Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials: Episode 2 - Northern Lights/The Golden Compass Chapters 4-6

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

Lyra sets off on a new adventure to high society with Mrs. Coulter, who seems like a fairy godmother... but "all that glitters is not gold."    Covers Northern Lights (UK & Australia) / The Golden Compass (US) Chapters 4 - 6   4. The Alethiometer 5. The Cocktail Party 6. The Throwing Nets   --- 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

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon, covering His Dark Materials. Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, His Dark Materials, Episode 2, Northern Lights, The Golden Compass, Chapters 4 through 6. I am Chloe, one of your hosts. You might know me from the internet as Liza Narber on Twitter, Tumblr, and at LizaNarberGold.com. And I am Eliana, another one of your hosts. You might know me as GlassTableGirl on Reddit, or on the Maester Monthly podcast, maybe as Arithmetric over on Twitter. I don't know how you guys lasted one month for this episode, because I don't know how I lasted one month for this episode. This is so exciting.

Our second His Dark Materials episode. I know. After we finished the last one, I was itching to do another one. I was like, oh, but we could just do another one, right? But life got in the way. Yeah. And we did start this podcast as a literary analysis cast. We were actually just kind of off air talking about how we've gotten each other

into different series on accident without thinking about it. Just like, oh, wait, didn't I read that? Because you told me to read that. So here we are. We are here. Eliana told me to read the Golden Compass slash Northern Lights. And I am reading the Golden Compass and Northern Lights. We love A Song of Ice and Fire, our first child that we read, or are reading. We're going to be reading for like 80 years. But we want to explore other things too, so we're doing this additionally. We are. And I mean, we always thought we were going to probably have more kids, you know? Yeah.

We planned for that. I figured. We planned for it. Yeah. And we released our A Song of Ice and Fire point of views on Friday mornings. And we release our A Song of Ice and Fire point of views on Friday mornings. And we are looking at editing our schedule for the fall of just our release schedule. You know, usually it's Fridays for A Song of Ice and Fire.

And His Dark Materials has been the last week of the month. But we're thinking of increasing our His Dark Material episodes in the fall here just for you guys. We're pending, of course, the release of the TV show. So we want to get this done for you. We want to get through it so that we can move on to some bigger things with you some crazier things in the subtle knife. Yes, I mean, it's for all of you. But let's be real. It's for us. It's also for us. We're just so excited to talk about it. And I'm like, oh, we're gonna get through all the rest of things. There're just so excited to talk about it. And I'm like, oh, we're going to get through all the rest of the things. There's so many things to talk about. And how we're doing today's episode is similar to the last episode.

Part one, Oxford. We are still reading that part. We are doing three by three chapter episodes. Today, we're going to be reading chapters four, five and six. The Alethiometer the cocktail party and the throwing nets and afterwards we will have a discussion our book spoilers after section so tune out if you don't want to know what happens further on in the golden compass slash northern lights or in the series in general in the series in general, we're just going to spoil the shit out of it there. And you guys, it's time that I admit that I fucked up. You didn't fuck up.

This is what I wanted. This is the outcome I wanted. It took too long to get to this episode, and I really couldn't stop in between. So I kind of read the subtle knife in half of the amber spyglass. This is a fantastic outcome for me it's all over for me though i'm like i'm uh the next time i painted yeah the next time i pick up the amber spyglass i'm not gonna put it down is the problem that's where i'm at in the amber spyglass it's over for me no the dust is beginning to settle on you. The dust, capital D? Yeah.

She's just been, or maybe actual dust. You know, maybe you've just been sitting there still for so long and you're just so gross now. Yeah, I'm obviously still going to look at this through a lens of the golden compass and save anything spoilery for the after discussion. And it's going to be really hard because I'm just like, oh, and Eliana's going to be like, yes yes shut up chloe uh so new dynamic since last month i hope you guys are excited for that but i do have lots of thoughts just so many thoughts and it's so you guys it's so big

there's so much happening i can't wait to talk about all of this with you guys oh my gosh it's so good i get it now i get it and speaking of people talking about it with us people said things to us yeah we had a lot of awesome emails and tweets from friends who love this series like when i say love this series i i'm coming at this from i haven't read it i watched the movie when i was younger because i think i got it for christmas on dvd one year it was like a five dollar walmart thing you know what i'm saying? So I didn't know anything about it until Eliana was like, yeah, you should definitely read them if you haven't read them. And I'm like, all right, I'll read them. I missed the boat on it. But so many people have had these touching stories. Like our friend

Pat sent us a little tweet about I saw Pultman speak at University of Maryland. And he says that his daughter has been very much so Lyra, you know, in his life. That's who he has associated his daughter with, and just some really cool memories and thoughts. And even our friend Amy, who tweeted at us and said that she really loved our coverage, and it's the literary analysis podcast she didn't realize she needed. Everything she loves about our Song of Ice and Fire podcast poured into His Dark Materials. And she told us about how her daughter is her Lyra, literally, she named her Lyra. 13 years old, really cool. It was just it's just really cool. This story has touched a lot of people and I'm so excited to finally be a part of it.

Yes, I mean, like, it's been such a formative experience for a lot of people. I know that some folks have said, like, it was just so integral and, like, part of, like, their growing up experience that they're, like, they want to keep it pure and keep it what it is and not, you know, listen to other, like, interpretations of it, which is fine. And I mean, a lot of people are going through it for the first time, but you guys, I finished rereading it, of course, recently. And now what? We're reading it literally right after, right now. This is it.

This is my life. Just I'm in limbo. I'm like, what? Sisyphus. Jon Snow and Lyra. Yeah, like that. I'm like Sisyphus and like just doing the same things over and over again, forever. that i'm like sisyphus and like just doing the same things over and over again forever and we're gonna know these books back to front by the time we're done with this yeah i was just i don't know

it was devastated by myself on a plane yeah well i was even reading the next couple chapters today again just to kind of refresh and work on this and holy crap there's so much setup there is chapters these are so the next couple chapters chapter four is pretty bulky chapter five has some good meat and chapter six is kind of just a lot of background setup real quick action scene and then we're off to the races till the next episode but chapter four and chapter five i was reading through them and i was like oh boy there is so much in these that i did not understand the first time i read them you know what like let's just jump into it let's get back into these books chapter four the alethiometer begins with mrs

coulter making room for lyra to sit near her on the couch and lyra asks mrs coulter if she's a female scholar and she hates female scholars because they're stuffy and old and acting, but Mrs. Coulter is glamorous, and Lyra finds she can't take her eyes off of her. Mrs. Coulter really comes off to me like this old Hollywood star. We talked last episode a little bit about the time that it's set in. It's supposed to be 1995, kind of per the different births we hear in this story we'll actually later learn asriel participates in something in 1953 which means he would have to be older than only 42 in 95 which is a little weird but uh it's a fantasy thing yeah zaddy so i could just put my brain however i want to it's super steampunk fantasy whatever it really doesn't

matter the years you know to me that's not the, whatever. It really doesn't matter the years, you know, to me. That's not a historical piece. The years don't matter. The points don't matter. Nicole Kidman played Mrs. Coulter's, like, Hollywood glam star kind of thing really well. Very glamorous, and everything was very gold and shiny. But in my mind now, when I think Mrs. Coulter, I think of Anita Ekberg and La Dolce Vita. And Asriel has that quality, like, Marcello Mastroianni. And they act like it as well.

They live in this glamorous life, exploring and scheming and inventing and backstabbing. And there's this moment near the end of The Golden Compass we'll talk about later that even is like this Trevi Fountain moment in La Dolce Vita. So I just thought it was really interesting. I just see like the glamorous pin curls and gold and rose scented fragrances. And just, I was really interesting. I just see like the glamorous pin curls and gold

and rose scented fragrances and just I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, and that's such a big part of who Mrs. Coulter is. And we'll dig into that a little later in the next chapter. But, you know, she's not a scholar in the way that Dame Hannah is. She is a member of Dame Hannah's college. But as she explains to Lyra, she is a member of dame hannah's college but as she explains to lyra she does a lot of her work outside of oxford which i have learned i'm sure everyone in fucking the uk knows this and apparently a lot of people have read this book in the uk it seems like it was part of quite a few curriculums etc oxford is very much apparently like how lyra describes it in her world even like nowadays it's apparently just a lot of like universities everywhere so i thought that was fun when i learned about that from a friend

who actually went to visit oxford solely because she loved his dark materials so much that's interesting mrs coulter asks lyra about her life at the college and lyra word vomits every single thing about herself in like a five minute span she's like i climb rooftops i participate in clay bed wars me and roger pull shenanigans we capture boats she even tells her about the skulls in the crypts and the ghosts that came to haunt them about the coins they go to dinner and lyra's ignoring the other scholars for miss coulter of course who says she must not be afraid of danger the ladies withdraw for coffee and dame hannah asks lyra if asriel plans to send her to school lyra says probably not the scholars can teach her for free and she doesn't want to put

anyone out the scholars in fact cannot teach her lyra is wild she doesn't want to put anyone out. The scholars, in fact, cannot teach her. Lyra is wild. And she's, again, she's very proud. She's like, I'm in the clay bed, Bors. Okay, Lyra. Mrs. Coulter's like, silently horrified. For understandable reasons, she's like, why is this happening to Lyra? She's like, absolutely not.

And Lyra's like, besides, I was going to go north with Asriel. And Mrs. Coulter's like, yeah, I was gonna go north with Asriel. And Mrs. Colter's like, yeah, I remember him telling you this, I guess. And that makes Lyra pay attention and also makes the other scholars suddenly look at their daemons look at each other. And Lyra's like, oh, when did you meet

Lord Asriel? And Mrs. Colter's like, oh, we met at the Royal Arctic Institute because I'm also kind of an explorer. This is something that rereading this chapter now we'll come back to later but it's like this chapter and the next they're just yelling it wow um it's interesting now to think about the royal arctic institute because as we get into the next chapter, and everyone's read these couple chapters here now, if you're listening to this episode, they obviously have some dirty money there, right? Like they have some people that hang out there. It's just showing that systemic corruption. And when you first read this chapter, you don't think

anything of the Royal Arctic Institute. And in a way, you're not going to think anything about it later on. You know, it doesn't come back up to my knowledge off the top of my head. It's not something prominent in the story. But this is one of those places that is full of corruption. And it's full of like the systemic problem of people that, you know, make these decisions and have no checks and balances. And they're obviously, obviously kind of like a pyramid. and they're obviously kind of like a pyramid. Oh, absolutely. And I think this is something that Pullman definitely wants to critique, especially when it comes to all of these different institutions. You see it in those first few chapters, right, with the way that the scholars regard Asriel,

who seems like he's doing actual work, and the way that they want to block him. But of course, we find we learn new things about the master. And his own goals. In terms of all of that later on. But. You know. I don't think this is this much of a spoiler. But a lot of it is of course part of Pullman's critique.

Of religious institutions. In particular. Yeah absolutely. And there's sprawling hands in a lot of things. things yeah and you even see it from the way that mrs coulter has political affiliations in these next couple chapters um there's so many people some that are nameless some that are named some that never come up ever again in the story but there are all these hands that change in the kitchen and you know there's money that changes in those hands so it's just kind of gross mrs coulter is telling lyra about all of her adventures right she's

talking about seal hunting and witches and igloo building and they're waiting for the men to join them at the table mrs coulter has everything lyra could want in a tutor it's like the ultimate like temptation like oh she's so beautiful. She's barely had any female guidance besides Mrs. Lonsdale and a couple later characters we meet. She runs wild throughout the entire university. Throughout Jordan.

She firmly believed in this bug! Mrs. Coulter's femininity is something that seems unreachable to Lyra. It's not something that Lyra desires. She doesn't desire to be this beautiful, you know, goddess. But at the same time, the fact that Mrs. Coulter is kind of a badass and goes on explorations and excavations and is glamorous is attractive to Lyra. Lyra's growing up and she says, wait, I could do that.

Like, that's interesting. She's nothing like what Lyra's growing up and she says, wait, I could do that. Like, that's interesting. She's nothing like what Lyra's seen before. And it just brings me back to a phrase that we use a lot in our Ned Stark point of view reread with a saga of ice and fire. And that's all that glitters is not gold. That's only it's just going to be repeated throughout these next couple chapters, obviously, and more obvious and more obvious as we go each page just becomes sickly with what it's laden with and it's an interesting construction because we have had mrs coulter already appear in the previous chapters and i've seen that she's the one taking

the children so these next few chapters become really suspenseful and full of irony as you're like, is Lyra in danger? It also makes it sympathetic in terms of, well, Lyra is taken in by Mrs. Coulter. Of course, all the children are taken in by her. Makes it this universal thing. But after the guests leave, the master asked to see Lyra. And he asked her, how did you like Mrs. Coulter? And then he sighs at Lyra's charmed response telling her that things are about to change because that's growing up he doesn't say

that but that's that's the message that's what it is that's a chapter that's the story right she was lamenting it last time but now she's kind of like oh I don't know like she can't stay in Oxford forever and he's telling her that herordan chapter is going to come to a close but hey you could get some female guidance and travel with mrs coulter and she's like oh word the quote goes she could hardly sit still the master smiled he smiled so rarely that he was out of practice and anyone watching lyra wasn't in a state to notice would have said it was a grimace of sadness my first read through of this chapter, it was like blink and you miss these couple of cues.

The master sighs when Lyra's like, oh, she's so lovely. I love Mrs. Coulter. And then he gives a sad smile, a grimace of sadness. That's, you know, he's trying to keep a straight face. I like it that Pullman writes this, that not only is lyra blinded by coulter even we can be blinded by just a minute you can be reading it and go okay well

she's being nice to lyra let's see how this plays out and if you miss that subtle subtle face movement and reverie from the master you're just uh yeah he's like oh she's growing up and she's about to learn things and i mean he knows some things right yeah we we got hints of that in the last chapter where he's like i don't know she's gonna have like a really difficult fate so i do think it's kind of funny that he's so out of practice but like funny in a lovable way that people like he's grimacing it's sad yeah he's trying to protect the girl the best he knows and as we heard him in that chapter speak about basically you know the beginnings of a prophecy about lyra that's he knows that she has a dangerous road ahead and

he's trying to repair her in the best way he can and having her go with coulter is the best way he can and having her go with Coulter is the best way I would argue as we learn she's going to learn some very valuable tools even if it's just some of these political connections and learning who some of these people are that Coulter hangs around with and Mrs. Coulter of course accepts the idea of her coming with her and says to her later on there might be danger but I need an assistant to do basic calculations and mathematics and geography. And Lyra, of course, wants to learn it all, especially from her, so she's super eager to agree. In the morning, Mrs. Lonsdale wakes Lyra

very early in the dark, telling her, run to the master before you leave with Mrs. Coulter. He wants to speak with you. It's a very super secret run to the master mission. So she tells Lyra to knock at the window in the garden to wake him. Mrs. Coulter. He wants to speak with you. It's a very super secret run to the master mission. So, she tells Lyra to knock at the window in the garden to wake him. And when she does, the master lets her into his library room

and draws the black curtains closed. Lyra's worried that this means the master isn't going to let her go, or is going to tell her that she's not going, but he says that, yes, yes, you're going. There's nothing that I can do to prevent it which is interesting I know

and then he tells her I'm going to give you something and you have to keep it a secret, especially from Mrs. Coulter and it's an alethiometer, one of six that have ever been made, a gold and crystal disc resembling a watch or compass she asks what it does and he tells her it will tell

her the truth which is like the vaguest thing that you could ever use to explain what this is and she just has to learn to read it simple fucking simple of course especially now that i've read the subtle knife i'm like of course of course simple simple just tells you the truth you just look at it people literally get degrees in it, but okay, Lyra. Good fucking luck. And then he has the gall to be like, your uncle might know how to read it. And then they're interrupted by a knock at the door and it's getting light out. So he sends her off and he sends her off with this last passage.

And it's sad. It's a sad little, just a little perfect warning and farewell to her, to Jordan, to her childhood. You know? The powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine. And they sweep us all up in the current. Go well, Lyra. Bless you, child.

Bless you. Keep your own counsel. She loves her. Yeah, I mean, these men these scholars these masters these people of power here they watched her grow up that was their child yeah they all didn't really have time to spend to you know keep a child or have a child but lyra was that child lyra was that curious child at their feet underfoot all the time you know bugging them every day uh being rowdy and they had to reel her in so it's yeah it's a bummer he has to say goodbye and as he says goodbye to her

here he's you know this is us kind of seeing that childhood for lyra we know it's about to die we know she's about to do some shit and see some shit in the future yeah things aren't safe anymore no they're not especially with what the woman who's taking children is now her caretaker yeah this is fine it's fine and as lyra gets back to her quarters mrs lonsdale wants to know what she has but lyra's like whatever i'm not gonna tell you and ask can i put it in the suitcase though mrs lonsdale's like nope it's too late. It's closed. Tough luck. Which I love. I love that

small thing. She's like, nope, you gotta carry it. I think the servants and the housekeepers had to learn from an early age that Lyra's a bullshitter. It's like the kid that's like, can I have a glass of water? I want a glass of milk now. Can I have a story? Like, no, go the

fuck to bed lyra it's it's also just i i kind of relate to this too people are like oh can you put this in your suitcase or ask me to open the suitcase i'm like no my suitcase is a very delicate operation it's over and you cannot ask me to open it i went through a lot of trouble to close it we can't this is it i get it yep and so she says goodbye to some of the servants that are still up goodbye to mrs lonz and before long it's close to departure time and she finds that she almost actually forgot about roger and feels a little bit guilty about this and she's like oh maybe mrs coulter's powerful friends could help me find him

yeah well i'm sure they could find him yep she boards a train to london though gazing out of the window with pan adorable mrs coulter finishes up some paperwork and then begins to chatter with lyra and of course it's like super magnificent talk about the most magnificent of things yeah she's talking about balls and soirees and just the grand flashiness of London. Lyra is intoxicated at her very word. What Mrs. Coulter was saying seemed to be accompanied by a scent of grown-upness, something disturbing but enticing at the same time. It was the smell of glamour.

Everything Lyra sees on her way to the flat is extraordinary. landing in falchal gardens the boat ride across the brown river grand mansions on the embankment i know i'm like why is it brown grand mansions on the embankment where mrs coulter gets saluted by a commissioner who winks at lyra so charmed so charmed and of course the eventual flat lyra grew up you know decently privileged with the magnificence in jordan but nothing this pretty everything is pretty it's full of light it's covered in gold and white wallpaper photos antique glasses and sconces frills soft green leaf patterned carpet everything is covered in pretty china and porcelain sculptures, specifically a shepherdess and a harlequin sculpture. Specifically shepherdesses and harlequin sculptures. And I thought that was

kind of interesting. Harlequins were known as comic servant characters in Comedian dell'arte, the Italian Comedia dell'arte, the form of Italian theater. They play light-hearted, nimble, and astute servant roles, and they act to thwart the plans of their masters, who are usually evil, and then they pursue their own destinies and love interests. And usually they become a romantic hero in the end,

and a clever devil-type character or a trickster character. They kind of play the fool and play the pawn and then they take the field later in most of these different plays and we've seen it evolve in modern culture with things like harley quinn and the joker for example and harley quinn breaking free of the joker and yada yada i thought it was interesting because we kind of see lyra do this throughout the book with different people in moments it's's interesting that the Harlequin imagery pops up here in Mrs. Coulter's flat, especially after the next chapter, chapter five. And then, of course, there's the shepherdess.

There are definitely lots of different shepherds and shepherdesses in some of old popular literature, even like Winter's Tale. But the one that comes to mind for me is from Hans Christian Andersen. He published a fairy tale in 1845 called The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep. I'm going to talk about this more in our discussion, for reasons. I don't know if you're catching me here yet, Eliana, but the tale follows the romance between a China shepherdess and a China chimney sweep, who are threatened by a carved mahogany satyr who wants the shepherdess, and a china chimney sweep, who are threatened by a carved mahogany satyr who wants the shepherdess for his wife. We could apply this to some later stuff,

so we'll talk about it later, but by the end of this chapter and the next, Lyra feels kept like a doll, like a pet, so it feels right that these china dolls are also being kept and shown to us here. Interesting. I have thoughts spinning in my head, and we'll get to them later of course in the

discussion cool i'm excited for that because i'm like i saw that and i was like oh oh i'm adding that to the discussion today i'm participating you are uh but you know before that we gotta wash all this dust off while i get a bath. This was a transition. And the bath is just as lush. There are soft towels, and everything is super fragrant and beautiful. Pan makes fun of her, taking the form of Mrs. Coulter's Daven. So she ducks him in the water. Pan's hilarious.

That's what you get, Pan. Pan was pretending to be Mrs. Coulter's daven, which shows it's like kids for that childlike sort of way of how kids pretend to be like the people that they admire. She suddenly remembers that the alethiometer is in her coat pocket, and that she promised not to tell Mrs. Coulter about it.

And I thought this line was great. It really highlights the ultimate conflict in this part of the book. Oh, this was of the book. Oh, this was confusing. Mrs. Coulter was so kind and wise, whereas Lyra had actually seen the master trying to poison Uncle Asriel. Which of them did she owe most obedience to? It is such an interesting conflict for Lyra.

The master did just try to poison her uncle, who's the only king she has. Yeah, with a fucking number two. I like how everyone else got stressed out about that, too. They were all like, yes, Eliana, I agree. Yeah, it is stressful. And so she just saw that happen, but then he also just gave her this, like,

magical compass that she has no clue how to use. And Mrs. Coulter, of course, is just sparkly, shiny, everything's great. And she's about to just dote on Lyra and buy her shit and do fancy shit with her. And interestingly enough, the first three chapters of this, Lyra was bored to death of the political talk when she was trapped in the closet. But now she's kind of being forced to pay attention and listen, which is what Marisa, Mrs. Coulter, is starting to teach her, and also probably what will backfire eventually on her. So Lyra is starting to question things where she wasn't really questioning them

before, which is a good step. And I think that idea of questioning is interesting because the question that Lyra asks is, which of them did she owe most obedience to? And that shows how childlike she is, right? Because it's not wondering which is the more advantageous path yet. She's not yet at that point of keeping the master's counsel. Keep your own counsel, right? She's thinking of it as whose rules do I have to follow? Yeah, she's not thinking, who do I trust? She's thinking, whose rules do I follow? That's interesting. Yeah.

And Lyra hurries to check her coat, which seems untouched after her bath. And Mrs. Coulter planned to take them to dine at the Royal Arctic Institute for lunch. This must actually be a really good school cafeteria. She's one of the very few female members, and she's like, I should enjoy it when I can. Yeah, she gives advice to Lyra on what's poisonous and safe to eat. And they end up eating calves liver and bacon. She warns Lyra that bear liver is poisonous. Mrs. Coulter points

out that some prominent people like Colonel Carborne, who made the first balloon flight over the Arctic or Dr. Broken Arrow of Skraling are here. Lyra thinks these men are all scholars and even more explorers. She thinks the librarian of Jordan would never know that bear liver is poisonous. I would like to say to Lyra, I have the internet and I did not know this. And this is in fact true of polar bear livers. And turns out it's because polar bear liver contains high levels of retinol, which apparently is like it's a form of vitamin A in animals, if I understood this right.

And consuming polar bear liver will lead to acute hypervitaminosis A, which is basically vitamin A toxicity from over consumption of it. So everyone never eat never eat polar bear livers again. Or vitamin A in excess. Yes. Or don't do anything in excess, right? Like, what is it?

One of the fathers of toxic toxicity said that, you know, everything's poisonous. It's just the amount. Yeah. Absolutely. After lunch, Coulter shows lyra some historical items and relics in the library like some of the men who voyage to the north and the stories of some of the heroes and they make their way to go shopping and she basically plays doll with with lyra she finds it a little dizzying they leave the stores and Lyra is just offstruck and flushed and tired. She had seldom had anything new. And when she had, it had been picked for wear and not for looks.

And she had never chosen anything for herself. And now to find Mrs. Coulter suggesting this and praising that and paying for it all and more. I just want to say Mrs. Coulter's love language is gift giving. Yeah, absolutely. When they arrive home, Lyra takes another bath, which, you know, good for her this time. Mrs. Coulter washes her hair gently and almost lovingly. And then Mrs. Coulter gives Pan a look that's like, look away, like her own demon was doing. Pan thinks he had never had to look away from Lyra before, which is interesting. I mean, i get it

technically like pan's male which i guess is what mrs colds are saying but i'm like i don't know pants are like soul that's fucking weird like pan already has seen it and it is weird it's like it's like the red flag of how you know something's not right because pan is part of her like pan's always there and she's trying to separate her from her demon yeah it's just so bizarre in a way and like what even her own demon doesn't look okay yeah right after the bath lyra is given a warm drink with milk and herbs and a brand new night dress and the herbs it makes me wonder what herbs is it like a scoop of lavender and rosemary and like pip pip off you go or was it yeah right or was it like golden milk i don't have you ever had golden milk i've

heard of this like now that i'm looking at your description please describe it's uh yeah it's basically it's turmeric and milk with a pinch of pepper cinnamon and maple syrup and it's supposed to be really good for like autoimmune uh turmeric is really good for autoimmune but it's like a golden color and often it's done with nut milk more often than you know like real milk but i don't know i was just like searching different milk things and that that's the only thing i could think of was it's a very like a vegan pro-vegan friendly kind of thing i've read a lot about it before so it sounds really good it does sound really good someone put me to bed i know so the new nightgown is a floral pattern with a scalloped hem and she's given really soft slippers of sheepskin the bed is soft the amberic lamp is soft everything is so soft

the curtains are covered in stars and moons and this all is like ringing through like a false sense of security to me like the stars and moons are on her curtains covering the outdoors the only stars and moon she's allowed to see are the ones that coulter is giving her on the on the curtains and mrs coulter is sheltering her and showing her only the things she wants lyra to see and believe of her business, and it totally shows. I think that's a really great interpretation of the curtains. Thanks.

Lyra lays there, too enchanted to sleep, once Mrs. Coulter says goodnight. But as soon as she closes the door, Pan pucks on her and is like, tell me about the thing! The thing! And Lyra's like, she knew what it was it was the alethiometer and the alethiometer has four hands they point to different places around

the dial but there are no hours only pictures we learned that some of them are an anchor an hourglass surmounted by a skull a chameleon a bull a beehive and in total there are 36 little pictures she attempts to wind the needle at pan's request and she clicks them into position a chameleon, a bull, a beehive, and in total there are 36 little pictures. She attempts to wind the needle at Pan's request, and she clicks them into position. But the fourth hand was long and slender. It was of a duller metal than the others, and she couldn't control it. It just goes wherever it wants. I like that earlier with the master, when she does ask, you know, what what does it do and he says it tells the truth

it's her one sense of truth in all of this right in this sparkling glitter it's her sense of her home in a way and it grounds her it's handheld truth and she's gonna figure out how to read it soon enough spoiler alert i mean you don't just give a kid a compass without teaching them to read it someday in the text. So once she learns how to read it, we're going to get some goddamn answers. Damn it. Yes, we will. I want some answers.

Still. Those answers come because Pan says meter means measure, like thermometer, which they learned from the chaplain. It doesn't really work through measurement. I don't. It's kind of a bad name, actually, in that way. But Lyra says that's the easy part of the name, because they can't guess what the alethiometer is truly for, so they just keep playing with it.

Most importantly, the image that I think of is Pan as a little mouse, with his small mouse hands on the face of the compass, just following and watching with it. I can't wait. It's so cute. I know. Just looking at it like that. Can't wait, Pan.

Can't wait to see you. She passes different symbols. There's an angel, helmet, dolphin, globe, loot, compasses, candle, thunderbolt, and horse. I've never thought to try and parse this if it just like is saying something but i did too i like thought about it and i was gonna start looking at it and then i went yeah i was like fuck it people get actual degrees in this uh not not here they begin to debate the true purpose they were given the alethiometer whether it's to give it to asriel lyra argues the master wanted to kill asriel so it couldn't be that or to keep it away from him

and then pand reminds her the only warning that the master gave them was about mrs coulter speaking of mrs coulter pops her head in and is like lights out you must be tired and lyra tucks the alethiometer under her pillow for safekeeping and goes to bed. Again, with that interesting conflict of the loyalties of, is the true reason we have this to give it to Asriel? The master wants to kill Asriel. I don't think so. But the reason that the master wanted to kill Asriel is different than like if he was meant to have it or not, you know, that's the interesting thing and Lyra doesn't understand that she's very

black and white she thinks well the master wouldn't have wanted to kill Asriel you know yeah if he wanted him to have this he would have just given it to him which is true but it's just interesting because she doesn't see through that black and white yet she doesn't understand

the shades of grey that are going on behind the scenes and she doesn't see through that black and white yet. She doesn't understand the shades of gray that are going on behind the scenes. And she doesn't see that it could be for her yet, either. Like, that she might have some sort of importance. Because as we have learned, you know, a lot of the clothes that she's gotten were just hand-me-downs. She's just, again, running wild

through her Oxford. Yeah, she was just Lyra. Yeah, she was just Lyra, and so the idea that oh, maybe this like cool thing is mine doesn't really occur to her yet well that leads us into chapter five another busy chapter buckle up the cocktail party lyra has been following mrs coulter around almost like a demon herself she sat sat quietly through Royal Arctic Institute meetings with geographers. She goes to lunches with prominent figures who dote on her

and order her special dishes. Her afternoons were filled with shopping for Mrs. Coulter's northern expedition, furs and boots and leathers, and after that was tea with prominent ladies who would pamper her and include her in their political chatter of different people and things.

And through all of this, we start to get that picture right of the different kinds of power that mrs culture wields here because she's holding these different kinds of meetings in order to form different kinds of connections for those different kinds of power like through meeting with these prominent figures she's forging these alliances and also working together with them even though a lot of them of of course, are men, because men hold a lot of the important positions in this world, they see Mrs. Coulter as a peer or as someone that they need to be in her good graces. And with the ladies, the gossip is helping Mrs. Coulter

understand the landscape of what's going on with all these different kinds of people. It could inform, who should I bring to a party? Or what are the different useful information or circumstances that I need to know? Yeah. It's political intrigue, and

it's going to a very minor scheming session. These ladies don't know what it is, but she does. I think the ladies do to an extent, right? Because they're also, of course, brokering their own... Right, clamoring for power. Parties, yeah, and, like, supporting maybe, like, other people in getting power of their own in whatever way. And it's a different... They're jumping on the train.

Yeah, I mean, we've discussed this before in the Song of Ice and Fire. It's that soft power and knowing, like, who to be around, who to avoid, etc. is helpful for all of that. And as the evening comes, Lyra goes to the theater with her sometimes, where even more glamorous people were milling about that Mrs. Coulter knew, because she has all of those connections, that power that they seek. Mrs. Coulter is very well connected. It's like she knows everyone. This is Chloe at Ice and Fire Con. People come and get

your good graces. They're like, I got you this bottle of wine. Literally, people just come up to her and give her bottles of wine. I'm a god. That's their oblation. I'm the oblation board. More like the bloatation board after all that wine. Oh my god.

Oh my god. Just bloated thinking about it in between the glamorous life coulter leads she gets lyra to begin taking lessons because it turns out her knowledge has a few gaps her education kind of spotty turns out she was a little bit of a problem child and didn't stick out her lessons and wanted to play this came to light as being a necessity when mrs coulter said something about the planets revolving around the sun and lyra laughed at it like it was a joke and she's like that's not a joke that that's science oh my god you need to go to school i can't i can't just imagine like mrs coulter's face like upon that just Just like, oh dear.

Well, she's not stupid, but it's just like she knows weird things. Yeah, well, again, there are spots in, I guess, her knowledge. And yeah, on one hand, sure, Lyra's a child who wanted to play. So, I mean, I don't know. The scholars could have tried to do some sort of structure that would have helped with their learning. Different people

learn in different ways, but I guess that's part of the benefit right of that community and why everyone keeps being like do you want other kids to like play with because being in a class and everyone else having to do the same having to learn kind of makes you feel pressured like maybe i should also be learning or whatever but it also shows that like at this point of her life the the teachers become teachers. They study for it for a reason because there's methods of passing that knowledge on, especially when it comes to younger children. The scholars know how to pass knowledge on to peers or to people who already know how to learn because they're older, right? But there's a system and a methodology to creating knowledge and building on it so that

children can actually understand the fucking world and mrs coulter doesn't like know this formally but she's like all right we're gonna start with mathematics and basic calculations i guess yeah start from the bottom and build our way up fuck god what have they taught you at this godforsaken place she's like the whole time mrs coulter's just like men are so useless she's like why is this what we chose to do yeah but lyra does know things and she wants to prove that she knows things so she finally gets a chance because electrons get brought up during some science discussion she says electrons are negatively charged particles, almost like dust,

but dust isn't charged. And Mrs. Coulter stops dead. Her daemon's fur stands on end, like it's charged, actually, and Mrs. Coulter calms him and asks Lyra, What do you know about dust? Interesting enough,

did you know that they named Mrs. Coulter's daemon in the radio episode slash serial of His Dark Materials? I did not. They named him Ozymandias, but Pullman didn't sign off on it, actually. Like, he actually rejected it and said, if you had to name her daemon, it would be Malice. It's funny because I saw in a different interview, Pullman had said he never named the daemon because he was like I don't know it scared me too much so he never bothered to come up with a name

for it because he just thought it was too scary to have a name which like I think is really interesting as well but I can see how malice would work but I think the idea of it having no name is just as unnerving I hate it Lyra says that dust lights people up if you have a

special camera to see it and it comes from space but it doesn't affect children the tension in the room is palpable and pantalimon creeps into her lap he's shaking and mrs coulter demands to know where lyra learned this and lyra says from someone in jordan it may have been from a scholar from new denmark who spoke to the chaplain about dust she then asks she's like was i right or did i get it wrong and mrs coulter's like oh you likely know more than i do and we should get back to your lessons yikes yikes and it was in the first few chapters right where they said that lyra will eventually be the person who knows the most in the world about dust yeah and with where i am right now in the books, I could see that. I understand

that. And so later Pan tells her that Mrs. Coulter's knuckles actually went white when she grabbed her demon, and that he actually thought that this demon, again nameless, was going to leap at her, and neither of them know what to make of this. Mrs. Coulter has a really fascinating relationship with her demon, and I actually read a really cool theory today when I was just

looking up some thoughts and seeing if anyone else has ever commented on it. If somebody else has talked about this in full, I need to understand, because maybe I have ideas. But someone had a theory that Pullman workshopped or scrapped that Coulter was the first person that was actually experimented on via dust and daemons and severed originally, like when he was first writing it.

And that some of the plot points seem flimsy in this first book would explain her character's motives. And like, I thought that was interesting. Not the plot here. I don't think it really actually has anything to do with this, but I just thought that theory was interesting. I'm like, I could see the essence of that thought that was interesting. Not the plot here. I don't think it really actually has anything to do with this, but I just thought that theory was interesting. I'm like, I could see the essence of that if that was true. I don't know, but it's just a,

there's a bunch of little, like, plot holes and things that somebody kind of came up with and said, I wonder if in another, like, writing, that if Pullman originally thought about it and just, like, scrapped it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But there are a bunch of things that lyra doesn't know either and she gets a lot of lessons on them many of which make no sense to her for example how to wash one's hair how to judge which color

suited one how to say no in such a charming way that no offense was given this is important how to put on lipstick powder scent to be sure mrs coulter didn't teach lyra the latter arts directly but she knew lyra was watching when she made herself up and she took care to let lyra see where she kept the cosmetics and to allow her time on her own to explore and try them out for herself so these are really interesting lessons because these are exactly the lessons that lyra does not have, right? She has never learned. She hasn't had a maternal figure to teach her these kind of lessons. She had Mrs. Lonsdale.

She didn't have, you know, a girly girl around and be like, Lyra, this is how you brush your fucking hair in the morning instead of go get in clay bed wars and throw dung at people. So Lyra has the ferocity. She has a bold and brave heart she's courageous but she needs precision and interestingly enough mrs coulter of all people are here to offer that lesson it is interesting so time is passing swiftly autumn is changing to winter lyra thinks of roger here and there and she also thinks about jordan but it feels quiet and small and far away and uneasy compared to her new fabulous life with mrs coulter yeah and i mean there's a lot of hero's journey stuff throughout his dark materials but in these few chapters we've seen lyra just take those first steps into that world of adventure

this is what's known as you know going past that threshold and there's clearly a mission for her in this hero's journey in this first book, which is finding Roger. There's a larger overarching story, right, for her too. But with Mrs. Coulter, for a moment, she's distracted from that mission of finding Roger. And in the hero's journey, this is known, one of them is like presentation or like meeting with the goddess, and the other one is temptation of woman. But here it's kind of both coming together and rather than it being like a sensual temptation it's lyra being tempted by that female guidance by the allure of all this glamour and learning this form of womanhood from mrs coulter it is kind of like this when you think about it it's like this horrible sexist kind of thing of like oh like

the female is sinful we always know that's where i mean this is obviously relevant with where this goes but the female is sinful in general and that kind of those connotations of people having that whether it be religious and something that was like carried over from religion even being a female and this art of femininity and lipstick and eyeshadow and curly hair and just this like femme fatale thing like that is complete sin in these eyes and mrs coulter is like she talks and walks and acts like a man in a woman's beautiful body like that's kind of what it is and people fear her kind of respect her also kind of don't it's interesting it's just an interesting dynamic yeah mrs coulter is one of the most interesting characters in this whole story i have so many

thoughts on her like and they're all new obviously because as i said i way went ahead when i shouldn't have so she has added so much complexity and depth to my thoughts about her and i'm like how do i pick out only the golden compass ones i can't that's why i struggled so much there's also always like an event right to get ready for a new dress in the institute and slowly lyra finds herself forgetting roger and all of that again and mrs couter's like, we're gonna throw a cocktail party after six weeks of you being here. She doesn't say why they were celebrating, which I mean,

why you don't need one? Just have parties. It's a society party. We know why. Some Kubrick shit. So she spends an evening deciding on who to invite with Lyra and the days have been filled

with special foods and caterers. She talks about the Archbishop. She talks about Lord Boreal. Interesting. She talks about Princess Postnikova, Eric Anderson, and others. Later, when they're getting ready for bed, Pan shakes Lyra and is like, Mrs. Coulter is never taking

us north. You get that, right? We're gonna run away, right? You have plans. And I like that this is normal. He's like, you're ready to go. You got a rucksack packed, we're gonna run away right you have plans and i like that this is normal he's like you're ready to go you got a rucksack packed like we're gonna escape right and lyra gets defensive and she's like you just don't like her like you don't like that i like her she's gonna take us north she wouldn't be teaching me navigation otherwise why would she be doing that to stop you getting impatient that's why you don't really want to stand around at the cocktail party being all sweet and pretty she's just making a pet out of you

lyra turned back and closed her eyes but what panel amon said was true she had been feeling confined and cramped by this polite life however luxurious it was she would have given anything for a day with Roger and her Oxford ragamuffin friends with a battle in the clay beds and a race along the canal. The one thing that kept her polite and attentive to Mrs. Coulter was that tantalizing hope of going north. Perhaps they would meet Lord Asriel.

Perhaps he and Mrs. Coulter would fall in love, and they would get married and adopt Lyra and go and rescue Roger from the Gobblers. Cool. One of my favorite things about the way that Pullman writes is that he uses words like ragamuffin unironically. Yes. This is important to me to point out. My mom uses it unironically.

I grew up with it. I was told I looked like a ragamuffin constantly. So it's ingrained in my vernacular as well. Thanks, Pullman. I think there was another word last time that I thought was hilarious. It might have still just been ragamuffin, but it's great. And so good. I also like, Pan's not always right, but he's very much right a lot of the time,

especially when it comes to how he feels about people. And Lyra knows this. And in many ways, like, Pan's kind of her conscience. Like, he senses when something's wrong since he's basically her soul. And I think you can interpret any time that Pan's like, I don't know, this is off as like a gut feeling. Yeah. gut feeling. Yeah, and especially because Lyra knows better, like, we know she does,

then, like, she's telling herself, because she wants this experience and she's never had it, I mean, this is, like you said, this is temptation, and Lyra is maybe, this is interesting because it is a first kind of temptation, she's reaching out

and taking the fruit. She wants it so badly to be good and true and it's poisoned yes yes the uh afternoon of the party lyra gets taken to the hairdresser to get pretty princessed you know she gets her hair her makeup done looking fly they head toward the flat to check on final preparations and mrs coulter tells Lyra she needs to put her hideous white saddlebag away. She cannot wear that with her new pretty princess dress, that despicable bag, but that despicable bag has the alethiometer in it. Coulter works on fixing the way roses are lying in a vase as she glances pointedly at the bag. Lyra attempts to use her best manners to

convince Coulter that the bag totally matches her outfit, it's the only thing she cares about, but she's interrupted halfway through her plea. Coulter has her daemon pinned down, panned with a cold and eerie force, and Lyra sobs in terror, she's begging them to stop, and Mrs. Coulter's over there just coolly observing her from her roses, telling her, you gotta do what I say. And then Lyra's like, ugh, fine. And then she slams the door to her bedroom, and within a moment, Coulter is in the doorway. Lyra, if you behave in this coarse and vulgar way, we shall have a confrontation which I will win. Now take off that bag this instant, control that unpleasant frown, never slam a door again in my hearing or out of it. Now the first guests will be arriving in a few minutes, and they are going to find you

perfectly behaved, sweet, charming, innocent, attentive, delightful in every way. I particularly wish for that. Lyra, do you understand me yes mrs coulter then kiss me she bent a little and offered her cheek what a fucking psycho what a 180 finally like everything was just too perfect and too shiny and too pink for too long it was like the cersei lannister, Dolores Umbridge, hem hem. Like, can you just break this facade, please? Oh my god. The other shoe finally dropped. Oh yeah, yeah, the shoe definitely finally dropped. In this scene, I remember thinking when I was younger, and I've seen people say this too,

like, it's weird because Pan seems like he should have the advantage because of his shape-shifting. But, and you can see this, this like just in this interaction right here between mrs coulter and lyra it seems as though a lot of these battles between demons have less to do with like the shape of the demon though of course that's influenced by you know what kind of person yeah the person is right but it has more to do with like that strength or like the will of the person and i mean mrs coulter just clearly has a very strong will and even later on we get this moment where pan is like i'm gonna get him like i'll i'll change faster next time you'll see i'll shape shift and like you said it really is about the will not really so much the uh the shape i think libra returns to the drawing room

and mrs coulter acts like nothing happened and asks her what do you think of the flowers darling and go check on the ice fuck the caterers goddamn servants and Lyra pretends to be charming and light-hearted all the rest of the night she's a universal pet but she feels Pan's discomfort at Coulter's demon the entire time she comes across an old woman later at the party who asks her, where do you go to school? And surely your mother would send you to her old school. And Lyra's like, um, you're mistaken.

My parents died in an aeronautical accident. Count and Countess Beliqua, Lord Asriel's brother and sister-in-law. And the woman begins to frown at her in curiosity. And Lyra's like, okay, whatever, you're weird bye she like leaves interesting she passes by a couch of men and a young woman where she overhears them dust scussing aka discussing dust and notes there's a bunch of flirting going on as well and she watches that with fascination even though she thinks dust is far more fascinating i thought that was a nice plug to remind us

eventually Lyra won't be a little girl anymore. Right there. Like, that she notices these things go on. Like, bring on the Gendrya. You know what I'm saying? It's not just that she notices. She's interested, and she's like, flirting's interesting. Right. Wonder what happens afterwards.

I don't know. Nothing. Where do they put their mouths? The male scholars were discussing dust being discovered by a man named Ruzakov, a Muscovite, and the particles named after him. The particles don't interact with others, but they are attracted to humans. Some more than others, especially adults and not children. And this guy is very intent on telling this younger woman who's sitting quietly like this is why the ablation board was set up and

our hostess mrs coulter can tell you more she is the ablation board it's her project yeah lyra is staring at this point and she's listening and the man says oh this little lady over here must know all about it and asks if she's safe from the oblation board lyra of course doesn't understand the question fully and it's like i'm safe from everyone here and she tells him all about the egyptians who sell kids to turks and the werewolves at the godstown nunnery and then she tells him about the gobblers and he's like that's what i mean the general oblation board and then it's like boof gobblers gobstoppers yeah oh my god is that what we should call the force after this book the people that are on the

good side are they gobstoppers yeah we should oh my god are I'm a gobstopper, are you a gobstopper? I should buy gobstoppers. I haven't had a gobstopper literally in years. And they eat a lot of candy, as you know. So this man says that in the Middle Ages, parents would offer their children to the church as monks or nuns, and that they copied the idea with a general

ablation board and dust. And it's very absolutely true. We see it not only in Middle Ages, but all throughout history, then and even now. And as far as human sacrifice goes, this brings up something we'll definitely visit in future chapters. But for now, I want to lightly touch it. The binding of Isaac. Genesis tells Abraham to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah and does so without arguing. An angel stops Abraham at the last minute and provides a ram instead that was caught in some nearby bushes to be

sacrificed instead of Isaac. The first chief rabbi of Israel, A.I. Kook, stresses the climax the story is the point. Put an end to child sacrifice, which contradicts the morality of a perfect God. But there are traditional retellings that say he did sacrifice Isaac. So it might just be something that's been rewritten and handed down over time and over versions. But believe it or not, they talk about this in Venom. I realized this the other day. I wasn't like, I was just like absentmindedly listening to the villain give a speech. And he talks about Isaac and Abraham.

And he gets a couple details. Interesting know they bend some things but interesting i think it's not even that i think this is interesting right the idea of being about to sacrifice isaac and a ram being brought instead for sacrifice especially later on in the story. But just fun facts, right? Here's a fun fact. In Islam, they have the same story of Abraham being about to sacrifice his son, but rather than it being Isaac, it's Ishmael who's placed on the altar, and that's where the blessing goes and and that's a huge diverging point for the religions of judaism and islam so well and and yeah and in judaism too the idea that they you know skirt that and say ah but then it was just a ram instead in venom he basically frames it he's sacrificing a homeless person to science.

Long story short. So not so far off with what we're discussing, I guess. You know, of these rowdy, because that's the same theme we see in everything. You see it in the runaways. You see it in this. You see it in Venom. You know, those that are weakened and are unable to really think or do things for themselves are the ones that are getting taken

first are the ones that no one would notice disappearing so in venom it's the same thing they're practicing experimenting on homeless people and he basically says look at this as you isaac the guy's name is isaac and he says you're just like isaac you're a gift you're blessed isaac you are a blessing and your sacrifice is not just a blessing for you, but it's a blessing for all of us. We are so grateful for you. And then, you know, he sacrifices him, but which does nothing except he gets eaten by an alien, so. Spoiler.

I gotta watch that one day. It's really good. It's really good. But until then, the guy says to Lyra, you should meet Lord Boreal. Who? I think he'd really like to meet Mrs. Coulter's protege. He had thought that actually Lyra was Mrs. Coulter's daughter. Fun fact, Boreal is a word that in Latin or Greek means far northern or northern.

I mean, you all probably recognize part of that, right? The Borealis. Yeah, the Borealis. It was called Northern Lights. northern or northern i mean you all probably recognize part of that right from like yeah yeah the borealis so it was called northern lights in the uk and there's a good amount of of that etymology in a lot of these names yeah for sure so he shows her the man with gray hair sitting by the fire and this guy has a serpent demon i'm not gonna animal quarter this one we all fucking know what snakes mean what does it mean what is the snake poop the snoot so the scholar obviously wanted to be rid of lyra it was very plain to see but the young woman on the couch had further business with her she introduces herself as a journalist named adele

and asks if she can have a quiet word with lyra. I do want to dig into the scene just a little bit because I think a lot of his dark materials plays on our expectations of things. And Pullman took umbrage with the way that C.S. Lewis portrayed girl and women characters. And he does center his story around a lot of girl and women characters, right, in his dark materials. So I actually really like the way that this scene goes because the way that Lyra interprets this scene, she's been surrounded and grew up in this very patriarchal structure

in a much more, I think, patriarchal society. Obviously, our society is, but this is a little further back in time, right? And she sees the women scholars as less than the male scholars at Jordan College. She also thinks that this young woman is a student, right? And that this young woman is gazing at the man in admiration. This is what Lyra calls it,

admiration. And she knows that this guy is just babbling on and on and on at this woman like as though he thinks he's saying the most interesting things in the world I mean he's saying some interesting stuff but like also is this not an accurate portrayal of men I don't know and so at first it does seem like the woman is just starry-eyed at this guy and all of his knowledge but actually turns out she's not she's a person with her own ambitions and goals because she's actually here and playing at that as a journalist who's on her own mission and she's been

just playing this guy to get more information about what's going on and I like how that power dynamic of oh starry eyed young woman student with oh super wise man is turned on its head. And not only is she fluttering her eyelashes but her demon is

fluttering around it's a butterfly uh telling her something quietly and lyra is sitting looking out from her favorite area in the flat over the river and the glittering lights and of course that's the thing that girl was using the flirting to get ahead so lyra is learning all these different woman skills and woman work that she has never had the opportunity to learn over at the college and she's surrounded by it now it's a whole new world an animal corner for this one for the butterfly butterflies really resemble powerful transformation renewal and rebirth it really doesn't have a lot to do with this journalist because as we know, her birth at this party is not going to be long-lasting. I think that

it has to do with something that's going to come in just a few. We're going to get to this point very soon, right? Where Pan turns into a moth to be as literally as unexpressive as possible and to help with telling Lyra, alright, we gotta go and sneaking around. So maybe lyra all right you got to go and sneaking

around so maybe a butterfly is just kind of like that and serves a similar purpose similar yeah and we did talk about the moth and that like youthfulness and that that protection and how it could also be the harbinger of death really too yeah so that could come into play a little bit there too yeah and adele asks lyra about her connection with Mrs. Coulter and says, oh, I thought you might be her daughter. Lyra's like, no, I'm her personal assistant. I'm the youngest intern ever. And Adele says,

I mean, you're a bit young. And she's like, yeah, I know. She doesn't say that, but she's like, yeah. And then Adele asks Lyra, so what's Mrs. Coulter like? And Lyra's just like, very clever. Adele keeps pushing at her and Lyra's like, she's very nice and very clever. And Mrs. Coulter suddenly appears behind them.

And the demon is like going crazy, fluttering around. And earlier, Lyra had sensed this metallic smell, like I talked about coming off of Coulter when she directed her anger at her. But now she can sense that metallic smell toward the journalist. Coulter threatens her career and tells her like, leave now. Get the fuck out. And she does. She like gets all squatted and hunched over

and leaves all awkwardly. Coulter asks Lyra what was said and Lyra tells her the truth. The smell begins to dissipate and Coulter's demon reappears, having been missing since then. And I'll come back to that metallic scent in the discussion. The smell begins to dissipate, and Coulter's demon reappears, having been missing since then. And I'll come back to that metallic scent in the discussion. It could just be like that metallic blood-like taste

that you get in your mouth, too. I hate that taste. Yeah, under stress conditions or from, you know, doing anything athletic. I was gonna say from liver. Unless it's pate. Or other kinds of sauce when you do other things to the liver. Hey, we talked about this on our other podcast. Oh, did we?. Hey, we talked about this on our other podcast. Oh, did we?

Yeah, when we talked about pork blood. Oh, we did. Sorry, I never... How funny is that? I still feel strongly about this anyway. No, yeah. Or like when you're working out, you get it sometimes if you run a mile or some crap. I don't know that feeling.

Me either. I'm not in high school. And it could just be her ferocity causing this, but spoilers. We'll talk about this in discussion. So Coulter then asks Lyra to keep her informed if she finds anyone else who should not be at the party, and she leaves. Pan tells Lyra, I saw the daemon coming out of our bedroom, which means he was snooping for something. It's the alethiometer. of our bedroom, which means he was snooping for something.

It's the alethiometer. I assume that, like, maybe if she had just fucking put the bag down, Mrs. Coulter wouldn't have gone snooping, but Lyra was so weird about it. She's like, what's in that fucking bag that she doesn't want to put it down? And it's interesting because later on we learn that's not her strong suit blending in. We meet a character eventually that does the opposite and yells at her about it. Yeah. Interesting. There's nothing they can do about it at this point so lyra just looks for the professor from the couch and catches an interesting moment the commissioner and another man tapping the professor

and speaking quietly to him the professor turns pale and they see themselves out it's like a super discreet exchange and it leaves Lyra anxious. So I think it's either that one of them brought the journalist, right? Because remember, Mrs. Coulter said that she was going to find whoever brought you in here and get rid of him. Or he realizes that he was talking to the journalist and maybe like said too much and is like thrown out for exposing so much of what's been happening. So the commissioneer then appears to Lyra

and says Lord Boreal at the fire would like a word with you. His serpent demon's mailed head and emerald eyes glittered in the light from the cut glass lamp on the wall nearby. He asks, how is my friend, the master of Jordan? And what she's learning and rather than telling this guy

the truth she tells him oh you know i'm learning about rizokov particles in the ablation board and not telling him so i just learned what the solar system is it's interesting because she doesn't know that it's a game but this is basically a game with this guy especially with his role moving forward like she he says how is my friend the master of jordan she says i know about rusikov particles and the oblation board she doesn't know she's playing this game necessarily but she is playing in a game now she's in a game whether she likes it or not i just found that very interesting. I was like, oh, this is like a back and forth. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, she gets better at it, right?

Later on. Yeah, yeah. And this guy asks Lyra then to tell him what she knows. And she's on practice. And so her charade falters. And she tells him about everything. She's like, so there are experiments in the north. And there's Grumman and the photogram.

And then you can see the dust on adults, but not on kids, which is like, this is all she knows. She just fucking spills everything. I mean, it's a lot. This is the same thing she says to Mrs. Coulter too,

is basically the photogram and this, and it's half baked thoughts, right? Like she doesn't actually know what any of it means, but she knows enough to be dangerous. Yeah. And she ends up actually revealing like how she actually learned of it but she didn't to mrs coulter right she says i learned these things at jordan from my

uncle azrael and i heard about the ablation board here though at the party they're gobblers she's looking at him with like super innocent eyes which i think she's kind of using some of that teaching from mrs coulter here and some of her own teaching. So she uses the super innocent eyes and he finally just like nods. He's like, yeah, Coulter must have been ready for you to join on, you know, a good amount. So he asks if she's taken part and she's like, I don't know what that means. So she says no, she doesn't know what happens with the children, just that it's about dust and that it's a sacrifice. He sacrifice is a bit dramatic the children come of their own accord and it's further good as well as everyone else's and he goes on that's why mrs coulter is so valuable for bringing in children it's great

you're gonna be helping her oh so basically you just admitted you're trafficking kids and sacrificing them cool reveal bad guys yeah and it's just played out so normally and i think that's part of the horror that they're just like yeah this is fucking normal and lyra's like what yeah you wanted me to be a part of this like yeah sure just bring a kid in on all of this too just kind of sinister in its own way if they that was their plan for her yeah it basically was they were gonna have her recruiting. It's fucked up. Yeah. Especially because some of these people being taken are her friends already.

And then Boreal smiles at her like they're both in on a secret. And Lyra thinks it's how Mrs. Coulter smiles at her. And he moves on to someone else for a conversation. So the second this is over, she and Pan are horrified. And they just sense each other's horror. And he turns into a moth a

little bit ago to not betray her emotions during any of these conversations and all she can think is how she wants to leave to talk to him and she thinks about her shabby room in staircase 12 at jordan college and her uncle and how she wants to find him and all of a sudden as if in an answer she hears azriel's name mentioned at another table. She occupies herself with getting some hors d'oeuvres from that table. Yeah, same. And then listens in. A man in a bishop's purple

says that Asriel's been captured in Svalbard by the Panzerbjorn and now we know what they are. They're armored bears, everyone. Panzerbjorn. He says that the last experiments confirmed that dust is an emanation from the dark principle itself and then just a bunch of word vomit it's like do i detect the zoroastrian heresy what used to be heresy if you could isolate the dark principle these are

two different people talking but i'm just gonna say nonsense fine svalbard did you say armored bears the ablation board the children don't suffer, I'm sure of it. Lord Asriel imprisoned. Lyra does not want to hear anymore, and she quietly moves to the bedroom, and she closes the door, shuts out the whole party behind. And I mean, let's be real, there's kind of a certain thrill, right, to slipping out of a party without being noticed. That's like your thing, isn't it? It's not my thing. I have a friend that it's definitely his thing. I say bye to people. I do this at

Ice and Fire Con. That's true. And then you all are like, did Aliana disappear into the woods? I never worry. I'm just like, that bitch is asleep. Which is true. I am. Whenever anyone's like, where's Aliana? I'm like, I don't know. Probably asleep. Literally that happened all this year. And I was just know, probably asleep. Literally that happened all this year.

And I was just like, probably asleep. More than likely. What time is it? Yeah, she's asleep. It could be like 3 p.m. Me, probably asleep. I did take quite a few naps. I think they were important.

No, they are. You don't survive otherwise. Yeah. So Pan and Lyra get in the bedroom. They immediately plan to run away as they might not have a better chance. And Pan is worried that Colder's demon is going is gonna get them they both are just ill with fear lyra tells him to transform into a moth and check the coast she puts on the warmest clothes she can she stuffs more clothing into a silk bag one of the ones they got when they were out shopping that afternoon and she

pulls out money mrs coulter had given her as well during their shopping adventures she packs up the alethiometer last in its velvet bag and then they listen for voices they hear the flush of the lavatory they hear glasses tinkling and pan gets in her ear and says go now so then lyra slips into the hall she opens the front door within three seconds pulling it quietly shut pans in the form of a goldfinch she finds the stairs and she runs get the fuck out of there girl i worry about that girl oh there's a lot to worry about doesn't get better in the next like five few moments there's a lot to worry about because lyra in chapter six the throwing nuts doesn't know london as well as she does know oxford as she tries to make her escape pan helps her navigate throughout the night it's loud full of drunks she's tempted by the light she's tempted by the comforting light of a shop she orders coffee and ham a man in a top hat pays

for her she says i'm meeting my father who she describes as he's a murderer she says her father is coming and then she sneaks away thinks about taking the catholic railway which is basically the subway and coulter had said it's not for people of your class yeah it kind of makes you wonder though did mrs coulter not teach lyra to use it for this exact reason of like yes lyra's gonna run away what if she runs away and can't ever doing the fucking subway you think that mrs coulter would go to dire extremes to keep lyra from running away i don't know about that never but i do think it's interesting that it's called the chthonic railway and mrs coulter says it's not for their

class a chthonic means belonging to the underworld and and it's often used to talk about subterranean, aka underground things, right? And this idea of that separation of the classes between what's in the above world and the below world, especially with how glamorous the world of Mrs. Coulter is portrayed, it kind of gives me some of those vibes from the Morlock and the Alloy of H.G. Wells' The Time time machine where literally the lower classes are forced underground and then evolved to be monsters i don't think this is a spoiler this has been out for literally 100 years or something like that so no i don't think so either the ending of that book haunts me yeah lyra and pan basically resign themselves to sleep on the street and they're trying to find a nice doorway but then she notices pan is panicking there are men with throwing nets coming toward her they try to escape but the nets capture them and the fox demon of one man fights with pan she's in pain and while that's happening the other man falls with an arrow through his neck

and the other guy is on the ground as well blood gushing out of him three dark men with bows and knives cut her free and it turns out one of them recognizes her it's Tony Costa Egyptian whose brother Billy Costa used to play with Lyra yeah she thinks that they're safe but then remembers wait no

the boat that I hijacked in which I firmly believed in this bug that was the costa boat she's like this is is this okay she's like this is a tragedy she's like this is awful that i'm captured by them and it's funny because it's like lyra these are like the best people you could want to be captured by well they weren't captured she's just like no you're gonna want to help me because i tried to sink their such a kid thing though right yeah and that's what i'm thinking she's just like are they gonna want to help me because i tried to sink their such a kid thing though right yeah and that's what i'm thinking she's like oh no i'm with the people that are gonna be mad at me but they don't even care they're like you you're you're good kid right

you all right we haven't even like mentioned it i think kind of like forgot about it yeah at this point which is uh children yeah and of course the saddest thing happens lyra sees what happens to dead men's daemons they fade and drift like atoms of smoke yep they uh they help lyra sneak away they bring her on a boat and we get mama costa yay the other female influence this is the one that i said we meet later! Because this is literally it. Ma Costa's great, she's the best. Yeah. They explain that Lyra, you were actually almost caught! We thought they were

gobblers, but actually they were probably Turk traders, which that just goes to show. A few moments earlier in this episode, Lyra was telling people that, oh yeah, the Gyptians capture kids and sell them to the Turk traders, right? And that's just another misconception that people have about the Egyptians. Because, like, Tony and his pals are literally saving kids from Turk traders and gobblers. They're not kidnapping the kids to sell them to the Turks. Like, they're the ones whose kids are being kidnapped. They're the good guys.

Yeah. And that goes back to what we said last episode with some of that like Roma, you know, just like people being prejudiced. I love that he's dropping that on its head. Ma Costa welcomes Lyra

very warmly and she feels anxiety about the boat stealing, but she kind of feels like, okay, all might be forgiven. It feels all right. So Lyra falls asleep in Billy's room and this chapter is just a nice change of scenery and pace. By middle of the last chapter, you start to believe like, is this Lyra's plot now? Fancy ritzy parties and politics. But she's kind of back to more of her elements and roots. I don't know, it's a nice pace.

It is, and I feel like there's a thing going on throughout this book where obviously the big central conflict, right, is what's happening to the kids? And Lyra keeps getting pulled into these situations, and that ramps up the danger for her. The first one is like, oh, she's with Mrs. Coulter. The next one is, oh, she's about to be captured. So that keeps the suspense going in terms of how it's structured of like, is Lyra going to end up? going in terms of how it's structured of like is lyra gonna end up and you'll notice it more as you get into like the next book but uh because it becomes a little less lyra focused even towards the mid-end of this you start to get some different point of views and some different like places to go and different people yeah see what they're doing so it does switch it up a lot and i am grateful for that i think this book did balance that well yeah yeah for sure and so lyra then makes up the next morning and joins makasa out on deck for breakfast which is quite frankly seems like a great way to do breakfast yeah they're on the

grand junction canal and they're like lyra you need to go back down under deck and stay hidden right like she's a wanted kid right now does she not get that uh and the egyptians like don't know formally yet they kind of do they're hearing whispers but also it's like i don't know this girl's like from the fucking high class they know all right someone's gonna be looking something's up yeah something is up with this girl and after a while tony comes down and he asks lyra about you know like where the hell have you been kid and she tells them the truth and she leaves out the about, you know, like, where the hell have you been, kid? And she tells them the truth. And she leaves out the alethiometer and a few of the spare details, but she tells them mostly the truth. The Costas know a bit of what the Gobblers do, taking them north and experimenting on the kids.

And they're trying to figure out why, if it had anything to do with the Tartars eating children that they'd heard of. Tony tells Lyra of the Nelkanins. That's the kind of ghosts that they have up there in those forests. Same size as a child and they got no heads. They feel their way about at night and if you're sleeping out in the forest, they get a hold of you and will nothing make them let you go. Nelkanins, that's a northern word. And the Windsuckers. 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 simmer in the air. And the breathless ones. Who are they? Warriors, half-killed. Being alive is one thing, and being dead's another,

but being half-killed is worse than either. They just can't die, and living is altogether beyond them. They wander about forever. They're called the Breathless Ones because of what's been done to them. And what's that? said Lyra, wide-eyed. The North Tartars snap open their ribs and pull out their lungs. There's an art to it. They do it without killing them. But their lungs can't work anymore 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. And then there's the panzerbeard. You heard of them? That means armored bears. They're kind of like polar bears. Lyra excitedly explains she knows them and that Asriel was taken by them and he doesn't seem to be on the side of the gobblers.

Tony explains that's tough because the bears are mercenaries and they keep their word. But Ma Costa chimes in. She doesn't like to hear about the north because of Billy being taken. The Egyptians had captured a gobbler and made them talk. Tony explains Egyptians were hit worse by gobblers, so now they're all coming together in the fens for a roping. There may be a rescue party and the king king of Gyptians, Jon Fah, will be there. And Lyra excitedly says they'll be able to

rescue Roger, but thinks Uncle Asriel, too. Sure. Wow. Those are three chapters, man. We just got a lot in there. Those first two chapters are a whirlwind, and that last chapter is just like action, action, info drop.

Done. Very short. Like, five pages. Like, six pages chapter. It's so short. There's like wind and that last chapter is just like action action info drop yeah done very short like five pages like six pages chapter it's so short there's like a lot of hints that are laid down for you know like later in the book especially in some of the other books like in just that last portion that passage right there the first time i read it i didn't think about anything and now i'm like what yeah so i guess that means you know it's time to go into our dust cushion yes i am so excited for the dust cushion last episode i could only contribute a little bit to the discussion today i'm like let's talk about the dust discussion so the discussion is now even deeper because now chloe has read past the first book and I am excited. But you know, we are trying to keep this, we're trying to keep it, keep

ourselves together. Yeah, we'll keep it relatively within the first book here. Keep with the golden compass. However, there are a couple thoughts we will talk about and warn you ahead of time. There will be a little bit of subtle knife talk here in this first bit because i want to circle back around to the idea of the harlequin sculptures and the porcelain shepherdess that we talked about earlier so the idea of the light-hearted nimble servant generally you know acting to thwart the plans of their master and pursue their own destiny and own love interest and become the romantic hero and the clever trickster type character. Wow, that has to be intentional by him, right?

Because that's basically Lyra. I do think so. I do think so. She's learned so much in that time she was with Coulter alone. And as we see her in The Subtle Knife, for example, even though we're presented with a new dynamic with her new co-star in the book, you can already tell she's a different person, how she thinks about things she sees. Like you were saying earlier, she doesn't understand right now what choices happen. But later on in the book, there's a moment where she comes to a crossroads and her and another character discuss like well this is the moment we have to make this choice and this is all we have and this is even going to come back

in just a couple chapters when she meets the bears and later when she tricks eofur right the bear the king bear she completely lyra silver tongue when she you know plays the demon and interestingly enough that's what she's doing in these chapters she's uh as pullman says she's playing the demon it was like she was a demon herself following miss coulter around she's the pawn she's the demon and later she uses that same she's the demon mentality to trick eofer i do kind of see it as like not only is it lyra and this other character i see it as also it seems like the harlequin and the shepherd could very much be both mrs coulter and lord asriel as we find out in this book right they are lyra's parents and you were talking earlier about and here right about the harlequin being like a romantic hero and a clever devil type

character and this is absolutely the way that i think asriel is portrayed and i wouldn't be surprised if uh mrs coulter has that weird sentimentality and and just keeps this around and this is her way of putting them together shipping them throughout her house well and bringing it back to the story of the shepherdess from hans christian anderson with the shepherdess and the chimney sweep this very much has subtle knife vibes to it because it follows that romance between the shepherdess and the chimney sweep both china sculptures who are threatened by the mahogany satyr who wants the shepherdess for his wife but to me like you said it feels like will and lyra being threatened and chased by Asriel and Coulter. And that tug back and forth of Asriel and Coulter on Lyra.

Because I feel like that's something that we're going to experience later. Of that tug of like, right now she's confused about the loyalties of, should I be obedient to what the master said I should do? Should I be obedient to Mrs. Coulter? Or what about my uncle Asriel i need to help him i need to find him i just could see like this tug back and forth of all these things right now it's complicated and it's just going to get more complicated for her yeah and i think there are shades of all of these characters in in these things and i think it's interesting that you point back to it being from these italian commedia dell'arte and there's it reminds me of another commedia right it reminds

me of the divine comedy and i think that philip pullman is pulling a lot also of course i mean a lot of things right harken back to dante's inferno and and not just the inferno the divine comedy general like purgatorio and paradiso whatevs whatevs so i think that's definitely something he's playing at yeah and that's the thing is a lot of these broad tropes of like that trickster romantic hero i mean those are just in theater and in old writing and literature i mean they they start broad there so you can find those anywhere it's not saying this might be exactly the one he's pulling from but it was the most interesting that not only were those sculptures the harlequin and the shepherdess they were also china and the shepherdess and the chimney sweep

is legitimately about china sculptures threatened by a carved mahogany sculpture. So I just thought that was very, very interesting. I think that maybe there might be some poles there from Pullman. I think there's another thing going on, but we'll talk about it later. Okay, okay. So Mrs. Coulter, she takes them to dine at the royal arctic institute and we learned that she's one of three female members at the royal arctic institute and we know there's all these crusty old white men everywhere something about female accomplishments and villainy like

men like azrael just get to exist all the time in stories doing nothing that exciting and the fact that marisa coulter is one of three females in the royal arctic institute i think that's huge uh i'm not saying that what she's done with her power and her life is good necessarily obviously like we see some of the places that has landed her and you know the fact that she doesn't uh i mean she's got a broken heart in general she's obviously by the end of this book you kind of see like a different side to her in a way at the very end of the book with that last scene with her and with uh asriel a different like i don't know sensitive side especially the way their demons communicate and that emotional so but the fact that she's one of

three females that got into that is big. We don't applaud female villains enough. She was ambitious, and obviously it shows because they set Lyra aside and put her in Jordan and said that's a good enough place for her right now. Because neither of them wanted Lyra, right? Not really. And I think that's fine, and I think that's really interesting, a portrayal. You know, being able to portray such an interesting, clever, and smart woman, right? And be like, well, sorry, dude, she had other ambitions she didn't really want to have. And now's her one chance to try to groom Lyra since she missed out on those years. And even though she obviously has ulterior motives and she's using it for, like, evil,

she still has this sense of maternal with Lyra, right? Like she's still kind of, you see that when she was giving her a bath, it was very loving. And oh my God, rereading this, could Pullman have shouted in our faces louder that she's the mom? Like. Oh yeah. I like reading this. It was very hard not to just say it 50 times. As you saw, as I accidentally fucked up the notes, because it's like obvious.

Every person at that party said, oh, I thought you were her daughter. Oh, I thought you were her daughter. Oh, I thought you were her daughter. Like, literally, that's not an exaggeration. Almost every single person. Yeah. Every single person she talked to and it makes me think does everyone just know because i mean they obviously a lot of these people have been around since you know 1980s when lyra would have been born um and when

marisa and asriel might have been fucking it makes sense like not that they might know no not might not be common knowledge but all of them are like oh i thought you were her daughter i think there's that and also it sounds like she kind of looks like her a little bit because even will it is like i hope you're like her someday yeah he's like are you gonna look like that is that what you're gonna look like gross ass i hate that so it's that and like there's even in those interactions that they have like if you ignore the sinister twist right of mrs coulter hurting lyra the lecture that she gives lyra of you're gonna be fucking behaved you're gonna pay it you're gonna go oh my god that was so mom it was so mom and especially

the end of like and now give me a kiss like yeah this is like some mom shit her coming in being like you got to turn off the lights so god yeah very maternal uh and interestingly enough then you had that passage where lyra was like the one thing that kept her polite and attentive to mrs coulter was the tantalizing hope of going north perhaps they would meet lord asriel perhaps he and miss coulter would fall in love and they'd get married and adopt lyra and go rescue Roger from the gobblers. It's a nightmare. They are the fucking gobblers and they're your parents. Your life is a fucking nightmare, Lyra. Yeah. Also, as everyone can tell, we have given up on trying to only talk about book one at this point. Sorry. Sorry. I said we were going to get into Subtle Knife on accident and we, we have barely might have gotten i've gone into amber spyglass

well oh yeah you did didn't you well anyways it's a nightmare it's a goddamn nightmare and i really feel for lyra because she has no clue and it's gonna fucking just blindside her but also it's like lyra you feel it like you feel she feels it with coulter yeah open your eyes to what you know is the truth use the force Lyra and it's kind of fun because it's interesting to see such a complex daughter mother relationship but also that Lyra seems

she's more plagued by mommy issues than she is by daddy issues yeah absolutely this is a fucking revelation well she had all the male influences and to her she didn't really need a dad because she had like 80 old white dudes up in this college telling her how to live her life and you know like lyra don't run lyra's gonna be black in uh in the show though it seems i'm so

excited yeah and i can't wait i'm so excited they're like diversifying it and lynn manuel as lee scores me is great so i want to come back to that metallic scent and how we have this weird metallic scent that comes up for mrs coulter twice when she's like in a rage or angry and i have some questions that i'm like looking at with like does it have to do with i don't know lyra senses coulter away from her demon maybe it's mimicking intercision? That the strain of the bond and her getting angrier and the demon being far away?

Or, I don't know, maybe it just has to do with being around Bolvengar and the intercision machine and the metal alloys. But it was just so weird that Lyra senses a metallic scent. And, I don't know, it's hard because I just, like, weird things, especially when you read A Song of Ice and Fire, usually have payoff. So, I just don't know it's hard because like i just like weird things especially when you read a song of ice and fire usually have payoff so i just don't know i wasn't never sure it it might

be from intercision i had like thought that there was a mechanic or something around the metallic scent that maybe it was like a perfume because it seems like she's able to use it to sway other people but as i reread these scenes and see how coulter acts with the journalist i'm like oh that's just like she's just a scary ass woman yeah yeah and so it doesn't mean anything but yeah and we'll probably never know but it was just interesting like that's why i brought up that theory earlier that maybe it's something weirder maybe there was like a plot that he just ditched and he was like no it's not gonna work out we don't have time for this because i mean he might have gotten to the third book which has a lot going on so far yeah i mean now we're gonna go into again deeper discussions and talk about things that'll go into the next book i want to stay in this one you can i want to talk about some of those quotes from tony just now of

like all these weird shit that's happening in the north so for example of course the Nalkanons yeah that whole entire passage I reread and I'm like oh fuck it's all about like the specters and some of them some of them yeah not all of them and the other stuff is like the Tartar stuff obviously we go into in this book a little bit and then we learn more with grumman i guess i would say in the next book have we actually gotten anything that hits that no we don't really talk about him that much in this book yeah they talk about him way more in the next book yeah and then the half-killed warriors the half-killed warriors and also the nulcanans like they basically they're basically telling you more or

less what is happening to the children and and no one's been able to piece it together because it's just so horrible but it's this idea of like a the nalkanians same size as a child they have no heads and they feel their way about at night and like that's that's the children going around as ghosts and the it's not that they have no heads it's that their soul's been cut off from them and yeah the half-killed warriors as you were saying god yeah there's so much right here in this one tiny ass chapter that i was just like i have nothing to say about this because it only has to deal with the future yeah i forgot i forgot about the wind suckers and it's interesting because the specters seem to mostly be in sitagaze but there is of course that thinning so maybe you know maybe there are some in this world too but a lot less of

them for reasons that we'll go into later but it's absolutely them it's so interesting that these are all legends that the egyptians know and they're real they're real and like it's good that they know because it means that they can like look out for them well and that's what makes me say like pullman might be anti-religious uh as far as like anti-religion and like organized religion and systemic religion but he's obviously not anti-spirituality which like a lot of spirituality is the very core of a lot of people's religion having that blind faith in something even if you might not have experienced it and then it turns out that these legends are true it's just interesting that pullman kind of explores that complexity in those levels right

that it's not always black and white it's not always like fuck Catholicism it's more like fuck the people that benefit from Catholicism and from other people suffering yeah yeah and I think it's that we're gonna get into it more in later parts of the story but you can see also his views it's he's i think very much against not just organized religion it's he's against the blindness of faith right he's against people yes absolutely is closing themselves off to experiences it's part of you can see it a little when lyra is like oh they're not just scholars they're scholars and explorers and granted i obviously he thinks scholars are probably good to some extent he's a fucking scholar himself a professor right but it's this idea of going out

there and experiencing life and he seems to think that religion keeps people from doing that yeah absolutely uh hey i know what ambaric is now yeah i forgot to touch on this last time i forgot to actually follow up on that and pat spinagle called us out on that thank you pat um tell us about ambaric chloe so in subtle knife will and lyra come to like get an understanding and even ground even though they're from different worlds they talk about light and in our world the normal world fossilized resin is amber but in lyra's world it's electrum so but that's like the coolest part is it means electric here in our world and that's how they understand like hey we're not so different and we can communicate

our worlds aren't that different we both have this just different words yeah and it's fun to see how the different worlds have developed in each of their ways and we'll obviously explore this more deeply in as as the story progresses again coming back to when Lyra and Will meet. Chloe pointed this out as hilarious, but it stood out to me now on this reread when Lyra is describing her father to the top hat guy. And she's just like, he's a murderer. And this is how the alethiometer describes Will to Lyra. And she's like, what can you tell me about this boy? It's like, he's a murderer.

It was my favorite part of the whole entire fucking intro and she just like is cool with it she's like okay because she knows other murderers i know she's like this makes me like him even more i'm like okay great lyra yeah but the first murderer that this describes is totally someone else that we're gonna learn about by the end of the book the first foreshadowing of this he's a murderer to the top hat guy though comes with asriel yeah and it's interesting right that she still thinks that will is good being described as a murderer because she does still seem to hold asriel in some sort of high regard even after he inflicts these horrors on roger right there's still some sort of admiration she

has for him clearly she's very disillusioned now about as real as her father she doesn't trust either him or coulter in many ways but you know she's like yeah will's a murderer i'm very excited for the show and there's a lot of cool casting i love who they cast as will and they also cast will's cat his uh cast his cat that's what i sent you oh my god oh that's who it was that's great yeah so i'm excited to see that part yeah i love who they cast as will for many reasons you know like it just seems right yeah and considering how multicultural london is like london is 41 percent like people of color right or like immigrants or something like that i was looking at this statistic recently and i think that just makes perfect sense for will in representing like our world i was recently in

london and i was like oh it's it felt like new york in many ways because it was just so it was just so multicultural. I was afraid that I was going to stand out because of my American accent. But no, there were like so many different accents, so many languages being spoken around me. I was like, no, I kind of blend in. And I was like, oh, I'm like Will, I blend in. And you can see why he might want to, especially with, you know, obviously this story took place during a different time. But as they move things forward, like you can, I think that you can kind of see how being like a kid who's like, doesn't look white, who like looks, you know, half like, maybe like Middle Easterner or.

Yeah, or rough around the edges too i mean will's not supposed to be like some clean little blonde boy you know what i mean like he's supposed to be kind of a counterpart to lyra someone that can get rough and tumble somebody that is a protector but also a fighter i mean his very first plot point is you know that he's freaking out because he just murdered someone but when people look at him he's this you know he's kind of in in his teens and he's getting a little rougher and bigger for his age and rowdy eventually i mean in the time of brexit and like people being xenophobic towards people who might be immigrants or or whatever like i can see why will would be the kind of kid who feels like i need to duck my head down. I need to not stand out. I need to blend in.

Especially with the situation with his mother. And then people were talking about Lee Scoresby making perfect sense as Lin-Manuel Miranda. I'm so excited to have Lin-Manuel as Lee Scoresby. I think it's going to be an interesting interpretation and I'm just like

really open ears to look at it and see it and hear it and whatever open eyes i guess too yeah i'm excited for it and again like similar things level just like i mean this makes perfect sense a lot of people who are texan are fucking like latino like they literally were the ones who lived in that land first i'm just saying like people that are saying well this character should be white because they're from this place why who the fuck cares make whatever random character whatever like you want them to be like some sort of like want them to be from thailand instead sure it's like the whole wheel

of time thing people are so stupid they're like that character has to be red haired though and this guy is not red haired they make hair dye yeah no one in this book is specifically like by color they don't say like will is this or lyra's this you know yeah and i mean they changed nicole kidman's hair like them yes heard a blonde and like pullman was like actually that was right and now to this deeper discussion chloe i don't look, take off your headphones. So I wanted to talk about two more things that are mentioned in this chapter. One is coming back to that Chthonic railway. There was a line that I thought really stood out to me of, she was wary of being trapped underground. Again, Chthonic means the underworld, and it's interesting to see how much Pullman is pointing

to this part of Lyra's storyline in the first book. Last episode, we talked about Lyra going down into the crypts with Roger and Lyra searching for him in the underworld. But here, Lyra has actually never been on that catholic railway and she's never been to that underworld. So that line of being trapped is really interesting. It's a present risk for Lyra when she enters the underworld later and becomes cut off from the above world. And she, of course, has never been to the Land of the Dead before, and no living person has ever emerged from it. So that specific naming of Chthonic Railway and Lyra not going into it yet is, I think, something that we should see as kind of like foreshadowing. And then lastly, I want to come back to this idea of the female scholars and this idea of Lyra's maturity, because there's such an interesting disdain from Lyra's side, again, of those female scholars. She sees them as stuffy

and unglamorous and wants nothing to do with them. And I think it points to that childishness on her part. We see that she isn't really interested in learning or knowledge at this point in her life. She holds the scholars of Jordan in high regard because she thinks they are the best because of their reputation, but she doesn't actually know if they're more learned or not because she hasn't been sitting in classes and doesn't know

about the fucking solar system. But just like this is what draws her to Mrs. Coulter, she's enamored by Mrs. Coulter's appearance and that its own kind of glamour as opposed to reputation. So when we eventually come to the end of these books, Lyra's reaction to Dame Hannah shows us how much Lyra has grown. Because Dame Hannah and her line of work are now suddenly interesting to Lyra, who's going to actually have to study to understand the alethiometer again. to understand the alethiometer again.

And she serves as this great counterpart to Mrs. Coulter with Dame Hannah's marmoset daemon, which is also a monkey, showing that intelligence and that she is also capable in the way that Mrs. Coulter is, but obviously more benevolent. And she apparently appears more in La Belle Sauvage, which is the first book of the new trilogy, The Book of Dust, which is a prequel series to His Dark Materials. I actually still have yet

to read it, so I'll report back on that as we get there. And I'd also be remiss to talk about Lyra's ending without touching on the Master. We talked a little bit about him before and how he loves Lyra, and Lyra actually discusses in this chapter the cost of schooling a little bit. And so it makes it kind of touching to see how the master does care so deeply for Lyra in these chapters, especially with that later context, because then he tells Lyra something kind of like a lie to protect her, telling her, oh, your parents left you money to continue your schooling. But really, it's just that the master cares for her. And so, you know, he smiles and tried to kill Asriel for Lyra's sake. cures for her. And so, you know, he smiles and tried to kill Asriel for Lyra's sake. And he ends up being the one later on who pays for Lyra's own education from his own funds. So feels. Chloe's back. I'm allowed to be back now. Thank you. Yeah. So that's that. I don't know what you

said, but I hope it was good. You will react to it after you finish reading the books. I hope so. All right. All right. Well, you guys, thank you so much for joining us. Like we said at the top, we are going to have episodes a little more often. We'll let you know when said episodes will be, when they happen, probably. We're not sure the next one's exact release date will keep you on your toes, but going forward, we will have an altered release schedule to present to you guys, so stay tuned.

Thank you very much, everyone, and this is fun. Stay tuned for whenever things happen. If you want to keep up with those releases, be sure to subscribe to us on social media. You can find us at Girls Gone Canon on Twitter, or, I mean, maybe you like this episode. Maybe you have other things to say in reaction. Feel free to shoot us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Yes. And if you want to keep up on our episodes dropping,

especially when this episode drops, subscribe to us on the various networks that you can listen to podcasts, such as Apple, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, Acast, and Podbean. Yeah, where we're hosted. Maybe that other one that allegedly exists. I'm never going to let it go. We're never going to bother to figure out what it is, everyone. And, of course, we have a new Patreon episode out for this month. It is part of our

A Song of Ice and Fire series, as usual. It focuses on mentorship in A Song of Ice and Fire, so if you are a $5 and up patron, you can find that. And also, for patrons $5 and up and also different ways that this was released for different tiers,

we have a His Dark Materials themed illustration, if you want to check that out. Yes. Check it out, and there is even a speed painting of it. It is awesome. It's a sped up video. So check it out on there. As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe.

And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. Bye, guys.