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I mean, part of it is that they have a massively, massively unrealistic conception of how feasible it would be to build a Mars colony, or even a self-sustaining "Galt's Gulch" setup here on Earth.
That these are mediocrities who have surrounded themselves with sycophants and yes men until they think they're superhuman geniuses is a major part of the problem.
It’s so funny how like. Spock is queer bc of the subtext, the Otherness inextricable from his character, meanwhile William Shatner was handed the straightest man of all time on paper and fumbled the bag bc he couldn’t stop giving Leonard Nimoy fuck-me eyes and now he lives in a bi Kirk hell of his own devising, forever enduring the conshatquences of his shactions
I just watched Uberto Pasolini's "The Return" 2024 as I continue my err…Odyssey odyssey.
Interestingly, a criticism that I've seen many folks have of Nolan's Odyssey (albeit one I don't share) is somewhat more accurate of The Return. I.e., This is a modern interpretation of a 3000 story of a return from war that focuses on an Odysseus who is deeply troubled by what he did during the war, and that this trauma drives the emotional core of the narrative.
I would argue that Nolan's Odyssey isn't about Odysseus' war trauma, but the trauma of taking part in (at first reluctantly and then centrally) in an action that broke an entire society.
That these are both the same war means these concepts are not unrelated, as the Return shows, but they are slightly different.
Anyway, I speak now of the Return.
As the title implies, the Return focuses entirely on Odysseus return to Ithaca. Therefore there are no mythological events or gods for which mileage may vary. It creates a stripped down and very raw realism. The sea is not Poseidon (or insert your favorite other sea deities), but it is dangerous, and fraught with obstacles. The earth is not barren because Persephone has gone to earth, but because of…spoilers for a 3000 year old epic.
Rafe Fiennes' Odysseus looks like old (if attractive) corded rope, and arrives in Ithaca without a scrap on. Like flotsam tossed up from the sea. He's far more hesitant about announcing who he is or even claiming his own identity. He does this less from a crafty perspective than from a psychological, "what have I done/what can I offer my people?" sort of way, which feels very earned in the drive of the story. There is a repeated motif that this is not the man who left Ithaca. That the person Penelope is waiting for doesn't exist. Twenty years stand between.
The Trojan War emptied Ithaca of people in a way that creates a negative space in many of the landscape shots.
It's made clear that Odysseus left with all the men capable of fighting age lo those twenty years ago, which unfathered an entire generation of young people coming of age on the island. There's a very clear hunger on the part of some of the younger men to hear of the war, while others want to know about their fathers, or angrily talk about how they didn't know their fathers because of that war.
Primary of these is Charlie Plummer's Telemachus, who has a particular feverish energy and simmering anger as a young man who doesn't know his father, doesn't trust his mother, and is constantly belittled by men of a whole span of ages. He has these wild swings with his mother first urging her to marry a suitor (any of them) and accusing her of being unfaithful that felt appropriate to the narrative structure. He is unmoored.
To say he's not thrilled when Odysseus does reveal himself is an understatement. But Odysseus is in no real way his father beyond biological. He hasn't been there.
Not out of choice, but because of war.
Or maybe out of choice.
I got the sense that somewhere along the way home, the other Ithacans died. We're not told anything about the journey other than it's length. That Odysseus was seen with another woman on some island, but it's not really confirmed or denied by Odysseus. We hear far more about the war than the journey.
Juliette Binoche gives a wonderful intensity to her questioning of the "tramp" Odysseus in half darkness. She asks if her husband killed. If her husband raped. Odysseus doesn't answer.
Another negative space.
Ah, yes, the suitors. They are like locusts devouring the landscape and driving anyone who can leave to do so to get away from them, so Ithaca is a hollowed out country with no fat. No kids (in the sense of baby goats) or lambs, because they are eaten.
This adaptation has Ithaca as an unstewarded land. Here Odysseus' father lives into the time of the picture, only to die giving up hope for the return of his son. He dies alone. So there is this sense that war results in both the old and the young being uncared for. Serving not glory, but nothingness.
It reminded me of visiting my relatives in the Midwest during the 00s. It wasn't possible to visit a gas station and not see a rack of magnets in the shape of Iraq with the phrase, "My heart is in Iraq", as a result of so many people in the midwest joining the Army reserves as a way to make much needed extra money. Resulting in a decade long hollowing of that region. These were people who didn't join out of jingoism. They thought they'd be primarily called in to help during wildfires and floods, and instead spent three or four tours fighting in a war that just wouldn't end. That when they did return left them traumatized, but without a lot of mechanisms to deal with that trauma.
Also, something that comes up a number of times is tramps. Not in a Xenia sense, treat the poor well way, (well, except where Odysseus makes clear that folks eating other people's food should perhaps be generous) but in the sense that the Aegean is flooded with Trojan War veterans. The suitors mock this by saying essentially they can't all be Trojan War veterans, but it left me with a sense that the entire Aegean is the same as Ithaca writ large. A thousand ships worth of men left each of the population centers to go fight in a war, and only some of them made it home.
Nevertheless, the Return is very micro rather than macro in it's adaptation of the most famous return from a war story.
Odysseus struggles with both the violence he committed, reframing the war as nothing to be proud of, and that he's the only one who is returning. That all those fathers and brothers are gone, and he bears responsibility for that.
This Odysseus is always one step away from violence. In a brutal fight early on at the palace, taking a beating until he has a way to end things in the most efficient way possible. In the way he fights suitors in mid-movie or punches Telemachus to get him to stay the eff down. And, of course, the big show down at the end where he feels elemental. Like there's never really any question that he's about to kill all the suitors like a lot. Their violence and hunger that has bubbled through the entire movie made slaughterhouse.
I will say, I'm glad there's a trick to the bow. It's one of those things where I don't want Odysseus to do the thing because he's the strongest. He's strong, but that's not his schtick. There's this whole progression of how to string that bow that starts with a suitor doing it the wrong way, another doing the right way but still struggling. The refusal. Then Odysseus, still pretending to just be some old veteran. First smelling then warming the wood, preparing for the bend. It provides a much needed, tricky bastard element to the character before the final showdown.
Penelope feels like she's holding on by the very last strands of yarn that we see her repeatedly ripping out of her loom each night by candlelight. Even when Penelope gives off, "I'm done" energy, there she is. Unraveling, even as her approach to picking out threads gets more and more off-kilter.
Along with the increased emphasis on the suitors, this gives a real sense that Ithaca is being slowly unraveled. Undone.
Returning to the suitors, Marwan Kenzari's Antinous manages to be creepy as eff, while also…how to say this…Look I don't want Penelope to give up on Odysseus. That and being clever are some of her main characteristics. Also, Antinous in this context is creepy in love with Penelope rather than wanting her for her throne. But there's also this sense that if say five-seven years before when Telemachus was still a child, and the pressure/rapaciousness from all the suitors wasn't so great, she'd gone, "Yup, I'm marrying the most manipulative fuck on the island, which is you, Antinous," he would have been happy to be a father to Telemachus. A creepy father, who would have taught the boy the ways of the Sith or something, but the island would reached an equilibrium that it clearly hasn't at the start of the movie.
There's this moment when Odysseus asks Penelope, "Is this what you wanted" after going death to the suitors that's chilling. Because Antinous is still sitting there and he gives a self serving, but not wrong summation that this isn't really better.
Again, it's not what I would necessarily want for Penelope, but it's an interesting subtext.
There's no murder of the slave women, which I'm just as glad they skipped. It's one of the more chilling bits in the epic, and well, in a modern context, I'm not sure how an audience can see that happen, and not judge those who kill the enslaved.
As it is, Odysseus and Penelope have a lovely final reconciliation that's allows for a space for them to grow back into each other. That they will become friends again and so find love again.
While Telemachus is the one sent off on a heroes journey of finding himself at the end.
It's the sort of end where Ithaca isn't by any means healed. It's half empty of people, but there's a sense that it may repopulate and heal given time, which isn't a bad place to end.
Nolan's film got flack for, among other things, the phrase "our Age of Bronze is collapsing". Thing is, THIS IS ACCURATE.
According to Hesiod, the single oldest source we have on Greek myth, the world started with a Golden Age for humans during Kronus' time, then, in the aftermath of the Titanomachy, there was a Silver Age during which men and gods didn't formally interact, then Zeus establishing formal contact and Prometheus leading humanity into trying to scam him started the Bronze Age that ended with the Trojan War and the Return of the Heraclids, and proceeded with the Iron Age in which the gods didn't walk among humans anymore that Hesiod lived in.
So yes, Odysseus saying "our Age of Bronze is collapsing" is mythologically accurate, not just because of OUR Bronze Age Collapse but because he recognizes the signs that the gods are washing their hands of humanity.
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humans will see a soft cellulose plant material or downy animal coat and say is anyone going to twist that staple fibre in order to make a cohesive thread and then not wait for an answer
Seriously, spinning as a craft is ancient. Archaeologists recently discovered three-ply fiber that’s around 46,000 years old, blowing the previous “oldest fingers” out of the water by thousands of years.
But get this: It’s made from fucking TREE BARK. Can you imagine the dedication, foresight, and experimentation involved in figuring out how to harvest and spin that? On top of everything, it’s also lace weight. What the fuck, Neanderthals?
it’s very cool that neanderthals managed to get yarn out of bark fiber, but i think you might be under the impression that all tree bark is like, oak, or sycamore, or something, and only exists in ‘thick chunk of wood’ or ‘flake of wood’ form. but there’s lots of bark like elm and cedar that peels away from the tree in long, tough strips, like so:
like, look at it. it’s string. it’s obviously string. you don’t actually have to be a genius to look at this and think ‘ah! string time :)’
i’ve picked up shed pieces of elm bark on a golf course, stripped and combed out the fiber with just my fingernails, and started hand-twisting good strong cordage right then and there as i walked. you don’t even have to soak it first, though i think if you want finer/softer cordage it helps to soak, beat, and comb the fibers.
the people of the pacific northwest, where there’s so many cedars, developed really wonderful textiles out of cedar bark fiber, pounding and soaking and combing it a bit like linen. i’ve never gotten to touch any, though i’d really like to.
Many plant fibers can be used to make cordage. Here I'll demonstrate how to process different kinds of plant fibers from the inner bark of t
here’s a whole page on all the different stems and barks that can be used for cordage! how cool is that?
so, not to denigrate the skill and intelligence of ancient people, but if you already know how to hand-spin grass and hair, then spinning bark is an extremely obvious and easy thing to do as soon as you encounter the right kind of bark.
you guys are splitting hairs about the nobody scene that nolan cut from the odyssey. he swapped it for the awesome character motif of odysseus strumming his bow to warn animals of his presence - a gesture he does not make for humans. he combats animals but he hunts people. instead of doubling down on the overdone hubris thing, nolan makes us hear the sound of odysseus strumming his bow all throughout the music. we got a version of odysseus that is godlike in the homeric sense, and you guys go grrrrr where are my obvious themes and character beats grrrrrr
doubling down on this : there will never be a ‘correct’ adaptation of the odyssey for the same reason that there will never be a definitive translation. it’s not a stable text. it shifts and eludes us, the characters do things that make no sense, scenes are jarring and end abruptly. you 🫵🏼 are attempting to ascribe fixed meaning to a labyrinth. it’s a fool’s errand.
I hate when men smirk and gloat and say shit like “Women are attracted to powerful men,” like that negates any feminist impulse, like they think that at the heart of all women is this little, mincing girl that wants to be dominated.
I just roll my eyes because, dude. If you ever read the second half of any fucking harlequin novel ever, and saw how the hero always ends up blubbering on his knees and saying shit like “I can’t live without you! You unman me!” you’d realize that being attracted to powerful men is just the first part of a two-step plan.
The second step is to completely fucking annihilate him.
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When you get more objective about the way nature is & away from weird anthropomorphic carnivore slander it is a little funny when the baby sea turtles hatch and every other animal in like a ten mile radius goes "oh fuck yum one million mini sliders"
[ID: a screenshot of the original post's tags that read, "#real turtleheads know this is a play on sliders (turtle emoji) which are a type of terrestrial turtle. but it's also tiny hamburgers #which seems apt. #this has been another episode of Joke Explainer" /end ID]
Keeping these actually. Necessary footnote for this post
Watching a jaguar casually walk up to an adult sea turtle headed back to the water after laying her eggs and eat it like why am I in my sea turtle violence era and why are they like this. Adult sea turtles aren't especially easy to eat in the water they'll swim around with shark bites taken out of them like they're just chillin. And then on land they just kinda
Also today I learned that since the jaguar scares off other smaller predators it's actually good for the sea turtle population if there are jaguars there. Cause less babies get eaten by Everything Else. I'm gonna be honest I didn't even consider that a jaguar could be on the beach
I think that now I’m one of those evil people in the movies that thinks an AI can’t be a person. I’m the guy saying that your robot girlfriend isn’t real. They’re gonna kill me during the matrix wars.
Nolan’s The Odyssey: When Humans Are the Real Monsters
Here’s a post that is a little different from what I usually write. I needed somewhere to share my thoughts, and I think this is the perfect place.
After a conversation with my friend @igiulss, I wanted to share my analysis and perspective on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey here. I’m going to try to explain how I understood the movie, what I took away from it, and the message that, in my opinion, Nolan was trying to convey through his reinterpretation of Homer’s story.
Before I begin, just a few things to keep in mind.
First of all, this post will obviously contain a lot of spoilers. I’m going to talk openly about certain scenes, several major revelations, and the ending of the film. So if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know anything, please don’t read any further!
Secondly, everything you are about to read is simply my personal analysis and my own reaction to the film. I am absolutely not claiming that mine is the only correct interpretation, or that my opinion is somehow more valid or legitimate than anyone else’s. You are completely free to share my interpretation, to have understood certain scenes differently, or to disagree with me.
If you feel like reacting, leaving a comment, or sharing your own perspective in a reblog, I would genuinely love to read it! I only ask that everyone remain kind and respectful. We can have very different interpretations of the same work without needing to fight over who is "right" 😉
I should also warn you that my ideas will probably be fairly raw and, at times, a little scattered. This post will be more like thoughts put down on paper than a proper academic essay, although I have still tried to keep some coherence throughout.
I didn’t want to spend weeks building a perfectly structured text for two reasons. The first is that English is not my native language: if I write a hundred-page essay in French, it will probably take me a million years to translate it afterwards. The second is that I know myself: if I spend too long thinking about the structure, the wording, and every tiny detail, I will probably keep postponing it forever.
One last note: I will use the name Ulysse rather than Odysseus, since that is the form traditionally used in French.
A second reading of The Odyssey
I think there is a second way of reading this version of The Odyssey - one that is more personal, more contemporary and, above all, much closer to us.
Behind Ulysses’ story, Nolan is not only talking about an ancient hero or a vanished civilization. In my opinion, he is mainly talking about human nature, our own society, and what our civilization is becoming, or what it may already have become.
This interpretation also echoes Homer’s original story, which is much more than a grand heroic epic or a simple tale of survival. The Odyssey is also a story about the human condition: identity, homecoming, temptation, hospitality, loyalty, violence, pride, and the way hardship transforms people.
At least, that is the idea that eventually helped me understand the movie.
For a large part of the film, I have to admit that I had absolutely no idea where Nolan was going with it. I genuinely found myself wondering, "What on earth is he doing with The Odyssey?"
I was expecting a grand mythological epic, with very present gods, monsters, and imposing figures. Yet the further the film went, the more that entire dimension seemed to fade away.
After thinking about it a lot, I came to the conclusion that Nolan may not have been trying simply to adapt The Odyssey. Instead, he mainly uses Homer’s work as a starting point; a familiar framework through which he can talk about us, war, guilt, power, and everything human beings are capable of doing to one another.
Why use Homer’s work?
The Odyssey is not only the story of Ulysse and his adventures. It has become a universal symbol of travel, wandering, returning home, and transformation.
It is also a timeless and accessible work, known almost everywhere. Even without having read Homer, most people are at least familiar with Ulysse, Penelope, Circe, Calypso, the Cyclops, or the Sirens. Nolan is therefore working with an imaginary world that already feels familiar. He does not need to explain everything Ulysse represents to us: we enter the film with our own idea of the hero and his journey.
I also think the title is deliberately meant to create a certain expectation.
We go into the theater expecting an enormous epic filled with gods, monsters, and heroic adventures. Then Nolan gradually strips away much of that mythological dimension, making us realize that the real monsters may actually be human beings themselves.
He takes a story we think we know and turns it around, forcing us to look at it differently.
And yet, he is not truly rejecting The Odyssey. He is reinterpreting it. The story’s central ideas are still there: Ulysse's pride, his desire to return home, temptation, hospitality, loyalty, violence, and the loss of his companions. The difference is that the gods and creatures become symbols of guilt, fear, and human brutality.
By using such a universal work, Nolan can also bring his message to the widest possible audience. He uses a story that is several thousand years old to talk about issues that are ultimately not so far removed from our own time.
Ulysse, war and guilt
Ulysse is portrayed as a man who has been deeply broken by war. He is filled with remorse and guilt over what he did at Troy.
He says that he wants to return home, but I feel that part of him is unconsciously resisting that return. Going back to Ithaca means facing Penelope, Telemachus, and the man he was before the war. Above all, it means confronting what he has done and accepting that he will probably never be exactly the person he once was.
As long as he keeps travelling, he can keep running away. He can blame his wandering on the sea, on circumstances, or on the people he meets. But returning to Ithaca would force him to face the person he has become. His journey therefore begins to resemble a form of penance. He seems to be seeking redemption through each ordeal, as though suffering enough might one day make up for his actions. But his true enemy is not only the sea. It is also himself, and what the war has made of him.
Athena as the embodiment of his guilt
In the movie, Athena appears with the face of a young woman who was executed at Troy. To me, she therefore represents more than the goddess from Homer’s story. Above all, she embodies Ulysse’s conscience and guilt. She wears the face of a victim he cannot forget.
Every appearance brings him back to Troy and to what he did there. Athena does not seem to guide him from the outside so much as constantly remind him of what he is trying to escape.
The fact that the gods are far less present in the movie also seems very important to me. Ulysse can no longer explain his misfortunes solely through Poseidon’s anger, Zeus’s will, or divine intervention. Human beings are responsible for their own decisions. They become their own obstacles, their own monsters, and sometimes even their own punishment.
Zeus’s Law and the loss of civilization
The famous "Law of Zeus" comes up repeatedly throughout the movie. Among other things, it represents hospitality, the protection of strangers, and the existence of rules that even the most powerful men should respect.
But the characters only truly follow those rules when it suits them. Ulysse and his men demand hospitality when they are vulnerable, lost, or starving. Yet when they are the ones with power, they are capable of pillaging, taking, and destroying. They want the law to protect them when they are weak, but stop respecting it as soon as it limits their own power.
Ultimately, it does not really matter whether these rules are human or divine. Their purpose remains the same: to prevent people from giving themselves over completely to pride, greed, vanity, and the obsession with power.
By repeatedly ignoring their own laws and principles, people eventually lose themselves. Little by little, they forget what once made them civilized.
They do not become monstrous through one single dramatic decision. They become monstrous gradually, justifying each new transgression through hunger, fear, war, survival, or their own suffering.
Each time, they grant themselves one more exception. And one day, they discover that there are no limits left.
The People from the Sea
The famous "People from the Sea" are probably one of the ideas I found most powerful in the movie.
No one seems to have actually seen them. They are known only by their reputation. They are described as a mysterious threat, a violent people from somewhere else, yet no one knows exactly where they come from. They represent a faceless, distant, almost mythological enemy.
Until Penelope realizes that the People from the Sea are actually Ulysse and his men.
They are the foreign threat. They are her own king, her own people, and the men who will be welcomed back to Ithaca as heroes.
To the people of Ithaca, Ulysse is a glorious warrior trying to find his way home. But to the people he attacks along the way, he is simply an armed man arriving from the sea with his soldiers to pillage their land. The hero and the monster are therefore the same person. Only the point of view changes.
I also think it is very important that these people do not really have a face. It is far easier to blame violence on an unknown outside threat than to admit that it comes from our own men, our own soldiers, our own king, or ourselves.
Giving that violence another name creates a reassuring distance. It is no longer "us"; it is "The People from the Sea".
Yet by losing their way and ceasing to respect any rules, Ulysse and his men forget what made them human. They become exactly what they fear.
Humanity becomes its own enemy.
They claim that they want to return home, but they carry the war with them wherever they go. Their real difficulty in finding Ithaca may therefore come from more than the sea alone. It may also come from the fact that, somewhere along the way, they lost the part of themselves that still knew how to recognize a home, a host, or an innocent person.
Circe, Calypso, and the power of women
Circe and Calypso seem less imposing and less majestic than they do in Homer’s story. But I do not think that necessarily means they are weaker.
Instead, I felt that they were deliberately portrayed as quieter and more withdrawn in order to show what violence, war, and male domination have done to them.
They live in a world shaped by men’s decisions and among the ruins men have left behind. Their withdrawal does not necessarily mean an absence of power. It may also be the result of everything they have had to endure and learn to survive.
The scene in which Circe turns Ulysse’s men into pigs is, in my opinion, especially powerful. She does it with her bare hands, without any grand spectacular spell or theatrical magic. Her power becomes physical, dark, visceral, and almost brutal. I feel that she is not truly turning them into monsters, but rather revealing what they have already become.
After Troy, they pillage, take whatever they want, and behave as though they are entitled to everything. By giving them the appearance of pigs, she makes their greed and dehumanization visible.
For a few moments, she is also the one taking control of the bodies of men who are used to imposing their strength on others.
This is where Nolan chooses to place Circe’s power: not in a permanent divine aura or spectacular domination, but in this incredibly concrete and visceral act.
Her quietness is therefore not necessarily a sign of weakness. A single scene is enough to show that her silence was not submission.
Nolan and time
We all know how much Nolan loves playing with time. He likes to make it an important part of his storytelling.
Here, though, I think he was actually pretty restrained with it.
He mainly uses time to create ellipses and condense an enormous story. Without them, the film would probably have lasted six hours. This allows him to move quickly from one important stage to another without recounting every day or every month of the journey.
But these ellipses also reflect Ulysse’s state of mind. A great deal of time passes and he travels an immense distance, yet internally he remains trapped at Troy. His journey moves forward, but his guilt keeps bringing him back to the same place.
Ulysse’s experience of time is fragmented by battles, shipwrecks, and memories, while Penelope’s is defined by endless waiting. They are both prisoners of time, but in two completely different ways.
Conclusion
In my opinion, Nolan ultimately uses The Odyssey as a mirror held up to our own time.
He takes a work that is several thousand years old, universal, and accessible, and uses it to talk about what humanity is becoming, or what it may already have become.
The gods and monsters gradually fade away, leaving human beings alone with their actions. In doing so, the film shows just how fragile the boundary between civilization and barbarity really is.
The real monster is not necessarily a mythological creature or a people from somewhere else. It is the human being who convinces himself that his suffering, his victory, his fear, or his power gives him the right to do anything.
By constantly searching for the enemy outside himself, he eventually fails to see that he has become the very thing he feared.
It reminds me of a very old Latin expression: Homo homini lupus, "man is a wolf to man." I think it takes on its full meaning here. When the rules that allow us to live together disappear - or when we simply decide that they no longer apply to us - human beings become capable of destroying one another. In the end, they become their own enemies.
Thank you for reading this far! I know this post is fairly long, even though I have already tried to summarize some ideas that I explored in much greater detail in my notes in French.
I am also aware that there are probably many things I have not discussed. So please feel free to share your impressions, interpretations, or your own opinion, whether you agree with me or not.
As long as the discussion remains respectful and kind, the debate is completely open 😉
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Well, at least for my part it's because I have (looks back at it) 100+ pages of Greek myth in a folder that I periodically go back to but haven't put out there cuz as they aren't quite right. Writing about hubris, it's depressing. Not because of the humans. Nope. Not cuz of them.
But yeah, fiction about that Circe and her sister. Pasiphae? Will there be a visit from Helios? That first village that gets sacked, have any of them gone west. Aeneas abandoning this wife in the midst of that fall of Troy. The journey of Menaleus and Helen back through Egypt. The wedding of presumably Hermione to Achilles son. That's not going to last long. Courtesy of... Orestes. Oops. What does Helen think of all that? How about a sea people who are the result of some sacking the Acheans do along the way. There's lots of possibilities.
Honestly surprised that Lucy Hebron doesn't get more attention in media focusing on the Sherlock Holmes extended universe.
Like, you're born in Atlanta Georgia sometime in the 1880s. Your mother is a white English immigrant. Your father is an African American lawyer who has managed to become fairly wealthy off his practice.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle claims that your parents were married, but they almost certainly weren't or, if they were, they probably had to go elsewhere to get married and their marriage wouldn't have been recognised in Georgia. Realistically, they were facing huge amounts of prejudice that are only increased when you are born.
(Your mother openly says, in front of you when you're older, that it is a “great misfortune” that you were born with darker skin than even your father.)
Then disaster strikes. Your father dies. Your mother can't stand to stay in America without him and returns to England.
She does not take you with her. She says this is because of your health. It's just way healthier for you to stay where you are, as a parentless mixed race child in the Jim Crow era American South. Rather than going with your only living relative to England (which, while obviously still very racist, at least doesn't have any actual laws against people like you existing).
Your mother meets a new man. A merchant. He's white. She signs over all your father's money and investments to him when they marry. She doesn't tell him about you. She's worried he wouldn't understand. She later explains that this was a major ordeal for her. That she struggled in vain to resist the urge to send for you for three years, until it got too much to bear.
So now you live in England. In a cottage on the estate that was partly paid for by your father's money.
You're not allowed to leave the cottage, because if anyone sees you outside in the daylight then they might find out that you're black. While you're in the cottage, even (apparently) at nighttime, you are made to wear long gloves and a fucking mask, so that nobody can accidentally look through the window and find out that you're black.
Your mother visits you occasionally. She tells you that you're her “own girlie and mother's pet” whether you're “dark or fair”. When her husband comes to see what's going on, you and your nurse get shoved out the back door so he won't see you and find out that you're black.
Unfortunately, your stepfather has noticed that his wife keeps randomly going off in the middle of the night to visit a mysterious cottage where the only inhabitant seem to be a weirdly secretive servant woman and a strange masked figure, and has decided that something Fucked Up is going on.
So he goes to consult the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes. Normally, the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes can work this kind of shit out in his sleep, but unfortunately your family is so dysfunctional that you override his borderline magical deduction abilities, and the best theory he can come up with is either “secret affair” or “weirdly convoluted blackmail scheme”.
Fortunately however, this does lead to your stepfather eventually meeting you and finding out who you are. Including the fact that you're black.
Turns out he's fine with it.
Like completely. Quite possibly more so than your own mother is. Turns out there was no need for the traumatic abandonment, the years of separation and then the even more traumatic being forced to live like The Man In The Iron Mask in a cottage in the middle of nowhere.
Nope. Turns out you could have been allowed to go outside in daylight this entire time. You all go back to the big house (that was paid for in part with your father's investments) together and we never find out what happens to you.
I mean… what. The. Fuck.
Like, I'm not expecting Sir Arthur CD to have written an entire child psychology textbook to go with what was meant to be a fun little short story about racial tolerance, but holy shit.
I want a book about teenage Lucy Hebron at boarding school dealing with all the fucked up shit that went on in her childhood whilst also solving mysteries with the help of correspondence from her friend and mentor Sherlock Holmes. I want that shit yesterday.
Yes, so much this. It's such an interesting story for Doyle to have told, and there's so many dangling threads to pull on.
Admitedly, when I approached Lucy, I chose to do so by including her in a massive (500k) fusion of BBC Sherlock & Star Trek, Omegaverse, and she has a whole long story arc.
But yes, it absolutely it would be such a facinating character to explore in late Victorian England. And I would hope that if she ever does get picked up on by someone, she embodies more of the Holmes spirit of exploring wierd mysteries that aren't murders. That's not always being called in by the police, but maybe that woman no one listens to and who needs someone to go, "That's fucked up, and I know of which I speak. I will help you."
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