britishnation:
[ So. Well. After months of quiet simmering, I finally need to get this off my chest and I fully expect to lose followers over it. By all means, do go on. But I must say: the way the fandom handled the entire Eurus ordeal has taught me rather a lot about victim blaming - and the victim I am talking about here is not Eurus. Everyone that has been following my blog for a while knows that I intensely dislike the way Eurus was written: I dislike the way they handled her sexuality, her mental health and her intelligence; it was like an ignorant throwback into the values of gothic literature that hundreds of years of writing have tried to improve. And just as in gothic literature, Eurus, the apparent âclimaxâ of the series, was written for little more than the shock factor, without paying any attention to the effects on the main characters of the show.Â
Ever since TFP was broadcast, I have come across sentences such as these: Mycroft was so stupid. Mycroft was so out of character. Mycroft is abusive. Mycroft treated her terribly. Mycroft is the true villain of the show. Mycroft does not deserve Sherlockâs forgiveness. And the best thing is - Mycroft would probably agree with all these opinions. TFP didnât end on a good note for him. It has left him in a place that might actually be fatal for his mental health and his career. He has a clear, very distinct childhood trauma that still haunts him and suffers from PTSD. His sister is his greatest fear, to the point where he consciously banned most childhood-related memories from his mind and his home. The childhood flashbacks actually show us some very interesting information: Mycroft was an extremely troubled, very unhappy boy who, nevertheless, had a close, loving relationship with Sherlock. He was charged with the tasked of taking care of his siblings, being the eldest and most responsible (a role into which he has been forced by circumstance. Mycroft has been made to grow up far too fast), and he felt that it was his duty to deal with Eurusâs destructive outbursts. He was the one that asked her sensible questions, tried to understand what was going on and how to help her. I often see people pitying Eurus because she had ânothingâ - what did Mycroft have? He didnât have friends. He only had his books. Mycroft, too, was left without his little brother whenever Victor came over to play (which is not, I repeat, not a reason to resort to murder). Mycroft didnât have being the family favourite, he didnât have being the most intelligent, all he had was being ⊠just Mycroft. Isolated and trying to drown himself in food. What happened then was that Eurus systematically destroyed all their lives. She burned their childhood home to the ground (and again: hello overused gothic stereotype). She delighted in making Sherlock, Mycroftâs passionately beloved little brother, suffer. And she killed a child. A child Mycroft could not save. Sherlock was unable to overcome his trauma, so Mycroft, essentially still being a child himself, developed a strategy to make him forget, to pull him out of his misery and help him cope. The fandom likes to call this âemotional abuseâ and âgaslightingâ. Where were the parents? Where was the mental healthcare? Mycroft did all he could, and he did it well, considering the intense emotional pressure that rested on him during the entire time. He encountered the first death to be blamed on him at the age of what - thirteen, fourteen? And it is at this age that an older, more experienced family member decides to take matters into his hand and entrust Mycroft (tiny! teenage! Mycroft!) with the responsibility of keeping Eurusâs fate a secret. Mycroft is not the one that locked her in - he was forced into this situation by a relative he viewed as authority. And for all these years, Mycroft has had to live with the knowledge that Eurus still wants to destroy him, that Sherlock will never be safe from her, that the psychological help she receives remains ineffective, that she violently rapes and disfigures staff members, that she is his to care for, that he is the only one that will be made responsible for her crimes. And that is what actually happens when things get out of hand. Mycroft handled many things poorly. He made decisions that can not be excused, but then, how could he be expected to remain logical and rational in this matter? Mycroft is a victim. He was an actual child when this happened and he nearly lost his life over it. More importantly, I believe he also lost a good deal of his already crackling self-worth. Am I trying to say that people should not relate to Eurus, a mentally ill, tragically misrepresented, incarcerated woman that ought to have been handled much more adequately by the writers? No. But stop blaming Mycroft for everything. There is too much suffering that needs to be recognised. All things considered, itâs not a surprise at all that he was puking with fear and guilt once the situation escalated. And what did he get in exchange for years of trauma, terror and loneliness? Nothing but an Idiot boy. You should have done better. And letâs not even talk about Sherlock. Honestly, just save Sherlock and Mycroft from the terrible, terrible Holmes household. They should and could not have done better. But they deserve better. Much, much better than this. ]
