#but lbr the discourse wasn’t abt that

[iheartbookbran]

i cackled before the season came out and everyone was freaking out about the brothel scenes because they wanted demi!Colin and now the possibility was lost forever, when it was precisely the brothel scenes (+ the diary bit) which cemented demi!Colin to canon prosperity!

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Sorry if you’ve already had this epiphany because You’ve spent a lot of time dissecting this but it didn’t really have to be one or the other with Henrik and Jacs SLs? Henrik could’ve had the breakdown he was headed for and divulged in a safe environment about being a CSA survivor. And ppl speculated sth happened to Jac offscreen to push her to breakdown, her running into her abuser or someone from her past could’ve fit that.

Ok yeah they’re similar storylines but has that ever stopped anyone before + Henrik and Jac are similar characters for a reason. And I know Holby was pisspoor with therapy so lbr it wouldn’t have been a safe place for Henrik (it wasn’t for Jac) but you get my drift. There were ways for both of them to have SLs they needed that they show had built up to instead of half assign one SL for each of them and it being the wrong one. (And Henrik deserved a chance to speak abt diagnosis)

These asks have been sitting in my inbox for the best part of a week while I've tried to find the words to properly reply to them, so sorry about that.

I strongly agree, in theory. Obviously anything they did with Jac's mental health should not have been written in the way it was (i.e. a flat-out copy of Rosie's own breakdown), but that goes without saying, I think. (As does the fact that anything to do with Henrik being abused as a child should not have been connected to the Shah family in any way except as an explanation for his harassment of Sahira.) Both characters could've easily had both storylines.

However, I do have to admit that for my own personal reasons I just wish the show had left the CSA stuff with Henrik entirely alone. I feel like addressing his sexuality was far more important than addressing the CSA subtext, and I'm not sure we could ever have had both without the fandom throwing a tantrum about how "OMG, this is saying being abused will turn you gay!!". Also, I don't like living with the knowledge that a large segment of the mainstream Holby fandom... well, has fantasies... of "broken, tainted sexual abuse victim Henrik", and I feel like they would still be doing that even if the storyline had been better done. (In fact, I'd think it's a large part of why there was so much outrage about him being bi. People love their fantasy of "oh, poor little Henrik, he was corrupted into homosexuality by an evil gay man when he was a perfectly innocent straight boy!! He needs to find the love of a good woman to fix him and erase the dirty queerness he was forced into!!". They do not love seeing Henrik form mutual, consensual relationships with other men, whether it's John or Russ. In their mind, that means Henrik was asking for it. They feel like he "tricked" them into feeling sympathy for him when they thought he was straight, only for it to turn out - again, in their minds - that he has nothing to be upset about and he was asking for it all along.)

That being said, I do think the show could probably have alleviated at least some of the fetishisation, complaints, and discourse if they'd made Henrik's abuser a woman. One good thing (the only good thing) about the fact that sexual abuse by women is seen as less serious is that less of the fandom would have seen Henrik as dirty and broken to the extent they do. (Speaking as someone who was abused by a woman here.) There would also probably be fewer comments connecting it to his sexuality (though there would definitely still be some "so you're saying Henrik being abused by a woman put him off women and now he can only like men??" comments, it would be far fewer than the "they're saying Henrik being abused by a man made him attracted to men!" comments). The downside is that Henrik's abuser being a man fits a lot better with stuff like his internalised homophobia (and specifically, his behaviour around John, alternating back and forth between openly flirting with him and seemingly ignoring his feelings for him), but I'd rather lose a bit of characterisation if it meant the fandom saying less horrifically harmful stuff about CSA survivors.

Idk, as I say, I can't be objective about this because when I think about Henrik's abuse I think of the deeply triggering fandom responses to it. Sorry.

He definitely needed that breakdown though. But yeah, as you say, Holby was dreadful about handling anything related to mental illness treatment. ://

I wholeheartedly agree about Jac though. That part of her past really should have been addressed. Also: "ppl speculated sth happened to Jac offscreen to push her to breakdown, her running into her abuser or someone from her past could’ve fit that" That makes complete sense, it really would fit. I don't know how I've never thought of that before.

(Also, yes, Henrik really really needed to get to look into autism diagnosis. The CSA stuff itself is a reason that needed to happen, sort of, because abuse rates are a lot higher for developmentally disabled people. So that just makes it yet another thing that ties back to Henrik's autism.)