It's January and our latest documentary comes out.
This one is about toxic relationships and problematic moments in movies and literature.
There's one cliché moment in a lot of movies that we use repeatedly in the documentary. It's the moment when the main character will start talking to voice their feelings or concerns or to scowl their romantic interest and the romantic interest will shut up the person by kissing them. The main character will try to fight them off a bit, before falling in their arms. The usual response—oh, how romantic. The correct response—that's unacceptable. How is basically assaulting someone instead of listening to their concerns viewed as romantic?
From there we tried to create a history of the kind of toxic relationships that become trends throughout the years. We tried to show that abusive relationships don't just mean hitting your partner and how the medias have grown us accustomed to them, and have even made us idolize them.
I guess my relationship with Holt was sort of an inspiration. It's not because you love someone that you have a free pass at their body. I've told this to Holt many times so he would stop worrying in the beginning when we weren't doing anything. I'm always asking him to tell me what he wants me to do and if what I'm doing is okay. I don't do it because I don't know Holt. I do it because I always want him to remember that he's safe with me and that I would never do anything he doesn't want.
The documentary gets an amazing response again. People were waiting for it. We also get shit from the people whose movies or books we've attacked. I don't really care though. If they thought putting on a pedestal abusive relationships was okay, they should be able to get called out on it.
Keith and I keep getting asked what our next project will be about. We still don't have any fixed plans yet, so we don't say anything.
But I have an idea. I've had it for a while now. Ever since we've done the immigrant one, it's been playing in my head.
Walls. Something about all the walls we build around our countries or our cities and the ones we build around ourselves. When we close ourselves up, who does it really protect?
I have a plan in my head, a plan that would involve a lot of travelling. I've started to give Keith some hints about it, but he's made it clear that if I want to do a lot of travelling for our next project, I'll have to go on my own. He'll gladly do the editing, but he can't leave his family for too long.
I get it. And honestly... I'm kind of glad he says that.
Because I'm sitting in bed and Holt is working on his laptop trying to pick a picture to send to a magazine and he keeps passing little clips he's filmed for other projects and I kept thinking, my boyfriend is way too talented. Keith and I might have good ideas and we might edit them well, but we've often hired a cameraman to do our filming, or we've done it ourselves and the result was always okay, but never extraordinary.
Holt would give us extraordinary.
"Holt, you think you might want to take pictures of walls?"