Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Episode 14 - The Subtle Knife Chapters 11 & 12

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Lyra and Will start to realize the heavy cost of bearing the subtle knife, while Mary Malone talks to magical Siri.  Chapter 11 - Belvedere Chapter 12 - Screen Language Links referenced:  ManaroGeek TV - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1lo_HzhE8_5Q6gxn7h4cUA "Excerpts from the All-Girl Remake of 'Lord of the Flies'" - https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/excerpts-from-the-all-girl-remake-of-lord-of-the-flies --- 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, His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife, chapters 11 and 12, episode 14. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe. Chloe is doing some sort of like Ginyu Force dance right now. I think I remembered that name right from Dragon Ball Z, but I could be wrong. But, you know, Dragon Ball Z is not, in fact, the story that we are looking at here, even though it is also an epic journey.

Yes, an epic journey revolving around the fates of some protagonists, which is exactly what we are going to discuss tonight in the Subtle Knife chapters 11 and 12. Chapters 11, which is the Belvedere, and chapter 12, Screen Language, which it's really funny because I was so excited about Screen Language, albeit, you know, it's a really fun chapter. But I have so little to say because of how excited I am about that chapter. I was just sitting here marveling at the gorgeous back and forth of the shadows and Mary Malone and gosh, really good, really good chapters. But this will be followed by our discussion, which will also be a little minimalistic. I think tonight it's our book spoilers after section two now, if you don't want to know what happens in the rest of the trilogy in the Amber Spyglass.

And I'm not sure if Eliana will have any ideas about La Belle Sauvage, but we'll come back to that. Yeah, but for now, before we jump into everything, we do have an email of note once more from our friend Lo, who by the way is the only one out of all of you to have sent us a tribute episode so thank you Lo, first of all

for doing that. Lo's tribute episode was in fact about his dark materials so it was on brand go check that out Lo sent us an email saying rereading the chapter, screen language, I was struck by how Mary Malone is such a wonderful parallel to Marissa Coulter, while being so very different. They both work with science and specifically dust slash shadows in different ways.

They're both offered the opportunity to collaborate with powerful people, including Lord Boreal Sir Latrim. They both have been seen with religion in some way. I'm sure there are even some parallels, but in the end, Mary chooses to rather burn her research than let it fall into the wrong hands. A strong theme throughout these books is that knowledge is power, and I think that the way Mary's story explores that is very interesting. When producing knowledge, we must always be aware of the power dynamics involved.

Knowledge, research, and science are obviously important, but Mary helps us question at what cost. Researchers must always be critical of power and of what their research could be used for. I very much applaud Mary for her actions in this chapter and standing up to power. We are absolutely going to marvel and adore Mary on these things later. I personally, when rereading this chapter, I mean, this is probably the second time I'm reading this chapter. Now that I say it, I finished this book back when we started Northern Lights within a very fast lightning speed amount of time, unfortunately. time unfortunately Eliana was like oh you're done um but at this time reading through I just felt such an affinity and kinship with Mary Malone right for doing the right thing is very hard it's not always easy especially in the face of money of power of will to power which we will talk about later on and I really appreciated this email from Lo. So thank you, Lo, especially for your tribute episode featuring one of your hosts, Two Tiki the Cat. We also have a cat on our team.

That cat is taking the night off. That's Alysanne, our executive producer. So solidarity, you know, between Two Tiki and Alysanne and between us and Lo. Yeah, and this was, as you said, a really great email and something that we will be touching on later. But I think drawing the parallel with Marissa Coulter is a great point, especially in regards to, and something that I wonder, right, is obviously Marissa Coulter doesn't really give a shit about how she's using power, etc. But could she have turned out differently, right, in terms of that? Could she have turned out differently, right, in terms of that? Like, how much of it is because of where she grew up and the opportunities that she was afforded and what she felt she had to do versus, like, Mary Malone, right?

Dr. Malone can theoretically maybe, like, get a research job elsewhere. Marissa Coulter has to continue forward and feels like she's forced to pay some of these prices, whereas Dr. Malone has more opportunity as a woman here. Like, right, like, like later on we'll discuss yeah marissa coulter is very much so trapped right i mean she isn't she isn't but like she's hampered in the ways that she can gain respect in her world or like where power is what she's allowed to like pursue and obviously like maybe that's not like as true as i think it is based on you know we do have some female scholars and letters like what the shit we have those but it seems as though they're not held to the same uh level of esteem and of course that's true in the real world too and people are working to to correct that but i think as we go

forward and what we're really going to be examining about Mary Malone and about Marisa's character in kind of a contrast to that is the choice, right? Marisa and Mary were both given a choice and Mary chose to walk away in the name of ethics, in the name of scientific code, right? nurses you look at many professions that have to do with such care and science in general and scientists i mean that is an ethical code that mary malone followed and marisa chose power and mary malone chose what was right and i think that makes all the difference and it's definitely something we will chat more about yes well on exciting news we're starting the sausage everyone we are going to talk about how the sausage is made and by the sausage i mean the savage so we're starting labelle savage which is the first book of dust by philip pullman the books of dust are a expansion on the original trilogy of his dark materials if you are like me you've sped ahead. You've already finished the Amber Spyglass. You sit there during our

discussions and you go, girls, talk more about the stuff I want to know. But we've only talked a little bit about it. If you've caught our Secret Commonwealth coverage featuring the Dark Material podcast, Ian and Amy, and of course, Her Dark Materials, where Faye joined us and hung out with us.

Unfortunately, Rachel couldn't make it. Next time for sure. So we will be covering La Belle Sauvage. For patrons that are Stranger Tier and up, you will start to see those episodes this month, June, and in August will be your first two episodes. They will cover three chapters each. And after that, well, you all, we only have three chapters after this episode left in the subtle knife yes that chapter is one of them and i don't want to talk about it so let's move on everyone will be sad when it happens but we only have three chapters left so after that we will

work to release for the public our LaBelle Sauvage episodes. But if you want to check them out a couple of months, two to three months early, you can check those at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. We will have show coverage as it happens. Right now, we know that the show may be delayed due to COVID and pandemic-ness and all that bad stuff. So we'll see how it goes. We'll play it by ear. But for now now we're working towards covering labelle sauvage and i'm i'm honestly thrilled about it i think labelle sauvage

uh had a couple weak spots but personally i think it's a magnificent piece of art and was very gripping and i can't wait to hear what aliana thinks about it yeah can you believe we're making them wait for the amber spyglass but you know it's fine and i think you know we're making them wait for the Amber Spyglass? But you know, it's fine. And I think, you know, we're all used to waiting for things. And I will say, you know, you talked about the episode that you did of the Secret Commonwealth. I also want to quickly say, speaking of guests, we did this past weekend guest on Monero Geeks channel together with Monero and our good friend Alicia Kingston, as well as T-Baby. And we had quite the time. It was a fun conversation. Talked about a lot of different things, a lot of hilarious things in A Song of Ice and Fire. But alas, it was an exclusive.

However, we are going to plug A, you should be checking out, if you're following our Jamie Lannister coverage, you should definitely be checking out their discussion on House Lannister, especially the generation of Lannister coverage, you should definitely be checking out their discussion on House Lannister, especially the the generation of Lannister brothers with Tywin, and with Jamie and Tyrion. And they are also covering The Expanse, the TV show. And I still haven't finished the books. I'm still like on the first book, but I am caught up on the show. And they are, they are covering and I think just released their episode

on season three and they do a lot of really great analysis and also on other sci-fi and fantasy series and they weave in that into a lot of their different discussions so definitely go check that out yeah we'll drop a link in the description and of course before we got too far into our notes and announcements and housekeeping. The Belvedere Rabbit. Actually, that's a Velveteen Rabbit. I don't know. That's what I think of every time I see it.

Even the vodka. Anyways, Will's dreams are heavy, anxious, and sickly sweet. And he wakes to his body feeling heavy and sheets bloodstained. These are real feelings. Probably not for Will. Like, this is normal, right? They had slept in the servants' rooms under the under the attic yeah this is a monthly feeling for some people uh this is this is really interesting right we are nearing the end of the story of this story right we have the next

stories to go and let's be real his dark materials never ends this is a far cry from where we had lyra in the very beginning of this story right god bless her but she was a bit privileged she couldn't possibly understand this whole living a different lifestyle in a different world i mean she met will and she was hissing at him like a feral animal right that's how we start the story we see lyra from the outsider's eye from will's eye in this home so this is absolutely a different cry from lyra in even the beginning of northern lights when we meet her in jordan college so i'm very intrigued to see this lyra moving forward yeah and i mean she's been through a lot

right she's been kidnapped and had to sleep in like this institution and a bunch of other crazy places yeah whatever. Nothing big. But, you know, right now, when Will comes downstairs, Lyra immediately is concerned and gets him and his bleeding wounds into a chair. Lyra is trying to find baked beans, but Will says, this isn't a baked beans

kind of house, and asks her to just fix his bandage and hot water for him to wash. And I will say, you know, as much as we give Lyra shit for being that high class kid, I think as pointed out, in some ways she is and she is right. She was kind of raised as an orphan but she wasn't raised to understand

the signifiers of class and power. Granted, wherever she came from there was a different, like, the class system was a little different. I don't know if people are into baked beans in lyra's world so she's in this like weird middle space yeah things are very different as far as culturally and just as far as location wise so it's been a lot for her to get to know she runs to get will some clothing and she rewraps his bandages. She's kind of worrying about his red raw wound. It really seems to be infected. Not good. Will feels better after he eats and asks Lyra if she's looked

at her alethiometer recently. You know, the machine that kind of tells what's about to happen. It's pretty convenient. She tells him that she isn't going to use her alethiometer unless he asks her to. And she seems pretty upset about it. alethiometer unless he asks her to and she seems pretty upset about it so there was uh this moment where will is bathing and i thought that was kind of interesting and significant because lyra will doesn't feel embarrassed but lyra does in that moment and that's something that we've been seeing a lot throughout the series of lyra starting to become conscious of her body and of others bodies bodies, right? Like, we saw that awkwardness between her and Roger when she went to Lord Asriel's,

or even that consciousness, that self-consciousness when Mrs. Coulter made Pan leave or turn away when Lyra was bathing. And so the fact that Lyra thinks of it right away here and is awkward and gives Will his privacy, whereas she and Roger kind of, like're still in the kind of the same room or like just a little bit outside each other. Even though as children, they had bathed in like the rivers or like in places naked shows that there's something different between the dynamic that Lyra and Will have. Yeah, that's interesting. There's definitely a consciousness about sexuality.

Lyra and Will have. Yeah, that's interesting. There's definitely a consciousness about sexuality. And with all this, like, I do understand Lyra's guilt, but I don't know why. It doesn't sit well with me that she's like, oh, I'll, like, only ask the alethiometer when you want me to. And I'm just like, I don't know, Lyra, it's your Sailor Century talisman, and you can, like, use it however the fuck you want. Like, you don't need Will to tell you, even though you kind of, like, fucked shit up before, but just actually do what it says next time or something yeah i feel a couple of ways about this honestly because there's something really meek and submissive and self-punishing that i really don't love to see from lyra who's kind of our you know our plucky protagonist uh the girl that can right like she's the one that she's like well we'll figure it out well we'll get him back um and i know it's because all that shit just went wrong right like it affected will um

all because she didn't really think about it when she went to the museum to find mary malone afterwards and uh i've also i've read some people that are unhappy with will and lyra's dynamic i don't know if it's just Subtle Knife, but also going forward. And I really do feel like there's something that kind of shuts her down here. Now that I'm rereading it for the second time, and we'll see how it feels as we get to the Amber Spyglass. I don't think it's like self serving for Will in a way. I know a lot of people probably feel like it's really serving for Will's arc. I just I don't know if I'd like it. And I think that it does change as we move forward. So we'll see it move. There's a couple anomalies

about Lyra in this chapter that I'm like, interesting. And she could be feeling off. I don't know. People feel different and off when they're Lyra's age, but whatever. I mean, she just lost Roger, you know, by not thinking. So here she is messing things up for Will, and she doesn't want to lose her new best friend, the person that, I mean, they're responsible for each other. They take care of each other so far. They're in this weird world that they really don't understand,

and they're there together. And right now Lyra knows she can't lose Will, and it's not going good. He's bleeding out. I mean. That is very true. Yeah. The specter of Roger hangs over, I mean, her entire story.

I was gonna say this chapter. I was like, that's the whole thing. Whatever. Spoilers. Yeah. And Will's like, well, sister, it's time to start using it. And they chat about the guy they kind of sort of saw. And by that we mean like kinda sorta

doomed to die and by that we mean of course Angelica's brother and then Lyra remembers she's like oh yeah I should probably tell Will that like everybody knows that we were pretty involved in that

responsible some would say like it was directly our fault, Will. It's almost like we killed him, but not really, but in a way. Could be argued. She explains that Angelica saw

her at the window, and then Baolo threatened them, and then she now understands that, oh, Tulio was actually after this knife so that he could protect himself and the kids so that they could just like all grow up without fearing the specters which makes you think like were they all gonna just like be together all the time which is freaky but it's doable i mean what other choice do they have yeah it's quite opposite from our world right now you know if you think about. Will asks what it looked like when Tulio was attacked, and she explains that he counted the stones on the wall, and then he lost interest and stopped, staying very still.

Will hesitates and tells her that he thinks, you know what, maybe the specters do come from my world after all, and that, like, if the guildmen first opened a window into my world, then the specters would have entered then. And he thinks that maybe the specters aren't called Spectres in his world. Maybe they call them something else. So last episode, I'm not sure if it was in our discussion. I think it was in our discussion because we hadn't gotten to this chapter yet. I can't be chuffed to figure it out. So we're just going to move ahead. In this moment, we kind of discuss that it feels like Will is realizing his mother might have been plagued by specters.

And especially when he says maybe they're called something else. If we revisit the specters with Tulio. The girl Angelica was running toward her elder brother, Tulio, who stood with his back against the wall on the other side of the narrow street, waving his arms in the air as if trying to keep a flock of bats from his face. Then he turned away and began to run his hands along the stones in the wall, looking closely at each one, counting them, feeling the edges, hunching up his shoulders as if to ward off something behind him, shaking his head. It kind of feels like Elaine's mental illness, Will's mother, is a sort of allegory for the Spectres. Whether it's just a metaphor, whether it's maybe something else that's similar to the Spectres,

the voices that she hears, the dangerous games that she plays with Will to escape those voices, it could be some sort of different Spectre. We're about to meet a different species in the future in the Amber Spyglass called the Tuolapi that also kind of make me think of this in a way. But it also reminds me of way back in Northern Lights, the first book, when we learned about a handful of different mythical spirits or fauna that Lyra heard from Tony Costa and his friends. They tell her this mostly trying to scare her, right? Like it was very obvious they were trying to fuck with Lyra. But when we revisit it, they sound pretty familiar.

There are the Nalakinens, I believe, which roughly in Finnish translates to hungry and peckish, which I felt like it was very interesting for a specter-type creature. And we hear from Toni Costa. That's the kind of ghost they have up there in those forests same size as a child and they got no heads they feel their way around at night and if you're sleeping out in the forest they get a hold of you and won't nothing make them let you go Nalakinens that's a northern word so I love that they kept some of that Finnish in there in general right because it's a northern word. But, hmm, interesting.

Kind of sounds similar, right? That they get a hold of you when you're sleeping. Then he talks about the wind suckers. They're dangerous, too. They drift about in the air. You come across clumps of them floated together sometimes or caught snagged on a bramble. As soon as they touch you, all the strength goes out of you.

You can't see them except as a kind of shimmer in the air. Yeah, that definitely sounds like it. Sounds a bit like the Spectres. Yeah. And then, of course, Tony Costa talks about the breathless ones. Warriors half-killed. Being alive's one thing, being dead's another, but being half-killed is worse than either. They can't just die, and living is altogether beyond them.

They wander about forever. The North Tartars snap open their ribs and pull out their lungs. They do it without killing them, but their lungs can't work without their demons pumping them by hand. So the result is they're halfway between breath and no breath, life and death, half killed, you see. And their demons gotta pump and pump all day and night or else perish with them. You come across a whole platoon of breathless ones in the forest sometimes, I've heard.

Okay, so the breathless ones don't necessarily seem to be in the same camp as the previous two. They kind of sound a bit like the zombie that Lyra and Serafina learn about, which are victims of something causing them to become like this. These may have been stories passed down to Lyra mostly to scare her by Tony Costa, but Lyra's learning in this book that they're not just ghost stories. They're real. And it's likely Will's mother could have come into contact with something like them. And while he thinks it's because of the knife, which actually is really likely, it's also kind of fitting that John traveling these worlds, ripping open the fabric of these worlds and letting spirits like these in,

also is the cause and effect of what's happened to Elaine. I know that a lot of people do subscribe to it being a mental illness, which I know you and I have discussed that it could be. It could be something like that, or it could be something else. I think it could be in a way both, right? Like, as you said, it seems like the specters could be in a way like a sort of allegory for the sorts of... Depression. Yeah, depression, the difficulties that come with adulthood and the costs of it.

And, you know, as we're going to see, like, the children are so ferocious after this knife because it represents a hope for them, right? And it's hard and life is hard. You know how people say, like, a couple thousand dollars would change my life, which all of us say all the time. Like, we're like, oh, just a few thousand dollars, that would change my life. That's what this knife is for them. would change their life yeah absolutely it would like allow them to grow up and i you know i i see i can definitely see the specters being as a sort of allegory for that and you know obviously like there is that very literal form in these ghost stories that you're talking about but there's that and like i mean we see it also with uh some of the adults right who have

their specters cut they're they're not completely like brainless right like the they they're capable of speech in a way that uh they're much more there than some of the the humans who've been attacked by specters are so all of these think, are sort of exploring different avenues of that. But I think that it also might be a thing where Pullman's kind of exploring it a little there, but he's not touching on it too much. Like how he says that, you know, there are many things in my story, in my world, that I don't understand that are mysteries to him right so and to be fair I know that both of us are uh speaking about Tulio Angelica and Paolo's brother who we saw unfortunately meet kind of a

sort of demise we're speaking about him like he's dead but he's still there he's a shell of a being right like the specters in a way I mean look at the dementors in harry potter they do worse than death this is worse than death they suck the soul out this is something that pullman is absolutely exploring deeper than jk rowling ever decided to right like she did not go the extra mile and explain this is why the soul and the body is one and it's really awful that the dementors are doing it she just expects us to feel it where pullman is trying to give us this whole series explaining that the soul and the body while they are one they are also two elements that are very different and very special and i think seeing tulio die quote unquote like we keep saying it's his quote unquote death it is it's the death of a person it's who he was

he's no longer that person. Yeah, and that's part of why Lyra feels so guilty, because she's like, yeah, he's basically dead now, and it's kind of because of us. Will. Yeah. But at the same time, as we'll see later, she decides to shove that guilt aside.

I mean, yeah, she's better than me at that. I'd be like, oh my god. I'd be like, curled up and be like, what did I do? Right now, Will's just like, his cheeks are red, his eyes are hot, and Lyra's like, I'm not gonna press him. She reiterates that the important thing

is that Angel and Paolo think we're responsible for Tulio's death, and also that they know we have the knife. So we should move. Yeah, they're like, we feel pretty bad about the situation but we also understand we had to defend ourselves we needed the knife and the alethiometer and if we could have done it without fighting we would have we get this quote like yorick burnison will was a fighter truly enough so she was prepared to agree with him

when he said it would be better not to fight. She knew it wasn't cowardice that spoke, but strategy. I really like that, especially because as we go through this chapter, Will's hot-headed tendencies and his physical anger, which is, you know, I mean, there is a lot of, I guess, masculinity we could explore in that, right? The lack of his father, as somebody that understands that role, the lack of a father and the masculinity thing, and I'm sure there's something there, but Will also straight up says, let's not try to fight them, because

obviously we have the upper hand in the bad way. Yeah. He's like, they've suffered enough. Yeah. Which they have. He's calmed down, and he says they need to think about Sir Charles and Mrs. Coulter's plans. He wonders about their bodyguards, the ones cut from their demons, and if they'll truly be able to avoid the specters, like Charles said.

He thinks, he says he thinks the specters eat people's demons, but Lyra argues that doesn't work. She's a demon, like most kids. Well, Lyra, it's almost like, what if the kids and adults are different? Which is, you know, what Will basically says. He's like, there's got to be a difference, right? Like, especially because you said that

grown-up demons, like, find their final form. And Lyra says, you know, wow, yeah, you could totally be onto something. And she's like, it doesn't matter. Because Mrs. Coulter wouldn't be afraid of them anyway, anyway of the specters she's already bossing them around and controlling them probably like she does with all the people around her she also says that lord boreal is probably going to be bent to mrs coulter's will soon as well as if he isn't already yeah wake up lyra well i don't know i mentioned the zombie in passing before in the end of northern

lights lyra and azriel discuss coulter's plans if you recall and lyra asks whose idea it was to do the cutting in the first place of the children and azriel says it was hers she guessed that the two things that happen in adolescence have to be connected between the demon and the dust settling. If the demon was separated from the body, we wouldn't be subject to dust, etc. But she's traveled in many places and seen all kinds of things. She traveled in Africa. The Africans have a way of making a slave called a zombie, he tells her. It has no will of its own. It will work day and night without ever running away or complaining and it looks like a corpse he goes on to tell her that the gob grew out of these ideas and also grew out of the church's obsession with original sin that they missed the point that power

harness could do anyways which we know that asriel harnesses in the end of the book we're obviously seeing though that asriel's a dumbass because the Church and the GOB have absolutely not given up on these ideals, and we see them doing so with, like, the entire plot of the story. More importantly, it kind of seems Lyra's grown smarter, right? Because after she was betrayed

by Asriel in Northern Lights, she now, in the Subtle Night, is assuming Coulter will be able to command these specters and Boreal, where back in Northern Lights she thought Asriel and Coulter were incapable of worse than they actually were. She's now just like, I don't know, they could probably do anything terrible. Everything that I can imagine. Not wrong. Lyra takes out her lithiometer.

She's prepared to ask about Will's father first, and then he interrupts and says, wait, no, check in on my mother. She tells him that she's safe, and the friend that's looking after her is kind and isn't going to give her away. He feels the tension leave his body, and he's about to ask about his dad, but then they're interrupted by loud shouting children at the edge

of the park outside the house, because you know, dramatic tension and mystery around Will's dad, and it's the meta reason for why we asked about Elaine first instead of about John Perry. Pan turns into a lynx and they stand up, knowing it's the children, and seeing them flow out of the trees.

There's like 40 or 50 kids. They're carrying sticks. One's got a pistol. They're being led by Angelica and Paolo, shrieking in excitement not too far behind. Yeah. Also, two of the kids have rifles?

Yeah, two of the kids have rifles. So there are three of them. With guns? Yeah. Will thinks he's seen children like this before, but never so many of them and not with guns and when i reread this the 40 or 50 really stuck out that's a lot of kids like 40 50 kids that's like three classes in an elementary school and that's a well-funded elementary school like a really well-funded school because a teacher with 30 kids per classroom is unheard of uh

so they could make out angelica's voice high above the other kids finally you killed my brother and you stole the knife you murderers you made the specters get him you killed him we'll kill you you ain't gonna get away we're gonna kill you the same as you killed him these children are very into killing other i mean even lyra every now and this is like we're gonna kill him i want to kill him i'm like okay all right everyone it's a lot uh and lyra and will discuss the logistics to cut a window out of the house and escape before those kids get up there but will's like it doesn't work that way sweetheart they have to get to a vantage point or get into the trees behind the house

because all he can see is the road by Charles Latrum slash Boreal's house or possibly even, you know, the road in front of like out of there where it would just be moving cars and wrong. So Lyra's furious, right? So she goes from earlier saying, oh, these kids, you know, we killed Tulio.

And now she's like, I should have killed Angelica the day before. She's as bad as her brother. And Will's like, alright, little miss tantrum. And he's like, the knife's in my belt. Let's go. We gotta go. Yeah, Lyra goes very quick to let's kill Angelica Pickles, so.

They escape out the back through a kitchen garden and out into the open. so there's that garden again interesting uh there's a circular temple-like building closer than the trees and will says let's run even though that's far easier said than done pan flies above keeping watch and lyra looks back they haven't caught up yet but pan then gives an alarm chirp a boy is pointing at them from the second floor of the home where they left and they hear the children shout in response Lyra tugs Will

back on his feet who is resting between running and you know just bleeding out slowly dying and off they trot again he knows he can't make it to the tree so they just aim for the temple looking building and hope to shut the door and keep them off long enough and it's interesting because like as they're running

I realize you know know, Will's kind of, he doesn't really understand, but he kind of is starting to get it that Pan is pulling, right? Because he's like, Lyra's gonna just stay behind with Will, so Pan is pulling to get them to some sort of safety. Yeah.

Pan is at the edge there. Yeah. The door is unlocked, and they enter to find a circular room with statues of goddesses placed in niches in the wall. There's a spiral staircase of wrought iron that leads to an opening, and there's no key to lock the door from the inside

until they go up to a viewing place for arches made to overlook the city. And this overlooking temple thing that provides views, this is in fact the Belvedere. I've learned today that it is not just a vodka. I mean, I knew that that was the title of this chapter, but I never thought to look like, well, it's a Belvedere.

Yeah, I didn't even realize it. And I was like, oh, that's what a Belvedere, an architectural structure cited to take advantage of a scenic view. While a Belvedere may be built in the upper part of a building, the actual structure can be of any form, whether a turret, a cupola, or an open gallery. And that's what this is, right? Like the arches are supposed to be like gorgeous.

It's very much a classy area. Yes, yes. Not a Sofia cupola, not a Sofia Coppola a different kind of Coppola okay I just usually drink you know my vodka and I'm a Coppola I actually don't usually drink my vodka at all you're the one who drinks vodka in this

podcast I would like to say that I no longer drink vodka after Saturday's live stream I digress. She had half the bottle. She like messaged me like, I don't know, at 2am or something and I'm like asleep and she's like I drank half the bottle. I'm like, what the

fuck? It was 4am, I had heartburn. They can see the forest behind them and the villa below and the park beyond. They can see a lot from up here on the Belle of the Deer. They can see Carrie and Crows as well over by of the Deer. They can see carrion crows as well over by the Tower of Angels that are wheeling above the battlements, which Will gets a jolt of sickness, which is a mixture of his hand and a mixture of remembering why the

crows will be circling around the tower, whether it's the old knife bearer or the one that they usurped. But this was no time to enjoy that view. The kids are angrily racing up the tower, calling them murderers. Will begins to cut his window, but realizes, Oh, well, turns out we're too high up to cut a window to the ground. All he sees when he cuts a window is just like air. They are stuck. Fuck.

Like that is a total oh fuck moment you are at the top of a tower with children with some guns and some like weaponry they made out of sticks coming to beat your ass i don't know odds don't look good right oh it's not they don't they don't there is kind of something to be said about the imagery here this belvedere this temple was built this gorgeous vantage point of the city to view the city of stolen artifacts and knowledge a gorgeous view and lyra and will stand atop it while a group of 40 to 50 orphaned children with nothing left in the world ascend toward them. There's a little bit of a class metaphor in there, right? I can't judge Will and Lyra on it, but they are the chosen ones.

These children are not. Tulio's death is symbolic of this. Tulio was consumed with the knife's power, absolutely, and turned a little crazy at the end, but he was trying to get the knife for a better purpose, right? To protect his population of orphans, like a father figure to these kids. And now these orphans are attacking because their very existence is depending on them having this knife. They don't get to grow up without this knife. Meeting this party of straggling children with the male and female guard in the woods in earlier chapters with the witches kind of comes to mind here right of them watching the dad die in the stream quote-unquote die the dad lose everything in the stream to the specters these orphans aren't the chosen ones

these orphans have nothing but an empty city of stolen dreams and as we go through this scene it's about to get worse for them and this is all because they were born in this world right and not another like lyra is a different orphan she's a chosen one orphan will a chosen one half orphan like they are not yeah and not only that like they're from another world and they're coming in and they've been chosen to take the treasure of this world yeah like not just the hope of it but i mean it it's both the treasure and the curse of this world right like caused a lot of the problems here not not all of them a lot of that was caused by lord azrael you know tearing an entire like

giant fucking hole into the reality but yeah that too that worsened the problem but yeah everything that she said it's it's sad like you can understand why the children are like this to an extent it's it's very sympathetic but it's of course very scary for our protagonists especially because the children's yelling is getting louder right like it's echoing through the temple and then a gunshot goes off lyra is crouching she's paralyzed at the wall. I mean, does Lyra know what guns are? That's a great question. Do they have guns in her world?

I don't remember. No, they must. They must. They fucking do. The bears have fire cannons. They must have guns. If the animals have cannons, the people must have guns. Because Ma Costa explains how Mr. Coulter had the gun during the uh birth store

like that's right yeah yeah so they and lyra's like what they had swords and she's like they had guns that's funny actually anyway so he reaches down and slices the iron on the top steps of the stairs which causes the staircase to crumble underneath the children's weight with no support. There's more screams, more confusion, and then another gunshot. One of the kids is hit, and Will looks down to see writhing bodies

in dust, blood, and plaster. The remaining continue to scream, spit, and threaten, but they can't reach. One of the children calls to those that are not pinned under the rubble. They leave the children behind as they go to investigate the call. The call reveals

itself as children climbing up the gutter to the top. They are swarming the roof like ants now and Pan's snarling. He's in leopard form causing the children to hesitate because they're like we hate cats! But they start to all climb up anyway they're like fuck this cat! Louder and louder, stamping on the roof

yelling kill but none will come closer to pan because they're like wait but maybe still fuck cats i'm over here lyra is fucked just like yes cats and you are too obviously uh as pullman knows so there's a lot that can be pulled from here but as i reread this for the second time, I realized, and maybe it's just such an obviousse is obviously different from Castle Rock, but it highlights kind of these broad themes of harmonious civilization, and I feel like there's a lot of Nietzsche's will to power being talked about here. If you're not familiar with Nietzsche's will to power, it's the idea that empowers basically all things to be, a psychological drive to human action. Everything we do, we attempt to insert ourselves into the world. The underlying motivation behind creating

philosophies isn't just making sense of the world or looking for a deeper answer, but more than that, it's an attempt by philosophers to distinguish themselves from others, right, by putting forth their own ideas. Everything we do is, in Nietzsche's words, even if we're not consciously thinking it, the need to assert our ideas and existence over another's and to be more important. In Nietzsche's Daybreak, he explores this in terms that our modern day can unfortunately very much understand. Spoilers, nothing's changed in real life. If three-quarters of the upper classes indulge in a permitted fraud and have the stock exchange and speculations on their conscience, what drives them? Not the actual need, for they are not so badly off. Perhaps they even eat and drink without a care, but they are afflicted day and night by a

fearful impatience at the slow way with which their money is accumulating, and by an equally fearful pleasure in and love of an accumulated money. In this impatience and this love, however, there turns up again the fanaticism of the lust for power, and that's from page 204 of Daybreak. Will to Power resembles a lot of different ideas from writers, like Charles Ferre's ideas that the sensation of pleasure originates in a feeling of power, and pain originates in a feeling of weakness or feebleness. But when we examine Angelica and her crew of their attacking of the kids, and the power dynamic is kind of flipped, right? Will to Power seems like will to survive. If the theories of Nietzsche and some of the kids, and the power dynamic is kind of flipped, right? Will to power seems like will to

survive. If the theories of Nietzsche and some of the explored themes in works like Lord of the Flies are to be explored more thoroughly, it's likely that children would eventually implode on themselves. There are plenty of books with similar themes like this, like Animal Farm or Greybeard by Brian W. Aldiss, or even a bit of Ender's Game, but I really feel like this reference that Pullman is making is one-to-one for Lord of the Flies to the kids of Chidigatse. The climax of Lord of the Flies is, of course, overseen by Ralph's social order leadership and Jack's leadership in Savagery. The order gets disrupted when Simon is murdered. Spoilers, but you should have passed your 14-year-old classes, guys.

Simon is a soft boy who cares for the ostracized piggy. When Simon crawls out of the forest later, the group of boys are chanting to kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood, do it, right after Simon has had this big revelation that the real beast is the dark side of human nature. They see him, who is arguably the balance of this group, the balance of nature as the beast, and he's the one who is disrupting their group. They murder him.

Spoilers again, should have read it. But of course, in the end, Ralph, who is social order, and the group is fleeing the savage boys running through the woods, and he finds a naval officer who ends up rescuing the group of boys, and at the end they tell the officer what happened, and the boys begin to cry, transformed back into children again, not these savage murderers. We see this happen very soon when Serafina and the witches descend to help Will and Lyra,

and in the end, Will and Lyra aren't the beast either, just like Simon isn't, and Tulio, of course, was driven to having this power over others and trying to take the end, Will and Lyra aren't the beast either, just like Simon isn't. And Tulio, of course, was driven to having this power over others and trying to take the knife, whether it's a good power or bad, it was a power to help protect these kids. It makes me think also a little bit about Harry Potter when you look at Will and Lyra, Harry Potter looking into the mirror of Erised in comparison to Will with the knife. Only the person who doesn't want it can wield that and that power. Yes, and that's definitely, I think, a thing that people felt and were exploring back then,

so I think that comparison is true. And the moment that you said to me, I was like, Felix, I don't know, there's something about this mob. You said to me that it reminded you of Lord of the Flies, like that definitely clicked. And I think all of this feels like something that Pullman is bringing into this or what, you know, his sort of philosophy on what a world run by children is like, sort of inverting that idea of, yeah, of course, a world run by children is innocent. And I don't know if that's like something that's sort of meant to respond, perhaps to Narnia in some way, as well. I'm not sure, or just in general ideas that children are innocent, versus adults. But something that I do think is funny that I sent to you as you said that, and that some people have brought up in

regards to Lord of the Fl right is i think around 2016 or 17 someone was toying around with the idea of like doing a gender flipped version of lord of the flies for i don't know a movie or something and people were like i don't know that it would actually turn out the same and they were talking about the way that like girls were socialized and differently than boys right and then the expectations and and how those interactions would be different and someone made this hilarious satirical uh essay on the new yorker called like so it said excerpts from the all-girl remake of lord of the flies and you will link that it's by ryan cons and it's pretty hilarious i think it's really funny so yeah you'll have to read it because it was very funny and i

would even say it's an interesting view especially because today i think something was trending on the internet that was like the era of girl bosses is over and i'm like colter's a girl boss that's a girl boss y'all like it's not good not great and you know, you know, looking at it, I mean, Lord of the Flies, chronologically speaking, it would have been very popular on BBC, on the radio when Pullman was a kid, right? Or when he was younger, not a kid. So it's definitely a huge, very popular, obviously, British novel. We've all read it through school, yada, yada. It really makes sense that he's drawing on some of

that. And some of it is kind of word for word with the kids chanting. And even when the kids descend, as we're about to talk about. It's not even that like, it's not even when it would have been popular when he was younger. But if I'm remembering correctly, right, he also taught quite a bit of high school English. So it could have been something that he would incorporate into the curriculum or that his peers at that time were teaching to their students frequently as well around that age so

one of the roof's tiles break and the boy standing on it falls but the one next to him grabs the tile he chucks it at Lyra who narrowly avoids it although it explodes into pieces in her hair what anime is this will reaches down to cut into the iron staircase giving a piece to lyra to defend herself with she swings hitting the first boy's head he falls and then comes another angelica red-haired white-faced crazy-eyed lyra jabs at her and she falls back

Will repeats the swing on his side and his eyes lock with the boy with the striped t-shirt and pistol Will is passionate for battle and knows what that eye lock means it means someone will die just imagine it you have a cut screen right and all of a sudden the eyes lock and he goes swing swing

and then the screen cuts and you have one set of eyes up here and the other down here. So anime. So anime. It's like a split screen. Vroom, vroom. And they're just about to start their fighting sequence, but it is interrupted

by a great white snow goose. Yay. Honk, honkk who swoops down low calling to the children. It's Kaisa, Serafina, Picala's daemon. And he flies at the striped t-shirt

boy who falls back and others begin to cry out because what the shit is happening? There are great black shapes sweeping in the sky. It's the witches shooting arrows at the children who begin to scatter.

Yeah, all the children on the rooftops are like jumping down from this because they're like, oh, it's another specter. Like they see these swooping dark shapes and they're like, ah, it's a sky specter, a new one. I mean, that'd be pretty scary. No, it's just adults that are

literally hundreds of years old attacking children. It's fine. Yeah, this is all, like, rereading it now. It makes me really sad. Like, when we talked, we kind of glazed over it, but Will cut that staircase, and yes, those kids were coming up

to try to kill them, so, like, I get it. I do get it. Like, there's nothing they could have done cutting the staircase was the only thing you could have done but like also like it crushed and collapsed on kids and a gun went off and there was blood and dust and plaster everywhere i was kind of like wow this is horrible as i was reading it yeah i don't know that someone died Someone died. You know someone died. I'm just putting that out there. You know several kids probably died during that. There were 50. 50 kids someone died.

At least 10% died. Yeah, and I mean, Lyra was ready to kill him anyway, I guess. And it's just like, okay. It sounded like the witches might have at first just been aiming warning shots. Not actually hitting the children. But still, it's not a good look.

It's not a good look. No. For them. We have this quote of, they jumped off the roof, some of them falling clumsily and dragging themselves away, limping, and others rolling down the slope and dashing for safety. But a mob no longer, just a lot of frightened shame-faced children just like the kids running to the naval officer in lord of the flies really sad especially when you think that as they ran to safety it's just like the real world that awaited ralph back home uh it was just as savage as this mass hysteria he just participated in, which is totally commentary on capitalism, but I digress.

It's like the beast's head, says to Simon in the cave in Lord of the Flies. Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill. Because you can't. It's part of human nature, right? That's the point. But at the same time, I was talking to our good friend Lo today, who mentioned something that made me think about the opposite of this, that maybe there is nature versus nurturing this. Like the boys in Lord of the Flies come across the naval officer and revert to children in front of his eyes, there's a lot of discourse around the story that may or may not be the original or non-whitewashed version of Lord of the Flies, right? That inspired the story that may or may not be the original or non-whitewashed version of Lord

of the Flies, right? That inspired the story. There are six Tongan teenagers who are now men. They were shipwrecked for 15 months on the island of Atta, and their culture taught them how to survive in nature and respect each other, in contrast to, well, Lord of the Flies, the English schoolboys that we meet. The island that the Tongan teenagers were ending up on was deep-seated in this colonialized history of slavery, with people of the Rock Island being captured and sold into slavery by those wishing to will their power on them, more like some of the creatures brought up with the Breathless On ones or zombie that seemed to have been exerted into slavery. The Taayan culture was not founded on colonizers stealing culture to survive. The Taayan culture was founded on four core values, which are mutual respect, humility, generosity, sharing, cooperating, fulfillment of mutual obligations, and loyalty and commitment

with family as the central unit of their life. The children in Chidagatse were brought up on a magpie culture, right? There's no cooperating, no loyalty. They were brought up to die. In this manner, I think Lord of the Flies relies more on this idea of human nature being inherently bad without order but the story of the tangan teenagers is a lot different obviously now they are men and it's a real story right it's not words in a piece of paper someone made up and they were brought up in a culture that was rich with strong values which tells me that in real life our society plays a bigger nurturing role on how children grow up giving them avenues giving giving them culture.

Honestly, it's really sad. These kids were just like born into this world where these old dudes decided they knew what was right for everyone. Wow, this sounds real. And they stole things from other cultures instead of putting the actual work in to create their own culture and have their own world that people could thrive in. So in the end, these Chittagatse kids are just suffering from their environment and how they were or weren't one could argue raised.

Yeah. And like you said, it's kind of like the, what happens in Lord of the Flies. And I do think, as you said, and they're pointing out here, and something that that New Yorker article is jokingly getting at,

there's a big nurture aspect of it. It's not as though, as we see from this real-life story, that the things that people are taught, the values that they are taught, that nurture completely disappears once people are out in the wilderness, right? completely disappears once people are out in the wilderness, right? It's a very cynical idea of what civilization or the lack thereof is, and I think it's only one lens. And at that, as you said, very Western lens, one that's mired in colonialism and I think western uh western values that more individualistic idea versus

i think you know other societies are more collectivistic right and we're seeing i think some of the ramifications of that when it comes to how a large widespread crisis is being handled by different cultures in this world so and you know it's uh these kids are have grown up in one where they're at first they were thought taught only to take from other other places and it evolved or devolved into you have to just keep taking in order to survive because that's all there is anymore. Yeah, it harkens back to a lot of what we read about with Nietzsche earlier, right? That why would these men that have all of the wealth in the world continue to steal wealth when they already have all the wealth?

And yeah, I feel really a lot sadder this time around for these kids. I know they were still going to try to kill our protagonists, but if Will and Lyra could, you know they'd try to save them. If they could. I mean, you can't truly blame them for wanting a shot at life. No, not at all. They're just fighting to survive. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism. Anyways, Will is kind of too amazed

to speak that there's these big black swooping figures, and Lyra's whooping, and she's calling with delight. She's like, Seraphina, come down here! But the witchers are like, yo, we cannot come down there. And Kaisa then explains that the specters affect the witches as well,

and a hundred or more are currently surrounding the building, drifting up the grass. Lyra explains we cannot see them, and Kaiza interrupts and is like, well, you need to make for the trees, because there's bigger trouble coming. Like, worse trouble. So Will and Lyra escape down the hill. His bindings begin to come undone on his hand. He tries to roll them up as they're running, but he's bleeding freely. And Kais is like, hey, who's this bleeding guy? And why are the specters avoiding him?

And at first, Will is like, what do you mean? I don't know why they're avoiding me. Probably because, you know, he's bleeding out. But then he remembers why he's bleeding out, which is the knife which wards off the specters. He wants to try to test the knife on the specters, but Serafina lands in front of them first, and he is of course captivated by Lise Goresby's wife's beauty. You can't stop who I am. I hope you know that.

I'm not trying to. Good. Before Will and Serafina get too acquainted though, Lyra throws her arms around the witch, who laughs and kisses her head. Lyra gushes about how the children wanted to kill them and how she's very happy that seraphina and her group of hundreds year old women were there to shoot at the children um seraphina watches behind lyra's head where the specters are clustering and waiting for them and seraphina tells them to head to the cave in the woods ahead, off the slope and ridge to the left, and they will meet there as the specters

don't see the witches when they're in the air. And the specters don't want anything to do with Will and Lyra, because they are not yet tasty. Lyra begins to tell Will that they're safe now, thanks to Seraphina, and chatters happily away. Will falls silently, his hand though is still throbbing, having to stop and rest

every bit of the way. When they finally get to the cave, though, is still throbbing, having to stop and rest every bit of the way. When they finally get to the cave, a rabbit is roasting over a fire, and Serafina stirs something in a pot, immediately asking to see Will's wound. The witches speak softly to each other, all asking, What made the wound? He shows them the knife, and they look on it with wonder and suspicion. Serafina says this will take more than herbs to heal they definitely need a spell it will be ready at moonrise she gives him a hot sleeping potion steeped in honey helps him to

sleep covers him with leaves which i wanted to comment reminds me of yorick and the pantsier born and lyra covering herself in snow to sleep like the rest of them being frozen with those snowflakes on her eyes if you recall that that from Northern Lights, I just thought, huh, the witches like to put leaves on them to sleep and the bears put snow. I like it. Seraphina turns to Lyra, who is gnawing on Rabbit and closes our chapter with the following. Now, Lyra, she said, tell me who this boy is and what you know about this world and about this knife of his. So Lyra took a deep breath and began. And that is the end of Chapter 11, The Belvedere.

And so we come to Chapter 12, Screen Language. I love it. I love it. And we're not talking about the language on the screen like in the His Dark Materials TV adaptation, which is excellent. We are talking about a very different screen language. So, we start the chapter. The show that, so far as we can tell, the show that is based on the books.

The only show that's based on their books. Holy shit. The only one that that's ever happened to. It's kind of based. There's been on their books. Holy shit. The only one that that's ever happened to. It's kind of based. There's been some interesting things. Anyways, we open it up with some new characters. Not Will and Lyra. You know Mary Malone, but we introduce Dr. Oliver Payne, who is back from Geneva and thinks that Mary Malone is speaking nonsense to him. and thinks that Mary Malone is speaking nonsense to him.

Mary Malone explained Lyra, the girl that's been visiting her, is from another world and that she speaks to the shadows. Mary Malone calls them dust and says that Lyra was able to speak to the cave and its newfound consciousness. She tells him about the alethiometer and that the girl knew about the state of mind quote-unquote intimately mary tells him about the skulls in the pit rivers museum as well and that they are much older than what the museum says so i mean i understand that if you have not been there but mary's saying does sound like a little crazy but at the same time like there's a bit here where it kind of

feels like mary malone is almost like cassandra from greek mythology here for a second until you know a man comes over and corroborates her account also also he has money but also you know nothing that we as women say like matters until a man comes and makes you're not wrong, honestly. And like, now that you say that, there's something about Cassandra that, considering like a few of the later versions of Cassandra's story, she falls asleep in a temple where snakes whisper in her ears

so she can hear the future. That feels a little relevant, right? And not only that, but Cassandra is super, like like strong faith uh and there is the story where ajax the lesser brutally assaults her and she holds to the statue of athena the goddess of wisdom with all of her might and she's holding on so hard that when ajax the lesser tears her from the statue the statue is torn down with her and it kind of reminds me of mary malone clinging to science and to logic

in this beginning of the chapter. I mean, there's an element of faith there too, right? Within the shadows and then Lyra. So it's both those things. So yeah, those all really work too. But Oliver is not faithful. He doesn't understand.

And he's like, wait, I don't understand. So are you just telling me that this girl came and confirmed what we know she's telling us something new and mary's like i don't know maybe both and from my understanding of science and research like that's how it's supposed to work some of the time anyway you know it confirms like what you know and maybe you from that because it confirms it you learned something new or like you know both right i'm not a scientist mary goes on to say something big had to have happened 30 40 000 years ago and shadow particles obviously existed before then like since the big bang but there was no way to amplify their effects until something maybe evolution altered it see the skulls no shadows

before that time but many shadows afterwards and lara said the same thing about the skulls no shadows before that time but many shadows afterwards and lara said the same thing about the skulls in the museum the human brain became the ideal vehicle for the amplification process we became conscious oliver asks why it would have happened precisely those 30 to 40 000 years ago ago. And Mary's like, look, I'm just speculating. It's all tinfoil, bro. But doesn't it seem possible? The conversation moves to the police officer that had visited today, who was named Walters from the special branch.

Mary had thought that was the politics branch. And Oliver corrects her and is like, no, that's the terrorism subversion and intelligence branch and honestly in my opinion if intelligence is involved that's when I'm like no that's the devil walk away Mary explains

that the officer came because of the girl looking for a boy of similar age that had been in her company but weirder that officer knew about their research in depth kind of flattering yeah but also a little weird because nobody cares about your scientific research mary let's be real lyra's like the first person that's cared about her scientific research poor mary the the phone rings oliver answers it and he puts it down he's like oh we have a visitor

no one i know but his name was like sir somebody or something and that's like when our brains go red alert right like sir somebody something hmm i know is there somebody something i do too and he has nothing but trouble eliana oliver reveals he's off he's been offered the job in geneva and he doesn't see a point in what mary is explaining to him this all sounds too crazy he says mary challenges him she's like what about your research on the shadows and the skulls but suddenly there's a knock at the door before oliver can answer it's who we all expected thanks to pullman's language, Sir Charles Latrum. Yes. And turns out, he's been doing his research, he knows their names, and he asks to sit. He says he knows they're awaiting the news of their funding application, that he used to be a civil servant directing scientific policy in the field. He sits as if he's in

charge of a meeting, and says that he heard from a friend he won't mention because the official secrets act covers all sorts of things that their application for funding was being considered and he wanted to see their work i thought you know this official secrets act comes up like i don't know two or three times in this passage and i was like pullman do you want us to tell do you want to like tell us something about what you think about this act? And so I looked it up, and there is in fact a real Official Secrets Act in the UK. It was originally passed in 1911, but I think it seems like it was amended. Another version of it was passed in 1989. And not only does it criminalize the disclosure of secrets, like these matters of security, it's really hilarious how it's just a very simple name, the Official Secrets Act versus like, I don't know, the Patriot Act in the US or something like that. But anyways, so it criminalizes the disclosure of these matters of security, what in the US, I assume, I don't know what security clearance levels are like in the UK,

but would think of as like secret or top secret clearance, SEI. But the revised version of this act in 1989 seems to actually remove the what is called the public interest defense, which would essentially protect whistleblowers. And it's interesting, something we might get into later, because this isn't the only time that Pullman talks about laws being repealed that have to do with protections. It's very interesting. I think that Pullman does write really

well when he outlines these kind of things. I love when they actually parallel real history, obviously, like this, but I think he does a really good job of sometimes of showing that political thing not to bring back jk rowling again but that's probably the one thing in the harry potter books that i detest is that like rowling had all this awesome ministry of magic corruption going on and she never explores it further than she has to

right and pullman yeah takes a lot of time to put this background information in there for those of us that are ready to dig for it. I mean, at the same time, you can tell like, this is totally something that he has his own gripes, but understandably so. And it's probably something that seems like it was passed a really long time ago now. But for him, it would have been, it wasn't super recent but recent enough because you get to a certain age and you're like that was just yesterday and then you're like that was a couple years ago i'm i'm getting to that point i'm at that point now in my life i'm like wow i know not a cast was a monday not a cast was talking about politics and poor quentin

mentioned that he was like yeah yeah, the 2000 election was really when I first realized it was all bullshit. And I was like, wow, it really was. 2000. Damn. Yeah. Yeah, so. Speaking of bullshit, funding

for scientific programs is now what we're going to switch over to. Mary asks if Charles thinks they're going to switch over to. Mary asks if Charles thinks they're going to be funded or if the board is going to decide to shut them down. And he's pretty blunt. He's like, oh, no, you're getting shut down unless someone argues your case for you. An advocate, so to speak. And Mary's like, hmm, I didn't think it worked that way. I thought there were peer reviews at a couple different levels. Andles was like oh yes in principle there are peer reviews but in real life no the system's a joke and your work is valuable and it should continue mary bless your heart mary right and she's very sweet during this

she's just trying to understand it's a lot of information at once charles asks if informally he can represent them and she's's like, oh, of course. Oliver's like, well, what kind of backscratching would we have to do for your representation, Sir Charles Latrum? Even though Oliver also just said he was quitting to work in Geneva. And then Mary suddenly understands. She sees the flicker of complicity

and she's like, okay so this is all bullshit i get it now yeah there's a manner here that kind of reminds me for a moment of that dynamic between lyra and will where will is like the more worldly one and understands a lot of these subtleties i mean will would never agree to this but he's he sees these things and navigates them a little more shrewdly right yeah as we see with kind of when he tells her like lyra you can't just be out there chatting with police officers you dumb bitch like yeah put your head down lyra a cab a cab yeah you are lyra this is not what we do we do not talk talk to them. You just put your head down, walk away. Charles basically reveals that he would

want them to take their research in a different direction, and if they agree, he could also allocate them extra funding from another source altogether, which I mean, it sounds to me like insider's look into university politics and funding, brought to you by Philip Pullman.

It's something that reminds me of that joke that someone tweeted. I've brought it up on this cast before where someone was joking about the scene where Lord Asriel pulls out that head, right? And then suddenly gets all the funding that he wants from the university. They were like, I know this is a fantasy show

because no one gets funding that easily in the university. And it sounds to me like what Mary Malone needed was a head. A severed head. Wait, they did. They had skulls. Fuck. Why isn't anyone funding them?

Because they don't stand for anything bad. I mean, this is an insider look at funding for anything ever. Like everything is corrupt. Everything is bullshit, Eliana, is what I'm trying to tell you. So, Mary puts her foot down and says that the course of this research is a matter for them. She would be willing to discuss the results, not the direction. Charles gives a regretful motion and stands to leave. And Oliver argues, saying, I'm sure Mary's gonna hear you out and saying that you know

she should really listen to him and then Mary outs him and is like why do you care you're going to Geneva and Charles comments that Geneva has excellent scope and money and not to let him hold Oliver back Oliver backpedals even more and says none of it is settled it's very

fluid and offers him some coffee Mary looks at Charles deeply for the first time she sees that he's confident beautifully dressed powerful and he wants something and he won't support them unless they bend and i'm like damn mary you only saw all this shit now and i get it i get it she's pure but i'm just like damn mary well she's passionate about her subject and i get that and i mean when people immediately talk to me about a song of ice and fire or his dark materials i also like to imagine that they have good intentions but it turns out no one has good intentions and everyone's garbage so charles tells them what he knows about

their research with consciousness and what he'd like them to work on he wants them to concentrate on manipulation of consciousness doesn't sound sound great. The many world hypothesis. And third, a child. Mary doesn't know this, but she goes pale. Mary goes pale. She feels faint. He tells her he's in contact with intelligence services about a girl who's stolen an antique scientific instrument and a boy who's accompanying her who's wanted in connection of murder. And he specifically says,

it's a moot point whether a child of that age is capable of murder, of course, but he certainly killed someone and he has been seen with the girl. I love that he's literally admitting here, there's actually no legal reason we're hunting this boy, but we're using it as an excuse to hunt him. you say wait wait wait is it good will hunting it's bad will hunting and i think that's true and like now that i think about it now that you've called out this line i i realize you know the question of i don't know can a child be capable of murder at that age i don't know if he's asking like legally or just like in general because now I'm thinking like the answer is yes. We just saw the previous

previous chapter and Lyra will be like, we kind of killed that guy. And then everyone be like, no, we're going to kill each other. All these kids killing each other now. So the answer might be yes,

but you know, the manipulation of consciousness sounds sounds bad sounds bad sounds like a lot of the things you've been talking about earlier regarding the zombies and the severed people and then he tries to like say you know that girl stole that scientific instrument but obviously mary knows better because she's seen Lyra do something truly remarkable with it. And again, Boreal has no idea what the fuck it is other than like, yeah, it's this cool shiny thing. Shiny, expensive, and old. Charles says that he knows Mary may be inclined to tell the police what she knows, but would rather, you know, she tell him privately so that the proper authorities can deal with it. so that it's not a tabloid event. He already knows about Inspector Walters

visiting them yesterday and that the girl had been to their facility. He calls it a matter of national security and leaves his card mentioning the funding committee will be meeting tomorrow on this. Then as soon as Charles leaves, Oliver turns to Mary, disavowing

her behavior and asks her, do you want this project to survive or not but she argues like this wasn't an offer this is an ultimatum it's like do what charles wants or shut down filled with not so subtle national security threats why is this even in here also it's like not just a like not so subtle national security threat but the fact that like it's enveloped right with a national. Like that's not normal. That's not a normal. Some threats are like, I'll beat you up.

Right. But like this is like, oh, the whole entire government will take you down forever to death, to dead town. You know what I mean? That's a little much. And Oliver continues to go back and forth he's like well they're gonna take the research over no matter what well whether you help them or not and she's like yeah but they're gonna find new ways to kill people and manipulate consciousness like i'm not gonna be a part of that this is unethical and he says she could at least help

it be kind of not evil and she's like what do you care you're leaving anyway and that's when it drops he's now considering taking the position and staying here and manipulating this evilness to his own advantage instead and he doesn't want to abandon their work now when it's finally taking off mary you don't understand yes i do it very simple. You promise to do as he says, you get the funding. I leave, you take over as director. It's not hard to understand. You'd have a bigger budget, lots of nice new machines, half a dozen more PhDs under you. Good idea. You do it, Oliver. You go ahead. But that's it for me. I'm off. It stinks. You haven haven't but her expression silenced him she took off her white coat and hung it on the door gathered a few papers into a bag and left without a word

as soon as she'd gone he took sir charles's card and picked up the phone fucking rat what a fucking rat oliver's a fucking rat and i love that moment moment. I'm like so proud of Mary Malone. Yeah, it's obvious. This relationship with Oliver and Mary very much reminds me of the nurses in Bullvanger. They have a very brief discussion on the ethics in Northern Lights of what Coulter is having them do with dust experiments. They go back and forth discussing. Do you think she'll make an unfavorable report? No, no. I think you dealt with her well. Her attitude worries me. Not philosophically, you

mean. Exactly, a personal interest. I don't like to use the word, but it's almost ghoulish. That's a bit strong. Do you remember the first experiments when she was so keen to see them pulled apart? Yeah, they come close to thinking about ethics. And we see in His Dark Materials in the TV show adaptation, they actually give two nurses in Bulvanger this argument, right, about how they're doing this to the children. One of them finally kind of starts to stand up and say it's wrong to continue to do so. Very much so this ethical debate.

But Mary here knows they will use her research to kill people without a doubt and being able as low said in our beginning of our episode from low's email being able to burn your knowledge and your hard work all of the work that mary as a woman in science which we know is a minority in science uh everything you've worked for that's that's immensely brave being able to collapse what society doesn't want you to right to burn it all down not reform a restart that's commendable this was the moment in the series that i knew that mary malone was something absolutely special and uh this this read-through cemented it even more than i already knew i just think that that's immensely brave yeah i at first you know i was like thinking about it

i was like i mean does oliver have a point like would she be able to do more if she like stayed in there um and tried to try to alter the course of things. But I think it seems like the story is arguing that that's not the case. And you made that clear by bringing in those examples from Bolvanger, right? It's that once you're already in there, once you're under there, your ability to enact change in that way becomes limited. And it becomes hampered by all these other interests and so i i think that that's something that was that comes through uh when you take it in that larger context that the argument is like no the right thing to do is to leave and at the very least mary is able to make that change um not just by leaving and not aiding in this because of course she has valuable knowledge

and the ability to even move it forward that oliver may or may not be capable of doing on his own but they don't have mary to help with that process but she makes it difficult right because she's like before i leave i'm gonna like fuck shit up and make it even more difficult for them to be able to do harm absolutely it's uh it's powerful stuff i mean that's i think in a way it's kind of by saying for oliver like you should stay and try to guide it it's empty because you and i both know that's not how things work right like that's not at all how it works uh they will use it no matter what. So for her to burn down whatever they can have and say, you don't get this piece of me as a woman in a field that does not welcome women often,

especially, I mean, we see it in here. We see it from how few female scholars there are. Powerful stuff. I just, yep, everyone should burn it all down is all I'm saying. Several hours later,ary malone lets herself into the side entrance of the building there's a security guard who she's never seen that asks for identification she's a little suspicious right but she shows her car park id that doesn't have her actual name and stuff on it and he excuses it and asks why she's here

she lies she's like i gotta check on a running experiment periodically. He finally accepts it. And she knows she has very little time because there has never been a security guard in her building. This seems to be a super sudden change. She locks the door behind her. She lowers the blinds. She takes out a floppy disk, if any of you remember those. A floppy disk!

I think about them every day, especially the Captain Crunch ones that you could get to play the captain crunch game anyways so i found out that um there are youths you know you show them you show them the a floppy disk right and you might be like what is this and they'll be like oh that's the save icon why do you have a save icon because they don't know what it is anymore because we're old yeah they're never gonna understand putt-putt goes to the zoo and i'm sorry for them oh my god but anyways floppy disks mary malone is uh she's entering the floppy disk into the cave and she uses a little bit of educated guesswork to manipulate the numbers on the screen we get the passage within a minute she had begun to manipulate the numbers going half

by logic half by guesswork and half by the program she'd worked on all evening at home the complexity of her task was about as baffling as getting three halves to make one whole i liked that i just thought it was very clever that uh pullman was like half half half 150 here it is yeah and it almost felt i don't know if this is just me like kind of religious like the mystery the trinity right but whatever mary brushes her hair out of her face and begins to type to the shadows she says hello to them she gets goose pimples she feels aware and she feels especially very self-conscious i thought that was interesting because when i like kept losing my place i was like fuck and i would search self-conscious and it like comes up what

maybe about three times very very rarely in this story she feels aware of the machines the dark corridors and experiments running and testing and recording around her the ac the pipework everything else is alive, also conscious she tries again, before she finishes the cursor moves across the screen and sasses back at her asks a question, like she hasn't she's just trying to clear her mind

and type, and then it's like, fuck you Mary Malone! they begin to go back and forth are you shadows? yes are you the same as Lyra's dust? Yes. And is that dark matter?

Yes. Dark matter is conscious? Evidently. What I said to Oliver this morning, my idea about human evolution, is it correct, but you need to ask more questions. Damn.

Smarter Child. Smarter Child's out of control. Chloe, if anyone remembers that while I'm talking about old technology. Oh, I know Smarter Child. I used to have that bot on speed dial in my AIM instant messages, okay? Smarter Child walked so Siri could run. Obviously, AI understands us because of smarter child someday we're gonna have to have a talk about uh this ai thing that was a fish project it was a bot that would be like blank fish anyways it was all aol instant messenger you get

me mary's scientific side is screeching at her that she's dreaming, and this is wrong, but her humane side is like, wow, what the fuck is happening? She continues on. The mind that is answering these questions isn't human, is it? No, but humans have always known us. Us? There's more than one of you? Uncountable billions.

But what are you? Angels. Wow. Amaze. Mary had been brought up Catholic, a nun, and she may not still have that faith, but she knew about angels. We get a quote in here

where Mary's thinking about something that St. Augustine had said. Angel is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is spirit. If you seek the name of their office, it is angel. From what they are, spirit. From what they do, angel. That's such an interesting line that she remembers from her time as being a nun and being Catholic.

And I know a little bit about saint augustine right he is considered the patron saint of brewers of printers and of theologians yeah a number of cities and dioceses and he is known to be invoked against sore eyes his writings covered theology philosophy and, and he was actually one of the first Christian Latin authors and anthropologists who had a clear view on theological anthropology. He wrote about the body and respect for it in that it belonged to the nature of the human person. He described body-soul unity as true marriage, that your body was your wife and your soul was you, the man. When born, the elements are in perfect harmony, but after the fall of humanity, they are in combat, is what he thought.

He wasn't preoccupied like Plato in metaphysics. He was happy to admit that they are metaphysically distinct. To be human is to be composite of soul and body, with soul superior to the body. And for a fun quote from him, the soul, which is spirit, cannot dwell in dust. It is carried along

to dwell in the blood. And these are all very interesting things that Pullman seems to be writing towards and against. Mary begins to talk again with the shadows. Angels are creatures of shadow matter? Of dust? Structures.

Complexifications. Yes. And shadow matter is what we have called spirit. From what we are, spirit. From what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one mary then realizes that the shadows have been listening to her thoughts spooky also invasive from the chapter lighted flyers earlier in this book which i'm also now realizing is a pun, and I didn't get it before,

that it's lighted fires, but flyers, because the angels are super glowy and bright. Get it? Anyways, I don't know how I only got that now. We have this quote that I wanted to come back to that this conversation reminded me of, in terms of them answering that their structure is complexifications of dust and it's nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners

of universes she had never dreamed of nor that she saw them as human formed only because her eyes expected to if she were to perceive their true form they would see more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.

So. Hmm. That was fun to talking about that a little more and how they perceive themselves, I guess. And we do get the sense that they aren't like made of matter in a way, though.

They make it clear, right? Matter comes from their actions and what they do and their will imposed into this world, unlike humans. But also that assertion that matter and spirit are one, it seems quite contradictory to some of the things

that maybe augustine or some things in it within christian theology where body and spirit might be married and together but they're considered separate things uh separate entities uh because and that the flesh is in many ways spongy and weak i mean you get that in Mind Over Matter, right? Yeah. Well, we also get it as like, in some ways later in the series, Matter Over Mind. Yes. In a way. And I think that's why they're saying, we'll get to that at some point later on. But anyways, Mary continues. And did you intervene in human evolution?

Yes. Why? Vengeance. and did you intervene in human evolution yes why vengeance justice fire and blood wrong series vengeance for oh the rebel angels after the war in heaven satan and the garden of Eden. But it isn't true, is it? Is that what you- Find the girl and the boy. Waste no more time. But why? You must play the serpent. But deep down inside, we know that the meta conversation here as to why Mary's not allowed to finish her question is,

but why? Plot. It's the truth. she rubs her eyes and she hopes that like when she opens them she won't see shit but the words are still there the shadows tell her to go to sunderland avenue and find a tent deceive the guardian and go through You'll need provisions for a journey and you'll be protected from the specters. Also, destroy the equipment. Man, this like, Google instructions is like, really detailed. And so

we have this line. But I... Before you go, destroy this equipment. I don't understand. Why me? And what's this? You have been preparing for this as long as you have lived. Your work here is finished. The last

thing you must do in this world is prevent the enemies from taking control of it. Destroy the equipment. Do it now. Damn. No computer tells me what to do. That's not true. Computers tell me what to do all the fucking time. Animal Crossing tells you what to do literally every day.

I don't go on every day, but now I have, because apparently I might have a large spike this week. Very exciting. Very exciting. Turn up. Turn up for what? That was actually Michelle Obama's line at one point, wasn't it?

She actually literally said that. I thought that this like last this last encounter that they have in the language is kind of interesting of like the language and the way it's phrased right it makes it feel pullman does a good job of bringing in language to make it feel like this big like force back there but this line of you have been preparing for this as long as you have lived really conveys that sense of destiny especially for mary and then like the whole there's this weird thing though right they're saying that matter is in terms of like what they influence like from what they are able to do and so they're saying like destroy the equipment do it now they

can't do it themselves and so there's some of these questions that uh that tension right of you're preparing for this your whole life and then the computer's telling you fucking go do this thing and there's questions of like where where is free will in all this and i understand that of course the destiny that we're seeing is like Lyra is supposed to destroy destiny. So you kind of see how that's coming through, even in this interaction. It almost makes me think like, until Lyra completes her destiny, will no one else be able to be free of destiny then? Like everyone is a slave to the written story until Lyra can defeat Destiny according to the prophecy. That's kind of how it sounds.

And like, what is it when you ask a question of what you should do from then on, maybe to the alethiometer or like something? Is it going to tell you something like you must do X thing? Or is it going to be like, well, you could like softer suggestions, right? And maybe they'll like, yeah. like well you could like softer suggestions right and maybe they'll like yeah it makes me wonder too especially in the beginning of the episode when we talked about how lyra was acting meekly toward will about utilizing her alethiometer it feels a lot like maybe she's afraid of the destiny of the alethiometer after what it's caused right like look back at benjamin who died because of it look back at her ignoring its warnings for uh tony mccarius and roger it makes me wonder if maybe lyra has been ignoring her destiny and maybe in the beginning of this the last chapter it's that as well right like that's her saying no i

won't touch it i won't touch destiny because destiny seems to lead me down this dark and dreary path. But in the end, we all have to face this destiny that Lyra is, of course, subject to, according to the prophecy. And Mary Malone apparently is being told she has a part as well. And I think that is interesting, especially in terms of like these questions of knowledge, right? Lyra avoiding asking the alethiometer, as you said, is it a sense of avoiding destiny? Is it a sense of avoiding that knowledge of what she has to do? As it is here, that sort of ignorance is bliss. And again, a sort of like question intention of taking a fruit, taking a bite out of that fruit of knowledge, right? And that's something that I thought of earlier when we were talking about Mrs. Coulter and

Mary Malone. Mary Malone is starting to do that here, tasting knowledge, yet she has to be the one who plays the serpent and tempt someone else, right, into tasting, I guess, knowledge. And yeah, as you said, lara kind of avoiding it here so like is it is it that what ignorance it's a weird question does ignorance then impart more free will than not anyways i think we're gonna find out as we go along eliana first mary though has to take these electrodes off her skin, beyond doubt and belief. Now, she

switches it all off, bypasses the safety codes, formats the disc, and removes the interface, smashing parts of it with her shoe, and disconnecting the wiring. She's like, I guess I won't bother smashing the screen. She should have. I mean, like, if it's all smashed, right? Like, is the

university going to want to invest in all this again? That's a lot of money. They will, though, if Latrum and Gob are behind it, etc. That's true. That's true. But anyway, she crams some paperwork from her drawer into her briefcase, takes her I Ching poster down, switches off the lights and leaves. The guard escorts her out and she drives. I thought there was something like there seems to be something really significant with Mary taking her I Ching poster down last.

In the first meeting between Mary and Lyra, we had this little passage where she says the I Ching. Yes, it's Chinese, a form of divination, fortune telling really. And yes, they use sticks. It's only up there for decoration, she said, as if to reassure Lyra, she didn't really believe in it. So I want to explain a little bit about the I Ching poster. We hear that has hexagrams on it, but when you think hexagram, it's not a hexagram like whatever you're thinking. It's a figure with six stacked lines. Each of these lines represents yin or yang. Some are broken, some are full. The bottom line is line one. The top line is line six. I took a course. Harvard has a bunch of these free courses right now, and I took an omens and

predictions course, and they talk a little bit about it, and I was very excited to read more about it. So each of the hexagrams are commanded under an element. There are heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, flame, and lake. There are 64 hexagrams in the Book of Changes under these. Some of them include small harvest, great possessing, displacement, prospering, clustering, shake, deliverance, leading, innocence, arguing, and gorge. Originally, stalks of gyro were used to cast lots and basically figure out which hexagram meant what,

but historians are kind of unsure about how they became lines. Since China has a lot of different forms of divination that have been revealed to be casting lots like bones, etc., I'd imagine it was something along these lines. Many now use a die or a coin to determine what number they have, and then they correspondingly look up the hexagram to read the fortune it very much so reminds me of lyra's alethiometer though because the way that the hexagrams are set up are those elements that i just spoke about are at the header and at the left side kind of like a one column one top row almost shaped like a opposite seven or whatever upside down l and there are different deep meanings associated as you go up and down the upper lower hexagram right so kind of like how

lyra deeply goes into a couple runs down from the madonna or from the hourglass etc and she kind of looks for the deeper meaning so i really really think it's special that Mary takes down her I Ching poster last because she was such a disbeliever. She had no faith in anything like this. Right. She was scientific, logical, no faith. Didn't believe in that. Just was a cute poster she kept around. And now the shadows spoke to her, Aliana.

I mean, that's kind of she rubbed her eyes a few times there's no there's no making that shit up that's very true and not only is it sign of her and it really shows her belief because she's like this this could be useful i didn't think about it the significance of that mary comes to sunderland ave one and a half hours later she's feeling apprehensive but she's also committed so she gets out her rucksack leaves her car and walks to find the tent that the shadows told her of and then mary thinks of like you know if i have to i could run away in the hills i could survive for a bit right she then she sees the same trees that will had seen earlier they're described as like childlike. I don't know. But I thought it was interesting that we have a lot of tree stuff going on

in the past chapter where Will and Lyra are like, if we can just get to the trees. They don't make it, as you all know. They go to the Belvedere, whatever. But taking comfort in it, the same as Barry does. And I don't know, probably not significant. Like maybe it's about tree of knowledge,

but probably not. It just might be like, I don't know. Trees are cool and shit. An unmarked white van is parked nearby with tinted windows always promising and she knows she has to do it now or never she walks toward the tent confidently and a policeman exits the van asking where is she going yeah he tells her he's had strict orders not to let anyone in this tent especially mary malone and she lies her ass out of it. She's like, I'm from the Department of Physical Sciences. Sir Charles Latrum asked me to make a preliminary survey while others aren't around. He asks for ID and luckily Mary had scooped out

stuff from her desk and she has an expired library card that reads Dr.iver pain however the r is a bit faded so it just says dr olive pain honestly another way that you know this is like a fantasy book like did people truly accept library cards as legitimate forms of id in the uk in the 90s is like this a thing anywhere like who's fucking doing that i remember when it was acceptable like i don't know i'd say early thousands i remember being able to be like i don't have id here's my library card as like a kid but nowadays no way you have to have like three forms of identification to do anything yeah i'm like as a child i'm like okay fine maybe a library card but you're not doing anything serious with it here he's like yeah I'll let you onto this guarded place

with a fucking library card, not even a photo ID. Damn. He asks if she knows where Dr. Mary Malone is, and she asks why. He says, you know, her position has been terminated, and we have orders to detain her if she tries to come through here. He had thought she might be Mary Malone at first, but looking at the card again, decides she's telling the truth.

And I will say, you know, at the very least, he doesn't assume that she's not a doctor or professor because she's a woman. So there's that. You know, same way that I respect the villain Sean Ewan Mulan for not underestimating that Mulan is the one who stole his victory. Just because she's a woman, he's just like, yeah. Yep, I'm going to kill you now. I accept that. You you now I accept that you did this to me you are still my enemy woman but enemy he doesn't even say woman but enemy he's just like you did this to me you're

gonna die that's it Mary stays poised he asks if she knows what's within the tent and she's like nope that's why I'm here and he's like all right seems harmless so he lets her in and as she opens the tent she hopes he doesn't see her hands shaking she clutches her bag to her chest and in she goes we end the chapter with deceive the guardian well she'd done that but she had no idea what she would find inside the tent she was prepared for some sort of archaeological dig for a dead body for a meteorite but nothing in her life or her dreams had prepared her for that square yard or so in midair or for the silent sleeping city by the sea that she had found when she stepped through it i love the transformation of m Mary's character in this chapter. In all of her chapters, truly, so far,

she goes from the skeptical ex-nun scientist, unable to lie, to finding courage and bravery to step forward into another world. And if you haven't read The Amber Spyglass yet, you're in for an adventure. No spoilers. Maybe it's this sense of purpose. She's been told she has to play a role by the shadows, so she's able to maybe shrug off her anxieties and convictions easier and force herself to move.

But we also see from her standing up to Oliver that this is Mary's very core being. She is good. She has that courage deep within her. And I also love that when she enters this tent in her mind she's more comfortable and has less disbelief held about an archaeological dig a dead body a meteorite than a new world right she's like anything but a new world holy shit and famously And famously, meteor mancy is actually a thing. It exists. It revolves with meteors, comets, and stars. But it is a form of divination.

You can look at some of the famous comets like 44 BCE with the comet right after Caesar's death, which was taken as a sign that Caesar had then become a god by many. it as a sign that Caesar had then become a god by many. 12 BCE, the star of Bethlehem during Jesus' birth is interpreted as a comet, possibly Halley's Comet. And 1066 CE, an appearance of Halley's Comet was a good omen for William the Conqueror and the Normans' conquest of England at the Battle of Hastings, or a bad sign for King Harold and his Anglo-Saxons. And of course, meteors, which obviously Mary Malone thought of, when streaking across the sky tend to mean plague, war, and fearful natural catastrophes like storms, floods, and earthquakes, which I think is interesting as we near the end of the book with a lot of the war that's becoming a thing.

Meteors obviously aren't quite as romantic, right? You don't have them as a central story piece for any of the great tragedies, but there are a few famous ones like the Williamette meteorite, which is the largest found in North America. There was a settler named Ellis Hughes who found it in Oregon in 1902. Huge. He moved the 15.5 ton rock to his own property. It wasn't its first journey though, because no impact crater was found at its resting site. Researchers figured it landed elsewhere originally and was transported via glacial action during the ice age.

This meteorite is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Check it out. And there's also a 4.5 billion year old meteorite that landed in Northwest Africa where scientists discovered a mineral called crotite. It had never been found in nature before. It forms at a high temperature and low pressure

and was likely one of the first minerals in the new solar system. So yes, meteorites aren't quite as romantic, but their history is exciting because it yields knowledge about worlds existing beyond ours. New minerals, new existence. And I think Mary thinking of meteors is very scientific, logical, and fact-based about what could be in that tent. And the result of what's actually in that tent is kind of like a meteor because it's proof that another world does exist yeah and bringing it there i think that's a really great connection

very beautiful thanks harvard for your free classes out of this world ch Duh! Yep. Okay. Well, yeah. That's our episode for these two chapters today. I can't believe we have three chapters left. Yeah. That's, it's over. What? The subtle knife. Then we get cut off. You know next episode's gonna suck, right?

You know it's gonna be the worst episode I've ever had to do of anything ever, right? Next episode? Yeah. Chloe's about to have a really hard time, but we can't talk about that right now, because that's something that goes into the discussion. Yes, our discussion where we are going to spoil

the rest of the Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass with some shatter. I don't think it's gonna be too thick today, so just a quick, a quick handful of thoughts from Eliana and myself. If you have not finished The Subtle Knife, which you don't have much time, like I said, three chapters left, get on it. Or if you haven't finished The Amber Spyglass, please tune out now. I do not want you to get spoiled in our discussion and come back next episode yup so I want to start off at first

like something I was thinking especially as we were going through the stuff with in Citigaz sorry my bad Citigaz and the future for these children right is that like at first I was like I don't

know maybe maybe there's hope for them. And then I realized there, like, really fucking isn't. At least until after Lyra and Will's journey and all that stuff. And all the doors started getting closed and the angels started dressing specters. Because at first I was like, I don't know know technically the kids could go and become refugees in other worlds right and then I realized no that only just buys them 10 more fucking years okay yeah basically I mean it still fucking sucks there's they get a crap deal because like they could go there's a shit ton of windows they could go through one of them right people are leaving

them open in shittagaze and but that's the thing is they don't have the knowledge you know what i mean like lyra and will were so lucky that they somehow stumbled upon having this and obviously lyra was set up with life by asriel in labelle's savage which we won't spoil but i mean we learned the alethiometer somehow makes its way toward asriel yeah lyra but even even if like lyra and will right did open a window which damn like they could at least try they could have just been like hey let's get you out of here right and i wish like angel i wish angelica and paulo came back in some way the fact that we don't come back to them feels kind of hollow yeah i mean i don't think pullman like

thought about it that deeply i and i understand that there's a lot of things where i'm like yeah i didn't care but i'm but like lyra and will could have let the kids go into another world you know and and i think the hope is that it sounds like zephania and the other angels are gonna address the specter issue so hopefully these kids will be able to like grow up and have a full life. But yeah, like Angelica was borderline adult, though. I mean, she's leading these kids. It's kind of shit. There was some time there was possibilities, I think.

Fingers crossed. I'm just going to pretend that you're correct. And that like Galavespians maybe and the angels all high fived and they were like, we're going to fix it. We're going to make sure that they're gucci they're alive they get to live and things are great that's how their story ended because honestly this chapter made me real sad for them you know it is it is and like i said like i was like damn they can't even fucking like really leave they could and yeah all they get is 10 more years. Anyway, other thoughts. I just put a bunch of thoughts down here. Another thing, thinking again about Spectres is, you know, if

Mrs. Culture is so good at making everything and everyone do what she wants, including the Spectres, you have to think it's kind of really remarkable that Lyra's will was just so strong that she was able to be like, fuck you, mom, I'm gonna do what I want. It felt really good that she finally was able to say like,

oh, please, Coulter will have these things under her control within a day. It's like this weird, she's like, I kind of admire it. She's like, I respect the game that Mrs. Coulter has. And looking at the will to power, right? I mean, I don't agree that Nietzsche is correct in that assumption, but I do agree that our actions come out of feebleness or come out of power, right? We do things when we are feeling powerless. I don't agree with the idea presented by Ferre that actions out of feebleness,

I feel like a lot of actions out of weakness actually are harsh actions and cruel actions right like people lash out when they feel weak i think it might even be the opposite um but i thought it was just very interesting that lyra was able to grow from northern lights in this manner even though some of her characterizations in these two they're in the last chapter felt a little weak right like she felt meek toward will as we discussed yeah i don't know quick side note of it i thought it was interesting that the witches think that they will need more herbs or that will's wound will need more than herbs to heal but turns out they're wrong all they need is the right herb blood moss i wish we had fucking blood moss apparently like

scratched myself during this recording somehow i have to use with my own nail myself uh betrayal betrayal you know it is sad because like this potion will not work as we know yeah only sad times can make it work um and then finally you know i i it's interesting that we're starting to see the inner workings and motivations of das we already knew that it had a personality but who knew it had so much back to us like damn and from what lara would say like we're also seeing that they have an agenda, right? They do have their own will. And what I don't understand, though, is not all of them can be fucking rebel angels, right? Not all the dust are rebel angels. We know there are two factions and that there are angels that are part of the authority.

And if the dust is not yet formed angels, I don't know. I'm not convinced that the whole dust and angels are the same thing thing like concept makes the most sense doesn't like hold up when you like run it through like the the rigorous like world building like logic thing so much as like pullman thought it was cool and again i'm willing to accept that pullman's like yeah there are mysteries about my world that i don't know and that's like what makes it fun for him but at the same time like i don't know that like i get it when i really really try and think about it but you know we are now at this point as we talk more with dust beginning to see like the war that's at play mary being brought into the fold

as the serpent which is cool and also those hints of once more about like what happened 30 000 years ago and human evolution and it is interesting like i don't think i've really thought about it until now but the idea that human consciousness which is that evolution that they're talking about and we talked about it more as uh forgot what i fucking called what the term is biological whatever we talked about it more a few episodes ago what happened like in that time frame as for human development in real life but that idea of consciousness as vengeance is very interesting yeah and i don't know a quote from william bl Blake that kind of reminds me of this in a way, especially with all the talk of angels and what matter creates them and, you know, that mind over matter like we were speaking about earlier, for example. before an angel that sat on a cloud and the devil uttered these words. The worship of God is honoring his gifts and other men, each according to his genius and loving the greatest men best.

Those who envy or calumniate great men hate God for there is no other God. That's from the marriage of heaven and hell. And of course, as we move forward into this story i feel like that quote is going to become very relevant but all of the angel stuff that's being dropped and the biology that's being dropped of this is what they're made of uh rebel angels and regular angels it's very very very very heavy i don't know foreshadowing or i don't even know if i want to call it heavy foreshadowing it's just literally him introducing a concept that he's about to fill out, right? Alongside him filling out this whole idea of the kingdom of heaven, and how fucking fake and awful it is.

I think there's a lot to come with that. And I think that the idea of what happened 30 to 40,000 years ago with human evolution and consciousness as vengeance is something that seems like it's going to be completed during the next bit of time during the next book. But I think he's still playing with it when we get to La Belle Sauvage and even the secret Commonwealth. I think he's kept it as a very strong overarching theme. And I think he has to answer in this universe some of the questions we have but I also

wonder how much of it he's going to leave up to our reading you know like up to oh well no one actually knows about heaven lol so good luck yeah so I think it'll be interesting as we deepen that you know is it vengeance or like rebellion

because it doesn't feel it doesn't feel vengeful right the way that it goes so much as rebellion slash liberation which is i think what pullman is going for but it's all it's all interesting to think about as we go there and i mean i'm sure a lot of you have noticed, especially with this one, that the discussion is shorter. Chloe and I were talking, I think, I mean, the nature of it is, as we go further in these books, we have more that we can talk about within the context of the actual chapters. So the discussion might get a little briefer as the material ahead of us also comes smaller yeah and i think that's something that obviously you and i will discuss while we do our labelle savage but there's no discussion to be had there right labelle savage covering that will be us kind of covering this culmination of the past three main trilogy books and maybe i'll do a dusty discussion we'll see i

don't know i don't know i might not yeah maybe i'll read the book by then who knows but i mean let's not get crazy okay let's not that's true one day at a time baby steps, that's our episode. I enjoyed this. This was really nice. Thank you, Eliana, for the wonderful discussion and discussion on His Dark Materials. I, of course, am ever so grateful for you

introducing this story to me, and I'm really excited to finish The Subtle Knife. Next month is going to fucking suck. I'm going to be a fucking shitshow because we have to watch them die. I'm not going to say it. You know who I'm talking about. We're in the discussion and

it sucks and I'm going to be a mess. So I hope you all enjoy next month July's episode of His Dark Materials and patrons, I really hope you get to enjoy us talking about LaBelle Sauvage. us talking about La Belle Sauvage. I love La Belle Sauvage. I'm so happy Eliana read it.

I read that book and just felt I was very happy. I thought the lore was amazing and it was just a really refreshing read because it was a new characters. I don't know that I could say the same about The Secret Commonwealth. I did love The Secret Commonwealth. I just don't know that I can say I feel the same as I did when reading La Belle Sauvage. So I feel like this will be a very special

experience with you. Yeah, I'm excited to go through it. And it's hilarious because, again, you read this before I did, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop thinking about sausages. I tweeted recently as we were recording

this episode, the sausage link between worlds. And that's what I've got for you regarding LaBelle Sauvage right now. Which has nothing to do with the actual story. Sausage. Yeah. Thanks again for listening and as always

you can catch us on the internet if you want to send us a tweet about the episode, feel free to reach out on social media at girls gone. Canon C a N O N, or send us an email with some of your thoughts so that we can feature you at the top. Like we do for low and many other people, girls gone. Canon C a N O N at gmail.com. Maybe you want to make us a tribute episode

as well still looking out for them but episodes that are made by us you can find on many platforms such as Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Podbean where we host these, Spotify, Stitcher, Acast, wherever else people have

decided to add our RSS feed absolutely and of course make sure to check Spotify, Stitcher, Acast, wherever else people have decided to add our RSS feed. Absolutely. And of course, make sure to check out patreon.com slash girls gone canon for our stranger tier and above patrons, you will be able to access La Belle Sauvage episode one, chapters one through three far earlier than when it gets released for public this fall. That is again, patreon.com slash girls gone canon and will be out by released for public this fall. That is again, patreon.com slash girls gone cannon. And we'll be out by the end of this month,

June, 2020. Wow. Where are we? Uh, well, thank you very much everyone for tuning in for this. Months. I say this week's this month's is dark materials.

Episode. Belvedere Vodka Screen Stuff Screenplay Screens I've been Eliana and I have been another one of your hosts, Chloe

tune in next month I panicked you did great thanks, bye everyone bye