

[Oh my god, just answer.]

huh.

[What gripping conversation they're having!!]

does that mean that stuff was really flammable or something?

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