Girls Gone Canon Cast - HIs Dark Materials Episode 12 - The Subtle Knife Chapters 7 - 8

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

After Lyra loses the alethiometer, Will gains his own special object at a very high price. Chapter 7 - The Rolls-Royce Chapter 8 - The Tower of the Angels --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro: Waltz Of The Skeleton Keys by WombatNoisesAudio | https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon, covering His Dark Materials. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon. Reads His Dark Materials, Episode 12. We are reading The Subtle Knife, Chapters 7 and 8. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe. Chapter 7 is The Rolls-Rphen Royce and chapter 8 is the tower of angels and I'm very

excited to read this one yeah I totally forgot to tell everyone where you can find me but whatever you're here you probably know it's fine it's linked in the episode description but you know if you are new and you don't understand what we're doing here

especially if you've come here from our Asaga of Ice and Fire podcast, we are, of course, reading the book series, His Dark Materials. This is not quite a reread in its entirety. It is a read. And then later on, we'll discuss in a dust-scussion material that covers all three of the books. And then there's an even dustier-scussion and dustiest-scussion. I don't think we have a dustier-scussion this time, just a dustiest. Yes. Which covers not only material from the three books, The Golden Compass, The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and Amber Spyglass. It also includes material from La Belle sauvage and the secret commonwealth yes and i

think my dusty discussion which is where i do my evil villain monologue where i just talk about the book that eliotta refuses to read the secret commonwealth um but i i think that's gonna be tight today so we'll see what we can get up to in the discussion where we talk about all three of the main trilogy and we'll go from there yes so this month right at the end of every month we do a his dark materials episode uh i've convinced chloe now to fall in love with it. And of course we started the Subtle Knife Blood at the beginning of 2020. Here we are. I don't know, like 14 months into 2020.

And eight chapters in. Yeah, I think we only have like eight chapters to go. So I think we're halfway. This is definitely, we're slicing our length to go in half. We are doing two chapters at a time. Now we started off with three chapters at a time, but you know, like Pullman packs a lot of things in one chapter. I'm like, this could have been two chapters, sir.

I don't think he's a sir. Sorry. I know that's like very particular, right? That actually means something for our English audiences. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. I don't. You'll have to look that up.

Yeah, and I think this pace is really nice, especially because as we go on with these books, they do get more and more complicated. There seems to be more exciting stuff, more exciting source material. And I kind of want to savor it because, you know, when we're done with that third book,

yes, we still have some time to go into these side books a little more and explore it, but it's kind of bittersweet, right? It's like I want to savor and truth be told. It's completed. Yeah, and truth be told,

we did just get told that the show, season two of the adaptation, is going to be out this year. So I think if we time it right, we'll have the show to stave us off.'ll do more coverage of the his dark materials bbc produced hbo produced show and uh we'll be able to kind of drag it out a little and hang out with you guys even longer for his dark materials exactly but not to drag out this intro too long let's jump into chapter

seven the rolls hyphen royce i'm gonna be real i didn't know that rolls royce was hyphenated like But not to drag out this intro too long, let's jump into chapter seven, the Rolls-Royce. I'm going to be real. I didn't know that Rolls-Royce was hyphenated. Like, this is remarkable to me. I actually did not know either. But for your sake, I did look it up because I could not let you stay confused. It's not fancy like that. Yeah, I'm not either.

I don't. I can't tell you if I've been in a Rolls-Royce. It's partially like I'm not fancy. Partially, I just don't care. I can't tell you. I've been in a Rolls Royce. It's partially like I'm not fancy. Partially, I just don't care. I can't tell you. I don't know anything about cars. So Claude Goodman Johnson was a British motor vehicle manufacturer who I guess was instrumental. He helped create the Rolls hyphen Royce limited.

And he would describe himself as the hyphen in the Rolls Royce name. I thought that was funny. That's so cute. Yes. So that's like the Alysanne, my cat, that's like she's the hyphen in Girls Gone Canon. Oh, that's also true. I was thinking he's like the Brian Cogman.

Yeah. Of the Rolls-Royce, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. From the Rolls-Royce. These cars actually drive and people actually like them so whatever lyra wakes to the sound of children playing in the harbor and eventually lyra joins three boys and a girl out in the water panda comes a fish in the water and

then it's like oh maybe i should like hide a little and lyra as usual doesn't feel any trouble connecting and speaking with other children and i think we see here that lyra still very much feels that her skills that she has from growing up in oxford around all the other kids like is still helping her maneuver in any world that she's in she's like yeah i got this i can lie do anything and so the beginning of this chapter is like that and it gets overturned by what happens later so the children are curious uh about what lyra is going to do with the cat from the other episode that uh she and will saved and whether they're like are you really gonna like take the bad luck out of it and then they're just like wow you and will both like will especially they're like that boy fears nothing and lyra's like i i too i'm fearless and she asked them you

know i don't understand what like the hubbub is why do y'all hate cats in musical anyway like Philip Pullman no I'm just kidding he doesn't even think about it he doesn't hate it he doesn't even think about it you don't know about cats the oldest boy said incredulously right

cats they they got the devil in them all right you gotta kill every cat you see they bite you and put the devil in you too and what was you doing with the big pard is that slang seems like it's slang for leopard it was pretty weird i was like why are we like using slang terms for leopard it also is this some tiger king shit it's their accent slash just they shorten words, I guess. I don't know. But it's interesting the superstition that's associated with cats here, right?

Because we know cats are like a superstition throughout all of society. I don't know if they were well established in Europe by the 13th century, but in 1233, there is a noted papal decree that condemned a satanic cult that was said to worship, among other things and animals and species, a devil that took the form of a cat. And this resulted in the death of millions of cats over the next 300 years. It's kind of where it stems from. Yeah, I know. I'm very upset. And then in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII declared that the cat was the devil's favorite animal and the idol of all witches.

And then in the 1500s, there arose the belief that witches could shapeshift themselves into the form of cats. Oh, McGonagall. Yeah. Yeah. It's real. It's real. Chloe's like, I do it all the time i do well you think she has two cats alice in joharie's jokes on you it's her

so anyway they i guess we just glaze over the part where they're discussing like oh that's interesting that the kids like when they can't see specters they're safe they're just like yeah interesting let's just talk about a different thing entirely the children debate theories now on like so why are the specters here uh just like we had that uh in previous chapters leading up to this more more of that sort of speculation and backstory lyrara learns the Torre d'Eliangeli and the guild filled with philosophers and alchemists are who let the specters in. This is what happened, alright.

This guild man, hundreds of years ago, was taking some metal apart. Lead. He was gonna make it into gold. And he cut it and cut it smaller and smaller till he came to the smallest piece he could get. There ain't nothing smaller than that. So small you couldn't see it even. But he cut that too and inside the smallest little bit there was Poppa's like, got some interesting interesting legends legends not anymore

but anyways so damn i found this interesting right i'm sorry the little packed specters uh that are described in here and their escape remind me of two things first that idea that like all of them are packed in the little thing i guess actually three things first i think of the big bang right the like tiny thing that explodes into a bunch of stuff and then that idea that all of the specters are packed into that small spit maybe an atom or something it kind of feels like a play on that like question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin which is like once a philosophical question kind of that intrigued thomas aquinas and later became a way of showing that an argument or discussion was basically a waste of time and

absurd and then the second is the way that the language is like once you cut it bam they whooshed out and they've been here ever since it also makes it feel like the subtle knife i mean i'm assuming you've all read these two chapters and are not reading as we literally tell you these things aloud, presents the Subtle Knife as sort of in the opening of new worlds as like this sort of Pandora's Box. I feel that very much and I think the series as a whole, I feel that too very much, but this especially, this moment feels like the Pandora's box moment. Like the story they're describing. This is their lore.

And this isn't the only kind of Greek influence in the story that I've seen in these two chapters or in the whole story, as we've discussed. We'll talk more about that. But there is a lot of stuff about alchemists that we're about to learn. Alchemists in his dark materials in this world not necessarily any of the worlds we know but in this world and i did a little reading on some alchemy downloaded a couple podcasts i'm starting to feel like an aficionado you know what i mean it's going good sorry eliana see ya but chloe's going to become an alchemist during this. Yes!

She's going to make cat chimeras. I wish you could see me because I just did the transmutation. I know, I saw it. So, the two inches light reading. In Cosmographia, Peter Appian talks about the shared vision by Renaissance alchemists that the center of the earth is made of the four main elements, the prima materia, a la Plato, and around it are 10 celestial spheres composed of the ether, the seven planets, firmament, crystalline sphere,

and primum mobile. And then outside of that final sphere is the Empyrean realm, which is inhabited by God. So that's kind of how they imagine things. Kind of see it in your brain, if you can with me. And I was doing some light reading. Christopher A. Plaissance published an essay piece called Turis Philosophorum on the alchemical iconography of the tower. And so basically talking about this tower, the Tour de l'Angely. And in my mind, right, like this is completely what we should all be thinking

of. Lots of iconography. It talks about alchemism and towers and the organic blending of the ideas of hermetic reflexivity and spiritual alchemy and then Renaissance cosmology. It's all tied to this image of a tower. Talks about hermetic logic and theory, which Johann Heinrich Elstad uses to make the following chart linking planets and their resources to body parts. So the sun is linked to gold, and the body part is heart. Moon, silver, head. Saturn, lead,leen jupiter is to copper is to liver mars is to iron is to gallbladder venus is to tin is to kidneys and mercury is to quicksilver is to lungs so it became something used to note transmutation of metals in comparison to the transmutation and growth of men. Purifying a metal could transmute to purify the spirit. It was believed metal was just as alive as men,

especially if we follow Plato's idea of the world's soul and Aristotle's position on the ensoulment of natural bodies. The main practice of this theory is that seven metals were conceived, not dissimilar to human conception, by planets with Earth. So Mercury enwound Earth and got quicksilver, Sun enwound and got gold, Moon silver, Saturn lead, yada yada. Those metals sit from Earth, the center of the universe, to rule the corresponding planets from there. The alchemists believed that their job was to nurture these embryos, being the metals, until they achieved the greatness that was planned for them by God and his planets, mostly creating the philosopher's stone, as the biggest piece of lore and mythology tends to go.

There are eight processes of alchemy that were defined by Guybert, all through heat application, which were like sublimatio, dissentio, distillatio, calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, fixatio, and serratio that all rely on the use of a furnace opus to complete the practice matter. And at one point there was a furnace or an athenor per each process, but they progressed to use only one central furnace. And these furnaces would be shaped in the form of a tower sometimes these towers would have turrets attached or these furnaces would have little mini towers also attached but the furnaces the athanor were based on man's shape and men saw themselves and what god had put forward for them to do alchemy so they built it in that shape

thinking it was basically godly and there's a lot of art you can see it in. So they built it in that shape thinking it was basically godly. And there's a lot of art you can see it in. You could see it in just photos too, some recovered photos from history. And Robert Flood's Medicina Catholica, Universal Medicine, he's 1600s. There's an illustration of a castle with four towers that's being besieged by four winds. And the symbolism is that four illnesses or demons are attacking the sanest human, the healthy human. And in most depictions of towers, towers represent athanors. So if athanor represents men, then towers actually represent mankind, not towers represent the furnace. You can look at like carl jung's alchemical tower at bowling and etc so you know what an alchemy circle looks like you've watched full metal alchemist eliana we've all seen it i know i know so those depictions and kind of those different crosses

you know and that design many depictions of towers and men show a man as cosmos, right? Like Flood's pieces specifically show this laying against an alchemy circle. And generally, it's supposed to represent the planet and cosmos. But if you rotate those alchemy circles, so instead of looking at them as if they're on the ground flat, if you rotate it so that you would be looking bird's eye down, they actually look like they're a castle top with towers attached at the cross points. Hmm.

Yes. So really interesting stuff, just that towers and alchemy are all really symbolic of mankind and that God has given unto mankind this great metalworking task. Interesting. I hope you feel complete now. I hope that was good for you. I don't feel complete. I gotta finish, you know, my own

sublimatio distillatio gudasolutio Interesting. All those. Before I can feel complete but yeah I didn't know that and I also I guess don't really know what castle towers look like from the top so

allegedly though the tower that they're at that I wonder what what it would look like from above they probably fashioned it to look like all the things that you were saying and I wonder if that's how they're going to depict it in the show but anyways

it's empty allegedly right now we have this quote which I included because it's very real they got special magic or something they're greedy they live off the poor people

said the girl the poor people do all the work and the guild men just live there for nothing. This is something that we've already known about life, because we're human beings that live in this damn universe. But it's also something that we've already seen from the first book, right? Like, this makes me think of Mrs. Coulter and Asriel sacrificing children to further science, because they think they have some greater purpose.

And the men in this tower absolutely are that. Alchemists, just like I said, they think they're men chosen by God to carry out a specific task. So the small folks suffer while they go insane over this damn knife. And then make a lot of hubbub. But we'll get to that at some point. Lyra confirms one more time that there are no grown-ups in the tower and knows everyone is fucking lying to her because she knows what she saw in that tower. She saw Amanda.

And also she knows that these kids are liars because she's one. She's all like, I know a liar when I see one. But she remembers Paolo and Angelica talking about their brother, Tulio. She wonders, huh, maybe that guy I saw at the tower is Tulio. Me and Tulio down at the schoolyard.

I don't know this song. What? It's me and Julio, but spoilers, Lyra, that you think it might be Tulio. I actually really appreciate this, that Pullman like put it in and was like, yes,

it is logical to think that I am telling you right now that that is Tulio. I appreciated it. Yeah. Because some authors, unnamed, don't always do that and leave you to wonder. They'll maybe tell you eventually. Maybe. If he writes the book. Lyra goes home to nurse her budding caffeine addiction and find Will.

He is asleep with a cat. Totally cute. She posted on the gram. Lyra's like, all right, fuck waiting. I'm gonna go see Mary Malone on my own. And she leaves Will a note letting him know, which is bad vibes. I feel like Lyra should never make decisions on her own. It never turns out good when she does, I feel like. It's interesting. Things turn out interesting when Lyra makes these sorts of decisions they pass the tower and they look at the statues and pan's like hmm these are probably angels and lyra's like i don't know maybe they're specters and pan's just like it's literally fucking called

the tower of angels probably like it sounds like it they head to the tower and they peer inside and they feel like as you said bad vibes and they decide what if we just ran and they just bolt for oxford so i love the idea of all these statues and all these carvings angel statues kind of go back to ancient assyrian culture there was this carved entity it was called a lamassu it was a protective deity commonly known as a winged bull and this hybrid figure basically had a head of a human the body of a lion or a bovine and a large different animals i know one or the other and large feathered wings and they actually made special demon statues for oxford in the show i didn't know that. I read that recently. They didn't ask

HDM last week on Twitter. And I wonder what they're going to do for the Tower of Angels. Like this has to be ridiculous because the earliest so the earliest artistic interpretation of an angel was actually found in Rome in the catacomb of Priscilla, a quarry used for Christian burials, third century. And as we moved into early Renaissance, it was more realistic and earthly in depiction. There was a lot of stained glass and the road from there went to naturalism for high Renaissance,

which kind of makes sense because Pullman was inspired a lot by Renaissance and Rococo paintings. Even some of the culture we've been seeing, especially in these chapters is very high renaissance or post-renaissance yeah and uh the the angels that you're talking about i wonder if part of it i'm sure like this is established somewhere but i have not looked it up you know like part of the reason that depictions of angels don't show up until christian burials

to later on maybe there's um i don't know if there's like a thing against depicting artistically angels, right? You know how some sometimes in religion there's like no iconography of that sort depending on what it is and also in some of the earlier books, right, in the Bible

they're like, yeah, the angels look fucking terrifying. They kind of are described like this but it's more like, maybe they have four heads and they're all different animals. Also, I feel like, I like the idea of the bovine. Bovine. Bovine angel.

But anyways, Lyra gets to the physics building and she gets into yet another fight with the receptionist and she's like, just call Dr. Ballone. She's like, I got this this time.

I got a real name. Name dropper. Yeah. She's like pitying him balloon she's like i got this this time i got a real name name dropper yeah she's like pitying him she pities his shitty desk and she heads upstairs she's like all right bye and she realizes they have bathrooms with symbols for women here that was big for her she's like huh she's used to just being in a completely mostly male gendered world right yeah that or maybe like maybe they don't i don't know how their bathrooms are set up now that i think about it yeah well at all this is where dr malone wanted to meet lyra right i mean like yeah i get it you know sometimes i too i'm like yeah my bathroom is my office or lab i get it dr malone mary immediately is like oh by the way the police are here they

know that uh you visited me this is wild and oh god this is like a tense scene i just remember this happening and being so tense now they they exit and she explains yes i've seen the child she's here and she starts to try to lie and lyra's like oh she is a shitty liar she is just a bad liar we're screwed yeah and i mean it makes sense right why would she be good at lying also she used to be a nun yeah she's part of the establishment man now she's all like science i guess for the state cool yeah and she's just like man dr malone's got a lot to learn unlike me i know about danger that's why i avoided the scary tower god she's like i know everything i'm lyra the sergeant does feel that way that's there his name's sergeant clifford he starts

questioning lyra about whence and where she came from and she lies and she's like i'm from winchester Lyra about whence and where she came from and she lies and she's like I'm from Winchester. Yeah and on one hand I get it. It seems like a good natural lie for her and she's like this is smart. I got this. She doesn't say that but you can tell she's feeling that way for her to draw on that. But on

the other hand because we all know in like a few paragraphs that this is all a trap turns out her saying Winchester was actually the wrong thing to say. You would think it was smart. And it's because they're not actually really after Lyra, they're after Will. And by referencing

Winchester, Lyra thinks, I'm totally throwing them off my trail. This is great because, of course, it's more suspicious if I'm here from Oxford. But it's not. Winchester's the wrong thing to say because it puts them on the trail for Will's scent. Because Will's from Winchester. Yeah, and it's kind of funny in a couple ways. Like, as we know, this is not a good chapter

for Lyra, right? Like kind of fucks up. Lots of shit going bad for her in this chapter. And Will told her last chapter, what did he say to her? He said, Lyra, if you draw attention to yourself, it's better you don't draw attention to yourself. It's better you just put your head down and don't talk much because they'll catch you in a lie. And she was like, no, my way is better. Well, and look what happens in this whole chapter. Exactly. my way is better well and look what happens in this whole chapter exactly uh the yeah the way it like gets later on it's just like wow she needed this lesson right yeah absolutely now is better than later because later it could have been worse that's true for everyone true the sergeant asks why lyra is not at school he wonders if she's been in the wars and asks about her bruises.

And she just like unleashes a string of lies like she does in response to the questioning. And the guy's like, he stares her down. He's like, are you going to be a scientist when you grow up little girl? And she's like, stare, blank stare. Super classic. Yeah, he just like looks at Mary Malone then then back at lara and lara's like oh you know obviously i'm just like into this stuff because my father is like dr malone he's also a scientist and they're like he studies dark matter and lara's like i don't know kinda and honestly she's not wrong he kind of does but also again wrong thing to say yeah it's a very it seems like it is a wrong thing to say because i don don't think Lyra truly gets, like, this is a really, this is a very niche field to study.

People don't just study it. Yeah, this is, you don't just go saying my dad studies dark matter. That's like, lock this fucking kid up, she knows some shit. I guess, or it's also, like, interesting, so which one of, like, right? And is your dad on our list? Yeah. And then they ask like, okay, cool. So you're staying

with friends. What about Will? Is Will staying with friends? And Lyra's like, I got this. Off of habit, she goes, yes. And then that's when she realizes she's like, fucked up. Damn it. Damn it. The moment she acknowledges it and says yes she gets up to run and they're about to stop her but dr malone interestingly she runs interference and lars is just about to make it out right she's like getting there she comes up

against the revolving door and turns out she's pushing the wrong way. Which is a whole mood. Been there. I always do it. Every time. Uh, I, okay, I have this weird thing. I like, when I go through revolving doors, I like pausing for a moment and trapping myself. Hmm. Intentionally. It feels, uh, it feels nice and secure for me for some

reason. It's very fun for me. And then anyways, so, Lara does that, she gets out, and then she, like, does that she gets out and then she like sprints across the street and finds safety in where else but a garden a place of safety and innocence that's perfect she's running up the norm gardens and it turns out the norm gardens are a real residential road in central north ox in England. It adjoins the north end of Parks Road near the junction with Banbury Road, directly opposite St. Anne's College,

which we do hear referenced in these books. Hmm. I didn't remember that. Yeah, I was like, this probably means something to someone. Many of you out there. As they catch their breath, they realize, oh they realize okay well

cool cool cool dr malone is on our side but also fuck we fucked up regarding will she's ready to run a blue car pulls up and it's the old man from the museum and he's offering her a lift and she just gets in the car she doesn't even ask the password. He doesn't even say watermelon bubblegum. She gets in the car with the stranger. That's how you know Lyra doesn't know this role. I'm like, oh, interesting. Just go in the car with the stranger. And he immediately starts talking with her about dinosaurs, so she thinks it's okay, right?

And about skulls and fossils. And they're like, Neanderthals. And he asks about her friend and lyra's like how else have i betrayed will when it turns out it's about dr malone yeah she goes oh she's a physicist she studies dark matter still not quite in control obviously in this world it was harder to tell lies than she thought and something else was nagging at her this old man was familiar in some long lost way and she just couldn't place it huh better tell him my whole life story then yeah pretty much myra just got in the car with him telling people about

dark matter like remember when you went around talking about it and it was like every single adult doctor was like can't talk about that can't talk about that last book and it all led to bad things yeah especially what during the time period that i guess this takes place in and the people who are interested in it i feel like talking about dark matter now like in the year 2020 we're like oh interesting yes i came across an interesting article on the internet about dark matter, but maybe, is that not a thing that happens? Maybe.

I mean, no, no. Is that what the dark web is? I mean, I'm sure that comes up every now and then just like for funsies, but they do talk a little bit more about dark matter. And for some reason,

everyone keeps asking. And so Lyra, what are you going to become a physicist when you grow up? And it makes me wonder, like, was this supposed to be foreshadowing? like pullman think that lyra is going to become some sort of like scientist or experimental theologian of some sort maybe at one point that is interesting i don't know that maybe maybe i wonder maybe it's supposed to be like a contrast

against her mother in a way. Not saying like that Marisa wasn't smart or didn't do things like grandiosely because obviously she's an evil bitch, but like she's an amazing evil bitch. She goes big. Yeah, she goes big. I love her. I love her so much. I wish she was big and she does not go home. Step on me. And, um, but I wonder if it's some sort of like, is Mary Malone's job and her research and purpose, even if her knowledge she's acquiring, being used by other people, possibly not for good, and she's just working and getting the knowledge and handing it off for the money paycheck that she gets and living her life as you know just a small human that does physics stuff like is that job better than coulter's job on the front line yes technically yes but like it's an interesting contrast to think of a physicist

versus a somewhat scholar evil villain scholar yeah Yeah, I mean, how hard is it to be an evil villain scholar, though, right? We see a couple of them in this world in a bit. Yeah. Definitely exists. And by this world, I meant the books, but I'm sure in real life, too. Elon Musk.

I wouldn't even call him a scholar. Fair, fair. He drops her off at Somerton Elon Musk? yes Elon Musk turns out this is not the Rolls-Royce this is a Tesla so the old man rolls up in a Tesla

Lyra gets in and now she's getting out oh my god and he makes her climb over him to exit which is really weird and gross. Yeah, I didn't notice that the first time around. And this time around, I noticed it. He's very skeezy.

He's just gross. And the portrayal they did in the show was actually just a skeezy skin crawling. I really liked that. Not that he was skeezy. I didn't like it. But I mean, the acting was really good. Yeah, he felt like skeezy and scary and plotty, but he doesn't feel slimy. This feels slimy.

Yeah, this is slimy, probably because of the age, too. Yeah, but just the making people climb over you, but also, anyway. So he tells her to give his regards to, like, her friend or whomever. I have here, for some reason, tells her to give Jamie Landis her regards. I'm sure I thought that was a funny joke when I wrote this. She waits for him to leave before going back through the window and thinks she wants to ask the alethiometer about him. And then we cut to Will, who is reading his father's letters again. him and then we cut to will who is reading his father's letters again and then lyra is sprinting toward will so we don't actually get the original emotion of when she realized it she who seldom

cried was sobbing with rage her chest was heaving her teeth were grinding and she flung herself at him clutching his arms and cried kill him kill him want him dead! I wish Yorick was here! Oh, Will, I done wrong! I'm so sorry! I like how Will's just chill, like, he's like, kill him? He's understandably confused, but he's also like, okay, interesting. Kill him. That's, like, the first words.

Then Lyra explains that the old man stole the alethiometer. When she finally calms down from sobbing to explain she's like I have fucked up so many times today you're gonna be so mad you're gonna be so mad Will yeah she actually more or less really literally says that

yeah she explains the questioning Lyra was hiding her face in her hands pressing her head down against the pavement. Pana Laman was flickering from shape to shape in his agitation. Dog, bird, cat, snow white air mine. It's actually hilarious now that I read the dog, bird, cat, very specific other animal. Yeah.

Anyways, I love this because last time we saw Lyra and Pan doing something like this was when Lyra and Roger and Cecilia were trying to fight off Stalmaria, right? I think that's the last time we saw that. And same as how she doesn't know who to be and goes through all these different forms, right? Trying to understand what kind of person, who do I need to be right now in order to defeat Asriel and save my friend? what kind of person who do i need to be right now in order to defeat asriel and save my friend she doesn't know who to be right now because she just feels guilt and shame no form that she takes right now feels right because she knows she wronged will and she's trying to figure out who is the closest to me right now what's the most honest and you know eventually she does fess up and she says uh you know at least they didn't see me

go through the window but the alethiometer yeah bummer Will isn't understanding when she explains she did it wrong because the alethiometer told her to help him find her father and that with it she could but she did

what she wanted and she didn't listen to it, and now she doesn't have the alethiometer. Will, knowing she's right, finally getting it, it clicks, pulls away from her, and they fight, they quarrel, and then Lyra realizes that, hey, we can stop yelling, I have his business card, I know where he is, we can just go there to him. But turns out he's a

sir. Charles Latrum. Sir Charles Latrum. Which, I don't know if we've discussed this before. I'm sure someone else has discussed it somewhere. But it has only dawned on to me that Latrum is mortal backwards. Huh. That seems significant.

I'm sure the dude is mortal. True. True. Also that sir is significant as we said uh that means he's knighted which means basically people are going to believe him and not them especially because the police are after will and lyra's solution then to all of this is we could steal it we could just steal the alethiometer packet? Will literally says, this is the quote, he goes, you're stupid. I love love. She then talks about York Burnington. Will's like, what the fuck?

What are you saying right now? But she fell silent. Will was just looking at her and she quailed. She would have quailed in the same way if the armored bear had looked at her like that, because there was something not unlike Yorick in Will's eyes, young as they were. Hmm, it's canon. Son, son. Oh my god.

We're really pushing the Will and Yorick thing here hard, though. Yiff, yiff. I'm telling you, that's what happened in Novi Odin odens that's why they're so weird about it will continues to berate lyra explaining there are burglar alarms in this world and lyra's like i don't even know what that means lyra's like okay what do we do and will's like yeah it is a we we're bound now he suggests she go up to him and see what his house is like and lyra knows they're gonna get the alethiometer back she says she's like i can feel it i can feel We're bound now. He suggests she go up to him and see what his house is like. And Lyra knows they're going to get the alethiometer back, she says.

She's like, I can feel it. I can feel it in my bones, in my jellies. I was so mad. I just am so mad about the alethiometer. Yeah, it's pretty infuriating. It only actually gets more infuriating from here on out. I hate this guy guy because they go through headington to latrims and lara's like you know inside her head she's like the big city is

actually way scarier than the north because at least there i had a bear and like all these people and friends and in the north you like know what's bad and what's dangerous but here in the city you can't tell what's dangerous as easily or who it's a metaphor true true true and then we have this great line without the alethiometer she was just a little girl lost oh uh-huh interesting interesting little girl lost isn't that interesting hmm little girl lost me almost like little boy lost been there talked about it yeah i'm sure you all know but like in previous episodes chloe has done a lot of analysis on this poem by william blake little boy lost go check it out it's canon basically yeah absolutely this is confirmation so the limefield house is swanky the rolls royce is

parked out front will vaguely remembers visiting a house much like this and his mother leaving crying and if you are one of our patrons in the stranger tier or above you may have heard our patreon episode lantern slides where we covered the added 2007 published Lantern Slides from all three of the main trilogy. This Lantern Slide is from the Subtle Knife Lantern Slides, and it is Will and his mother visiting an elderly seeming couple in a large house and getting a cold welcome. He was puzzled. He was too young to understand the conversation, the murmuring voices, his mother's tears. Later, all he remembered was the contempt on the older woman's face, the feeling that these two regarded his beloved mother as dirt,

and his savage resolution never to let her be exposed to that brutality again. He was six. He would have killed them if he could. Very much later, he realized they were his father's parents. I think we're going gonna see this scene in the show this season. It sounds like they cast John Perry's parents for season two. Huh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I heard a casting call about it and I thought that was interesting, that maybe we'll get that flashback. Yeah, have we seen flashbacks in this show yet? We've seen, I mean, there's the video of his dad. But that's not a flashback. But I don't know.

I guess there could be a video. Yeah, that could happen. Something like that. They struggle to find the doorbell because it's old fashioned. And it's basically like the ones in Lyra's world. Interesting. And she's like, oh, this is how we ring it. After the butler, eventually Charles does come to the door, surprisingly.

And Will explains Lyra. He's quite diplomatic about it, right? He's like, Lyra's about to be like, oh, you took something of hers. Charles is like, I don't know a Lyra. And I know Lizzie, though. He invites them both in. It's very surprising for everyone god yeah super

surprising and the place is super nice and there's actually this line here that I love that the hallway smells like wax and flowers very cool very interesting we actually just talked about this in our Patreon episode this month once upon a time in the north

for our stranger tier and above patrons. We just covered that side novella and talked a little bit about flower smell throughout the story. It was fun. Yes. In the study, they see Charles Latrim has many, many nice objects and why he would probably want the alethiometer. Lyra immediately tries to accuse him, but Will is like, no, no, no, we gotta stay calm, stay level-headed. But the guy starts just dangling it

in front of them, and he explains, well, it must be mine, because it's in my possession, and who would believe you goddamn dirty orphans anyways? Lyra says, damn, this guy's worse than my mother, because at least my mother knows the value of what she would have stolen, but

this man is just gonna lock him up with his other baubles. Byra, you're very close. Almost there. Almost there. Instead, though, she just continues threatening to kill him. Bold. Lots of murder threats in this episode, holy shit. Yeah.

And she's so furious. Pan just appears, and he's a wild cat and latrim is surprised but he doesn't flinch and latrim tells her to calm down and lyra huffs off and she throws herself on a couch that's a fucking mood just throwing yourself on a couch big mood will is wondering after threatening to kill people will is wondering wondering what Charles is playing at, because they haven't been thrown out yet, but they still don't have the alethiometer. And then, for a very split moment,

he thinks he sees a snake within Sir Charles' jacket. Yeah, which, you know, there's very good clues here for anyone who's reading the first book closely, or, you know, on a reread. I'm pretty sure that i actually forgot this though in my reread i was like huh interesting interesting but i mean this all we'll get there oh my god the doorbell i mean i didn't even notice that ever like the fact that this reread i'm rereading it yeah i'm just like oh the doorbells from lyra's world duh

yeah you're just like oh, it's some old shit. Yeah. Sir Charles starts explaining, though, that by the time you get anyone on your side or convince them, I'll have some documents already forged up that are going to quote-unquote prove that I bought the alethiometer. You know, I like this

little exploration we're getting of the more legal side of things with will's plot introduced especially um it feels very tied to that we're getting this exploration of latrum and will is involved feels very very very much so tied together and uh i wish we would see more explored with kind of these offices and oh i can get the police to do this and this is the kind of action that i love it's just like jk rowling with the ministry of magic right like that stuff was so interesting and i just wanted a little more exploration of that i feel like we see a lot of the magisterium and different offices through mrs coulter throughout the story and different kind of just like big bads and stuff like that come through mrs coulter's pov usually so i don't know i'd love to see some wheelings and dealings of charles

latrum on the side yeah i think that's interesting because like especially charles latrum in this world because as you said it's a huge obstacle for will and lyra whereas like in lyra's world her parents were they were powerful people right in many ways they got her out of situations like Mrs. Coles being like oh hold on let's not sever this kid

that would be bad and here she has Will is what she has that's her guardian angel so to speak right now and he's wanted I would love to have gotten a little more of Charles Latrim's POV in this book than just these handfuls of scenes we get just for that alone. Like, I would love to see him knowing the police guy that's after Will, you know?

I mean, I'm not surprised to think that that's probably how he knew where to get her at. That's true. Yeah. That's a good point probably how he knew where to get her at. That's true. Yeah. That's a good point. And he proposes a trade to them. He's like, all right, you know what? Sure. You can have the alethiometer back, but I want you to go to that other world and I want you to find the man who made the window.

He's going to be in the Tori Dilly Anjali and bring me back the knife. And they're like, what? And he's like, just do this. And allegedly he's a man of his word and will honor this. Yeah, okay. I believe that, fucking snake. Literally? Literally.

Chapter 7, Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce. And that brings us over to Chapter 8, the Tower of of the angels they really actually just literally slide one into another yeah it's really nice fast moving and really action-packed as they drive back through oxford in the back of this guy's car again i just want to point out here they are again yeah that's true still it is still dangerous. And as they drive through Oxford, Will is like, who is the man we have to find in the Tower of the Angels? And Charles says, I don't know.

He's like me. He owns things that he shouldn't, that aren't theirs, which is more or less basically what he's saying. And Will asks how Latrim knows about the other world. And Latrim says, I'm old. And a bunch of guys in the guild used to do it all the time. In this moment, Lyra finally realizes what Eliana and I understand. Not from this world. Familiarity kicks in, but not enough because she thinks he must be from Chittagatse.

He says, no, I'm not. And then we just skip over that, right? Will explains, okay, you know what? We need intel on this guy in the tower if we're gonna succeed. And instead, what they learn is, you know what, the knife keeps specters away. And they just hand-wave away. Why the specters only attack

grown-ups once more? Because plot. And Mr. Charles asks after Pantel-A-Mon, which Will now realizes, oh, so what I saw earlier was a demon, and that this guy is only doing it asking after Pan, because obviously people would ask what is going on here with your interesting, strange animal. Then they exchange a couple of barbs about dung beetles and scarabs and the worthiness of the alethiometer, and then they get dropped off.

Will says, no, drop us off further. It doesn't matter if you know where the window is. And Will realizes Sir Charles couldn't enter the other world if he wanted to because it's unsafe for him. As they leave, Sir Charles makes a threat. Don't come back without the knife or I'll call the cops on you. Revealing Will's photo was in the paper. Lyra's like, if he wanted you caught, you'd already be caught though, Will. And at the tower, 10 minutes later, Will discloses his knowledge to Lyra that he saw a demon and Lyra discloses to him that she saw a man in the tower the other day. I love that they've totally made up at this point. They're not fighting. They're just in like full blown detective mode now that they're home, they're like, I don't have time to be mad at you.

They went to this guy's house. It's framed that they go there on a covert ops mission to steal the alethiometer back, but they ended up making a deal with the devil instead. And I think it's really interesting how he frames it because Charles's snake demon is really important in this. While we tout that the story being played out as a whole for Lyra and over the book is kind of this Adam and Eve-esque story, I think as we explored in our Once Upon a Time in the North episode, Pullman keeps creating these microcosms of the main story in other frameworks. frameworks. So here, Charles is tempting Will and Lyra,

making a deal to give them what they want, doing this thing for him. But when they realize what this knife symbolizes, there's no way they can give that back to him. Yeah, and I like what you're doing here in pointing that out, because it's also that he's tempting them with the lithiometer, which is knowledge.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Very cool. Knowledge and immortality, basically. Yeah. Freedom, protection. And Lyra theorizes, okay, so maybe the guy in the tower

is Paolo and Angelica's brother, and I think he's probably after the knife. And she's also like, I think all the kids know about it. That's why everyone even bothered to come back to this crazy city and the children though they refuse to go in the tower because they're afraid of it same as lara had felt that it was an evil place and knowing this is the only way to make things right and per will suggestion pan becomes a sparrow and flies very high to peer inside and give them, you know, sort of like some intel before they go inside.

And Lyra explains as she like gasps and stuff that there's a pain from being separated too far with your demon. Pan sees stairs and rooms and a young man who seems kind of like he's dancing, but maybe fighting something invisible off. They go around toward the front of the tower, and they can hear murmuring, interspersed with laughter, that sounds kind of like a madman. They climb the tower, which looks old, run down, crumbling, and full of cobwebs, till they come across the room where the madman is. In the center of the room, a young man was dancing. Pantelaman was right. It looked exactly like that. He had his back to the door and he'd shuffle to one side, then to the other, and all the time his right hand moved in front of him as if he were clearing away through some invisible obstacles. In that hand was a knife. Not a special

looking knife, just a dull blade about eight inches long, and he'd thrust it forward, slice it sideways, feel forward with it, jab up and down, all in the empty air. Oh, I didn't realize literally until this stupid fucking moment that the whole time he was trying to open windows. Yeah, they explained that later in this chapter. Because I was like, I thought he was trying to stab Spectre's, but later in the chapter they explained he's trying to cut windows. I get it. Like, I just didn't put, I was worried more about about will learning so i just like totally didn't think about it i'm like oh duh of course jab up down all in the empty air slice it sideways feel forward duh i love it just like the

light described at will's house in the beginning of the book back in our first episode when we talked about the light falling yes and yeah i mean he does look mad but they also note that he's the same red hair as paula and angelica it's convenient that they have such iconic hair so that you can tell that with the exception of paulo but i don't know maybe including him i almost feel like i haven't thought about this like in depth but that the names of the three siblings are kind of meant to be a little ironic. Like, I mean, I don't know. Paolo is small.

He's not quite humble, I guess, so maybe he counts. Angelica, though, obviously not very angelic in her demeanor, especially because we've actually seen in Metangels in Tulio, it turns out that name means the one who leads. And, you know.

Okay. You know? No, that one makes sense. I like that one. Okay. Okay, I could dig it, Eliana. Ironic. I could take what you're laying down.

I like it. Maybe. I don't know. So they feel really weird about all of this. Feeling strange. They go further up. They hear a groan and they argue about who should go first will wins out to go first because lyra fucked up earlier they find themselves on a roof of lead

with the old man groaning so with a lot of what you were saying about alchemy and of course its significance to the guild that made me think that we really can't overlook that the material used for this roof is lead i mean first of all i guess lead was a popular building material at one point but we have like those famous associations that it's even called out earlier in this chapter of like there's that quest of turning lead into gold alchemists were like all about that and it shows on the one hand the failures of the guild of alchemists philosophers that you know they studied all this time and they're still looking for it but like they weren't able to turn that impure metal and it's not the prize gold that

comes at the end of learning right they never really got to the end of what learning is but along with that you know again lead used to be a common building material. But even back then, people realized, wait, I think this is bad for us. People had this idea of lead poisoning even during the Roman times. And you stated earlier that lead was associated with the planet Saturn. And apparently as people got more lead poisoning and were more sullen, etc., because they were ill. Their countenance was described as, like, Saturnine. I'm like, interesting. They're just sick, but okay. So not only is it just, like, an

impure metal, but we see that the guild over the years, like, this lead, right? It's decayed, it's rotting from its own poison the way that lead would do so. And I just thought that was interesting. That's a really good comparison. Yeah, lead and mercury are the poisonous ones.

Those are the poisonous metals and kind of were the downfall of alchemy, right? Because it's not practiced the same as it ever was nowadays. Yeah, and people were also, weren't people just like out there drinking mercury too? They were like, this is good. Yep, which is totally like a sidebar a song of ice and fire sidebar totally like an airy and bright flame thing oh that's true i mean i can

see why they think that it would be a cool thing to drink it looks cool it's like a forbidden snacks you know like a tide pod oh like a play-doh yeah but play-doh is like kind of okay especially like old play-doh is just like what, flour and cornstarch or something? And water. It's not like great for you, but it's not like the Tide Pod or Mercury levels. I mean, I'd take my pick of any of them. Forbidden snacks! They untie the old man and help him.

And I like this quote of, It was clumsily and hastily knotted, and it fell away quickly once will had seen how to work it and we get another uh sort of hint towards will's intuition getting a lot of hints of that here i think that's also going to play a factor in his role of learning the knife soon too right uh it fell away quickly once he's seen how to work it. True. Just like his fingers. Yeah, exactly. Like his fingers. God damn it, Eliana. You fell away quickly. Sorry. The guy introduces himself as Giacomo Paradisi

and as the bearer, no one else. I was kind of looking in to see which references I could find about this, right? And there are a couple. One I think is more likely than the other. Giacomo Lopardi, Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, basically the best Italian poet of the 19th century. He used to reflect on existence and human condition in the Romantic era. And I think it's likely that the Giacomo may have came from this.

However, Thomas Buchanan Reed has a dramatic sketch called The Alchemist's Daughter. He was a poet and portrait painter from 1822, 1872. But the alchemist's name in this sketch was Giacomo. And I thought that was interesting. He also did some ethereal, angelic paintings, like The Harp of Aaron.

So, definitely drawing on a couple different eras here, but found it interesting yeah i want a different route yeah yeah the name felt like significant i mean the paradisi part is pretty pretty straightforward right like in terms of that irony right of like oh yes paradise you know the whole eden thing and oh this place fucking sucks yeah i'm pretty sure thomas buchanan reed's piece is about jacamo now that i say it like or playing off of him because he existed like he was born 30 to 40 years after jacamo so it wouldn't surprise me if maybe his thomas buchanan reed's pieces were about

jacamo la party actually now that i say that yeah i don't know i was wondering for me i was like you know like did he pick the name giacomo because it's like jake it's like the italian version or something of james jacob and going back to the bible again but ideas of like jacob wrestling with the angel or seeing like the ladder uh to heaven things like that. Oh, I like that, though, too. Especially Tower of the Angels. Yeah, exactly. Like how it was maybe like about the fall of places and civilizations. The older man explains that the young man downstairs stole the knife from him and is desperate, pretty much a dingus, and deadly.

And Lyra's like, he's not going to kill you. And it's really a straightforward passage jacamo says well he's the bearer of the knife jacamo tells us that he was the bearer of the knife and he explains that the guy downstairs is trying to cut through whatever that means which now as you and i just discussed cut through to another world as the guy comes up pan turns into a bear to intimidate the young man which is a faint because we know that he can't touch him will sees the guy hadn't registered this because who would and this guy is obviously crazy they have no weapons but he obviously has the knife which happens to be like this massive hellcraft knife and he starts going towards will who gets

cornered. There's this quote that I liked. I don't know, I just thought it was great imagery for envisioning what was going on. Lyra was scrambling toward the man from behind with a loose rope in her hand. Will darted forward suddenly, just as he'd done to the man in his house, and with the same effect. His antagonist tumbled backward unexpectedly unexpectedly falling over lyra to crash into the lead it was all happening too quickly for will to be frightened but he did have time to see the knife fly from the man's hand and sink at once into the lead some feet away point first with no more resistance than if it had fallen into butter it plunged as far as the hilt and stopped suddenly i like that it was similar to the way that, you know, Will fought off the people in his house.

But also I wish that Lyra had been able to use the rope. Like, I feel like the rope could have been useful. It's like, I've played Clue and obviously this is a weapon. Yeah, but I guess, and we both know moving forward, this was Will's fight, obviously. The wand chooses the wizard, right? Yes. Will and him fight for the knife.

There's some exposition about Will learning to fight in school from being bullied because of his mother. And he learns that the point of the fight is to hurt the other person more than you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too. And he'd found out that not many people were when it came to it. But he knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else too and he'd found out that not many people were when it came to it but he knew that he was yes this is larry's type oh my god it is though it is it is look at yorick yeah she's into murderers this guy though will's not so used to fighting you know someone who's almost grown and also he has a knife so it's pretty different from the schoolyard brawls that he's been in. They fight more.

Will's like falls into space and he's like, oh, fuck, I'm falling. But he's fine. And, you know, it's kind of interesting because Pullman shows Will's willingness to do anything to win the fight. Because he's just grabbing and holding and pulling Tulio's hair. anything to win the fight because he's just grabbing and holding and pulling Tulio's hair and my understanding right of the way fights are occasionally depicted is that this way of fighting is considered neither masculine nor honorable but Will knows like that doesn't matter okay what matters is winning and living that is it it's survival at this point yeah Lyra tries to throw herself in too at the guy but doesn't really get a good hold on his

air. So he throws her off and stands up with the knife. Will takes her rope, which does get some use, and he wraps it around his hand for protection. They keep fighting. Will uses the light to blind the young man, which is a really tactically smart move. And they subdue him eventually. They kick the knife away and after one last tackle he falls down. The young man flees and Will has the knife. But that rope is the ultimate sacrifice. Just kidding.

It's his fingers. Because something is wrong. The rope is seeping with blood and when they untie it, Will's little finger and the finger next to it on his left hand fall away. Sapphire. Oh, wait, wrong. That's what you got, too.

Wrong books. I'm thinking more like a core and half hand. I was thinking of that, too, and I was thinking of very Star Wars. I mean, this is a big losing fingers, losing a hand. That's a huge arc. It's on The Walking Dead. It's, you know, it's everywhere. Not on it. It's in it. In the comics. The graphic novel.

Just the only thing that matters about The Walking Dead. I only really read the graphic novel. I don't, I didn't get to finish it, though. I just didn't. It's not bad. I didn't see a lot of things. I liked it. I liked it more than the show. I remember I fell asleep at some point in season two.

And I was like, I must not like this if I thought it was that boring. The first few seasons were alright. No, no, have a take. The first few seasons were alright. But as you go on, it slowly deteriorates. Yeah, for sure. The first two seasons are definitely the better of the seasons. So Lyra has fashioned a tourniquet for Will.

And he's losing a lot of blood. He's in super pain. She's thinking, I wish we had blood moss. Paradisi goes to get some salve. And I think it's a great comparison to look at the subtle knife as a philosopher's stone type of mythical magical sword or knife right some really basic staples of youth fiction are being displayed in this story it pulls a little bit from our anime yeah right absolutely uh it pulls a little bit of arthurian with that whole sword in the stone kind of vibe and everything we've talked about with alchemy

i think regarding this knife as the philosopher's stone is really interesting framework because it's metal transmutation right it wasn't just done by one group of people in a tower metal transmutation was rampant from the middle ages well up and through the 18th century it's a magical knife that can slice through oh pretty, pretty much anything, right? See, Will's hand. And it was transmuted to become its final form. It had guilds of men that researched and protected it in a way much like the Philosopher's Stone. They thought if they kept putting their work into it, this could lead to their immortality someday.

Yeah, they thought it could provide the answers. And I didn't think about the fact that it would have probably taken them alchemy to create it. Well, like, obviously something special happened. It's something that I do want to bring up later in our discussion, I think. But I also want to talk about it now that this knife is made of metal. And the metals that we do get talking about in this book the only metals that really have come up very prominently besides the lead what you've mentioned is a titanium manganese alloy that can separate anything and we saw it in action in the golden compass they're sorry in the

northern lights so wouldn't surprise me if this is a similar thing yeah but with magics and uh yeah i like the arthurian legend thing you know i didn't think about that that it's like lodged all the way in the lead yeah it's very as you said sword in the stone i didn't think about that but first you know will's injured he's given some plum brandy. Is that actually, like, a good idea? Isn't there, like, a thing, like, you shouldn't drink alcohol because it'll- Thin your blood. Yeah. Yeah, it's a horrible idea, but, you know, it's old other world times.

It's for the pain. And it's for the pain. Mostly. The guy says he can heal Will and that they have bandages, and then we have this quote. This precious ointment, the old man said, very difficult to obtain. Very good for wounds. It was a dusty, battered tube of ordinary antiseptic cream, such as Will could have bought in any pharmacy in his world. The old man was handling it as if it were made of mirror.

Will looked away. I don't know. This, like, scene just gets me every time. I don't know why. I don't know. This scene just gets me every time. I don't know those religious associations with it especially within this book but like that it's being handled so preciously and it's just so sad to me like how pathetic it is that will has to look away because he knows he's got to be thankful for like obvious reasons even though he doesn't feel like it and that's just like where it is like there seems to be this great civilization right they made this

awesome fucking knife and they're like i don't know ne. Right? They made this awesome fucking knife. And they're like, I don't know, Neosporin's super... This is what religion feels like. Oh my god. Just putting it out there, that's what all the years of Catholicism felt like for me. Like, yes, we believe in a higher power, but also

please put two dollars in this basket so you can keep coming back every week and no one shames you. You know? Yeah. Yeah, it's a similar feeling. I just, like, felt that. Yeah. I feel that.

So Pan is a kestrel, and he calls Lyra to come look out of the window. She sees Angelica running to Tulio down at the schoolyard, who looks to be fighting off a swarm of unseen bats and is running. Angelica and Paolo are desperate and try to help, and this is sad. And Lyra realized with a jolt of sickness what was happening. The man was being attacked by specters. Angelica knew it, though she couldn't see them, of course, and little Paolo was crying and striking at the empty air to try and drive them off, but it didn't help, and Tulio was lost. His movements became more and more lethargic, and presently they stopped altogether. Angelica clung to him, shaking and shaking his arm, but nothing woke him, and Paolo was crying his brother's name over and over as if that would

bring him back. Then Angelica seemed to feel Lyra watching her, and she looked up. For a moment, their eyes met. Lyra felt a jolt as if the girl had struck her a physical blow because the hatred in her eyes was so intense. And then Paolo saw her looking and looked up too, and his little boy's voice cried, We'll kill you! You've done this to Tulio! We're gonna kill you, alright! The children in this story, including Lyra, everyone's just really into throwing around threats of killing people very willy-nilly yeah shout out to final fantasy 7

remake because anyone that's playing this right now probably really feels the specters you know they get it i fought some specters in in Sector 7 in the slums. I fought my own specters the other day. So I get this. I really do. Not everyone has materia, prima materia, to make it through. But they did watch everyone they love die to the specters, you know? So I don't know.

They don't really have much to live for. Of course, they're like, I'm six. I'm going to kill you. Yeah. And I mean mean this is kind of i think in a way their moment right of like how lyra felt watching lord asriel roger it's like obviously not the same magnitude but that's how they feel about lyra maybe right now yeah i mean tulio was still their brother yeah and because of them now Tulio doesn't have the knife and the protection and none of them do.

And it's also kind of like a cautionary tale of wielding that power of the knife because obviously Tulio drove himself insane trying to get it or getting it or having it. Yeah, that's true. For Will, now the bearer. Yeah, and everyone's like coming for him. that's true for will now the bearer yeah and everyone's like coming for him lara though tries to advise mr paradisi on healing will and he says that he knows that i need to stop bleeding you know but he's also very sad he's like you know what kid here's the knife it's yours now and bill's like definitely not i don't want that and he's like you don't have a choice you're the bearer now congrats and you know yeah it's actually reiterated twice that Bill doesn't have a choice in being the bearer and I think you get it again some of those mingling

and like sort of paradoxical ideas of like destiny versus choice uh when it comes to these two kids as the Digi-Destined. Yeah, this is kind of his Digi-Destiny, his prophecy for himself. I didn't think about that. Yeah. Well, he proves it by holding up his own left hand, the old man, because the old man is missing the same fingers, and he also lost them not knowing that he would be the bearer and threw a fight it is the badge

of the bearer Will's like I only came here to get it cause some guy told me to though yeah and then uh I put in this quote right the description of the knife cause we might as well yeah it's important it's the book title

it's the thing title it's the thing I know that man he's a liar, a cheat he won't give you anything, make no mistake he wants the knife and once he has it he will betray you he will never be the bearer the knife is yours by right

with a heavy reluctance Will turned to the knife itself he pulled it toward him it was an ordinary looking dagger with a double sided blade With a heavy reluctance, Will turned to the knife itself. He pulled it toward him. It was an ordinary-looking dagger with a double-sided blade of dull metal about eight inches long, a short crosspiece of the same metal, and a handle of rosewood. As he looked at it more closely, he saw that the rosewood was inlaid with golden wires, forming a design he didn't recognize till he turned the knife round and saw an angel with wings folded. On the other side was a different angel with wings upraised. The wire stood out a

little from the surface, giving a firm grip, and as he picked it up, he felt that it was light in his hand and strong and beautifully balanced, and that the blade was not dull after all. In fact, this roll of cloudy colors seemed to live just under the surface of the metal. Bruise purples, sea blues, earth browns, cloud grays, the deep green under heavy foliage trees, the clustering shades at the mouth of a tomb as evening falls over a deserted graveyard. If there was such a thing as shadow colored, it was the blade of the subtle knife. But the edges were different. In fact, the two edges differed from subtle knife. But the edges were different, in fact the two edges differed from each other. One was clear bright steel, merging a little way back into those subtle

shadow colors, but steel of an incomparable sharpness. Will's eyes shrank back from looking at it, so sharp did it seem. The other edge was just as keen, but silvery in color, and Lyra who was looking at it over will shoulder said i seen that color before that's the same as the blade they was going to cut me and pan apart with that's just the same yep yep yep there you go there's that alloy and it makes sense because it does chop through oh everything it really does something really interesting here is just all the color and i like to think about it kind of in a more abstract way of looking at it against the compass right the alethiometer the golden compass as pullman hates hearing uh that it makes me think of like this

duality when it comes to will and lyra like you said their destiny is being intertwined will now has kind of a new purpose in the story right getting this and the philosopher's stones of old were said to only be able to be two colors either white or red and it kind of makes you feel like they each have accepted their philosopher's stone in the story. Giacomo explains the edge of steel will cut any material in the world and the other edge does something else. The other edge, the old man went on, is more subtle still. With it, you can cut an opening

out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say. You are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me and i have not much time left stand up and listen will pushed his chair back and stood holding the knife loosely he felt dizzy sick rebellious i don't want he began but giacomo paradisi shook his head be silent

you don't want you don't want you You don't want. You have no choice. Listen to me because time is short. Now hold the knife out ahead of you like that. It's not only the knife that has to cut. It's your mind. You have to think it. So do this. Put your mind out at the very tip of the knife.

Concentrate, boy. Focus your mind. Don't think about your wound. It will heal. Think about the knife tip. That is where you are. Now feel with it very gently. You're looking for a gap so small you could never see it with your eyes, but the knife tip will find it if you put your mind there. Feel along the air until you sense the smallest little gap in the world. Oh, so good. What a good passage. I feel like there's something being played with here very hard. And there's a lot of the Greek influence like we've talked about, but the subtle knife here feels like the golden bow in Greek mythos, like from the Aeneid 6, the myth that goes that Aeneas's dead father appears and tells him to find the golden bow. And what the golden bow does does we're going to talk about during the discussion

but i just feel like it's so symbolic yes the way that it uh passes down to as will tries to make cuts in the world he thinks of his mother and how he had to leave her and then starts sobbing and then this crazy thing happens right uh he finds Pan there all of a sudden, licking him and comforting him. And this is very remarkable to us as the reader. Also to Lyra, because she's like, I didn't tell him to do this. Also astounding to Will, but especially Lyra, because as we all know, this is not a thing that demons do, just touching other people. But Pan's gesture gives Will courage, so he tries again.

No less intense. He was focused differently now, and the knife looked different, too. Perhaps it was those cloudy colors along the blade, or perhaps it was the way it sat so naturally in Will's hand, but the little movements he was making with the tip now looked purposeful instead of random. He felt this way, then turned the knife over and felt the other, always feeling with the silvery edge and then he seemed to find some little snag in the empty air so this is it and next time

jacomo wants will to slide the knife and make a cut also don't hesitate and drop the knife because that would be absolutely awful you'd cut off some some toes. Maybe we could even him out, you know, like cut off the opposite side toes. I don't know. We get a line. It was like delicately searching out the gap between one stitch and the next with the point of a scalpel. So I just like that. And we'll come back to that in a second. But first, something I haven't thought much about,

and I'm just like starting to form these thoughts but throwing them out there the significance of the use of the word a window between each of these worlds especially because will calls it out a few chapters ago when he's reading those letters from his father and he's like wow we use the same word to describe it a window and then like how the windows are often like just hidden in plain sight it's only visible to some who are able to see it and the idea that will can choose to make the windows but also that it feels like the creation of these windows is very tied to this very visceral act right this motion this it's a cut and it makes sense for will's character and how we see him portrayed

with this like willingness to hurt and how he has to fight out of necessity, right? And it's very much contrasted to, I feel like, the Chronicles of Narnia, where there's that door into the other worlds. And these books were somewhat of a response to that, right? Because those were very pro-God, not this. those were very pro-God, not this. And, you know, with those doors, right, like, doors are meant to be stepped through as opposed to windows, which are you're meant to, like, see through, right? It's hidden, but has to be found.

Both of them kind of are like that. And then what happens, like, when one is no longer deemed of being worthy to step through those doors in the chronicles of narnia versus like the choice that happens uh for anyone who bears a knife where they have to a remember to close their windows to other worlds and they get to choose right if they go through or not the windows don't really care or distinguish if one's good enough to go through them or not i mean we got charles latrim over here so yes anyway well speaking of windows will creates another one uh high in the air above oxford because they are high in a tower and jacomo i think he didn't drop it yeah good thing jacomo is like good cool now you have to close it you'll need your fingers for this one, not the ones on your left hand.

He has to feel for the edge with his mind in his fingertips. Kind of crazy. Focus, you know, focus it hard, guys. And then pinch. He struggles to do it. Lyra offers to help walk him through it since she knows it, kind of. And the problem, of course, is that the pain in his hand is really distracting him. Well, you're trying to do two things with your mind, both at once. You're trying

to ignore the pain and close that window. I remember when I was reading the alethiometer once when I was frightened, and maybe I was used to it by that time, I don't know, but I was still frightened all the time I was reading it. Just sort of relax your mind and say, yes, it does hurt. I know. Don't try and shut it out. I like this a lot because of that same kind of transmutation note we were talking about. This is bringing the spiritual part into this. It's not just the physical action. And I think that's incredibly important, especially because this is the action Lyra does when she realizes she needs to slip her subtle knife into the third rung while she reads the alethiometer, right? She will, when she focuses, she has to just kind of dissociate and reach for the answers. Yeah, and I just also kind of like that Lyra is showing Will and she's playing the mentor figure in a way here too.

For once, Lyra's like, I know this thing. I know this thing in this new crazy world. He tries what Lyra says and he's able to find the gap and pinch it closed. Easy peasy, we did it. He gets a cool sheath for his sword and it has buckles so it doesn't accidentally cut anything. And then there's this, we're nearing the end, there's this really sad, long passage from Giacomo Paradisi that I've included because it makes me feel feelings. This should be a solemn occasion, Giacomo Paradisi said. If we had days and weeks, I could begin to tell you the story of the subtle knife and the guild of the Tori delle Angeli

and the whole sorry history of this corrupt and careless world. The spectres are our fault, our fault alone. They came because my predecessors, alchemists, philosophers, men of learning, were making an inquiry into the deepest nature of things. They became curious about the bonds that held the smallest particles of matter together. You know what I mean by a bond? Something that binds? Well, this was a mercantile city. A city of traders and bankers. We thought we knew about bonds. We thought a bond was something negotiable.

Something that could be bought and sold and exchanged and converted. But about these bonds, we were wrong. We undid them and we let the specters in. Will asked, where did the specters come from? Why was the window left open under those trees, the one we first came in through? Are there other windows in the world? Where the specters come from is a mystery. From another world, from the darkness of space, who knows?

What matters is that they are here and they've destroyed us. Are there other windows into this world? Yes, a few. Because sometimes a knife-bearer might be careless or forgetful without time to stop and close as he should. And the window you came through under the hornbeam trees? I left that open myself in a moment of unforgivable foolishness. There is a man I am afraid of, and I thought to tempt him through and into the city, where he would fall victim to the specters. But I think that he is too clever for a trick like that. He wants the knife. Please never let him get it. Will and Myra shared a glance. Well, the old man finished spreading his hands. All I can do is hand the knife onto you and show you how to use it, which I have done, and tell you what the rules of the guild used to be before it decayed. First, never open without closing. Second, never let anyone else

use the knife. It is yours alone. Third, never use it for a base purpose. Fourth, keep it secret. If there are other rules, I have forgotten them, and if I've forgotten them, it is because they don't matter. You have the knife. You are the bearer. You should not be a child. But our world is crumbling and the mark of the bearer is unmistakable. I don't even know your name. Now go. I shall die very soon because I know where there are poisonous drugs and I don't intend to wait for the specters to come in as they will once the knife is left.

Go. But Mr. Paradisi, Lyra began. But he shook his head and went on there is no time you've come here for a purpose and maybe you don't know what that purpose is but the angels do who brought you here go you are brave and your friend is clever and you have the knife go oh my god does that mean that cat is an angel uh it could be i think so also i like how he's like i don't know your names. I'm sorry, I'm like totally ruining the mood. But he could have found out.

It wouldn't have taken them that long to be like, what are your names, kids? What's the point? He's gonna die. I was watching. What was I watching today? Oh, I was watching Once Upon a Time, the TV show. And there's an episode in season two. There's a basically there's an arc where they some of the

people have lost their memories but they come back like they get it back right before the world's about to end and it's like well what would you do you know would you really want to waste that time if you're literally going to die in a second i guess but it seems like a nice thing to do and he's the one who's going to hasten his death and also another thing ruining the mood but is he saying he's like you are brave and your friend is clever is he saying like will's not clever nobody sure is strong true i also just love that lyra keeps calling him mr paradisi mr paradisi the whole time she's like really worried he's actually gonna kill himself which he is but lyra like thinks that's the worst right yeah I mean understandably like she's like

really broken up about it it is a sacrifice though you know in the end choosing yeah he's choosing well I mean he could be a coward he could have kept the knife you know he could have well he couldn't have when they found him they helped him to death but I mean he could have double crossed them that's not the way the knife works I guess but you know he could have double-crossed them. That's not the way the knife works, I guess. But, you know, he could have done something differently. But he kind of just said, nope, I will just die now. I'll just go and let the cycle continue. On to the new one. They could have tried to get him out of this world.

Yeah. They could have taken him down the tower and done something. I truly believe this. I'm going to need two chocolatels before I can do that. Thanks. Yeah, Lara's like, can I have another Coca-Cola? Anyway, so instead what they do is they just shake hands with the old man.

They leave the tower. It's empty. And Lyra doesn't share what she saw at the window with Will. That's good to give him a little reprieve so that his heart doesn't have to take it. Because he has enough to worry about right now, like, two fingers being gone. That's true.

And he's the one who's comforting Lyra to an extent, right? And reassuring her about Giacomo and his lonely death. And it's not going to hurt him. He's like, it's better than the specters. Yeah. And by the end, Will is like alright we're gonna go get the alethiometer back we're gonna steal the alethiometer back we're getting it Lyra

and she's like wow that's what I said last chapter yeah weren't so on board then he's like well back then I wasn't missing two fingers and also the bearer of this like cool ass weapon Lyra's like maybe I'll chop your fingers off more often.

Maybe. But right now she's just like, I hate this place. We should burn it. She actually literally does say something like that. Yeah, something like that. Wow. I can't believe we already have the knife. Yeah, it's the book.

That's the whole title. It's the whole thing. Dude, that just means that we're going to get to the end of the book. That's sad. Yeah. It's the whole thing. Dude, that just means that we're gonna get to the end of the book. That's sad. Yeah. Many reasons why and I hope all of you are ready to tune in for those reasons over the next four months as we finish

this book up. Yeah. It only gets, uh, it gets much more intense. Much sadder. True. But it's really good. The series does. Thank you for all coming on this journey with us on this much sad journey. The sadder. True. But it's really good. The series does. Thank you for all coming on this journey with us on this much sad journey. The sadder knife.

Yeah. Well, we are gonna get into our dust-scussion where we spoil the main trilogy and the dusty-scussion might happen for a hot second where I talk about the books of dust. But, if you're not caught up with all three books and you don't want

to get spoiled tune out now come back next month when we do chapters 9 and 10 of the subtle knife yes but for now we're going to jump into this discussion all right i'm so excited about this one the golden bow from Aeneid 6. So we talked about it during the episode, but the myth goes, Aeneas' dead father appears and tells him, go find the golden bow. It will take you to the land of the underworld. He finds the bow. The boatman takes him and Sibyl across the river to Hades, where he then finds and frees the spirit of his father.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Huh. Interesting. cross the river to hades where he then finds and frees the spirit of his father interesting yeah yeah so that was kind of my thought there just wanted to complete it there's another thing that like i was thinking of so that's one of the references right in one of the inspirations for there's a book on comparative like literature and mythology by sir james george fraser and it talks a lot about different myths especially that of like the death and rebirth of like gods etc and like myths that recur throughout a lot of different cultures and some people believe it some don't and one of the things in the golden bow that he starts that book off with is something that makes me think of the subtle knife. There's like a cult or something. And I don't remember if like the priest was castrated or not, but they had to like stand watch over this tree. And it was a very coveted spot for some reason.

And someone had come along and basically being that priest was in many ways a death sentence because people would come and try to take your spot and kill you and become the priest. If I'm remembering this correctly, it's been a while since I read that. That is kind of a similar legend, though, similar lore. Yeah, it shows up in a lot of different things. The subtle knife's one of them.

I mean, he didn't have to kill the bear. We don't know that that's part of the lore. It better not be. You better stay the fuck away from Yorick. Seems like there could be theoretically like two bearers at once. It just happened that this one was old and dying and in a place that was horrible. Right? Yeah.

Right? I don't know. I think it's gotta be one and done. I don't know. I don't know i think it's gotta be one and done i don't know i don't know these are questions that i would love to know actually now that i think about it they could coexist for some amount of time it's just that this guy was dying because he's like i'm supposed to be the one to teach you obviously someone had to teach him he's like and they had enough time to teach him he's like you know normally we'd have enough time but we don't yeah because as long as you stuck with him with the knife yeah but that also still implies that you'd have to kill him at the end you know what i mean like by living your own life or they would just be old right maybe they would just die

yeah but and not to put it into harry terms, but it's like, would that mean if he just died honorably, even though he had taught you very kindly how to do all this shit, would you still become the bearer? Like, it seems there has to be a fight. That's the mark of the bearer. Yeah, but he didn't fight

the bearer. He fought Tulio. True. Well, he fought the owner of the the yeah i don't know and tulio had conquered him so i don't know i would love to know pullman please weigh in please weigh in yeah pullman we should bury it in another question about cat add it to your post-its so we get the confirmation from Lyra that the subtle knife itself is made out of the metal alloy that Asriel invented. Yes. That I feel like is big.

And I guess it's not like a, it's more of a, I think this is what it is, she says, but that's good enough. That basically means it probably is. Absolutely. And, I mean, the very metal that severs human from their soul, that is the metal that this is made out of. Which is really funny because the subtle knife, the one thing it can't really cut through is, like, love and heart and earth and, you know, etc. Water. Yeah. Fire.

All these elements combined. That's actually what I've been thinking this whole episode. I hope you know. Captain Planet. We hear about this a couple times though we hear about it in northern lights uh once lyra gets to captivity you hear the nurses and doctors discovering it with coulter that it was a curious discovery by lord asriel that gave us the key to the new method, an alloy of manganese and titanium that has the property of insulating body from demon. And then we hear about it again, that they've made a type of guillotine out of the blade, the manganese and titanium and the alloy mesh that is also used to separate the demon in person in the cabins. And we also hear in the Amber Spyglass about Asriel's war, that alloy, that metal alloy is being mined. The quote is, in the mills below the mountain, volcanic

fires fed mighty forges where phosphor and titanium were being melted and combined in alloys never known or used before. Yeah, and I mean that makes sense, right? Because as you pointed out, obviously whatever's in the chambers for separating people isn't I guess as good as the subtle knife or else everyone would fucking have one. But that makes

sense that this is what Asriel's mining for because he's trying to make his own again. Because that's his whole reason for living. To kill God. Right, right, right. because he's trying to make his own again. Because that's like his whole, you know, reason for living, to kill God. Right, right, right. That's it. That's the whole thing. That's his whole shtick.

But as you're saying about bonds, you know, part of what I really liked about what that, what Giacomo was like saying about it is, you know, it made me think of a couple of different things, right? He was all like, you know, we thought that we could break these bonds.

We thought there was something that we could negotiate and sell and trade. And the, the idea of bonds shows up quite a bit, right? In this series. One of them is, you know, as you said,

between Will and Lyra and like the end of the series. And when people die and then, and find their demons or their loved ones and the particles they find each other at the end and they bond and they like live together as little particles for forever as part of the universe yeah like those bonds between people like being unbreakable yeah and i thought it was quite interesting um I'm going to come back for a second and double back on this idea of how Chittagaze

was a financial mercantile city and how they were thinking of bonds in terms of those financial terms of you know, I'm not great at finance so we're just going to read aloud this entry from the internet about finance bonds, which are a real thing you can do and invest in.

But maybe you don't want to do that now. I hear investments aren't doing great right now. Maybe these kinds are doing great right now. Turns out I'm not an economist. Ask Lyra. Anyway. A bond is an instrument of indebtedness of the bond issuer to the holders. The most common types include municipal bonds and corporate bonds.

It's a debt security under which the issuer owes the holders a debt, and depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay them interest to repay the principal at a later date. Yeah, again, that's a type of investment you can take, and you can exchange those, right? But here, turns out, particles are not that. And it feels like there's a debt, right, when they break those bonds. This is just me thinking really abstractly about it.

And that debt ends up being taken out by the specters. That makes sense. Yeah, they could just do whatever. And then coming back again to those bonds between people that are unbreakable, and that exchange and trade of bonds, as you keep talking about alchemy, I keep thinking of the law of equivalent exchange, right? And the energy that comes from severing the bond between human and demon, like, slash soul, and then that becomes like that exchange to what open a door

to another world or create a bomb do some random shit yeah yeah and obviously with the overarching idea of the bond like you know that me and you joke about the the parks and rec andy and april looking up at the same moon. Obviously not the same moon. That'd be impossible. But I mean, that's a special type of magic there, right? Like the type of magic, I mean, even losing two of your fingers to become the bearer, whether you wanted to be the bearer or not, that is the blood sacrifice that this costs.

Yeah, a bond of like destiny and that's part of what's holding Lyra and Will together along with love like at first it's the one between him and his mother and that ends up being unbreakable and shattering the knife and later on you know this knife that's supposed to be able to just keep breaking these bonds

like it can't it can't break this the bonds between Will and Lyra yeah um even though it could break particles between worlds. Something random that I was thinking also regarding Will's hand, it's called the Badger the Bear. Is this sort of like a Mark of Cain thing going on in the Bible? Yeah, I was wondering, because the first thing I thought was Mark of the Beast that you know like i was thinking that but then i was like that's a little negative yes but for kane like you know they he has to leave i mean they all had to leave the garden but that was like his parents fault whatever um you know cursed but at the same time no man's

allowed to harm him and like that's what the knife kind of does by conferring that protection and then like that fighting i'm thinking again of like jacob fighting the angel there are also literally angels in this book series but whatever and also like i think there's something weird of how pullman kept writing yes the on the left hand the little finger and the finger right next to it like Pullman we know what that fucking finger is called right we have a word for it it's the ring finger okay first of all the left hand is associated in Christianity with like marriage goats and devil things but yeah also the ring finger marriage like the left hand ring finger which is connected to the heart where you would put your wedding band and I'm just going back again because I'm like, let's get sad about Will and Lyra again.

Yeah. I think this was foreshadowing that maybe in the last book of dust, they'll get married and have 20 kids. Just kidding. That's an interesting theory. Just kidding. This isn't Brienne and Jamie. Oh my god.

Yeah. And then like we have those lantern slides. You brought up one with will and his grandparents there's another one that i was reminded of with that quote of like it was like delicately searching out the gap between one stitch of the next with the point of a scalpel and then will's like future as a doctor scalpel that's brilliant surgery and the precision like what you were calling out in the episode today that like that instinct and that intuition just came back in with the rope yeah and it came it comes into the rope it comes in when he's a doctor so like we're getting like

hints of will's future professions here was lyra supposed to be a physicist i don't know maybe that i really do think that could have been his first idea i think you're onto something maybe he's like science that's cool what's not cool is the old man dying but at least you know he chose his own death and i think that's something we're not cool is the old man dying but at least you know he chose his own death and i think that's something we're going to explore a little bit more later on uh in this book with choosing one's own death throughout the series between the father mcphail jacomo mrs coulter nazrael and lee but we'll come back to those and then finally coming back to the television series we've got that with the way that this is playing out,

I'm seeing now how strong of a choice it is that we put so much focus on Lord Boreal in the television series in the first season because it's going to make it really feel good and pay off for when Will squares off against them. Yeah, and they really set it up well. I know you and I were chatting before this, and I think that we're

gonna see the mulefa in season two of this show i really really do i think we'll see those early because you know they have to replace now what they've already spent ahead of um so i don't know i'm excited to see it but i think the way they set it up the way that they connected some of the this world this they really i mean chita gatsay is going to be such a really fulfilled world i do wonder how uh i don't know he was a prominent character in season one obviously for not just the will stuff but for the lyra stuff so oh yeah seeing him again and the whole lyra innocently hanging around the museum. And I can see where she'd be like, I recognize this guy, but I just don't know where.

And I can see him being kind of like charming older dude about it. But like, and we know he can pull off the creepy skeezy stuff because we saw him in the car with the reporter, the journalist. That's true. the journalist that's true and you pull you said something earlier in this episode of like yeah i could totally see like charles ladrum being associated with i don't know the sergeant clifford or whatever and like we see that in the in the show right oh yeah he has like law enforcement or i don't know if he's law enforcement but you know he's infiltrated it one way or another i think that adds depth to it i'm really really glad they showed it, especially ahead of time. I think it just adds a lot of depth. Yeah.

Maybe he's gonna have to find like a new dude. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't think I'm gonna go into dusty discussion. I really don't have much to say. Oh, okay. The couple things that I have we've kind of covered in a way that we're just gonna let them play out. We're gonna let them play out.

Let's just come back to it next week. I'll have something for you next week. Next month? Or month, yes. Oh my gosh, you're right. Are you sure you don't want to do it now? No. You're gonna make them wait a month? Oh my god, I wish. I wish we could do it next week, but you guys have to wait one month. One month.

Oh my god, she's really doing this to you guys. You'll live. You guys will be back. You all will be back in one month thanks so much for listening to us today you all we had a blast talking about his dark materials as always i am so excited to get through this book but not for that and we won't talk about it right now but i'm not excited about Yeah, she's already begun her grieving and mourning process. It's part of why we did Once Upon a Time in the North for our Patreon

episode this month. Yes, check that out at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. Patreon members in our stranger tier and above, our $5 tier and above, get a special episode every month. This coming month in May is going

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and for A Song of Ice and Fire and His Dark in historic materials you can find us on twitter at twitter.com slash girls gone canon and hey maybe you had a thought about historic materials that you would like for us to cover or discuss somewhat briefly or whatever shoot us an email at girls gone canon at gmail.com yes please and lastly don't forget to subscribe to us on your local podcasting platform. We are on all the big ones and a handful of small ones as well. Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Podbean, where we're hosted, Stitcher, Acast, you name it.

Yes. And thank you again, everyone, for tuning in this month. I have been one of your hosts, Eliana. And I have been another one of your hosts, Chloe. Goodbye. Goodbye.