#tw eugenics

[identitty-dickruption]

there is a difference between a disabled person saying “in my perfect world, I wouldn’t be disabled”, and someone saying “in my perfect world, disability doesn’t exist”

the first is understandable. being disabled can be really fucking hard. pain is not fun. fatigue is not fun. meltdowns aren’t fun. relying on constant medical intervention is not always great, either. there’s nothing that says a disabled person HAS to love themselves, and it’s not inherently ableist for a disabled person to wish that they were different

the second is eugenics. that’s the long and short of it. you wish disabled people didn’t exist? well we do exist. oh but you wish they didn’t? how do you plan to achieve that, bud? it’s just straight-up eugenics

#tw eugenics #tw ableism #disability

[bodhrancomedy]

This is happening way more than is comfortable in my comments right now and I kinda need neurodivergent people (and obviously other disabled communities including my own) to be aware of lateral ableism.

#deaf #tiktok #queer #video #actor #disability #ableism #tw ableism #tw eugenics

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

‘In my day, we didn’t have all this Autism stuff’ ‘The last Asylum for Disabled people only closed in 2001’

Neurodivergent_lou

#autism #actually autistic #autism awareness month #autism acceptance month #tw abuse #tw eugenics #tw ableism #tw institutionalisation #neurodivergence #neurodiversity #actually neurodivergent #feel free to share/reblog #Neurodivergent_lou (Facebook)

[thethirdromana]

I think last year I wrote something about how meaningful it is, and what a leap of faith it represents, that Mina chooses to marry Jonathan even when she has no idea when or even if he'll be able to work again. Only unmarried women could be teachers, so her ability to earn money is curtailed by the marriage; she may struggle to support them. It's both a statement of trust that Mr Hawkins will keep to his word and take care of them, and a declaration that - in a very immediate and practical sense - Mina chooses her love for Jonathan over financial security.

What I was less aware of last year is the extent of eugenicist thinking in the 1890s around the marriage of people who were mentally ill. Mina makes it very clear just how unwell Jonathan is:

He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past.

And Jonathan is open about it too:

"I feel my head spin round, and I do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. You know I have had brain fever, and that is to be mad."

We know that Jonathan's experiences are real, but he doesn't and Mina doesn't. And neither of them knows if he will make a full recovery.

This was at a time when the British Medical Journal published articles claiming that "marriage was often contracted in a blind and reckless way by those who had a strong predisposition to insanity". In a wider discussion, the article suggests that doctors might advise against marriage not just for those known to be mentally ill, but even people "who come of a nervous stock".

I don't want to go into all the horrible things that the medical establishment of the 1890s believed. But I do want to emphasise the extent of Mina's devotion. She travels day and night to get to Jonathan, she spends a small fortune to do so, she sacrifices her career, she marries someone against the advice of a lot of the contemporary medical establishment, and she does it without hesitation.

Mina and Jonathan are both young. It would be entirely respectable and normal for them to stay engaged but wait to marry, to see if Jonathan recovers, to build up savings, to get home. But Mina says a massive fuck you to that and fuck you to contemporary ableism as well, and marries Jonathan precisely as he is.

#dracula daily #tw ableism #tw eugenics

[starlightshadowsworld]

Happy Disability Pride month and a big ol fuck you to Alexander Graham Bell.

Who despite having a deaf mother who he communicated with via tapping certain things to.

And thus having an understanding that she needed something other than verbal communication to understand things.

.... Saw deaf people as "a defective race".

He wanted deaf people eradicated and at his school for the deaf, he banned the use of sign language.

Yeah he saw sign language as a foreign language.

And as he was also a racist and very against immigration, he went all "we're in America and in America we speak English and only English."

So glad thats not a thing anymore...

His answer to this was that deaf people should be unable to marry other deaf people.

Lest they produce more deaf children a which he saw as a "great calamity that could ruin humanity."

Well jokes on him because 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.

And if you think he kept those opinions to himself... Nope.

Encouraged by him, in 1880, the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf was held.

164 delagates were in attendence, only one of which was deaf.

And they voted to banned sign language in schools.

As an "effort to encourage spoken language skills, and thus restore the Deaf-mute to society."

... By actively taking away what for many was the only way they could communicate in society.

People who had their own community that he wanted destroyed.

But the deaf community is still thriving.

Decades of campaigning resulted in British Sign Language bring recognised by the UK Parliament and passing the BSL Act.

... In 2022.

Yes it was technically recognised in 2003, and was legally recognised in 2015 in Scotland.

But not over all of the UK and did not have the same protections and recognition as it does now.

As of the passing of that bill, there were around 90,000 deaf people in the UK that have BSL as their first or preferred language.

Which I'm sure Alexander Graham Bell was rolling in his grave at hearing.

Also, he is credited as the inventor of the telephone but he may not actually have invented it.

So yeah Happy Disability Pride month and maybe learn some sign language.

#Bsl #british sign language #alexander graham bell #tw eugenics #Deaf #deaf community #Hard of hearing #disability pride #disability pride month

[disabledanarchy]

disabled people buying mobility aids from Amazon are not the issue. Amazon is cheap and easily accessible. sometimes it is the best option, or even the only option.

disabled people who use plastic mobility aids are not the issue.

disabled people using plastic straws because they are unable to drink or will choke without them are not the issue.

disabled people buying thick water in plastic bottles are not the issue. (thick water is water specifically made for disabled people who have difficulty swallowing)

disabled people who use medical equipment made of plastic are not the issue.

disabled people whose medication comes in a plastic bottle are not the issue.

disabled people who travel in cars or buses or trains because they are unable to cycle or walk are not the issue.

big corporations are the issue. the rich are the issue. selfish politicians who do nothing are the issue.

get your eco fascism and eugenicist ideology out of here. disabled people are not responsible for climate change. disabled people deserve to use as much plastic and fossil fuels as they need to survive with as little suffering as possible.

#ableism #physically disabled #physical disability #neurodivergency #mobility aids #mobility aid #cane user #actually autistic #adhd #cripple punk #cripplepunk #disability #disabled #neurodivergent #tw ableism #tw eugenics #tw eco fascism #eco fascism #climate change #climate action #climate activism #climate justice #global warming

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m writing a story about a lady with Down Syndrome. I was wondering if you knew where I can find any resources about Down Syndrome made by people who actually have it, or any organisations that would be good to follow. Any resources made by people with intellectual disability would be really helpful as well.

I read your post about this and it was really helpful so thank you, I’m going to use it as a starting point for my research.

If you’d like some context about the story she’s literally a lady in the 1920s who’s trying to get control of her family’s estate from her brother. Shes underestimated for her disabilities and for being a women but I’m trying to not focus so much on the discrimination and work more on giving her an interesting mystery to solve with the detective she hired. I’d like it to be a bit lighthearted. Anyway, as she’s a main character I really wanted to make sure I wrote her well. Thanks!

Hi!

There aren't many resources out there unfortunately, but there is a page on the UK Down Syndrome's Association's website where members with DS share their opinions on representation in TV and film! You can read it here. For info on intellectual disability in general the best I can do is link some of my previous posts on it - there's close to nothing that's actually made by us unfortunately, everything that I was able to find is always made by someone who knows a person with ID at best. To be clear, not all of it is bad - I thought this interview (TW for abuse that happens in the movie's plot) about a movie starring actors with DS was pretty good - but it's still a sign that we aren't getting enough #OwnVoices representation. It's slowly changing though!

To learn more about DS I would probably recommend NDSS, it's one of the very few orgs that have people with Down Syndrome as board and team members (should be the bare minimum, but it unfortunately isn't). There's also information on things like preferred language and myths that often show up around Down Syndrome!

I'm not great with history, but in the 1920s she would be a subject to a lot more than just discrimination. Eugenics and institutionalization would definitely be present. Not sure what route you'll take there, but basically all the words around that time that she would be described with are currently considered slurs or pejoratives. The racist term for a person with Down Syndrome was officially used into the 60s, and the ableist one is still used legally in 2024. But if you want to skip past that, I think that's more than fine. You don't always have to aim for 100% historical accuracy, just be aware of the real history.

A detective story sounds very exciting! If you decide to publish it on Tumblr or other online site feel free to send me an ask with a link, I'd love to read it :-) !!

Thank you for the ask!

mod Sasza

I’m just popping in as a history fan for a couple bits of history notes — but again, like Sasza said, you don’t have to be 100% historically accurate if you don’t want to and if you don’t feel it’s necessary.

So, especially in the first half of the 1900s, a large part of disabled children, including children with Down Syndrome, were institutionalized very early in their life. Around this time the push that immorality caused disability was strong, and people were often convinced by doctors and professionals that the children’s needs would always be too much for them. Eugenicism was sort of reaching a peak around this time, as well—I would say it was at its most intense in the period of 1900-1940s.

Not all parents institutionalized their children, though. There was pressure to do so, but that doesn’t mean everyone fell victim to it. There wasn’t really any official support for parents who did this, and there weren’t official organizations for Down Syndrome. From my research, the current large DS organizations seem to have popped up in the 60s.

The term ‘Down Syndrome’ wasn’t in popular use until the 70s, and it wasn’t known that it’s caused by an extra chromosome until 1959.

Life expectancy in 1900-1920 for people born with Down Syndrome was 9 years old. Some of this could absolutely have been due to conditions in institutions, but likely even more relevant is that about 50% of people with DS are born with heart defects (also known as congenital heart disease) that can be fatal if not treated with surgery. Heart surgery wasn’t really feasible until the late 30s and early 40s. Another risk factor is a higher risk for infection, which isn’t easy to manage in a world that doesn’t yet have antibiotics.

I actually wanted to find pictures of adults with Down Syndrome pre-1940ish, though, to see real tangible evidence of adults being part of a community. First I found just one picture of a baby in 1925 on this Minnesota government website. But then I found a collection someone made of photos of both children and young adults, but they are not specifically dated. The first baby picture is from the 30s according to the poster!

Judging by the clothes I see people wearing in these photos, photo #4 (man with Down Syndrome in a suit next to a woman) seems to be from the 20s and photo #13 (young woman with Down Syndrome and very long hair) seems to be from about the 1910s. #18 (large family with a lot of sons, including one boy with Down Syndrome) could be from the 30s. Those three are the oldest people with DS in the photos, and they seem like young adults. A lot of these pictures show a community and aren’t just isolated kids, which I find nice.

It’s hard to find specific historical record of people with Down Syndrome from that period of time, but I wanted to show photos of real people in their communities to show, hey look! They were there, too!

Either way, I love detective stories and historical fiction and I’m glad you’re writing a story and that you care about your character’s portrayal but I totally know the feeling of that tricky balance between historical accuracy and modern acknowledgement that we should have been doing better.

— Mod Sparrow

#mod sasza #mod sparrow #intellectual disability representation #historical fiction #pretending that this answer isn't extremely late.. sorry #tw eugenics #tw ableism

[sxnshxnxxnddxxsxxs]

i really feel like we don’t discuss enough just how deep jkr’s white supremacy goes

like it’s way more than just:

cho chang’s name

almost every black character being tall and sporty

kingley’s name

the goblins

the house elves

the only south asian thing about the patil twins being their names

there’s way more but those are the talking points that are usually discussed in the white supremacy context of jkr’s bigotry.

but there’s something else that i find to be particularly insidious which i don’t see that many conversations about.

so for context when i did my a level i had had to research late 19th century pseudoscience because i was studying gothic literature. and i came across things like phrenology and the criminal mind and honestly it feels like jkr discovered these theories and just ran with them.

as a quick explanation phrenology is the theory that by studying the shape of someone’s skull you can see if they’re predisposed to criminality and lombroso’s criminal mind is the theory that criminality is hereditary and you can tell by observing someone’s physical features. it’s also the general consensus in both these theories that someone with physical ‘defects’ or deformities’ will be predisposed to criminality which also makes them incredibly ableist.

both are incredibly eugenicist and white supremacist theories because they’re essentially saying that you can tell if someone is inherently good or bad and thereby whether they deserve to be alive/within society/treated as equals by looking at their physical features.

they are both complete bullshit pseudoscience with no real basis in fact.

now where this comes into hp and jkr is that the antagonists and the villains of the series are disproportionately described as having these very negative physical characteristics.

like the very obvious one is voldemort with no nose and being snakelike.

but also the way peter pettigrew is described.

“His thin, colourless hair was unkempt and there was a large bald patch on top. He had the shrunken appearance of a plump man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. His skin looked grubby, almost like Scabbers’s fur, and something of the rat lingered around his pointed nose, his very small, watery eyes.” (poa ch 19)

like the man is literally being compared to an animal (yes i know it’s implied in the lore that the longer one stays in their animagus form the more traits they take on but the point still stands).

then there’s marcus flint who as far as i remember is literally just a minor antagonist.

“Marcus Flint was even larger than Wood. He had a look of trollish cunning on his face as he replied” (cos ch 7)

like she really has a thing for comparing people to animals which is a very common tool in white supremacy for dehumanising people.

and then there’s greyback

“a big, rangy man with matted grey hair and whiskers, whose black Death Eater’s robes looked uncomfortably tight. He had a voice like none that Harry had ever heard: a rasping bark of a voice. Harry could smell a powerful mixture of dirt, sweat and, unmistakeably, of blood coming from him. His filthy hands had long yellowish nails.” (hbp ch 27)

now admittedly it’s slightly different with greyback since jkr is very openly saying in the narrative that he’s less than human and too dangerous for society because jkr only believes in equality for muggleborns and no one else.

but as is stands there are so many examples some big some small of the physical descriptions of villains and antagonists having negative connotations. the reason that it’s so insidious is because this is a children’s book series. and children soak up information like sponges including the implication that the further you are from the beauty standards the worse of a person you are (something that is reinforced by society). then when you place that in the context of the west where hp is most popular then it becomes the further away you are from whiteness (the western beauty standard) the worse of a person you are.

it seems like a really small thing which is why i don’t think it gets discussed nearly as much as the more overt things but even the small pebbles can have large ripple effects. besides i think think it’s incredibly important to discuss every aspect of jkr’s bigotry.

#anti jkr #fuck jkr #seriously fuck her #hp meta #harry potter meta #cw jkr #i do not support jkr #jkr is trash #screw jkr #literary analysis #harry potter analysis #tw white supremacy #tw ableism #tw racsim #tw eugenics #pseudoscience

[transformedyt]

Just a friendly reminder that telling disabled people (ESPECIALLY those of us with genetic conditions) not to reproduce is ableist and is pretty eugenics-y. If YOU are disabled and do not want to have children because YOU don’t want to pass it down, then that’s YOUR choice to make. But don’t tell OTHER people not to.

If you are a doctor and have a patient wanting kids, but their disability/illness could make the pregnancy dangerous or fatal, then mention it. Make sure they know the risks. But you can’t FORCE them not to do something. Informed consent exists for a reason.

Also, if you don’t want kids, that is VALID! I don’t either. But I’m also not gonna shame anyone who does.

#disabled #physically disabled #heds #adhd #chronic pain #ableism #actually autistic #rant #actually disabled #hypermobile ehlers danlos #invisible disability #tw ableism #tw eugenics

[identitty-dickruption]

The emphasis on nation and national fitness obviously plays into the metaphor of the body. If individual citizens are not fit, if they do not fit into the nation, then the national body will not be fit. Of course, such arguments are based on a false idea of the body politic—by that notion a hunchbacked citizenry would make a hunchbacked nation. Nevertheless, the eugenic “logic” that individual variations would accumulate into a composite national identity was a powerful one. This belief combined with an industrial mentality that saw workers as interchangeable and therefore sought to create a universal worker whose physical characteristics would be uniform, as would the result of their labors—a uniform product

Davis, 2013, ‘Normality, Power, and Culture’

#disability #disability theory #crip theory #tw eugenics

[bonefall]

What would bb!Tigerstar think of Shadowsight? Would he attempt to gain a hold on him like Ashfur did and use him, especially since he's 'kin,'?

Tigerstar refused to even associate with Jaypaw in spite of the anger that would have been very easy to exploit. He hates people with disabilities, especially in his "great bloodline."

He wouldn't want to admit that Shadowsight is kin. He'd sort of dance around it, he's diplomatic enough to not say DIRECTLY that his grand plan for the forest would dissappear him quietly... But, Shadowsight is not part of his grand vision, either.

It's more likely he would target Lightleap and try to find any resentment she has for her brother. But, thankfully, he is double-dead and only exists now in gorey nursery rhymes, where he belongs.

#Better bones au #Tw eugenics #Tw ableism #He is not a wholesome man he is a violent dictator lmao #There are slurs behind those eyes that you've never even heard of

[sunstormbudgie]

okay but like. what if the hivewings aren't any more closely related to Clearsight than the other Pantalan tribes. what if the black scales thing was made up by someone to justify segregation. what if the stories were all propaganda for some kind of eugenics movement.

Look, here's the thing. We all know the official story makes no sense. How on earth does one single dragon completely change the language, genetics, and culture of an entire continent??? I've seen some people saying "oH CLeArSigHt wAs a CoLoNisER" but I still don't think that interpretation makes any sense. It doesn't fit her character at all, and even if it did, she couldn't have taken over the entire continent by herself.

But what if all that change wasn't her doing at all?

My theory is that at some point between Clearsight's death and the Tree Wars, there was a civil war in the beetlewing kingdom. At that time, there was a small group of extremists who believed themselves to be descendants of Clearsight. They believed that nightwings/the Pyrrhian tribes in general were racially superior, and so they started some kind of eugenics program in an attempt to breed dragons that had more nightwing features.

The biggest thing the eugenics movement focused on was black scales. When they took over the beetlewing kingdom, they segregated the population into dragons that had black scales, and those that didn't. This was the beginning of the split into hivewings and silkwings. They also deliberately tried to breed more defensive/dangerous abilities (such as venom) out of the silkwings.

After several decades of being denied basic rights, the silkwings revolted. They eventually gained independence from the hivewing kingdom, starting their own kingdom.

For the most part, the old eugenicist beliefs were shunned, seen by the new generations of hivewings as a terrible crime. But there was always a small group of hivewings who held onto those extreme beliefs, hoping that one day the hivewings would rule the continent once again.

And Queen Wasp was one of them.

#I know the real reason why the canon makes no sense is that Tui doesn't know how genetics works #but all these years of watching MatPat have rewired my brain #now my default response to bad writing is to fill in the gaps with the most dark and disturbing fan theories imaginable #wof #wings of fire #hivewings #silkwings #tw racism #tw eugenics

[real-total-drama-takes]

guys, i dont think its a big deal to ship two blonde people together 😭😭 they have to keep the gene alive somehow just let them be

#tw eugenics #fandom takes #tw racism

[celestiastarshine]

So I just found out from Essence of Thought that JK Rowling has gotten worse. Which doesn't surprise me, but I find it plenty abhorrent for obvious reasons.

TW: Nazis, eugenics, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and transmisia are discussed in the video. If these topics trigger you, please protect your peace.

(TERFS and JK Rowling supporters DNI)

#tia talks #jk rowling #anti jkr #fuck jkr #feck jk rowling #tw jkr mention #tw jkr #tw jk rowling #tw nazis #tw eugenics #tw antisemitism #tw holocaust denial #tw transmisia #tw transphobia #tw transphobes

[cemitadepollo]

I'm a hardcore Beastars fan in the sense that it's written so badly and it handles subjects so poorly I resorted to fucking doing some sort of fanfic I'll hopefully get around illustrating on my art account someday.

One of my greatest points about why I dislike it yet love it so much is about how inherently abusive Legoshi is over Haru. I read it a lot because it brings me comfort since I see myself in Haru A LOT, so I'm thankful about Beastars existing, and I don't have a problem with people thinking they're cute or romantic because it's fiction and it didn't really matter because Beastars is meant for mature audiences that should have nuance and reading comprehension, but yeah, I think I want to talk about that more.

Also, the eugenics involved with the Melon thing???? Yikes. I see myself in Melon a lot as a borderline person with antisocial comorbidity, but I absolutely get that Melon is yet another "crazy quirky deep social criticism socio/psychopath" character type, Joker style, so yeah, double yikes.

#ableism #sanism #beastars #beastars haru #beastars melon #beastars legoshi #legoshi #haru #melon beastars #haru beastars #tw eugenics #tw ableism #tw sanism #tw sociopath slur #tw psychopath slur

[spocks-evil-godmother]

Rest in peace to me because I am vague blogging so forgive me everyone but sometimes I am so very obsessed with people's opinions about why Elementary is Bad in the year of our lord 2023.

The argument was that Elementary was bad as an adaptation for making it a procedural crime drama and for making Sherlock an addict, both of which "miss the point" of the ACD canon. (This person was very obviously a big Johnlock person as well which wouldn't matter except for the particular hill they decided to defend.) I can't disagree that procedural crime dramas are a function of modernity, and are certainly not the "point" of the Holmes canon. If you dislike procedurals on principle then I think that's that and there you have it—but considering that procedurals are a very common way to do mystery-writing now, and considering that to my knowledge there has never been a Holmes & Watson procedural before, I do think that it makes sense for a modern adaptation. Modern Holmes, modern storytelling convention, matchy matchy. But no, not the point and perhaps a valid complaint.

But disliking Sherlock as an addict is a VERY FUNNY ISSUE TO TAKE WHEN YOU ARE PUTTING BBC SHERLOCK ON A PEDESTAL. My number one complaint about season four of Sherlock (and I am being dead serious) was the relationship they presented between John, Sherlock, and drug use. Because the "point," I think, was that Sherlock Holmes is willing to escalate conflict, lie to his partner, and put his own life in jeopardy for the sake of the mystery, damn the consequences (and, for that matter, he trusts that his partner will accept being abused and still help him no matter what). And I get that ACD!Holmes would do anything for the mystery and he didn't always treat Watson well in the canon but I think if the "point" were that these two characters are locked in an immutably abusive and codependent relationship then these characters would not having the staying power that they do. I won't say that the episode was bad writing per se, but I felt like that was the nail in the coffin for BBC Sherlock as an adaptation for me. It was like, yes sir, we've always given Sherlock drugs to use recreationally as in canon, and when he starts to use them in unhealthy ways and they negatively impact his relationships, it doesn't need to be addressed to the audience as an issue because actually Sherlock Holmes is Too Smart to have a drug problem, he was tricking you the whole time, and you were stupid for worrying.

Which like. Okay. I don't think that's the point, and if it is, I don't want it. No thanks.

Compare with Elementary. And not saying it's perfect. Not saying anyone has to like it. But we are thinking about Sherlock Holmes in a modern setting. And the fact of the matter is, when ACD wrote Sherlock Holmes, we did not have the same amount of information on substance use or addiction that we do today. This isn't to say that people can't use substances recreationally and safely, whether they live in the late 1800s or in the modern era. But in ACD's time, the common understanding of chemical dependence was often attributed to moral failing rather than any other contributing factor. There was no such thing as chemical dependence. There were people strong enough to make good choices and people who weren't. And that's not to say they didn't notice, say, genetic predispositions. That tied into much of eugenicist thought at the time. "Ah, yes, the way to fix society is to get rid of those gross people who keep generating morally weak children. Then society will be great!" The way people thought about drug use had very little to do with medicine and a lot to do with self-reinforcing prejudices against class or race. The Sherlock Holmes written by Arthur Conan Doyle did not have an addiction, not because he was just amazing at maintaining a healthy and recreational relationship with his substances, but because deep down he's Too Good For That. Back then Good People didn't have addictions. He had vices, perhaps, or indulgences, or experiments. But Holmes couldn't have a problem with substance use because he was above having a problem with substance use.

So we are left with Holmes in the modern era. Like before, Holmes uses drugs recreationally. He enjoys them. They, as before, help him think and help him stay close to the mysteries he solves. But something else has changed. Now we know that there is no such thing as being Too Smart or Too Good to have an addiction. And so our modern Holmes has to contend with the fact that yes, he's not Too Smart to develop a dependency, he's not Too Smart to relapse, and he is not Too Smart to suffer the same kind of struggle that so many ordinary people have also suffered. It's very humbling. It is indeed painful for him to accept Joan as a sober companion in his life. It's something impossible to escape. And it is really, really fruitful as a character trait. The conversation he has with Joan in the season 3 episode "The Eternity Injection" still sticks with me:

Sherlock: If you must know, Watson, I've been feeling a little bit down of late. It's the process of maintaining my sobriety. It's repetitive. And it's relentless. And above all, it's tedious. When I left rehab, I... I accepted your influence, I committed to my recovery. And now, two years in, I find myself asking, "'is this it?"' My sobriety is simply a grind. It's just this leaky faucet that requires constant maintenance, and in return offers only not to drip.

Joan: You have your work, you have me. You're alive.

Sherlock: I've told myself that many times. So many times, it has become unmoored from all meaning. Odd. I used to imagine that a relapse would be the climax to some grand drama. Now I think that if I were to use drugs again, it would in fact be an anticlimax. It would be a surrender to the incessant drip, drip, drip of existence.

I love this scene. I love this conversation. And I love it as an adaptation because this is not a conclusion or moral that Arthur Conan Doyle could have written in his own time. This scene captures some of the knowledge we have now, and likely some of the hurts and harms of our era as well. However, it says something about these two famous characters: that Sherlock, whose mind aches for mysteries, is equally if not more challenged by the practical matter of living his life, and that Joan is with him in it. It's not dramatic. It's just a conversation in their living room.

I think that's sufficient.

Sherlock is a detective and an addict in Elementary. His addiction changes the way he thinks and acts forever. And in some regards, that makes him worse. And in other regards, that makes him the best he's ever been. No, Arthur Conan Doyle did not write a story about an addict. Elementary did. And the point is that he solved mysteries and helped people, the point was that he was an incredible detective, and the point was that he was human, only human.

rrrrrrr don't say weird things about my show kthxbai

#elementary #vent #tw substance abuse #substance abuse mention #tw eugenics #tw substance use #substance use #long post #mitch pitch #it is also perhaps relevant and something many people may not realize #but elementary also suggests that sherlock holmes is an addict specifically BECAUSE he lives in the 21st century #holmes speculates to himself that had he lived in the 1800s he may not have become an addict #which i have always found interesting