#Elinor mentioned for ts

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aaaaaahhhahahahah Bernie coming back to Holby to do a short stint (maybe just the one ep) in the new year and her arrival coinciding w Elinor’s death date

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petition for a mashup of Elinor zooming her car away to hit Edward when he’s holding that bouquet flowers after stalking Serena at work

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seeing reasonable parent in fiction is honestly so bizarre to me, like i just watched the “Elinor throws a huge fuck off party at the house gets trashed” episode and like, Serena doesn’t even yell. She just talks reasonably about actual issues in a clear and concise way despite the fact that she’s shattered and Elinor royally fucked up, like wtf is that

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also forever (negative) screaming about Edward’s “let’s start living a happy life together” like wtf mate you can’t start to live a happy life after you get married have a baby get cheated on get divorced move on get back together have ur heart broken and break up all over again like that is just not an option like mate u had ur chance and u blew it and then you had another chance and you blew that too get ur shit together and get the fuck away from Serena she was always too good for you stop trying to cut away at her self esteem until she’s sad enough to be manipulated into bed ffs

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me @ cam: maybe use ur words and tell ur mother you don’t want to do things?! instead of letting her pull you along w things you don’t want to do bc she doesn’t know you don’t want them?

Edit: below the cut!rant thinky thoughts bc I’m real worried about what the writers think is the point of Cam as a character 

So Can doesn’t make any sense as a real person in-universe. 

His emotional maturity is w e i r d it doesn't follow Bernie's pattern and it doesn't follow Marcus's either. He got this weird “I dont want what my parents want for me,” even tho either of his parents actively forced him into medicine? 

Like, having both ur parents in the same field and feeling as if you should do that is one thing, but you’re only going to feel like you should do that thing if you don’t know what else you want to do enough to stand on your on feet and say: I want this other thing. in which case, the actual issue is the not knowing what you want in life, and not external influences i.e. parents wanting you do do something more than the you wanting something else.

so Cam chose to go into medicine, of his own volition, and then dropped out for the same reason. 

and obvi Bernie is excited to see him go back to medicine in Indefensible bc he'd been rolling after flunking out and not really doing anything nor having anything else he wanted to do. but she didn’t force him back into it, he chose to come back bc of Morven etc. Then he came to Holby and then left for the same reasons: they were all his choice.

Just like him agreeing to observe must have been his own choice. And I can see how that agreement to come observe might be just about the fact that the surgery sounds interesting regardless of what medicine he wants to specialise in, but he could just as easily have said “no thanks i’m happy in London” if he really didn’t want to come back to Holby or spend time w his mother. 

But he chose to come back for a bit of his own volition bc there's no way Bernie could have exerted enough pressure on Cam while he was living and working on London to make him feel pressured to be involved in trauma. She’s been distracted af by huge things happening in her life recently and there's no logical way she could have been involved enough in Cam's life to make his decision about her. That kind of pressure w the filial history they have would be enormous and it’s not something Bernie is capably of doing unconsciously. 

we know she's not an inherently overbearing parent - of course she has expectations and wants and she’s def been more involved w Cam and his life since the car accident and then again after Elinor died, but more likely than not that’s just text messages and the odd phone call), but that’s and nothing that could possibly make Cam feel like his life decisions are all about her bc Cam has had plenty of time apart from Bernie to develop into his own human away from maternal expectations.

and if she had intentionally tried to apply that kind of pressure (wildly out of character as it is) there’s no way she’d have had that time or the energy to make that happen anyway. like, she can’t even got on top of her paperwork ffs. so it simply isn’t possible for Bernie to have pressured Cam enough to make him feel his life choices about her.

So unless the writers are deliberately trying to create a character with no inherent sense of self and is thus incapably of know what he wants in the first place (which i don’t think they were), neither his relationship w Bernie or his emotional palette makes any sense what so ever. 

And it unsettles me, bc I think what writers are trying to implying that Cam has some extremely serious emotional issue re his mother, but nothing serious enough for him/them to actually address in canon.

Bc when Cam came to work at Holby he makes out like Bernie refuses to talk to him of her own volition (i.e. “this is not an appropriate work place conversation” “well you’ll just have to have a proper conversation w them then”) despite the fact that we know Bernie wants her children in her life and def kept in contact w Cam after the car accident (bc you don’t not keep in contact w ur kid when they’re been in a car accident like wot?).

and like, Bernie’s surprise at Cam being at Holby could only have been bc Cam never told her he was coming back to medicine/the ward. he must have made the decision not to mention it to her, bc sending a “oh btw mum, i’m coming to work w you” text would be the natural thing to do in that situation. But he didn’t do that. Add that to all the digs at Bernie about never using her words to validate him re the compliments etc

And when he left w/out saying anything is was if he was skulking away, and I think it was supposed to be both an act of care i.e. not wanting to worry her more than what she always was re Serena, as well as an unconscious but deliberate act actually wanting to hurt Bernie (like a revenge act of leaving when she needs support akin to how it felt to Cam when Bernie went off to serve during his teens, for instance).

And now they’re framing that him being back at holby is Bernie's fault, as if he - as an adult human - has no say about how his life turns out. Which is simply Not True? it cannot be true, bc anything that would compromise his emotional development to the that degree cannot have existed in his childhood and align w the canon we have for Bernie and Bernie/Marcus.

Absent parenting only messes someone up so much but Cam appears to be displaying extremely deep seated issues that outflank which is logically conceivable given the canon info we know atm but the writers aren’t engaging w any of this, at all. And it’s got me real unsettled I don’t know why they’d include this content and not address it unless they’re legit not aware it’s in his character. In which case, Cam is legit a just prop they bring in to traumatise Bernie when they feel she needs a good kicking when she’s down, rather than a legit character in his own right, and that’s got me fucking unsettled. 

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Salty(tm) thoughts about narrative choices re Serena’s now finalised storyline, bc the more I think about it, the more I’m beginning to see the logic of the choices the writer’s made, and I find I like what we got more than the alternatives.

I mean, Serena’s narrative pre-Bernie had already check off: professional humiliation, a cheating spouse, reconciliation + disastrous personal break up in a professional setting, the continued incorporation of personal issues into a profession setting, self grooming and physical abuse (+ being having her status outed at work), the supposed neglect of her family, plus shocking lack of friendships and generally just failing at romantic relationships. All of which is intermingled with continued and consistent confirmations of her failings as a human, a woman, a mother and a daughter (which comes w a heavy dose of emotional neglect), a doctor and a surgeon, and a colleague who just isn’t nice enough.

Bernie’s introduction and the possibility of being happy are wildly out of narrative form for the show, and the more I think about it, I seriously doubt it was ever meant to last. 

There aren’t that many other options that match and raise the severity of Serena’s past storylines. Except for maybe killing a patient, there aren’t many professional things that could go wrong for Serena. And personal life wise, Serena is too old to conceivably have more children, which eradicates any pregnancy+miscarriage+sad birth stuff storylines they might have gone with if she were a younger character. And the only way she’s end up in an abusive relationship is w Bernie, and given the show already had on screen abusive same-sex relationship so they couldn’t very well go an repeat that on two different wards, could they?). And that pretty much covers the narratives they could have gone to keep Serena’s continued narrative suffering up to and beyond the level it had previously grown. 

Thus, in continuing the narrative progression of Serena’s combined arcs, the writers left themselves no other choice but to have a crack at her family. And they only just introduced Jason so it was never going to be him and so: Elinor died, bc what better way to further traumatise Serena (without incorporating any kind of therapy into her narrative for healing) and continue to punish her for being a professional woman with a family than to take away the family?

But I find myself strangely grateful about this choice, bc the only other narrative the writers could have chosen that would have maintained the narrative trajectory and trump all that pre-existing suffering in Serena’s storyline, would be to physically injure her so severely she lost her ability to perform surgery with no possibility of recovery.

bc as painful as her grief is now, it is possible for her to recover and find some sort of happiness. It won’t be the same happiness as she might have found before, bc life will never be like it was before. But given enough time and therapy and support, Serena can still have a future that includes the possibility of some kind of happiness. 

bc at the end of the day she’s lost her daughter but she still has herself and her skills and the career she’s build for herself through the course of her whole life. But if you take that away - take away what Serena has build for herself w her whole life: medicine - even if she still had Elinor, it wouldn’t be enough, bc she wouldn’t have anything of her own to live for in that instance.

Serena is, at her v core, a surgeon and medicine is what she lives for, and if the writers took that away, took away her ability to perform surgery, there is no why in hell Serena would ever recover from losing her future in medicine. 

At least this way -  with the storyline that they chose to tell - Serena does have a future that she can grow and heal and live into. At least this way she has hope. 

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@merylstreeeps @ktlsyrtis k so specifically bc lizard brain and i’m watching old canon footage + new canon events and “you shouldn’t have to care for an elderly relative until ur my age” except Elinor will never be Serena age. 

The only relative Serena is going to have when she gets old is Bernie (like she’s got Jason and the Dunn clan but they’re not carer options) so my brain went on a tangent that fits in w this tag!rant (cw: death mention).

I kept the details to minimum bc it hurts real bad but if y’all want to cry then msg me and i’ll msg ur the rambles 

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salty asks: Most disliked arc? Why?(berena)

well obvi Elinor, bc it was sad and angsty and Hurt Me, but technically that wasn’t a Berena arc - it was Serena’s and Bernie was a bystander - and them running AAU and getting together are the only actual arcs they have so far.

If I were going to so most disliked arc(s) for Serena and Bernie as separate characters, I’d say Bernie: the undercurrent of “make nice and learn to be motherly” snippets they gave her when she was working on Keller, and Serena: the consistent “lets publish Serena for being a woman and a professional with a family and generally just existing as a human” deal they’ve had going on for since ever. bc fuck the justification bc that kind of narrative treatment.

pour me some salt from this friendly list

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“Everyone makes mistakes, some of us pay a very, very high price for them.”

LIKE YOU PARTNER’S DAUGHTER DYING ON YOUR WARD BC YOU HAD TO LEAVE HER OBVS TO A JUNIOR DOCTOR BC YOU WERE IN SURGERY SAVING HER NEPHEW AND YOU CAN’T BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE like f u c k as if Bernie doesn’t second guess herself every morning about how she could have done differently that day, done anything differently that day and every day that came after it, how she could have handled everything differently so she wouldn’t have lost Serena. As if Bernie isn’t a huge ball of regret and guilt and shame and carrying all of that around w her every day and having no one to talk to bc she isn’t canon in therapy and brave face shoulders back solider on bc that’s who she is and no one asks bc no one cares enough to ask or ask anymore so no one knows how messed up she is, like f u c k I am upset. 

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omg Ollie did u legit just ask a woman who has been

blown up + stopped beating on the operating table + quarantined for opened TB 

been outed on the ward by a patient who knew bc of hospital gossip while her separated/ex partner was on the ward

had her partner’s daughter die while the ward was under her overall care

whether getting you on AAU was “bad luck” when you deliberately asked to join the ward? 

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critical ranting about holby under the cut (bc I am also sick of long holby text posts bc reading is hard)  

But I have Thoughts(tm) I need to air because there are many things that really really get my goat about Serena’s current story and almost all of it is due to the fact that her entire narrative arc has been constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

To begin, I hold that this narrative arc is an example of poor storytelling. As I’ve vague discussed before, I think Elinor’s introduction+exit=the fall out of her death was very poorly constructed and executed. The pacing is wrong, the rhythm of progression is beyond clunky, and the “you fill in the blanks” between the plot points the writers are handing to the audience are too large and frequent to be of any benefit to the narrative.

They reintroduced Elinor far too briefly for anyone to actually care that the character die, because, of course, the point wasn’t that Elinor died: it was that Serena Campbell’s daughter died. Following that, they left out crucial and oh so very important scenes in Serena’s story. For instance, discussing Elinor’s condition with the Doctors and Edward, their decision to turn of the ventilator, and preparing for the funeral. Nevertheless, those plot points were left out of Serena’s narrative as a deliberate decision.

So too was the choice to leave out any depiction of Serena’s grief at home. Which in itself, I shall concede, is understandable given Holby is a medial drama situated in a work place hospital and generally only includes out of hospital scenes when large concentrations of hospital employees are there at the same time such as Albie’s and work functions, etc.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the trio’s house and now Dom and Issac’s domesticity. Those scenes are included because they are essential to the story those characters are telling at the time. Zosia’s early story is inherently connected to her personal life. As is Dom and Issac’s storyline necessitates the blurring of profession and personal and how Issac’s abuse alters depending on the situation. Thus, Holby has a history of included non-work place related scenes when it furthers the story they have chosen to tell.

Yet the deliberately decided against including allowing Serena to grieve in the safety and comfort of her own home, just as the arguably essential scenes above mentioned scenes were left out of scripts. In fact, that entire section of Serena’s storyline was barely even acknowledged. Now, we all know that Russell would have knocked those scenes out of the park. So leaving them out wasn’t the writers factoring in to a lack of ability on behalf of their performer. Nor do I believe they left them out because the writers were unable to write the content. On the contrary, I think Holby’s writer’s room to be more than capable of producing that type of content and doing it rather well.

It then follows that the writers made a deliberate decision to they breezed over what ought to have been a significant point of character development in favour of inserting her straight back onto the ward. To ensure that her grief and every unhealthy coping mechanism she uses to get through the day would be on full display to her colleagues, and to the audience. The writers forced Serena back onto the ward, to the same physical location of her daughter’s death, in order to deliberately blur the lines of the character’s personal tragedy with her professional existence.

They explicated unhealthy coping techniques that directly affected Serena’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and they did it without providing her with an adequate support network. 

They created an unhealthy inter-generational dynamic between Serena and Jasmine that, at times, epitomises the ‘old queers are predatory and dangerous to young women’ trope. They glazed over Serena’s panic attacks and fugue states in favour implying she’s drinking on the job. They justified the narrative shaming of Serena reaching out to the one person in the world who understood what it meant to lose their daughter: Elinor Campbell, without bothering to make it clear that problem was never Serena wanting emotional support from Edward. The problem was that she continued to try and engage with him after he made it clear he was in no way prepared to provide Serena with the care she was requesting. Once again leaving Serena without a support network as well as implying her desire for the support was unreasonable. 

They continued pushing the mentor/mentee dynamic between Jasmine and Serena to unprofessional and unhealthy levels. Now, while there is certainly examples of emotionally abusive behaviour between Serena and Jasmine, I avoid using the term “abusive” to describe their entire relationship. I don’t believe the mistreatment occurring has been sustained long enough to warrant the term. (It bears mentioning that this classification is based on my own personal experiences with emotional abuse and that I have little interest in expanding on this reasoning should anyone take issue with this statement.) Instead, I would classify this situation as incidental grooming between two people who have positioned another in an unhealthy and toxic position in their live. 

Granted, they both agreed to a mentor/mentee dynamic. However, Jasmine in no way deserves to be belittled and bullied in the work place, to have Serena use her as a project to help process her grief, or to become the focal point of Serena’s need to make sure what happened with Elinor never happens to anyone else. But nor does Serena deserve to become the source of Jasmine’s validation, to overcompensates for Jasmine’s already developed sense of unworthiness, or become a maternal care provider which Jasmine so clearly wants her to be. Both of them are using the other in horridly unhealthy ways and desperately need counselling to process their own emotional traumas. 

But once again, the writers don’t bother to make clear the actual issues in these exchanges, nor handle the fall out of these situations with the degree of seriousness issues such as these actually require. Instead, they continue to escalate things between Serena and Jasmine, which we know cumulates into Serena telling Jasmine she wishes Jasmine were dead, because this was their intention all along.

Despite the fact that Elinor was Serena’s daughter, the point of killing off her off was not to give Serena a storyline. Elinor’s death and the resulting grief, which has irrevocably changed the character at the very core, was not about Serena at all, because this entire narrative was constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

And that fact makes me furious. 

Because Holby gave us the story of a middle aged woman discovering her same-sex attraction in a situation where her desire was mutual and returned. They gave us a story in which that character was about to embark on a healthy, fulfilling, sustainable relationship that satisfied her emotional, physical, romantic and sexual wants. They implied the character was going integrate that romantic relationship with her other filial bonds and, for the first time in possibly her whole life, have her emotional needs actually met.

Then they took that character, who in universe was finally finally about to be happy, and decided to add to the other numerous instances of suffering the writers have already put her through by killing of her daughter. Killing off her daughter in her place of work only to cut short her grieving and send her right back there to suffer in the public eye.  

And they did it to give a new and barely formed character a storyline. The fact remains that Jasmine had literally millions of plausible storylines they could have gone with; so many options that would have ended with substantial character growth. She could have stopped drinking and studied harder, she could have taken up running, gotten a boyfriend or a puppy, learnt tact and become an actual decent doctor, and the character would have grown. 

Christ, she could have stubbed her toe on the edge of a bed, sworn on the ward, and gotten a dressing down from her boss about appropriate workplace vocabulary that character growth would have carried the same weight as the storyline she’s now had to endure.

They writers have irrevocably written Serena into a corner, because that character will never be the same again and there is very little they can do with her now, without actually letting the audience see the some of the most important narrative points. Moreover, they have also cut off almost all of Jasmine’s further storylines, because unless they give her a surprise pregnant with Ollie’s baby and then she miscarries after deciding to keep it (which I wouldn’t put it past them tbqh) there’s not a lot the writers can do with her that will have the same intensity and significance as what they’ve already put her through. 

In short, the Holby writers took a queer mentally ill abuse survivor and guttered her from the inside out for the sake of another character with barely touched potential. They treated that character with a level of disrespect and disregard I’m not sure I’ve seen since The L Word drowned Jenny Schecter in her neighbour’s pool and nobody really cared. Because they gave us Serena Campbell, implied that she (along with and everyone she represents) deserves to be happy, only to turn around and burn her beyond recognition for daring to hope. And they did it because they wanted to.

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me: *starts writing a "Bernie takes Jason to the cemetery scene on the anniversary of her death bc Serena is still on sabbatical" scene*

me: *has to stop when i start choking up bc i've legit made myself too emotional just *thinking* about the dialogue*

me @ myself: why am I like this

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Fandom: Holby City Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe Characters: Bernie Wolfe, Serena Campbell Additional Tags: Canon Compliant (maybe spoilers for the lastest ep but not really tbh bc I haven’t seen it so...), Established Relationship, Feelings, happy feelings, good feelings, a touch of angst obviously, Elinor is dead after all, but this is a happy fic, I promise it is happy Summary: Bernie has sensed, for quite some time (longer now than she cares to admit), that maybe this is forever. That they are forever. That she and Serena are forever.

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wait lmao what if the “flash back to 12 years” isnt a typo and it goes back to the divorce and Serena’a getting custody and charts Serena+Elinor’s life from then till now and then Serena going on alone w no Elinor and then the roof happens 

i mean i know that’s not what going to happen bc that would require actual solid writing but hella i would watch that ep like flip there is some potential in there 

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Holby City Rating: Mature Warnings: Major Character Death (Elinor is dead, kids, this is an angst fest) Characters: Bernie Wolfe/Serena Campbell, everyone connected to Elinor's storyline is here, but only Bernie and Serena actually make a significant appearance Additional Tags: Angst, Heavy Angst, Angst and Feels, have I mentioned the angst, Canonical Character Death, Summary: Serena had asked Bernie to give her space. Serena has asked Bernie to give her space and Bernie had done exactly that. Serena had asked Bernie to give her space and Bernie had done exactly that and never thought, even for a second, that Serena might lose herself in the space Bernie had given her.

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k so as yet i haven’t seen a fan!theory about Elinor where she wakes up but her brain damage so severe she needs constant care for the rest of her life so Serena quits her job to look after a daughter that simply isn’t there anymore and never will be

Given that there’s a tweet about Elinor’s death from a holby writer (i dont know if its legit) I’m honestly so grateful this storyline doesn’t appear to have crossed anyones mind bc Serena giving up her life so that her daughter can outlive her but never have a life is literally the most heartbreaking thing I can think of 

but guess what Black Mirror AU anyone???