hurricane-eva
undoer eva
autistic. author. artist. adventist.
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This is SO good. As someone who can't drink myself, both seeing Thursday push the first drink on Morse in the pilot, and all of season nine, just absolutely breaks my heart.
Morse and drinking in the 70s...
Long....because I can't write short. And obviously, a lot of you will already know this stuff...
Just want to take a moment to talk about alcohol and alcoholism in the context of the early 1970s and remind folks of how totally and completely different it is from how we see it today.
Drunk driving had not been outlawed in most countries. Not only that, it was widely regarding as funny—funny enough to be used as a regular “gag” in movies. Problem drinking was also seen as funny. There were regular cartoon strips about it. The “drunk” was a funny stock character in all sorts of plays and movies.
Alcohol was ubiquitous. We’re not just talking liquid lunches. We’re talking drinking at work, while you work—just as you see in Endeavour. Think about that for a second.
And politely saying no wasn’t something you did without social consequences. It wasn’t just seen as a personal preference. Unless you had a specific, acceptable reason, turning down a drink was often seen as stand-offish and judgmental or as a social snub. Teetotalism was regarded as rather naive and ridiculous—not something any man or woman of the world would embrace.
In the early 1970s, there was no widespread understanding of alcoholism as a disease. It was still seen very much as the consequence of personal weakness—still a matter of “If you cared enough or tried hard enough, you wouldn’t do this so it must be a character flaw.”
Plus, most people, “normal” people don’t have problems with alcohol, so if you do then there’s something abnormal and defective about you—most likely something you brought upon yourself.
And as a “personal weakness” and a “defect,” the shame around it was profound and the secrecy matched. If someone went away for treatment, it was very much akin to an unwed mother going off to have her baby and then returning without the child. You never spoke of it. You pretended that it had never happened.
If you were a kind person, you also didn’t go out of your way to parade babies in front of her or talk constantly about children when she was with you. But refer to it directly? Never. Ask for help? Never. It was always something to be hidden. Everyone did their best to forget that it had ever happened and saw this as the "kindest" thing to do.
When Morse returns from his “cure,” it would simply be assumed that everyone would pretend that nothing unusual has happened. Why he’s just been off on a tour of the West Country and nothing else! Hope you had a lovely time! That sort of polite fiction was exactly what he would have expected upon his return. Anything more direct—at least in a public setting—would have been shocking to him and everyone else.
Where things break down, however, is in the more personal interactions. His relationship with Thursday is such that they can at least broach the topic of drinking. When they do, my impression is that Thursday is well-aware that Morse not “cured.” However, in the context of the time, saying this would be akin to saying, "You failed," because there was no disease model of alcholism in widespread use. You went to be cured and it worked or it didn't.
However, I'd also add that Thursday is almost to the breaking point with the cumulative strain he is under. He can’t cope with the “burden” of Morse being in a precarious state and he knows it. He feels desperately guilty about that—as well as about other things like Strange and Joan or about life having moved on so much while Morse was gone—and so he just shuts down.
Shutting down is Thursday’s go-to strategy when he’s overwhelmed. We’ve seen him do it many times before. And part of that for him, is that he pretends that the people around him are ok—even if they are anything but ok. Not surprisingly, he does it the most with the people he has the closest emotional ties with—Win, Joan, Sam, and Morse.
So the only way that Thursday can cope is by having Morse be perfectly fine. Conveniently, his preferred coping strategy fits exactly with his society's expectations about how alcoholism works. If Morse is "cured," you don’t need to worry about sparing him the constant offers of alcohol in the same way that the young unwed mother might hope to be spared babies. You certainly wouldn’t embarrass him (especially after he’s been through the humiliation of rehab) by drawing attention in any way to a possible to the idea that he still has a problem.
And finally, a last note on time context. The scene in the pub where Morse has that first drink after finding out that Joan is marrying Jim is utterly heartbreaking for so many reasons. One of those reasons, however, is that we know it’s the first drink—and that the first drink leads to the second, and so on and so forth. Then Morse says to Thursday, “They said the, the odd beer, the odd shot, does no harm…"Everything in moderation," they said,” and we automatically assume he’s lying.
I’m fairly sure that those scenes were meant to be interpreted through our modern viewpoint. However, it’s worth noting that again, the model of alcoholism in the 1970s was nothing like what we have today. The idea that someone with a drinking problems/addictions needs to abstain entirely was not even close to universal at that point. It’s perfectly possible that the advice Morse is quoting is the advice he received!
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okay okay so in this particular situation Morse was there bc he was invited by the soloist but how often do you think he and Max end up at the same concerts and don't realize
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This really ought to top every “Best Opening Lines,” list. The 21st century reading public is sleeping on Dorothy L Sayers.
(Have His Carcase 1932)
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@librawritesstuff has already brought up this topic, so let's delve deeper into it...
I have reason to suspect that I'm not the only one aroused by the disheveled, hangover Morse sleeping with his clothes on the couch... and that hideous vest... I'll take him blindly…
Do I need a therapy? … probably…
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So, autistic me has one (1) dentist I am comfortable with BUT they don't take the insurance we have. I have two cracked fillings to fix + a crown to put on. If anyone wants to help crowdfund towards the $2545 needed to take care of these things before they get out of hand that would be amazing!!
Project Fix Eva's Teeth
venmo: @hurricanewriter
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/evaseyler
paypal: dm for the email address
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the montfermeil sequence, according to the musical
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Ugh he's so hot in uniform
Morsetache Monday
Plus bonus hatfidget gif
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Another quote from This Great Wilderness, which you should definitely request that your library purchase for its collection (either digital or paperback). 👀
#autism awareness#autism#autism acceptance#autism acceptence month#autistic author#own voices#historical fiction#1950s#nazis get punched
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...He's senior officer. He's a fist with a warrant card.
Endeavour, 601, "Pylon"
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The hands
The eyes
THE Morsetache™ (Yep. Again. I'm not sorry)
(from 0602 - Apollo)
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Ask me for a free code for the audiobook of This Great Wilderness on Spotify! Or go here for other formats: books2read.com/u/braR5A
#autism awareness#autism acceptance#autistic adult#autistic author#own voices#this great wilderness#1950s#historical fiction
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🤣🤣🤣
victor hugo spends NINETEEN chapters discussing in great detail the battle of waterloo then be like 'jean valjean had been recaptured. the reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad details'
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Just finished!
65 days.
Around 200 hours of work.
63,261 stitches (which means I stabbed the aida a minimum of 253,044 times).
This icon is called "Christ the Word of God" and the pattern is available from my ko-fi shop.
https://ko-fi.com/s/78b086f0f8
#cross stich pattern#counted cross stitch#orthodox christianity#orthodox icon#jesus#word of god#christianity#christ
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