Re: That Article but also just relationships, something I’ve learned over 14 years of marriage is that there are lines and walls. Lines can be negotiated and compromised around. You hate their mom. They don’t like ironing. These are lines.
Walls are things that no matter how convenient it would be be or how logical you are, cannot be changed or negotiated. If your partner is bi, for instance, you can’t convince them to be straight. If your mom was killed by bees, you will probably never share their love of bees.
Partnerships can run into real trouble when they treat walls as lines, especially when the partner with a wall is treated as irrational or burdensome for something they can’t change. Health is a wall. If you have cancer, you can’t be talked out of it, or compromise on having it.
For people with high-risk conditions who don’t want to get sicker, Covid is a wall. It’s not stubborn intransigence to avoid getting sicker. However, everything in society is insisting it’s a line. Including many of our partners, friends, family, coworkers, and leaders.
Being a good partner or friend to someone high-risk right now is not just about respecting that they have a wall they cannot negotiate. That’s the floor. It is about getting pissed the fuck off that everyone else is insisting it’s a line. And supporting that with your behavior.
I can’t imagine taking up space in a national publication to talk about how hard missing social events is for you when your partner has the whole world telling them they are crazy and stubborn their life isn’t worth living. Equalizing your lines with their walls is…not great.
If you’re the healthy one in a mixed-health relationship (so far), remember that all their precautions are protecting you, all your risks are endangering them. And while everyone is guilty of petty, selfish thoughts - how much space those take up in the conversation is a choice.
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Here’s the thing about a chronic illness or a medical vulnerability: it changes your life, and it’s not fun. And it’s not the vulnerable person’s job to compensate their partner for that change, because it’s not a choice they’re making, it’s a necessity of their condition.
A further thing: people who have a high risk of medical complications due to Covid are not “anxious.” There is a credible threat to their safety. Anxiety is an *overreaction* to risk. Caution is an appropriate reaction. Dismissing it as anxiety is harmful.
Friendly Neighborhood Script Reader here: let me talk a little about unfilmables before I walk into the sea about them.
An unfilmable in a script is a piece of prose that gives the reader information but not the viewing audience. They tend to crop up in character intros, but can be in other places, too. An example is something like “JOE, 60s, Loves his 5 grandkids.”
I as a reader have that information because I am reading it, but scripts are meant to be translated into visuals. So unless Joe is wearing a hat that says “I ❤️ MY 5 GRANDKIDS” the viewing audience will not have that information. Hence, unfilmable.
I’m not gonna argue the unimpeachable science that getting Covid is very bad and wearing masks is preventative. But I *know* there are smart, kind people out there who are choosing not to protect others because they have social permission to do so. And I know they can shift back.
And I know that some will say “well, I’d wear a mask if someone asked me to, I wouldn’t do this.” And I’d like to know - why are you making very sick people ask you to please not make them sicker? Why is that not a given?
Guys you have no idea about the scripts I read. It’s my job. Heartbreaking dramas. Wildly funny comedies. Groundbreaking sci fi. Diverse voices. Amazing love stories. Biopics of fascinating people I’ve never heard of.
Almost none of them get made.
It’s not the writers.
Almost all truly great movies require a studio to take a risk on a new voice, a new idea, or a new twist audiences haven’t seen a million times. The way studios work now, those are all the OPPOSITE of what they want. They want a McDonalds hamburger, every day, every meal.
It has nothing to do with what’s being written. Every truly great writer I know has at least two scripts in a pdf that would blow your mind on screen. But what they can sell is the hamburger, and what you get is the hamburger, over and over and over.
Covid is going up pretty significantly everywhere right now, so I say this as a caution, not for sympathy: my life is nearly unrecognizable since I got Covid in 2022. I have what’s considered very mild long Covid. What does that mean?…
Well for me, debilitating fatigue. I cannot walk for more than 15 minutes on a flat surface. If I try to walk twenty, I can end up in bed for a week. No exercise. No yoga. No long grocery trips. No amusement parks. No fun days wandering the beach. No sports or physical games.
And after nine months, it’s slightly deteriorated. Now with hormonal shifts, even the slightest bit of fatigue brings on hours and hours of heart palpitations. Which have been benign so far, but are of a type that can shift into afib without warning.
Here’s another gentle thought from your friendly neighborhood script reader: sex scenes! I love ‘em, but they’re an art! A lot of writers stumble when they try to write intimate prose. This is an area to research! Romance novels and fanfic are THE PLACE to study up on this.
Sometimes these descriptions are very bad and you will recoil reading them! So take the time to learn what terminology you actually find arousing on the page, and what reads as clinical or off-putting. Just because you’ve had IRL sex doesn’t make you a sex-writing expert!
Sex scenes are also an amazing place for subtextual character. The way the acts are described can tell a lot about the characters involved - is one domineering the other, do they objectify their partner, is there a gentleness to it, can they not believe they landed this person?