Thread 99 (yes, 99!): Join us for spirited discussions of The Archers and its Top Blokes, whether you're Team Elizabeth (low spirits), Team Kate (Spiritual Home) or Team Toby (spirits =gin)

[Bittermints]

Thanks due to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and to @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit. Thanks also to all those who contributed to the thread title.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other odd unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

So, to business. What a fantastic two-hander. Massive BOOP points to Alison Dowling, the scriptwriter and director (and the therapist). I had more than a small tear in my eye listening to that.

I'm another one with a vote of thanks to chemenger for all that information on the last thread about distilling. I should know some of that because I went on a tour of the whisky distillery near where my parents live but I've forgotten most of it except how delicious the end product is.

Oh it was definitely rape (Helen I'm referring to) he continued right through her pregnancy too. Hence her sex phobia

He actually sets out to learn things from a point of recognising that he doesn’t know then yet.
But he isn't even confident in stuff that he does know. His constant need for praise and encouragement is a bit wearing.

It may be the great circle of soap life. Ed used to be the un-confident one. Now he's matured they need a new Ed (Johhny) to fulfil that role. I used to find Ed's insecurities endearing (although, eventually, they were exasperating too); I find Johhny's annoying.

On my meta-thread "ONE HUNDRED NOT OUT
there's a consensus for asking MNHQ if we can have a smiley to mean "over-infested". We're just looking for votes on what form it could take.

Separately, an idea on that thread that I like is that for the actual thread 100, we temporarily alter our usernames to honour The Archers in some way.

By the way, is Bittermints or PseudoBadger starting the next thread?

About the rape, I wasn't listening to TA at the time of the episode in question, and I emphasized above that from the bit I could bring myself to listen to in the link I posted, I did not hear a rape. I have never heard the whole episode.

The rape scene was, I think, deliberately somewhat unclear at the time, so listeners had to join the dots themselves. Helen wouldn't have named it as such then - which is surely realistic?

That's the great thing about TA, they can develop character and plot over years, decades - I think they're doing a good job on slowly maturing Johnny.

Perhaps best to invest 13 mins in listening to the episode before weighing in with an opinion on rape then, what with it being an important and sensitive topic. I mean that it in a more friendly way than it sounds. It’s hard to tell how many seconds you listened to, but at no point does Helen express any agency or enthusiasm, so I’m still not sure how you are hearing consent!

I agree with Errol. It was unclear at the time, and made deliberately so by the SW.

I listened in the first place because someone elsewhere said that he didn't think Helen necessarily didn't consent during the scene where that song was playing, and after everything I'd read and heard about the rape scene, I thought he must surely be wrong. After listening to the part where that piece of music was playing, I had, unexpectedly, to agree with him that the scene was ambiguous. I reiterate I am only talking about the end of that particular episode, nothing else.

Hello - just caught up with the episodes and thread after a week or so sans WiFi. AFAIK Natasha doesn’t know about Tom and Hannah’s previous “arrangement” and I think it is significant that Tom is moving her into the house. Also does she know he stood Kirsty up at the altar? Helen is not the only one harbouring secrets from a partner (though admittedly Helen’s are slightly more startling). Whether Hannah is pregnant or not (and I think she’s had a fair few partners since Tom so he would probably be looking at a DNA test) I think Natasha is going to be in for a shock of some sort after the wedding (and it’s easier to believe that she has been kept in the dark than Lee since she has spent less time in the village).

Pseudo popped in at midday yesterday DDD.

Are we all being bashful about offering thread titles for the coming illustrious event?

QuaterMiss - we seem to be stuck on "therapist in a tabard", and wanting reference to both Joe's and Peggy's longevity.

*R4 he's a boy and pleasingly ,unlike a lot of teenagers, he's aware of his lack of experience , perhaps he has a lack of self esteem, which will grow as he does.

*Lilian Tom told Natahsa about the FWB rrangment.

Sorry about the typos , problems with my lptop.

Consent isn’t a contextless event. I think it’s both inaccurate and dangerous to judge it from what the participants say or don’t say in the seconds immediately before sex.

For the title, maybe something about being overinfested, given it’s the 100th?

Thislido, tricky then, isn't it? I honestly don't know how we teach our sons about consensual sex, then. I have been keen to impress on my boy that consent needs to be verbal, ongoing, explicit, unambiguous, enthusiastic, and not just to penetration. That consent can't be given by someone who is high or drunk. Of course, someone might consent to sex to please a partner (which might arise out of terror of that partner, or out of a loving desire to make a partner feel well, even if your own libido isn't firing up, and an awful lot of emotions in between), or to patch up their own poor self-esteem, or because all their friends are doing it and they don't want to fall behind, or to assuage loneliness or depression - but honestly, how could one start understanding as 'rape' these sorts of 'bad sex' events arising out of false consciousness?
In Helen's case, isn't part of it that she only gradually realises what has happened to her? IIRC, she doesn't immediately register it as rape.

thislido You may have missed the 🐜 🐜 🐜 conversation in the last thread?

I have been keen to impress on my boy that consent needs to be verbal, ongoing, explicit, unambiguous, enthusiastic, and not just to penetration. That consent can't be given by someone who is high or drunk.

You sound like you’re doing a great job. ( And I don’t think it’s just boys, in hindsight I didn’t have the first idea about consent as a young woman.) In Helen’s case that night literally none of those indicators of consent were present so I don’t think it was ambiguous (and I have started to wonder if what other posts mean that it was ambiguous as to whether they had sex, rather than ambiguous that it was non-consensual).

I agree people consent to sex they might not want for all sorts of reasons and If I think about personal examples I wouldn’t classify them as rape. I think that’s where enthusiasm is so important - basic consent is a pretty low bar for sex!

• Or maybe not, as that was about emojis not titles!

I’ve contributed my opinion to the other thread, but thanks!

“Consent isn’t a contextless event. I think it’s both inaccurate and dangerous to judge it from what the participants say or don’t say in the seconds immediately before sex.”

Sorry-pressed send too soon.

“No” at any time is a pretty accurate measure of absence of consent.

As ppeat said, Lilian, Tom definitely told Natasha all about his arrangement with Hannah, there was quite a lot of discussion about it at the time as it was Hannah who pressed him to tell Natasha and the implication was that Hannah was trying to put Natasha off, but it backfired because Natasha took it very well.

I’m not so sure about how she came to know about Kirsty, and whether she knows the full gory details of the jilting and the miscarriage, but I think that we are supposed to think she is fully au courant.

Thanks Jessie and Ppeat - that all rings a bell now. It just feels as though Hannah has been silent for so long that the SWs must have a reason for resurrecting her. Very odd to move your new wife into a houseshare with your former friend with benefits (or however you might describe Hannah). Not sure why they have to get married so quickly - do people really like to get married on their birthday?