Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Episode 25 — The Amber Spyglass Chapters 29–31

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

In which they finally ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD Also Asriel and Marisa go on a long trip   CHAPTER 29 — BATTLE ON THE PLAIN CHAPTER 30 — CLOUDED MOUNTAIN CHAPTER 31 — AUTHORITY'S END   Links Mentioned: CreativeMornings Talk: Jason Reynolds — "Finding Humility Through Chaos": https://youtu.be/Wp-yjX16Oek --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro: Waltz Of The Skeleton Keys by WombatNoisesAudio | https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon, covering His Dark Materials. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Reads His Dark Materials. Episode 25, The Amber Spyglass, chapters 29 through 31. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe oh it is it's getting grim out here getting glib we are on 29 to 31 battle on the plain clouded mountain and authorities end of the amber spyglass a lot happens today if you have not read these three chapters i think it's time to sign off i think we're at the point where

if you have not read chapters 29 through 31 get out of here take a trip have a nice fall go you know yeah i mean it's springtime but it's not like we're maybe take a pal with you you know take a pal with you if you go on a nice trip yeah anytime soon down down under oh my gosh down under yes head to australia go there that's where coulter went finding nemo yeah she went to go find someday a woman appears p sherman oh my god maybe we should do we should just do the finding nemo no i'm joking but the reason why chloe says if you have not read up to these chapters is because we are going to of course cover spoilers going up to chapters 29 through 31 but only up until that point though again we are so close to the end of this book

and this trilogy however again we are going to leave spoilers from after chapter 31 and from the Books of Dust novellas for the most part for our dust-scussion, which happens after we cover these chapters. Yes, I love our dust-scussion. I like getting dusty. Hey, there are two characters in these chapters here that are actually getting so dusty. Indeed. Three, even. Everyone. And some say three's a crowd, but three love to tango in these

three chapters when you get to the discussion we will talk about the end of the amber spyglass maybe maybe labelle sauvage maybe the secret commonwealth of course the novellas right the outer novellas which we have covered most of them up to date at our patreon patreon.com slash girls gone canon if you are a patron in the stranger tier and above you get bonus episodes but we did actually recently release one thanks to patrons for the public which was lee scoresby's once upon a time in the north we did we did and we are going to see lise gorsby and yorick briefly reunite this episode which uh amazing my heart spoilers i assume people have read they're not reading along as we speak this is not an audiobook i gotta catch up oh my god what if they say it before i'm there but

there is allegedly another novella coming out soon in may and so we are going to once again release is eventually a hisark materials patreon episode likely covering that in may yeah uh it sounds really cool right it's like the uh what the imaginarium something something i'm a really bad fan right now. I've got a lot going on. We have a lot happening. Yeah, you know, we covered recently some other ones like The Collectors, which The Collectors is coming out later this year, I believe kind of alongside the show as a new novella, a new print.

But he is putting out this new one, and I'm such a bad fan right now. I don't even remember the name. I know I've retweeted it recently. Something about Imaginarium, something, something, something. It's got some snippets. It's like lantern slides. You get some info on dust, some stuff about Serafina, actually, a little bit from her POV, it sounds like, or something.

I got to look it up. If you got the link, drop it. Maybe I won't look it up by our next episode at the end of the month because it's april and we have two episodes this month while you have to wait till may for a patreon novella uh you get two hdms in april too yes and part of that is of course because um again everyone thank you so much for your graciousness as we had to shuffle episodes around this past march this this march really kicked my ass i was like caesar you know getting stabbed over and over again yeah march sucked it was really hard for me but there are things to look forward to coming this april for example we are going to be continuing our his dark materials rewatch i am having such a blast every week.

Our friend Pete has been hosting a rewatch at our Discord. Patrons in the Thunder tier and above have access to a private Discord server where we sometimes host events like this or our monthly brunch slash happy hour, which we haven't yet decided on April's date, but stay tuned for that on Patreon. This has been so fun pete is doing a weekly rewatch he also recently told us he was like this is kind of hard you guys do this all the time and i'm like oh pete you're so sweet he's he made like slideshows yeah with a breakdown snippets of the scenes photos audio he has audio in PowerPoints. This guy's got it going on. But Pete is not only so talented at hosting this rewatch, which we just finished up series one weekly.

He is so generous and gracious that he has spread this rewatch to his other fellow friends that attended series one of his rewatch. And now they get to do all, I mean, have so much fun too with Pete. So I'm going to put the schedule up on patreon we'll put a post out telling you when where how to get on with discord and if you're in that thunder tier and above you know how to get hooked up and come hang out with all of us weekly for a couple hour discussion on the episode of the week we are taking a little break until april 16th episode one of series two, City of

Magpies is going to be hosted by our friend Cassidy, who was on a couple months ago for Amber Spyglass. You may remember him. April 30th, Pete takes back the throne. We take another little week off for Ice and Firecon there. Pete is going to do The Cave. May 7th, series two, episode three, we're going to do Theft theft and our friend janice is gonna host that one she's quite a poet so i definitely try to come to that one that one sounds fun and of course may 14th tower of angels our friend jimmy is gonna be hosting and we will definitely let you know the other three hosts in our next episode at the end of the month we'll keep you updated so you can get ready for those ones at discord too yeah and again like pete has done such a great job with this and i think it's great to see other people stepping up to do it and

it's been really inspiring for us in terms of like i mean we might follow this sort of format as you said again this is not a binding contract this might kind of be what we do for when house of the dragon comes out yeah it could be fun to do some little meetups based on that and have everyone volunteer and host uh the episode they want to chat about i'd be excited for that and i'd even do one I'd even come back and put a little work in on that garden you know what I'm saying maybe but I also think to that manner it's cool to see the style come out right like every single person I know

that I just said hosting an episode is gonna have a different style of how they want to have a discussion about media which I think that's cool I think it's just cool I'm excited to see how everyone does it and approaches it and it's just very it's just very cool so thank you everyone for being involved in all of that and most of them are grown yes so that was

probably an astute thing to say they are've all got settled demons, you know? Oh my god. Oh my god, that's the worst part about this ending. We haven't chosen our demons yet. Oh my god. Well, they haven't settled yet. Right? Technically. When do our demons settle?

The last episode? A long time ago, probably, for me. I'm very old. Oh my god. So what's kind of actually fun you were saying that we restart this april 16th if i'm not mistaken that's easter weekend so this feels very pointed oh my god we rise again we rise again with series two i love that this is leading up to like it'll be summer we'll finish it up you know it'll be june everyone could have kind of a summer vacay and come back in the autumn for hdm series three let's cry and get for the fall the fall of

man the fall of girl yeah girls pumpkin spice i got pumpkin dust wait that just sounds like drugs oh i was thinking it sounded like something you put on your uh pumpkin spice latte pumpkin dust pumpkin spice must flow you should do that you should make that drink we should work on that we should make that recipe it sounds delicious i would drink it does well let's get into chapter 29 we've come this far we can't turn back now let's talk about battle on the plane each man is in his specter's power until the arrival of that hour when his humanity awake william blake so this is obviously not our first william blake heading for one of the chapters and this one though does come does come from William Blake's And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time,

which is more commonly known. It was turned into this hymn called Jerusalem. And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time is this larger epic poem fanfic that Blake wrote about

John Milton, which is called milton a poem in two books people love writing you know erotic friend fiction about each other yeah us gassing each other up that's all it is i mean that's what we do every week why is that so wrong eliana i guess you up every week our podcast is erotic friend oh my. Oh my gosh. I didn't know this. I did not know that he wrote this, though. Didn't he wrote an erotic friend fiction? I don't even, I don't think they coincided in timing. He and Milton.

Oh, they coincided. Oh my gosh. Their atoms met one another later on. But anyways, it does really tie together, right? A lot with this story's inspirations. I mean, I kind of wonder if initially, way back then, Pullman got maybe the name for specters from this, right? Not only that, as well as this idea of coming of age to be able to see the specters. You can see that in these lines here.

And I mean, Lyra and Will begin to start seeing specters this chapter. I also really love this line of of you know each man is in his specter's power and i think that speaks to a little of that succumbing to when the specters devour the demons but there's i think another way of reading that line in the context of this chapter relating to it where a man can be as powerful as a specter when we see the ghosts fighting against them which is so great to look at like last couple chapters when you know you could really see the yearning that lee and joppery can't be of a real help they're just wisps of air right vapors so to speak they're just the vapors in the air and and

almost feels powerless right so for them to actually take back that power here and be able to fight like that that's really nice yeah because they want to help as we see all they want to do is be able to fix it for their kids yeah they want to protect their kids you know lee and his adopted daughter there's one moment i forgot to call it out here where he calls lyra towards the end like my like something my dear child i'm like he calls her my child that's his daughter oh the sacrifices parents make in these few chapters yeah and then of course choppery but yeah yeah he's there too yeah his father-in-law yorick is here too lyra and will wake up from like a very beautiful sleep at the start of this chapter, and then they're like, oh no, wait, everything's still horrible. We have to snap back to reality.

Oh, there goes Rabbit. Just kidding. It's their demons, though. There goes their demons. And they do need to seek their demons. Lyra reads the alethiometer, which I love this. It once was very easy, and she used to feel confident reading it, but now it's starting to feel

harder laborious even i was so stressed when i first read those lines like back then i was a magical girl that's that's bullshit i'm stressed what does it mean it's just like when usagi would like try to transform and not be able to yeah that was stressful that's the same stress that i felt as a kid i was like what do you mean it's not yeah and they do that at the beginning like every new season right before she gets her new power up and yeah you have to get through the big well i guess that's literally the theme here at hand right like lyra's got a power up right now. She's gotta go get a life, aka pan. Yeah, she does. And they've come to the right

place in this tunnel that they're in, right? They can cut out finally. It's just Will has to make the cut. Their ghost buddies, Lee and Will's dad, are still with them, and Lee says that it's not gonna be long now when Lyra sees Yorick tell him And when the battle's over there

will be all the time in the world to drift along the wind find the atoms that used to be hester and my mother in the sage lands and my sweethearts all my sweethearts lyra child you rest when this is done you hear life is, and death is over. That was still Midwest, but you know, it's better than nothing. I'm sorry, everyone. It was much, much smoother than the first four tries. I mean, I think that- Okay, I should put all-

Everyone, if you want to hear the first four tries, I will let you all hear that. You can find it on our bloopers channel, right? Post our bloopers channel where i post our bloopers yep get on that discord y'all y'all uh it's really funny because the first thing in like my first run through of the chapters i had for a note was actually this and the first thing i said was in my note that i took in my kindle okay i'm fucking sobbing now she's crying of laughter but yeah now i'm laughing that is literally what i was gonna say i'm like now i'm fucking sobbing for another reason so thanks for that eliana uh that did make it a lot better because it sucks this sucks this is like the saddest shit in this book uh can we just have you guys read this book it's

so fucking sad okay so this and later when he finally like when they cut out and they cut out to somewhere that looks like a prairie so he could be home and free that is just god bless that chapter my god uh the sage lands? That's conservation lands in Washington. Those are native wildlife areas, lands on the reservations of the Colville and Yakama Nations, the Cascade Mountains, the Okanagan Mountain, the Tunk Valley, Waterville Plateau, just beautiful. I think there's that great connection, right,

that we talked about during the subtle knife chapters with the lantern slide we learn a little bit more about lee's mother's ring that joppery uses lee's mother's ring to summon him right and he's like what the fuck how did you get this he saw a ring of silver and turquoise, a Navajo design. He saw it clearly and he recognized it as his own mother's. I think there's such a strong connection of those lands with his mom that we don't get the full story of. And also there's something really beautiful and magical, right, about that wildlife there. And about some of the history on that land that makes you think like, I don't know, his seraphina right his girlfriend one of his many sweethearts one of his many sweethearts just i was thinking that i was like he's gonna float around like atoms and make sure and check in on

her and make sure she's okay and make sure lyra's okay and float around in the air particles of the universe finally at place so beautiful we can finally be at rest when we die. Thanks, Lyra. Yeah, it makes me think of the witch's magic, though. You know, like it's magic in a different form. This book has so much magic in it, even if it's like, in a way, dispelling mythical magics and corruption in them. But there is so much magic in it and science and horror. I do love that lantern slide. John Perry and the Turquoise Ring. How did he get hold of it?

You could tell a story about the ring and everything that happened to it since it left Lee Scoresby's mother's finger. And you could tell a story about Lee himself and recount his entire history from boyhood to the moment he sat beside the little hut on the flooded banks of the Yenisei and saw the shaman's fist open to disclose the well-loved thing that he'd turned and turned round and round his mother's fingers so long ago the storylines diverge and move a very long way apart and come together right now and something happens when they touch that something would lead Lee to his death but what happened to the ring it must be around somewhere this never comes back maybe books of dust maybe a discussion we don't know but it doesn't come back right so where's the ring it might come back it might not i feel like philip pullman really loves you know

his little like mysteries or like just leaving things out there. And I like that. I like that ambiguity, but as you said, it's so sad, but I'm happy for Lee and I'm happy at this idea that his atoms are going to spread apart and he's going to be with all of the people he loves eventually, including his mother and all of his sweethearts and Hester and everyone else and maybe one day

York too. It's actually a little bit like when York devours Lee. Anyway. Except technically York was like not freeing Lee, you know, his body in a nice way. He was technically you know, freeing his spirit to hell. So maybe York's a bad

boyfriend. Oh my god, no. No, why would you say that? I'm so sorry. They're atoms mingled together in a different way it's in like a physical digestive way that's like literally we have literally had this discussion anyways put your friend fiction away right now my this is not this is like i don't want to hear about their atoms what is this like god called vor or something i don't know anyways lyra wants to hug him wants to hug lee but she literally cannot so she gazes at him with passion and

brilliance in her eyes and inspires him with that giving him courage the gallop espions ride on lyra and bill's shoulders and their lives are almost over it's cold in their heart they're weak and stiff this is so sad also they would return to the world to the deadest ghosts but they both silently vowed to each other that they would stay with the children as long as they can and up and up they climb the harpy leading them her wings beginning to drag running water is echoing in the cave and finally they reach the rock that they must cut through and lyra then turns to the harpy she tells the harpy that to thank her she would like to give the harpy a name instead of just living around like no name just as king yorick had given her a name she's like i'm your dad now too just like yorick

was to her and lyra names her gracious wings it's not like the best name but it is all right and gracious wings tells her that she will see her again someday lyra says that when she does she knows that she will see gracious wings and so she will not be afraid of dying goodbye gracious wings till i die she embraced the harpy hugging her tightly, kissing her on both cheeks. I love that so much, actually. I do want to say, look, Aliana, how many things have you been good at naming in your life? It's just like not as good as Silver Tongue.

All right. Silver Tongue was like an A, like S tier name. I mean, Gracious Wings is like a B. You're like that, though. Yeah. And Lyra's like, you know, like two years old. Okay. She's got a lot on her mind right now she has she's exhausted you know she's not sharp on her feet right now as

she usually is probably hungry a snack yeah a break yeah exactly uh i can't think what i haven't eaten that that's apparent i had to eat before this because i was like there's no fucking way she needs a Klondike bar I need to take five girl uh I love though that Lyra names her and as Lyra who was so lost right like who just felt like an absolute horror about having to be a Belacqua after what Asriel did to Roger right in that shame and then Coulter having that be the other half of her that like fucking shame that stark targaryen energy emanating through her like what do i do no i'm just kidding that's the wrong series uh i think there's just so much in the power of a name right meaning that a name holds and that no name the harpy had been awful and horrible up till now just because like

she never knew she was allowed she she had never been granted to be allowed not to be right she had never been able to and now having that name it's very actually it does have some some sort of biblicalness to it right because you have like god's gracious wings on his wings on jesus's gracious wings and the harpies were kind of an exploitative part of the authorities control right like they were basically fucking misdirected and just were told like yeah just torture everyone that's what you do that's all you're good for and they were just nagged to the underworld uh or they nagged everyone else a cycle of nagging yeah it's honestly that's literally what nagging is all about

now that gracious wings has this name they might actually be able to do something good right like that might empower them to do something good and people believing you can't do something because of your name you know like having no name uh we talk a lot about bastardry in a song of ice and fire right and what that kind of does to some of the characters that have lived in that shadow and like that's all the harpies lived with like being nothing coming from nothing and now she has something something more powerful than the authorities control right like she has a chance free will free him yeah absolutely everything that you said right and what you're saying of like having a name and the powers of that and being able to sort

of just like redefine like who she is right before she was kind of nothing right that's how she was thought of no name now she gets to be gracious wings and uh not only is it like as you're saying she was tasked to this by the authority they were kind of like you know horrible creatures to everyone else they were harpies right now it gives a sort of angelic ness like angels of death but in a positive way to them so and i think there's something really great in that contrast to metatron who's an actual angel that we see is like horrifyingly horrible in the last chapter in this and also you have marisa doing similar in that like not in giving herself a new name necessarily but in her betrayal of metatron right and her slow seduction and

betrayal of him she's able to kind of reclaim the parts of her as he said you know he'll say as we get to it you are a cesspit of moral filth uh and hearing the words and her knowing like inside her heart like i'm awful i'm terrible but you know what he has no clue who i really am i was able to fool him about what's in my heart uh that gives people the power to reclaim like a part of themselves they had lost or that have been taken from them along the way so it's great to see that at the front with the harpy and at the end with marisa and asriel kind of realizing they have a chance to do something good and to be something yeah and it's interesting that you liken that to metatron right he had a name before as a man and as a man had not as much power as enoch but then

metatron that's something different being called metatron, that's something different, being called Metatron versus... That's a good name there, eh? It still sounds like a robot to me, but you know what? It's a metal band to me. Is it? Metatron, yo, I'm gonna see them Saturday. Just like Isaheater. Oh, we're gonna rage. Isahetra.

That's like, I don't know. I kind of liked their first album. Well. Chevalier is there, right? They die in, but they're still there. They're hanging in there. Chevalier asks if they've reached Asriel's Republic, and Lyra's like, well, we're close. Chevalier says there is a fortress at the mountaintop that Asriel is defending from an unknown enemy.

Lyra and Will must find their demons and the Galavespians will help them to do so. He kind of also implies he's like, whether it's me or someone else, our people will get you there. Because I'm dying. It's fun. It's fun for him. I mean, it's fine. He's just going to to what start back where he was like a few hours ago when he dies right like he was just there like 24 hours ago 48 hours ago Hades is the worst game

he's just gonna do it all over again it's gonna be sick me for six months this year I bet he's like I'm really glad I went on that journey I'm really about to benefit from that very soon he's like well time to start level grinding yeah right so i hope there's a skill tree when i get there oh my god they keep emphasizing like this mountaintop that azrael's fortress is on and i

feel like in general fortresses come up a lot in the bible but the mountaintop for some reason kind of struck me um just because there's like i think a famous sermon from jesus right known as like the sermon on the mount on the mountaintop a lot of the important things happen on mountaintops like moses getting the ten commandments and stuff in the bible but anyway jesus gives the sermon on the mount like it's it's really famous he gives a lot of teachings including like how to do the our father and like the whole thing of blessed are the meek and blessed are the poor who shall inherit the kingdom of heaven and we're about to tear down the kingdom of heaven you know it's interesting you say that because then you get that idea of like i mean very much so your mount olympus is versus the earth right yeah uh and hades being beneath all that as we talk about some of our mythology

and that's so interesting because like i just get that very visceral vision of someone going to the highest mountaintop they can find in earth and talking to the gods and so now i'm thinking we just did that righteous gemstones episode with our Dire Wolf City girls, and that was a good time. We'll have to relink it. I know we linked it for our last Sam episode. Church changes a lot these days. The words change.

Eliana and I were really offended that, you know, when we didn't go to church for so many years and now they want to change the script on us? Yeah. After learning it for 20-something years? Yeah. 21 years because i'm 22 yeah

i do look like an idiot i do i'm like i know about god but is that how they learned did someone climb all the way to the highest mountaintop and get their ear real up there and be like authority please is the authority here we need to change some words we got some betrayers in our midst yep yep yep I don't know it's an interesting communication telephone game of telephone well

as opposed to telephones Will is taking out a knife and saying he's ready he gazes into his ghost daddy's eyes, knowing that they don't have much longer. And Will thinks he would have loved to reunite with also his father here and

his, along with his dad, and then begins to get wrapped up in his thoughts and Lyra stops him because she could tell his emotions were beginning to affect the knife. And he lets go of the knife which ends up suspended, hanging stuck in the air in front of them and water tells him to look at her in the ghost light he saw her bright hair her firm set mouth her candid eyes he felt the warmth of her breath he caught the friendly scent of her flesh the knife came

loose i'll try again he said i i do like this it's subtle but kind of shows us uh not just a subtle knife oh my god but lyra has will you know focus on her this time and is like look at me instead of like him thinking of his mother showing i think starting the transference of emotions of like where, where love lies, you know? His heart lies in his character. Yeah, a little bit of that sexy mommy transference. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I mean, a little bit.

The young love is blossoming here. Did you call her Eve, mother of us all? You know? Yeah, I mean, subtle, young, blossomingoming um you know a little sexy oh my god you can just tell like she's like will don't break your knife buddy yeah i mean it would actually be really bad if he did at this moment yeah no really they really need for once we really really really need you not to yeah will focuses for a moment and he lets his mind flow within the knife finding the scene making the cut at first the first thing they hear

is noise right they don't even see anything but then the light strikes next it's dazzling and light but the pounding and explosions and gunfire and shouts go over all of it it's far louder the ghosts are the first to recover their senses both of them are soldiers and experienced in battle and a little disconnected right and lyra and will watch in fear and amazement as rockets blast in the air with rock and metal showering them all angels witches fighting swooping galivespians on dragonflies attacking machines we got action action people there's a lot of i mean all these three chapters are just like action and pow it is it is action and like heartbreak and in a bit like we're gonna see like all the forces of the gallivespians emerge and i just love that moment i just want to say like i love that moment

everyone on the dragonflies it seems seems super cool, very dramatic, and I love it. Lee is ready to go, but John tells him to wait to cut another window to see what's happening. They watch the attacking force withdraw through the second window, and a squadron of enemy machines fly off to the west and retreat. The kingdom's forces on the ground pull back as well but there seems to be no reason for it suddenly will notices movement among the ghosts the reason for the retreat has appeared specters will and lyra are able to almost see them maybe for the first time shouting out and uh confusing the soldiers through the window they watch a soldier from lyra's world then get attacked

and john perry turns to them telling them to let him and the rest of the ghosts out because they can also see the specters and they can fight them you know when it comes to almost being able to see the specters for lyra and will what does it mean ah i love this with nothing to fear the ghosts battle the specters an invisible wrestling match for the kids can't quite see fully. Will gets himself to the middle of all of it. He's selling popcorn. No, I'm just kidding. His knife is in hand and he's trying to keep the specters away from them.

Lyra is feeling a little helpless, right? A little downtrodden. She doesn't really have anything to fight with, but she stays close to him with Salmakia on her shoulders. First of all, again i i don't know whoever's gonna i'm so glad bad wolf and sony just hooked up a little bit because like we're on the way out for hdm so sony can't fuck it up too much with any big wig decisions i mean so like we just got our bag and we're getting out girls we're getting out we got our bag we're getting out we are gonna get this we are gonna get the galavespian army eliana i hope so on those dragonflies we are gonna see the ghosts fighting and shit it is gonna be wild um this is

just gonna be a wild badass scene there's so much in the end of this book that i just keep thinking they're gonna adapt and i'm like wow we're gonna get that i deserve that i do deserve that i've waited a long ass time and i like almost like never got this you know i had a really hard eight seasons of another show i deserve a really really good adaptation of something thank you thank you they even have like a blueprint right here you know tells them how it's supposed to go uh well it is finished that's true yep even the sequels are almost finished i when i first read it i remember being like yo what the ghosts are fighting because i thought they were going to cut open and it was over right like i thought they were going to try to help and be like no we're fading we're

melting uh but it makes so much sense that because of like and this is something that we obviously talk about like spatial dimensionally speaking spatial dimensionally speaking you know quantum physically speaking uh you know in science terms this is science there's a lot of other people and like other people from other worlds and mulefa even they all ended up in one place but they all came from a lot of places which i guess that's a metaphor probably too for something uh but they are the only beings they finally meet there so i don't know now they're dead of course they're the only beings they finally meet there so i don't know now their dad of course are the only ones that can fight the other ghosty things right like men have not been able to fight them yeah man has suffered at the hands of specters even though man created them only when a man has

lost all can they fight it and you know they're all on the same plane here these ghosties and it's interesting because when you think of like spatial dimensions and how many different universes we've seen so far and you know there's millions out there i'm sure in this in this world of pullman's uh it's a spectrum right oh the latin word spectrum a spectrum specters yeah i mean that's where specter comes from so like life is a spectrum of just like being alive or not being alive and where you are on that spectrum absolutely absolutely and the shimmers of light kind of in the air interesting interesting but also like yeah i mean it makes you know, it absolutely makes sense for the ghost to be able to fight specters.

I mean, after all, sometimes specter is a synonym for ghost at times. And I don't know if they're supposed to be maybe like the Holy Ghost when it comes to the Trinity or no, but like they're the spirit part of the human, right? Their souls are already free floating around somewhere in the other, so they don't have to worry about them being consumed. It's above the clouds for Lee, which we'll find out at the end of the last chapter of this episode. But I'm also, like, now, like, I guess the angels are kind of similar,

but maybe the angels are more like demons and dust, so that's why it was harder for them. But the angels said that they could take care of this, but I don't know, whatever. But yes, it's brilliantly, it's great that the ghosts could do it. Exciting times, exciting times. And like, they can join the battle and fight alongside their children. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Hey, that's something. And it's, you know, the bummer about the specters is like, even if the specters aren't attacking you, we realize. They're attacking someone. They could be attacking something else, like your demon. Yep. And you could still get horrible nausea, which is what Lyra and Will get. First, they're looking out at the fortress, at the hills.

They're made of black basalt, and they're watching people repair battlements, and then suddenly comes the specter, Nausea, and she knew what it was at once, though she had never felt it before, and it told her two things. First, she must have grown up enough now to become vulnerable to the specters.

Whoa! What does it mean? And secondly, Pan must be somewhere close by. Whoa. Where is he? Close. He's close by. And I think it's also interesting because we've only ever

witnessed the effect of Spectres affecting other people, but this is, I think, one of the first times we're getting a first-hand account of it, right? Because every time anyone else comes up against a Spect specter they they lose so what are they going to be able to tell you about what it was like getting your soul eaten they can't all right so this is uh our first time getting a first-hand account of what it feels like to be touched by the specters and have them try to consume your soul good times also the nausea of it it's actually

it feels reminiscent to how it's described when an unwanted other person touches your demon that's very true that is yeah i think it's a great way to explain kind of what we've seen from other people that have had that happen right lyra obviously that's happened to in the series but i never really thought about like that's a great explanation to finally find out that's what it feels like yeah feels bad man feels bad man dot jpeg uh she cries out for will who suddenly also experiences the exact same feeling bending over and trying not to be sick and then she begins to cry out for pan the sky fills with storms on top of the gunshots also the sun is still shining so a lot of things are going on here it makes

everything very vivid especially the lightning will and lyra cling to each other through the cracks of thunder and look up seeing an insane sight witches you got rudiscotti reina meaty and a half a dozen other clans carrying torches of flaring pitch that they drop over the enemy. And some of the witches fly into the specters, but many of the specters had dodged to the earth and a flight of angels emerges and set up to meet the witches. And then their wings blaze and they scream as they tumble into the air. This is honestly, I i'm gonna be honest marvel needs to pay philip pullman because this is a the portal scene from endgame and be better it's just better i want to see this irl i want to see them all tumbling out from different universes to fight

i deserve this yeah i mean the angels can do that, I think. They can just, like, make the windows slow. Good for them. Yeah. And I never thought about it until now, but, like, the witches are just a great addition to this battle, specifically. So are the bears, because they're technically not human. But, um, you know, if they've especially if the witches have been able to retain and then pass on the knowledge

of, like, keep your demons far away from the battle, right? Because that makes them, therefore, very useful and strategic in a specter filled battlefield yeah it's it's not like it's good to have some defense there because that seems like a pretty killer that's a pretty killer enemy to just unleash, man. Yeah. Yikes. So all throughout this, Lyra and Will are being soaked to the skin. Lyra's shouting for Pan. The Galavespians are keeping lookout, giving them direction,

but they've been faltering, losing strength, and now Lyra's holding Salmakia in her hands to keep her upright. Tialis still scans around, calling out anything they need to be warned of, but his voice is losing power he's losing steam so sad they're seeking their fellow clan colors electric blue red yellow but the colors have faded and those bodies have already gone to the world of the dead then comes a movement in the sky a weird squiggly looking plane appears in the sky a craft of sorts an intention craft of sorts but the children like they see it out of the corner of their eye and they're like we don't fucking care we just don't have time uh because

suddenly they feel that nausea again and they know that their demons are once more in danger and they stumble forward through the war to go find them. And I love that. That transition is amazing. Right. That like Coulter's arrived. And I love the transition as we go into the chapter where we get Coulter arriving on her own terms. But here for the kids, especially for Lyra, who usually would be like, whoa, what a freaky ship. You know, she'd be into that this means nothing to them they have to do for themselves which neither of them

have gotten to do their entire life right but they have to find themselves to survive right now they have to save their demons and one another this weird squid aircraft is gonna have to wait sorry mom or you know that is like the metaphor right like i have to fix myself mommy you gotta go that's true i mean she spent so much time you know trying to help everyone else she seemed like all the people ever yeah well we were in the underworld before last chapter but now let's go all the way to the clouded mountain chapter 30 we open with far off the imperial heaven extended wide in circuit undetermined square around with opal towers and battlements adorned of living sapphire john milton what yeah john milton johnny m john milton jojo jojo what jojo milmil uh milton a poem in two

books jerusalem uh so i feel like i don't really need to explain where these lines come from i think it's pretty straightforward uh it's paradise lost everyone they're kind of important pretty significant you know uh to the creation of this story but there is a lot of a significance here um in these lines to what happens in this part of the epic poem and how it correlates to this part of the story this line comes towards the end of book two of paradise lost and around this time in the book slash not book epic poem i don't know if you're allowed to call them books i don't know satan is crossing a bridge above chaos capital c who together with night rules the void between heaven and hell which is also the abyss which uh

if you all remember was at one point called the womb of nature i think in when they quoted paradise lost earlier on and many milton scholars have said that chaos and night stand opposed to or are diametrically in a way opposed to god um almost as much as hell is but not as much as hell especially in terms of this nothingness being opposite of god's love and kindness but many many other scholars such as for example john rumerick and regina schwartz and others take on different views such as chaos actually being a part of god's creative power or chaos being inherent to order or chaos slash the abyss actually more of as a neutral entity in paradise lost uh respectively and um more views there are many more views i am not a milton

scholar these people like probably have doctorates in this and i've spent like years decades of their life like really thinking about this i have a podcast um paradise lost though chaos does ally with satan to help satan reach earth which is i think kind of interesting right right? Considering how Asriel, who's this, like, Milton satanic figure, ventures to the abyss here and uses it to fell a Metatron with Marisa. Perhaps Marisa

could also- I'm wondering, you know, there's a lot of different ways, of course, to think of Marisa. Very complex figure, but could be thought of as either the embodiment- is Marisa the embodiment of chaos or night, right? Like, this idea of the womb of as either the embodiment, is Marisa the embodiment of chaos or night, right? Like this idea of the womb of nature and perhaps her grave, which is, again, a line from Paradise Lost, right?

Or is she a figure that together with Asriel, right? We should be seeing them as one figure together, both encompass this idea of Satan, not just Asriel. I really love the idea of Marisa kind of embodying chaos too with that same line because especially for these a chaotic like that girl real chaotic but be of course we know many mythologies borrow from each other or even follow similar, you know, similar canon, so to say, and in Greek mythology chaos, you know, the goddess, she is the lower atmosphere that surrounds the earth, the invisible air and the gloom of fog and mist. Which, in these next two chapters, Marisa is very much the embodiment of Chaos. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. She's chilling in Chaos. Absolutely. And as a tangent, we think of chaos differently nowadays right as opposed to

as you pointed out right like the original meaning of the word in ancient greek and i just want to plug jason reynolds award-winning literally award-winning like fantastic child slash young adult novelist who like he did this fantastic talk about chaos as this gap right like that being what it was right this gap this abyss um i'm talking about how like adults can continue to relate and help young people and children and like being vulnerable right and anyways i'll i'll what's it called i'll link it it has nothing to do with this but one of the best talks i've ever seen that's great i gotta check that out i'll send it to you when i think of like fantastically done public speaking i think of this so i'll send it to you and like

metaphorically speaking that's interesting to think about too because a lot of the times when you hear chaos assigned to a person it's a negative connotation yeah you know so reclaiming chaos yeah my god yeah he does that and he starts out with like the story of like him and his mom watching some like trash like daytime talk show it's actually really funny it's very well done i love it so the clouded mountain mrs coulter and her demon are alone in the cockpit of the intention craft they are hurtling along in the bad weather avoiding the flying beings that are fighting in the air staying clear of the land below this is pretty chaotic here too she keeps her lights off to stay incognito control shift n uh for landing and begins to climb ignoring everything flying by her her demon leaping around to look left and right and call out to her constantly whoa whoa whoa

he's calling out to her constantly he fucking talks all the time uh yeah i i mean there have been like three to four mentions in this last book alone as we slow read it he's not mute he just doesn't have dialogue that we can hear which is also interesting when you think about like on a talking to yourself level like i don't always talk to myself but when i do you know it's just a light murmur a mumble you know so maybe it's just nothing that we've been able to hear he just you know i think he leaves his things mostly just to say to marisa she's a very private person and um i mean they're manning this ship together which is very cool or maybe it's like you know if you don't got nothing nice to say don't say nothing at all as thumper and bambi said and that monkey probably never has anything nice to say yeah i mean it's

marisa's demon i am also taken now just by like the end of the last chapter versus the beginning of this chapter, thinking that the kids were like, whatever, don't know, don't care, have other shit to do, like survive. And Marisa is same way. She's like, my destiny is this. I am not, I could not stop for anything. Can't stop for the shit in the air, the witches, the nothing. I really love just that very set in their kind of what they're setting out to do going on very nice very nice they are

very set they're they are intentional intention crafting intention crafting this story intentionally crafting right up my ass eliana uh so coulter's dazzled by the mountain right yes the clouded one that one it reminds her of another abominable heresy whose author languished in the dungeons of the ccd they believed and suggested there were seven or eight dimensions a set of the three familiar ones even constructing a model as to how they worked which had been burned and removed folds within folds corners and edges both containing and being contained its inside was everywhere and its outside was everywhere else that's the tardis first of all i've watched doctor that's the tardis i've watched one and a half episodes and now i know that meme of what what is it chloe bigger on the

inside no no the stretched out the hydrate moisturize me oh the moisturize me yes yes yes good job thank you i'm hit one and a half episode wow wow she is that girl got out there she went canon so besides the tardis it's also something from algebraic geometry. It's a Calabi-Yau manifold, also known as Calabi-Yau space. It's a particular type of manifold that has properties like reachy flatness, yielding applications in theoretical physics, particularly applicable in super string theory, Eliana. Super string theory eliana super string theory uh the extra dimensions of space-time are conjectured to take the form of a six-dimensional kalabi yao manifold which

lead to the idea of mirror symmetry basically they're shapes that satisfy a requirement of space for six unseen dimensions of string theory so some of them are smaller than what we can currently see and they haven't been detected and a big popular alternative to this to large extra dimensions something that occurs in something called a brain world model is that the kalabi yao is large but we are confined to a small subset on it which basically intersects something called a d brain yada yada yada a bunch of shit i don't currently really understand because i have not studied decades of algebraic geometry is not for chloe uh but basically higher dimensions are being explored with additional kind of ramifications for general

relativity and so there were a couple chapters that it made me think of just even that there are like six huge folds in this theory made me think of Lyra reading the alethiometer. Without having to think about it, she found her fingers moving the hands to point to the helmet, the griffin, the crucible. It felt her mind settle into the right meanings, like a complicated diagram in three dimensions. Or going back to the Galabespians,

the lodestone resonator. When heians, the lodestone resonator. When he talks about the lodestone resonator, he talks about quantum entanglement, as we've highlighted, that two particles can exist that only have properties in common. So whatever happens to one happens to the other at the same moment, no matter how far apart they are. far apart they are. There's a way of taking a common lodestone and entangling its particles and then splitting it into two so both parts resonate together. And then there's a chapter, and this isn't yet a spoiler, but it is a line that we have not read yet this far, but Mary talks about kind of a Rorschach test, inkblot test. And in Mary's world, they had a picture that looked at first like random dots of color but that when you looked at it in a certain way seemed to advance into three dimensions and there

in front of the paper would be a tree or a face or something else surprisingly solid that wasn't there before. So there's something interesting about the idea of the three different dimensions and folding them together. How can we entangle? I mean, the whole first book is spent talking about separating. That's true. Trying to separate something that is one. So how do we separate that and rejoin it and have it be stronger than before? How do we join these worlds?

Oh, interesting. Yeah, the joining of worlds but also i mean like you said right like this is just physics that people like aren't able to necessarily comprehend right that's why i need to like all be folded can't be necessarily uh perceived and it's reminiscent of how we were told that bruta scottie was like, yeah, okay, okay, I see these angels. And then the text tells us, no, she doesn't really. She doesn't really. She's lying. They're towers.

They are towers of just like crazy folded things. Like this, what you're saying, right? And different aspects of dimensions. That's crazy. And it's the same thing as like the lacquered you know glass the amber spyglass and mary holding it up and being able to see the dust and not and of course it's will being able to cut open the world by its seam with that knife oh it's all of those things yeah those fabrics those folds all over he's able to slice through the folds well it reminds me actually of another character

that i'll talk about maybe in the discussion now there's a little la belle sauvage hanging around in this this end of this book now that i say it there's a little la belle sauvage action you guys you gotta read that one if you haven't hey we covered that yeah that one was that one's fine to read um so the clouded mountain feels similar right to to those diagrams and that heresy that mrs colder had seen uh like there's a force field manipulating space to fold into one another and stretch and layer into galleries terraces chambers and colonies actually reminds me of another young adult children's novel around this time a wrinkle in time it's like you have tesseracts but anyway it's also you know besides like on like that more sciencey level on an artistic level

right which is probably inspired by the science very reminiscent of the drawings of mc escher or prints of mc escher which speaks i think, really well to how the show interpreted this aspect of the story visually, and has woven it into the rest of the seasons, right? Especially by incorporating it into the opening sequence, and also, like, how they've portrayed Chittagatse. So, really, really great visual interpretation. Yeah, I was really thinking about M.C. Escher when i was reading everything about that super string theory i was like oh i get it visually i get it because of mc yeah he's probably like into that he was very into math you know math has a lot of math in it i mean yeah like math is the devil

uh i will tell you i hate math you know we're trying to do a daylight savings in the u.s apparently as a distraction from everyday politics uh and like war and bombing people and shit that they do so if they do that now we just gotta ban math yeah i mean you know let's just go full jonah ryan it isn't everything though like everything is numbers right like even down to like genetic code like everything can be translated Everything is numbers, right? Even down to genetic code. Everything can be translated into numbers, numbers that are universal, where words cannot always be. And it's almost like, you know, unlocking these worlds for Lyra and Will and Mary and Coulter and Asriel even. All it took was a mathematical code.

They just had to find the right tool to use the right code. Experimental theology. But again again too dangerous jenna ryan for president absolutely not richard splatt's my candidate anyways amen hallelujah sister so mrs coulter upon seeing this feels a strange exaltation and also realizes how to land the craft lurches and strains but her demon helps her land and they head toward the mother of pearl radiance coming from the mountain everything looks very confusing right because you have these enfolded perspectives so again the colonnade staircase and the facades and pullman does not strike me as someone who really likes hp lovecraft he doesn't strike me as a lovecraft

fan or aficionado but so i'm not saying that he's uh inspired by this necessarily but it does remind me personally of how some of the places in lovecraftian literature and like how the lovecraftian gods right like the places where they live or are associated are described they're comprised of like they're it's called like non-euclidean geometry so like things that will drive you mad that's how like the world that is that's so crazy because this is going to be such like them adapting this book is insane this is going to be such a like almost like a hall of mirrors mind fuckery going on here with all the spatial dimension talk this is going to be very crazy to look at i wonder if they're not going to do it exactly like that right they didn't do the specters as exactly in the we'll see yeah i think they will definitely do something i mean i just imagine everything having like a little 3d filter

on it but in real life and a couple flickers here and there to make you oh holy shit this is just a big rock not somebody projecting an entire beautiful palisade or but it would be like inspired by we did see metatron's cube portrayed on the computer or something looking like that so yeah we did when i saw that i flipped out i was like that's it he's coming i hope he's a daddy that that's all I want so as Marisa decides how the fuck to get in there she hears voices singing a palm and coming

near a procession of angels carrying a litter and they see the intention craft and they stop she can see an angel in there indescribably aged not very easy to see enclosed by crystal glittering throwing light around and she gets this awful impression of terrifying decreptitude sunken wrinkles trembling hands mumbling mouth roomy eyes

he gestures shakily at her craft muttering to himself howling in anguish but the bearers ignore him moving him along i like how when mrs coulter sees this she's just like oh interesting weird and then she just like she just does not care about it she's like look i'm here to suck angel dick and save my daughter and i'm almost out of angel dick to suck yeah actually though she's just like weird moves on man these angels are crazy op in this i never really realized it but like they can shape shift they can send people to the afterlife they can turn people into angels and i know there's the point that like you need legitimacy right like you can't just eat god right even if all the other angels are bigger than god i just don't get they're all bigger than God, why don't they just eat God?

Anyways, but like, you can't eat God, I get that, because, you know, you need legitimacy, you need people to still believe in something and still like enslave themselves to your cause of religion. But also these magnificent beings are following those dopes. And that is the point, right? Baruch and Balthamus aren't following the authority. You see the angels have rebelled. Angel rebellion is a big theme in this chapter. But I'm just telling you, it's like when the God Squad in season two of Righteous Gemstones realized that Kelvin is a pipsqueak and weak and they can just sit on him. You know what I mean?

It's like, damn, why don't they simply eat god well i mean it's like you said right i it was safania like baruch and baltimore's they all realized like wait but what if we did and i think it's like the ones who are carrying the litter not only are they like the ones who swore themselves to that old order and they refuse to question or think about it. Right. Like that would, I think, absolutely destroy their sense of self. And also, I think it might have to do with it's not that they're questioning or they refuse to question just like the Ancient of Days. I think it's because Metatron is real big and scary. He's clearly very, very powerful.

And it's probably that he forces them not to. Right. You're talking about legitimacy. And I think it's maybe like he forces them not to right um you're talking about legitimacy and i think it's maybe like metatron setting that and he is telling everyone you guys we just got to protect all right you got to protect the ancient of days keep them alive in that crystal thing or i will eat you because i mean he needs the ancient of Days alive for his power to have legitimacy yeah that's true and he is able to take more power this way as we've seen until he isn't we're getting there

well and like you said about the Kingsguard right the ones that are sticking to order and duty there that are still guarding him even though you know it's like what's the fucking point it's not unlike the people that get hit by the specters right you're living half a life still yeah and that's part of it like even the people here in heaven on the mountain they they live a fucked

up shitty life too yeah they're not having a good time they do not seem like they are having fun we can't have that free will no sir well they reach an open space and fly off they're carrying the litter leaving through vapors and mrs. coulter and the monkey move quickly up staircases and bridges a sense of invisible activity hanging around them until they come to

a piazza confronted by an angel with a spear he asks their business and mrs. Coulter thinks that, ah, yes, these are the beings who had fallen in love with human women, the daughters of men, so long ago. She tells him not to waste time to take him to the Regent at once. He awaits her. She thinks, disconcert them, she thought, keep them off balance.

And this angel did not know what he should do so he did as she told him she still got it mrs coulter she still got it i love as we get into this everything about enoch and how he's presented in some readings versus others right a lot of the basis for what we're going to hear from enoch here comes from two different readings from the fallen angels you know one six through eight one Enoch and then a Genesis six and they're both described as very different caricatures in these books the fallen angels go to earth fuck women marry them give them children and those are the Nephilim mighty men who who were of old, of renown. No details are really given, but Genesis says the wickedness of man was great in the earth,

and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Enoch's book expands on that, saying the sons of God, sons of heaven, as the story progresses, Azazel becomes the ringleader until Enoch later intercedes. 200 angels take an oath to descend Mount Hermon, find woman to fucking marry, and make giant fucking 450 foot tall babies with them. And they eat the blood of animals and even humans, which in Enoch's book, it kind of details this is sinful what they are doing. They are sinning it is bad uh the angels then teach humans magical medicines metal working eye shadow and ornamentation of the face and hair oh yeah the devil dude the devil was in them uh how to track stars astrology divination yes it's why

your boyfriends and girlfriends and partners are all very annoying and they know their signs thanks enoch and your angels uh and the signs of the moon teaching humans truly how to sin right which again how come they are the only ones allowed to sin and humans aren't how come the rules are different for the anyways this expansion of the stories basically is blaming the wicked angelic beings for revealing these mysteries of the angels boy club to humans which result in sin and that it's not adam's rebellion in the garden that's responsible for human evil but wicked angelic beings who don't remain in their appointed place and what's more the flood and for us it's the flood of dust is not the result of human sin but the rebellion of these angelic beings

so that's a very interesting take in enoch's book compared to kind of what the canon is right that like oh it turns out everything is the angels fault because angels are the original greedy men that kind of makes sense right because it's an angel or fallen angel right in the garden that's like eat the apple eat the apple but it's interesting about the flood right like it's like spilling over into the human realm it is it's a very visual thing uh you know i i one time i was watching speed racer and i may or may not have consumed a drug. And I kind of like saw a scene that made me think about how you think about like a tunnel. And it's full of like food. But the angels already ate all the food, right?

And like now it's just the remnants that are left in the trash. And the trash is leaking on the other side of the tunnel into humanity. And so they're just shoving all of their, like, bullshit trash, their, like, tiny magical gifts, you know, like, here, have a speck of dust, kid. And they're just pooping it all down on the humans and that's the scraps that humans get.

And then humans get blamed for the scraps? How is that fair? They don't have free will, though. So. Yeah, that's true. They don't. They're having a bad time. Don't be an angel apologist, Eliana. They're, I don't they're having a bad time don't be an angel apologist eliana they're i mean they are having a bad look at them they're having a bad time in this story they're clearly not no one is having fun all right metatron they had a really good time for hundreds of years eliana and no time's up for the angels they were i'm not sure they were they had ornamentation they had eyeshadows that's true they had eyeshadow they had cool tower-like bodies like pokemon like gigantamax pokemon dynamax no that's actually what i'm thinking it is like i think it's like that dude those things are huge they're massive they're fucking coliseums in

themselves they're like like one of them is a coliseum you think they're like little bergmites but really they're all avalugs gigantamax avalugs big boyos big boyos well the monkey presses his nails into marisa's flesh as they come to the room and she grips his fur as well for reassurance i love that um and they are faced by a being made of light he's man-shaped and man-sized i like that description man-shaped but she's too dazzled to seem clearly and even the monkey hides his face metatronron said, Where is she? Where is your daughter? I've come to tell you, my Lord Regent, she said. If she was in your power, you would have brought her. She is not, but her demon is. How can that be? I swear, Metatatron her demon is in my power

please great regent hide yourself a little my eyes are dazzled oh yeah I was gonna add an echo to that one make me sound like omniscient you know oh my gosh okay I'll do that I'll do that for you you will oh my god I love you so much i can't

wait i want to be metatron it reminds me of like in that uh merry christmas little mama um album collab between chance the rapper and uh jeremiah tana wolveress says you better attitude no shit if you don't not attune my voice, we're not friends anymore. It's like that. That song. Yeah, you get me. You would never post a photo of me without a filter. I don't think I would. Right?

Anyways. So, I am... This is just me, personally. And I've always been kind of like, I don't really get it. I'm not really completely sure why Enoch is the specific biblical figure that Pullman has chosen as the main antagonist. The cosmology

that you laid out earlier makes a lot of sense, but I feel personally as though Enoch is kind of famous. There's a character named after him in Agents of S.H.I.E.L agents of shield but he's a good guy and but like the reason like i question it is he just doesn't feel like as famous to me he's not like an

a-list celebrity right in terms of like someone you would pick as well known when you want to question theology as much as like figures like noah right or abraham. Abraham is a big deal in like three. At least three religions. You got David, you got Moses. Moses is a pretty big deal. Literally any of the disciples, especially the ones on the Gospels, like, those are some name brand

figures. I think Peter, founder of the Catholic Church, allegedly. Saul slash Paul. Those would have been good to get very big figures and i think the only reason again like i can think of that he would pick enoch is that cosmology and like this idea of having like a second figure the one who ascends into heaven and becomes guardian and leader of angels and then usurps it all which i guess kind of happens to enoch but again it makes sense from a world building perspective but for me personally if

the argument is like and maybe it was too heavy-handed he thought it would be too heavy-handed or something right like if you want to be like anti-religion slash anti-church specifically i feel like peter especially or paul would have made a lot of sense as like a figure to rail against but again maybe that's like too on the nose and like too literal and maybe it would have gotten some folks like way more mad at these books than they already were the one thing i would say is like i could see where it could be better to have like you know the creator of the church could be interesting but i think that there's just too much of that already with the magisterium maybe I think for

balance it made more sense to show like the ring leaders actually be you know like pull the curtain back and this is what you have and I think the reason Enoch specifically is why who Pullman chose is because of his story or having like the book of Enoch is such a like contrast it's like oh yes that is what they wrote in that cute little burn book of theirs but did you know what they were secretly saying and doing in heaven it's like mushrooms testament for jesus right from a song of ice and fire for those of you a swath readers uh it takes all the smoke that they've blown up everyone's asses in the regular bible and kind of blows it up and is like i mean that's kind of true that's that's like a half truth paul you know like kind of blows it up and is like, I mean, that's kind of true. That's like a half-truth, Paul.

You know, like, kind of, but you left out these juicy bits where it turns out, I mean, like, it almost is like he's shifting, you know, they're shifting the blame a little bit, just saying, like, interesting, gentlemen of the Bible, with all those fingers pointing back at yourself

when you're pointing that finger yeah and i guess like enoch is also way more ancient so it feels like this has been going on for a long time versus yeah i guess you know peter and paul are much more kind of recent right like less than 2 000 years ago versus slash 2 thousand years ago not less than more than two thousand years ago based on we are in the year 2022 where we are but where this was where this was yeah you know what i mean you know similarly yeah and fairly recent ish and i just think they're so administrative right like those men what we've seen of the magisterium and of men in power at the magisterium like uh father mcphail ain't shit i mean that's a big theme in this book yeah i mean shit uh father mcphail in this book you put him against metatron

metatron father mcphail is an associate level employee okay like metatron is he's evp baby of everything the e stands for everything like he is like i am in charge oh hey wait a second uh i am in charge he's like a real boss though you know like he's like oh you're just a little detail person working on the ground mcphail when you look at like so like when i think of the church creator like he'd probably talk to the angels this dude i'd imagine but like he doesn't seem he still seems administrative is my thought process there yeah i guess i just think of him as more representative right of the church um but i i having an old angel is kind of cooler i guess i just think he's just like i just don't think he's famous enough for me i think that's more more of it. I'm just like, I guess.

I'm really not in the Jesus fandom, so I'm just not really sure. I'm just like, him? Her? Beyonce? But coming back to how Enoch actually is in this book, we're talking about

Metatron, the name, title slash term. Apparently it has many different proposed meanings of what it could have meant with a lot of different potential etymologies for it some are like to guard or to protect other ones are co-occupant of the divine throne other ones are like to measure or messenger so lots of different proposed ideas but anyway like in regards to maybe why it makes sense to pick enoch slash metatron we have this construction of the dual figures of metatron and the first angel in this book right and again first angel claims godhood but was just like the first one and is false as zephania learns and pullman may be taking i guess inspiration from the book of Daniel.

There are a couple of moments in which dual figures emerge, but the Book of Daniel identifies one of them as the Ancient of Days, who, again, this is culture season, the crystal litter, and is interesting, not that interesting, scrolls past.

And then there's the other one who's shaped like man, one like a man, right? And the Ancient of Days gives the one like a man right and the ancient of daves gives the one like a man dominion over pretty much everything and this is commonly interpreted in christianity specifically as being jesus before you know he takes on humanity which also makes sense but pullman here interprets it as the others also interpreted right as metatron and clearly enoch taking over the kingdom slash empire of heaven and as we've said before right jesus is really only named

like twice in this trilogy and i'm not sure if he's ever named in the book of dust books of dust i i forgot because we've discussed this and only ever happens in the context of mary speaking as a figure from our world and like her time as a nun and never at all from like Lyra or the magisterium or the authority just like is of no consequence in Lyra's world in their theology that's interesting too yeah yeah it does seem like separation

of church and state right yeah I don't really get it except it's like not separation of church and you know the whole entire spirit of everything. Oh, I think he's mentioned like once, right? Like in La Belle Sauvage, when they're talking about like the League of St. Alexander or something. Yeah, it's something school-wise.

Interesting. That's something to think about. Was that a spoiler? Kind of, but that's okay. Whatever. We've done a bad job. We'll see. We'll see see if i take that out so metatron's second figure is it's all right right like he veils himself in cloud and now it's a little easier it's like looking at the sun through smoked glass now he looks simply like

an early middle-aged man tall powerful commanding she can't really tell if he's clothed or if he has wings his eyes though are very forceful that is what's commanding and i'm like oh girl you have a tight middle-aged tall powerful commanding okay this is gonna be sexual as shit the scene is gonna be like ruth wilson is gonna do this in the HDM show, and she is going to, wow, wow, wow, wow. And the allure is obvious, right? Like, before his normal man form, especially that sexiness of not knowing, just a huge, shadowy, powerful figure, right, to choke you. Sexy, like, could beat me up, you know?

Throw me into a fucking pit of despair and nothing. Yeah. I mean, definitely could beat me up you know throw me into a fucking pit of despair and nothing yeah i mean definitely could beat us up but even if he's good at choking he's the one who gets choked later on oh my god oh amen amen she tells metatron that she's coming from asriel who has lyra's demon and he's like what does what does he want with the child? She tells him to keep him from her until she comes of age. She wants to keep Lyra from you, my lord. And I'm betraying Asriel, she says. I'm telling you the truth, but I must go back to my master, Asriel.

She says, look at me clearly and tell me what you see so he looks at her examining every scrap of her and she feels naked body and ghost and demon all vulnerable to him and that her nature would just have to answer for her we have a comparison here of lyra had lied to joe for rackinson with her words her mother was lying with her whole life. The Metatron says that he sees corruption, envy, lust for power, cruelty, coldness, vicious curiosity, and poisonous malice. He does in fact use the term malice. She's never shown compassion, sympathy, or kindness without calculating how it would benefit her and says that she is a suspect of moral filth and part of her is pretty devastated knowing the truth but part of her is also triumphant she tells him she plans

to betray asriel easily that the child will walk into his hands and feels a movement of vapor around her almost ice-like confusing her amber spyglass is so good because it is Maurice's book, right? It enriches Coulter's motives and this moment here, she accepts, she knows she's sinned. And because she's a sinner, because this is that moment where the truth comes out, she knows there's nothing else she needs to live for, kind of. She knows that's what I needed to hear, that I'm awful and now i can do my thing and

i can go um it makes her able to deceive with her entire being and soul right she's lying with her whole life what a line and philip's not subtle by he's not playing coy he drew that direct line to lyra and yofer's encounter uh just like when Lyra realizes he was pretending he had a demon, then she knew she was safe. Coulter realizes in that moment, as soon as she knows she's fooled him just enough, because there is something else in her heart, not just that, she's able to take advantage of that opposite here, that he is so soulless, he craves some sort of demon himself some sort of companionship and coulter kind of in a similar way to the witches safeguarding themselves from the specters right not bringing their demons coulter is able to kind of separate something within her to be

soulless herself to sever herself from the situation almost we see uh and it's very disassociative right she puts herself outside her body like the way mary has to be with the yi zhang or with uh the amber spyglass or lyra with the alethiometer or will with the knife she's able to compartmentalize her love her loathing her emotions and her pain and betray herself right what her very heart is saying she's able to shut it off in this moment yeah absolutely it's it's very very impressive right like how she's able to hide all of that and i guess it's because she's lying with her whole life and all of her actions and none of them speak very well for her and i mean if like you said you know m Mary's talisman is the

amber spyglass and the I Ching and Lyra is the lithiometer and the wheel with a knife, Marisa's is lying, right? She's very good at it. And he describes her as the cesspit of moral filth and in that I feel like

Marisa, again, that comparison between Lyra and Marisa's situations from book one and three, Marisa is representing exactly the same thing that a demon represents. And that's humanity, because Marisa has sinned again, and again, and again. And sinning is to be human, it's being imperfect and while that has also made her like really bad and very evil in many ways because you know she she kills children without remorse like that's pretty bad that's like really bad all of like she's she's the embodiment of those seven deadly sins right she's got that pride that greed that envy lust and maybe gluttony and wrath she's all those things she's not very slothful she's way too ambitious to be slothful but anyway she's all of these other things and again that that's human and yofer and metatron covet the same thing in regards to desiring humanity yeah metatron tells marisa when he was a man he had plenty of wives but none were as

smoking fine as mrs coulter he was enoch son of jared son of mahalal of canaan of anash of seth of adam living on earth for 65 years until the authority brought him to the kingdom damn he really reached retirement age he's like i'm done he's like time to cash in and he's also very into genealogy.com apparently hey at least he didn't get on facebook you know i mean that's where relatives go to die that's true he loved his wife's flesh even defended the sons of heaven who fell for the daughters of earth but the authority had been fixed against him and made him prophecy their doom he had been regent for thousands of years and celibate and coulter asks is it not time he had a consort so she feels exposed again and in danger but but she trusts her flesh, knowing that he has none.

What a loser. He covets it, and he's close now, able to smell her perfumed hair. How does she still smell perfumed? I guess she just came from, like, wherever. The fortress. Anyways. Perfumed hair, her flesh, and to touch her with his scalding hands. We have this line of, There was a strange sound, like the murmur and crackle you hear

before you realize that what you're hearing is your house on fire. Tell me what Lord Asriel's doing and where he is, he said. So, incidentally, there was actually a fire in the alleyway, like, right by me, and I'm, like, looking down, I'm like, there's the fire truck, and there's the huge flume of smoke. See, I was just bringing you in. On my block.

Today. Oh, no. Well, hopefully that fire is out. It does seem to be, but hopefully those people, I guess, are okay. Are too, yeah. Jesus. It seemed bad. Well, I do love the simile. I think it's a great simile.

The crackle you hear before you realize your house is on fire? Oh my god. That's masterful. That is perfect. And it's like knowing you are in a trap. This is where you locked your fate. This is it. You have chosen, Marisa, right here, that you're going to

see this through. Metatron had dispatched the authority, he says, somewhere to stay alive, entrusting the storm to give cover to the angels. They may have left quietly, but however, as we spin real quick away from Metatron and Marisa, a certain cliffgast had watched all of this happening,

and having a very specific memory, cliff guests are wont to do, he pauses, eating a warm liver, remembering a very specific babbling fox, and he flies upwards with his troop, following him. Those are my friends. And then we go to the angels! Thanks for that nice brief respite and check-in with Eliana's friends. spite and check in with Eliana's friends. Zephaniah and the angels search all night and through the morning until they find a very minute crack in the mountain. A new crack.

They explore it, they enlarge it, and then Asriel is suddenly climbing within to caverns below, and all of this is illuminated by dust. Stalmaria points that out, floating steadily down. Asriel had never seen it with his naked eye, and nor so much of it.

The tunnel opens, and he's on top of a very vast cavern large enough to contain at least a dozen cathedrals. There's no floor, the sides slope to a very great pit below where dust is pouring down and is lost. So I'm gonna be honest, I am like just not completely sure how Asriel got down to the abyss or the cavern like they kind of tell us they're like and he started climbing down the mountain to the abyss but I'm like I guess we're kind of told that it's just such a big explosion that maybe the abyss is stretching across different worlds but also like he sees the world of the dead on the other side like if the other side like it's so so far away which is where

the dead are escaping from does that mean like there was a second window this whole time and that before like the abyss blew up everyone could have just exited from there i don't know how does he get down there it's all very confusing like written and maybe it's like whatever right maybe i'm just overthinking it suspension of disbelief storytelling good times move it forward but even just picturing it like yeah it is a little suspension of disbelief but also it's like suspension of this world like this whole entire world seems to be kind of crumbling right uh and falling apart at the seams so to me it just kind of shows especially because the clouded mountain is, you know, situated. So, and it's brought over here,

which is interesting because you have like a moving carriage to move these people and house these people. A moving garden, so to speak, as you've talked about before. But Asriel's mountain seems to be built on a similar plane in a similar universe, right? So it just seems like this entire universe is emptying out bottoming out but where did the window to go from there to this part of the abyss come from that's what i also like do not get like how did he get there i just i mean through the crack in the

basalt like zephania found that crack and then he got okay he just like happened there just happened to be but again that means maybe that was caused by the explosion and it didn't exist before the explosion because i'm like that means that that was there the whole time and everyone could have just gotten out there okay well that's true that's true right but i know that's a valid question i think it's just a different part of that world where they cut into like i think like it's they're both in the same universe right now you know like i just think they didn't because like his rock has a hole in it and he went into it and now he's crawling down to a different area of the abyss but where did that come from because it goes into the world of the dead

but like it's not like the rock has a crack in it so the world is falling apart like the whole entire like time and relative space is going to it because of the war is like disappearing okay them that's what i think is happening that makes that makes sense to me i will like the abyss is eating everything yes i will you know so like yeah the abyss is slowly breaking things apart it seems like a black hole that yeah yeah i mean it is it's nothing it's absolutely nothing and across several dimensions that makes sense to me yeah i mean there's a hole in mary's universe there's a hole in lira's world there's a hole here uh the universe is breaking apart right okay okay oh my

god um but it is that it's like the multiverse is breaking apart, right? Like, all these universes are fucking breaking apart. And we'll get to some of that, I think, too. But, and then you have, like, there's nothing. Just nothing. But then there's the rocks, right? So they're clinging to, like, what's left of reality around them, almost. Oh, there goes Grout.

Okay. Oh my god. But actually, literally, kind of. Yeah, literally. Okay. Oh my god. But actually, literally, kind of. Yeah, literally. Okay. I accept that. Because I was like, how did he get here?

Why didn't they just... Anyways, why did we go through this entire fucking trip? So, Asriel and his demon climb toward the abyss, seeing what's happening at the far side of the gulf

in the gloom. And there's a movement, right? The movement is a bajillion ghosts. Women, children, men. Every being he had ever seen across all these different worlds right um and he knows that lyra must have come through here now and samaria tells him that he's got to tread carefully because as you all remember lyra almost fell into this thing and i actually love that when azrael sees that he's like lyra did that i know that this impactful thing was lyra so that's nice meanwhile lyra and will are soaked through they're stumbling through the storm past gullies where

streams run red with blood and lady savankia hasn't moved or spoken in several minutes and lyra worries that she's dying she is in dying. Teolis is also very quiet but rouses telling Will that he hears horses and Asriel doesn't have a cavalry. So he warns them to hide from the enemy. They head to some bushes just in time to evade the riders.

All of this noise covers up the screeching and snarling of the cliff gas from above surrounding something in the mudching and snarling of the cliff gas from above, surrounding something in the mud, something large with walls of crystal, a giant cage. They hammer at it with fists and rocks, shrieking, yelling, because they just feel like it. They just felt like doing it. And it ends with, and before Will and Lyra could stop and run the other way,

they stumbled right into the middle of the troop. Interesting that even the cliff gas want to dethrone and kill God. Yeah, they're just like, yeah. Actually, they're like, I don't know, for shits and giggles. That's what he remembered. That's what the cliff ghast remembered, though. He remembered, oh shit, I heard that was God

and I should eat him. Yeah, exactly. They're like, what could be fun what could be interesting spice things up we respect cliff gas in this house we respect them alright authorities end uh oh this is a big one a big action

chapter get ready buckle up we open up with Mr. Blake Bilake William Blake for empire is no more. And now the lion and wolf shall cease. They call that a storm of swords where I'm from. Well, thank you.

I'll be here all day. So Pullman actually includes like a good portion of, not like a huge portion, but a good portion of this same poem that this line comes from. And including, I think that line, poem slash book by Williamake at the start of this book the amber spyglass and it comes from america a prophecy and we might have spoken a little bit about this poem as well in the book of dust in regards to some of those lines regarding like a prince of albion and i i do think it makes sense i guess why he included this i'm like is

in regards to you know america is a republic it's a it's a really great poem book and asriel wants to make a republic of heaven and you know the way that like the poem describes america is really not how i would describe the United States. But, you know, again, that's why William Blake is remembered all these years later. And I have a podcast. That's a very, very observant take. I really appreciate that. uh and to be fair like i think this is also a lot about you know um fighting for an actual cause which america was once what america is now i mean william blake wasn't a fucking prophet eliana

jesus he did get some of that right of what was happening now he predicted some of this shit because it was all the same then too but just a flair for drama you know a penchant if you will yeah i won't um yeah but i think it is about that like and also sacrificing and bleeding for your country like good countrymen which is about to fucking happen uh like ideals i guess that ideal of like i don't know democracy a better world things yeah that's what the poem is i guess about yeah and that's what azrael and colter do choose in this chapter they could have shoot they could have chosen a lot of other things in this crazy vacuum going on of power and war and bloodshed but they actually choose to put themselves aside and their petty bullshit for once and they

sacrifice for the hopes that many worlds can have a future at the hands of their daughter which is this is a powerful chapter this might be one of the best chapters in the whole fucking thing this is not just the power vacuum literally the vacuum expanding below their feet

re the abyss that is true yes regarding said abyss uh so coulter is in the abyss right and she watches asriel and his demon climbing below whispering to metatron look how he hides he creeps through the dark like a rat metatron says i could strike him down and marisa's like no no no no i want to see the pain and betrayal on his face how about we follow him and catch him for funsies? I like how Metatron buys this from her. I want to twist a knife.

He's like, sure. Anything for you, sweet tits. The dust is lighting it up. Oh, my God. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be amazing. I want to see this show. Oh, my God.

Give it to me. Coulter can't pay attention to the dust though which is crazy because that's the one thing she's been fucking chasing her entire life she has to keep the shadow beside her occupied under her control and they climb down she gets tired and metatron can kind of sense her emotions and is like what are you thinking about what are you thinking about She claims she's glad the baby will, the baby? She's glad the child will never grow up to be loved and to love. She says, I thought I loved her when she was a baby, but now. Metatron is like, interesting.

So you're saying you do have emotions. He sensed regret in those kind of words she said. Regret that she wouldn't see Lyra grow. And Coulter's like, fuck, I really got to pull this one out of out of my ass and she's like obviously you don't realize that it's not regret it's about lyra's coming of age and how this was stolen from me my coming of age i regret not knowing you dear metatron in my girlhood because i would have been passionately devoted to you it's such a weird line i'm like what the fuck does that mean marisa in your girlhood well it's manipulation man it's like look it's just like maddie and nate in euphoria when she told him she was a virgin but she wasn't this is like coulter's like yes when i was an

innocent young maid still not deflowered i would have devoted myself to you metatron my very virginal clear pure, pure flesh. Because, you know, that's like a weird thing in religion. You know, they really embrace that shit. So she's really playing it up. She's milking it. She's milking it. And she keeps that routine on this whole time.

She keeps her scent of her flesh, which, first of all, Eliana, that girl is not going anywhere without her black opium sprayed on, okay? She is not gonna go girl boss in the abyss. She's got it in her, like, pack. She powdered up.

Think of her, like, Selina Meyer and the monkey, like, Gary. The monkey is Gary, Eliana, okay? The monkey is in her purse like your lipstick, ma'am. That's pretty intense. I gotta think more deeply about this. She tells Metatron, stay behind me. Let me lull Asriel out.

But come as a shadow, small. Otherwise, he'll just let Lyra's demon fly away. So, we have a line of, The regent was a being whose profound intellect had had thousands of years to deepen and strengthen itself, and whose knowledge extended over a million universes. Nevertheless, at that moment he was blinded by his twin obsessions, to destroy Lyra and to possess her mother. Classic Marisa.

This is just, you know, she's used to this she's been doing this for a couple books now and again themes men ain't shit like metatron is over here like smartest man in the universe right he's like i have all this power flowing through me and he's like your skin smells real pretty and your daughter sucks i gotta kill that bitch um you don't have to ask pullman what he thinks about god and the men that prop god's image up do you i think it's pretty clear i think he's making it very clear in that passage yeah the regent was so smart his iq was 800 but yet he couldn't resist the pussy oh my gosh but actually though and like you got like there right simultaneously embodied in both

of them like what's called you know the madonna and the horror complex right there in that line to destroy lyra and to possess her mother and i i do appreciate that he included this line because you are kind of like i don't understand like this is a thousands of years old creature he's like no no we're addressing this like he addresses it up front so he allows marisa to go ahead to meet asriel at a great block of granite just out of the region's site and everything is permeated by falling dust giving soft clarity to each tiny detail and in the light coulter's face is wet with tears she's gritting her teeth trying not to sob. And Asriel holds her as the golden monkey holds the snow leopard.

And she quietly asks if Lyra's safe, if she's found her demon. And he tells her, John Perry's ghost is watching over them. And then they discuss the beauty of dust before he asks her what she told Metatron. And she tells him that she lied and asks if they'll live on after this not if they fall in the abyss Asriel says but at least we can give Lyra time to have her demon to live to grow up and she'll be safe that is painful and the next line oh man this next line is so painful he kissed her she felt as soft and light in his arms as she had when lyra was conceived 13 years before damn that was passionate that was a passionate night huh why did satan write these books i have some words that i would like to have with pullman i don't know what it is

but it's very beautiful you know it is it's like there was passion and love there and she tells him she says I told him I was gonna betray you and Lyra and he believed me because I'm full of wickedness my lies were great but I love Lyra and I don't know where this love suddenly came from but her heart bursts with it. We have this passage. She says, I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done. I wanted him to find no good in me and he didn't. There's none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don't know. It came to me like a thief in the night and now I love her so much. My heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them and I wished

I'd committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still but the mustard seed had taken root and was growing and the little green shoot was splitting my heart wide open and i was so afraid he'd see damn she was just she'd committed greater ones like just to hide the shame of how greatly she loved lyra like she committed pretty great crimes they were pretty big crimes like holy shit what else i would kill 700 more children if i could forget how much i love my daughter i love her so much oh my god what a what a queen absolute woman i mean girl boss every kid can't keep gaslight girl boss that's that's her in this moment she's like i would have done more crimes oh my god anyways um so i find this

description of her love for lyra though i mean it is really interesting because first of all it's it's this incredibly moving passage also what the fuck but also it actually pulls from a lot of biblical passages that are commonly trotted out in Christianity. So for example, she describes her love for Lyra coming like a thief in the night, which is how the second coming of Christ is described many, many, many times in the Bible. This idea that the second coming will be swift and it will be quiet and blessed are those who stay awake awaiting his arrival. And so Lyra is being described again through this language it's tying her to this idea of being a messianic figure in this but also this idea of a second

coming right but rather than jesus's second coming it is the second coming of eve and of course the way that lyra defeats death right that's part of the messianic prophecies that's what jesus's prophecy to do and gives everyone kind of like this eternal life by releasing everyone from eternal purgatory the second um phrase that comes up a lot in Christianity that people like to trot out is this likening Mrs. Coulter's love for Lyra as that of like a mustard seed the size of a mustard seed it shows up quite a few times in the gospels and mustard seeds are seen as among the smallest or the least of seeds and they are indeed pretty small i have some in my kitchen and jesus uses it to describe this idea of faith the size of a mustard seed and that even faith of that size again so small can

move mountains or can tell a tree to uproot itself and move and there's also another instance in which jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that has been planted by man in a field and then it would grow into a tree that becomes the largest in the garden and it's a place where the birds can come and nest and i'll come back to this tree thing um in a sec i love it so much in the gospel of matthew there's the line it's greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so birds in the air lodge in its branches like lyra is the tree she is a harborage for safety for others right at a sanctuary if you will yeah lyra provides sanctuary and by watering this mustard seed with your many many bloody sins marisa you've grown

but yeah absolutely she it's that and also that her love for her daughter it allows that sanctuary to flourish and she is tied with birds a lot myra but yeah yeah marisa's love for her daughter it's also again like by likening it to that mustard seed um i think kind of compares it to this idea of faith again not just as lyra as like messianic figures saving all the worlds but also this belief that like if marisa just takes this you know very literal leap of faith with asriel the faith that her daughter will be able to grow up to live and have a good life yeah that takes a very big amount of faith and she's fighting herself this entire way you know i mean dust is all around her the very thing that she could reach out touch and learn more about than she's ever been able to right all she's wanted was to learn

it and understand it but yet she has to shove all that aside now and do the big deed and she gathers herself and she could climb up like this is literally top of the ladder when it comes to the magisterium right consort to metatron like there it is in her grasp you could literally just start fucking this dude and like stay there for thousands of years honestly literally probably thousands of years yeah yeah she gathers herself and tells azrael soon he'll lose patience metatron they'll have to take him down and go with him themselves he kisses her he promises her lyra will be safe and says call him this is so emotional the dust is falling around them like ash or even like snow you know that very thing they try to master and finally it's mastered them they threw away

everything that meant anything to them they tossed people aside uh dust destiny fate mastering them and ending them and you know there's this line uh it's a latin phrase quad me new treat me what nourishes me also destroys me and that's how this feels them in the dust And, you know, there's this line, it's a Latin phrase, quad me, nu treat me, destreat me. What nourishes me also destroys me. And that's how this feels. Them in the dust, admitting their love for one another, admitting all of the fears that have held them back from loving each other, their daughter, and living a true, full-spirited, loving life.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know why they gotta do that right now. They're about to have, like, all the time they need to do that. They're gonna be falling for each other for a long time. A long, long time, but yeah, I mean, again, Lyra has that tree, right? That life-giving mustard

tree and Marisa's love for her. It lets her do the impossible. That moving of mountains, but also, the faith as a seed that becomes, again, a tree like the Tree of Knowledge in the garden of eden and also we have a couple of other seeds in the story too like the seed pods yeah anyway so marisa does it she calls for him and tells him it's time and metatron appears cloaked in shadow

taking in exactly what's happening and it's like, this is not maybe what I expected. Watching the demons embrace, the woman and Lord Asriel, who leaps, they seize Metatron around the waist, and they take him down, judo. Buh. Buh. Before we run into the action of it,

I just love how much the language and moments mirror the northern lights here right this is complete the demons swooning into one another and embracing one another uh his hands still clasping her head tense suddenly drew her toward him in a passionate kiss lyra thought it seemed cruelty than love and looked at their demons to see a strange sight the snow leopard tense, crouching with her claws just pressing in the golden monkey's flesh, and the monkey relaxed, blissful, swooning on the snow. Mrs. Coulter pulled fiercely back from the kiss and said, No, Asriel. My place is in this world, not that. Come with me, he said, urgent, powerful. Come and

work with me. We couldn't work together, you and I. No, you and I could take the universe to pieces and put it together again, Marisa. We could find the source of dust and stifle it forever. Well, here they are and they're fixing that. They're reversing that. Not stifling it. No, they're literally trying to blow that bitch up so that they can fix it and reverse the flow of everything.

This is just... This is full circle, literally. Literal full circle. This is a character arc. This is how you do it, people. This is how you do it. Wow. Okay, back to the action.

Back to the action. Please, please. Metatron pummels asriel as they go but he keeps his arms clamped on metatron who keeps trying to break free mrs coulter joins in the demons too and they are flung around as metatron moves crushing them against the rocks asriel is able to crush the breath out of him though and Mrs. Coulter clamps down on his other wing and both of them they are exhausted and weakening because they are just like little fleshy humans but also the flesh makes them stronger and finally Mrs. Coulter drags her fingers deep in Metatron's eyes. I'm like oh shit oh shit she's going for the eyes

and his cry bounces off the cliffs and stillia makes one last again this is the choking time right she makes a leap for metatron's throat but in this moment i want to point out the monkey is holding he's just pulling back a metatron's hair he's like there's a neck go for it stal maria and he doesn't say that but that's that's what he anyways he falls to his knees and mrs coulter falling with him sees asriel gaze at her blood in his eyes she scrambles up to seize metatron's hair oh wait this is it she scrambles up to seize metatron's hair bearing his throat for still mario there's a lot of throat shit going on but metatron is able to like his wings out he flies upwards takes them upward just like charizard when he's about to do seismic

throw or seismic toss and if they keep going asriel may fall this is the moment the era the culture right here get ready lyra's mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart to hurl herself against the angel and her demon and her dying lover and seize those beating wings and bear them all down together into the abyss Colter did that shit

together technically it's leap to faith it's a little of both I was channeling spider-man this is also about many different worlds spider Spider-Verse. Leap of Faith is a big theme in it. Cheaty Anna Kendrick

would say otherwise. It's Leap to Faith. Oh my gosh. Kierkegaard said Leap to Faith. Okay? Okay. So again, nitpicking the language I guess it insinuates that

Stalmaria also jumps but we don't know for sure it doesn't say but I guess it doesn't matter because I'm realizing even if Asriel dies here in the abyss then Stalmaria would just like dissolve into dust and because of the selection slash tide of the abyss it would just bring her into the air with them anyway so whatever

anyway there is no actual hell in pullman's cosmology as far as i can tell other than like i guess pandemonium uh asriel's like whole thing and because of that the abyss and hell i think kind of end up becoming one in terms of this idea of like nothingness forever and ever and being away from all that is good and like actual feeling and consciousness and that in and of itself being a kind of damnation which despite that again not being the case in milton's cosmology in which the abyss and hell are different but i think what really drives home the idea that

asriel and marisa are sacrificing themselves finally they're sacrificing themselves not everyone else to this damnation after again killing a bunch of people including sacrificing children which apparently was not enough for marisa in order to condemn metatron to damnation slash hell as well is that there are three of them and the strained relationships that are between all three of them right it's the number of people who choose to descend that reminds me a little of jean-paul sartre's famous existentialist play about hell no exit we are having to be perceived through the lens of others and rebuked by them and like that dance between desire and rejection becomes that hell

slash torture for those three people and it leads us to that like famous phrase of hell is other people um because i mean they're going to be the only three people to one another for forever and and for all of their crimes right despite like this being a final act of heroism it isn't redemption of their souls like in the sense that like the bible necessarily means but depending on the reader and interpretation maybe you could see it as redemption within the story slash narrative mind i know there's a lot of discussion about redemption lately but so i'm just saying maybe um and while for these three right the abyss and hell maybe other people thankfully as we'll get in later chapters and episodes not to spoil too much but i would say that the are you also i would say

that the story also argues that heaven is born of other people too yeah i mean heaven isn't just a place on earth heaven is a people yes oh my heaven is a place but i mean yeah it's heaven is a place that you create. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's what Asriel hoped to create for the people. Yeah. Unfortunately, his life is pretty much over. I'm going to have to find someone else to shit talk in another book, you know? But I have candidates.

Okay, well, text them to me. I bet I can guess which ones they are. Yeah, that's interesting. That is, all I know is it's going to be an interesting throuple, and I'm really glad there are a lot of holes to go around in that abyss, because they're going to have fun, you know? I think it could get real kinky down there. I think Asriel's bisexual, so yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There's going to be dicks everywhere. They're going to get bored after a while, so. Yeah. Well, no, they aren't, because angels can shapeshift. We've been over this. OP as fuck. absolutely there's gonna be dicks everywhere they're gonna get bored after a while so yeah well no they aren't because angels can shape shift we've been over this op as fuck he's just gonna be in there shape shifting there's a lot of things that they can be doing down there forever i think but they gotta do it like while while you know falling forever you know like

again like dragonflies having sex in the air so meanwhile the cliff guests hear lyra exclaim out in dismay and will springs forward slashing at the nearest one tialis lands on the cheek of the biggest kicking hard before being thrown off while will is slicing and dicing their arms off as well no the cliff gas they're just muppets they don't know anything he realizes tialis has gone out a little too hard on the cliff gas and then realizes no oh no tialis has ultimately gone out he is dead that motherfucker is dead yes that is pretty much what he does too lyra is focused on the unbroken crystal litter though it is stained and smeared with mud and blood from all the cliff-gassed executions that just happened. Inside, whatever's in there, it's old, crying, cowering, and still alive.

Will offers to help the being hide. He's like, can we help you? And he offers out his hand, and Lyra's reaching out too, trying to smile at him. Yeah, so I feel like, you know,, trying to smile at him. Yeah, so I feel like, you know, we need to look at this moment. It's a pretty big deal, even though it's like a very brief moment, right? Because in like two seconds,

the authority's about to dissolve, and I think I've probably actually spoken about this before, but I do love how it all works in terms of Lyra bidding Will to open the crystal litter. She's like, we have to help him! And then she leads the authority to his end out of compassion and innocence.

Right? I guess kind of ignorance too as it was prophecy. She has to not really know what she's doing and she doesn't. She's just like, we're helping him! We're helping authority and it's not through malice or wanting to overthrow or kill him. So I think that's really an important

part of this motivation and she does it because she wants this thing in the crystal to be able to live his life to free him from what is clearly a prison as she helped the other ghosts right seek freedom and because what was the use of all of that power and prestige if you think about it that the authority had if he never got to experience it anymore right and was imprisoned even if it was to an extent one of his own making and lyra extends compassion anyway it doesn't matter to whom she extends that compassion just like when again talking about usagi and sealer moon when she stops and she reaches down and saves sailor galaxia from falling into the galaxy cauldron and anyways who knows how long this guy's been trapped in that crystal bubble but now he can finally feel and experience it's mercy she's showing him the lord's mercy that's what she's showing him yeah she doesn't know it but she is the liar is mercy and you know like you said he's light as

paper the air is damaging he vanishes moments later dissolves a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief follows him then he was gone a mystery dissolving in mystery all you had to do was hold god's hand and tell him it was gonna be all right apparently and that he was a good old boy good old lad you know like i mean imagine living so long as a sentient being that all you want to do is die that's such a mood that's so me so me bestie i really love that line though a mystery dissolving into the mystery because you know life is still mystery once more it brings out some of those great themes and it it also reminds me of the mysteries in Christianity, the joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries. I won't read through all of it, but, you know, you have a few anchor points of the story that almost fit this in the joyful mysteries. You know, the annunciation of the angel Gabriel, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the presentation of Jesus in the temple, the finding of Jesus in the temple, the luminous mysteries.

You have the baptism in Jordan, the proclamation of the kingdom, the institution of the Eucharist. You have the sorrowful mysteries, the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the agony of Jesus in the garden, the scourging of Jesus at the pillar, the crowning of thorns or the crucifixion. And then, of course, the glorious mysteries that I think are very much in this book everywhere. The resurrection of Jesus, the ascension of Jesus into heaven, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the assumption of Mary into heaven and the coronation of Our Lady in heaven. I feel like there are just so many mysteries that could almost adhere to the story's arc. Yeah, there are. There are. And I like that you've brought out, there are a lot of mysteries, right?

That's part of the aspect of faith and religion. It's fun. And if you've ever prayed the rosary, then you get to relive and go through all these mysteries when you get to the proper bead. But I want to say you skipped over my one of my favorites the wedding at cana because that was jesus first miracle i mean it's it's important right his mother was like everyone's drunk but we still need to get lit and jesus is like okay we're gonna turn the water into wine let's do it hey lyra did have some wine in her story that's true oh my god now that you say it

and she's like roger's wedding and it was right at the beginning that was like right at the beginning too and this is again at the beginning of jesus exactly it's important it is it feels important the mysteries lyra has her own mysteries i might think on that more you know i might workshop that that's interesting to think on. A lot of these could align. Well, finally, Will is cradling Chevalier, but Lyra says we must move. Salmachia hears the horses. An indigo hawk swoops down, and instinctively, Lyra hides, but Salmachia says, No, stand high, hold out your fist.

And she does, accepting a gray-haired woman, a small Galavespian, Madame Accentiel, who tells Salmachia she's done all she needs and now she's here the hawk screams three times and hundreds of dragonflies bearing galavespians come down oh they get to see them oh gosh i love the chevalier could have seen them i'm so glad salmachia at least got to see it bearing them all them all swiftly moving, Madame Exentiels tells them follow her to find their demons. Lyra feels Salmachia's weight fall, knowing her strength has kept her this long, and she holds the lady gently to her heart as they stumble through mud and lightning, men charging for them but fought off by Galavespians as they go. The battle is too quick to follow. Unfortunately, the horse people finally catch up with them

nets in hand galloping onto them flicking the insects into the nets accential warns them to move and they feel the earth move lyra wonders is it horse hooves but no it's yorick he orders his bears to crush the enemy but he's caught in a net a steel strong cobweb and he's roaring and he's slashing and will shouts for him to keep still coming forward to cut him out yorick gets them to climb on and proves it's a little hard to hang on because he's wearing his armor but they feel the massive power as he moves them along the rest of the bears keep on with a good fight the gallivespians are above fighting well. Madame Exentiel keeps watch and guides them ahead to trees in the valley

where they hear guns firing shell after shell and flares firing too. Specters are ahead as well, being fought off by ghosts, looking much more solid than Will and Lyra have ever seen them. A group of trees lies beside them, where Will and Lyra realize their demons are, and if they

don't reach them they may die so Yorick charges in telling them to hold on they pass witches who are heading to fight and Will and Lyra can feel themselves nearby excited specters are still thick among them and they would

have to go directly through them and a voice rings out saying they're afraid of the knife and Yorick bursts out in happiness for it is his comrade and bff lee scoresby and i just i just love this for them i'm so glad there was this reunion and it's so sweet and it's so short because lee's like i don't have time to explain how i'm here the ghosts will take care of the specters now keep lyra and will going and madameemptio lands on Lyra's fist and tells them, go find the demons. Danger's coming soon.

They thank Yorick and the lady and they push ahead. There's no time. Lee gets them through the thick, tangled shadows and tree, telling them to keep close. Finally, they reach a grove, but specters pour in. John Perry helps fight them off, and Lee points over to a large rock where two wild cats are sitting, spitting, hissing, slashing. Will thinks he could tell the difference if only he had a little more time, but he doesn't because a specter is going for them. Will leaps over a tree trunk, plunging his knife into the air to cut through.

He's nauseated and his arms numb. Lyra is too, and Lee sees a specter attacking their demons. He leaps for them, wrestling them away. In goes the knife and opens another window. Lee Scoresby's ghost looked through and saw a wide, quiet prairie under a brilliant moon, so very like his own homeland that he thought he'd been blessed. Will leapt across the clearing and seized the nearest demon, while Lyra scooped up the other, and even in that horrible urgency, even at that moment of utmost peril, each of them felt the

same little shock of excitement. For Lyra was holding Will's demon, the nameless wildcat, and Will was carrying Entalimon. They tore their glance away from each other's eyes. How untoward, you two. Whoa. Whoa. The girlhood. Wow. Girlhood.

We just got a little haunt, a little turnt, a little bit of intimacy going on there. I'm like, I remember my first boner. I don't.'s not anyways so that's what started happening at this age actually a little earlier from what I've heard Will just got called to the front of class let me just tell you woo they touched demons

that is like they've known each other long enough yeah they're at that age I mean what would have happened sooner if will would have just fucking had one already god what are we talking about no a demon whoa a demon a demon okay jesus settle down these kids are fast these days but i don't know what i'm settling as uh they say goodbye to lee he them well, and Will finally gets a great moment with his father's ghost. Will says,

You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn't argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can't choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I'm free. His father's smile was full of pride and tenderness. Well done, my boy.

Well done indeed. Will couldn't see him anymore. He turned and climbed through after Lyra. And now that their purpose was achieved, now the children had found their demons and escaped. The dead warriors allowed their atoms to relax and drift apart at long, long last. Out of the little grove, away from the baffled specters, out of the valley, past the mighty form of his old companion, the armor-clad bear, the last little scrap of the consciousness that had been the aeronaut Lee Scoresby floated upward,

just as his great balloon had done so many times. Untroubled by the flares and the bursting shells, deaf to the explosions and the shouts and cries of anger and warning and pain, conscious only of his movement upward, the last of Lee Scoresby passed through the heavy clouds and came out under the brilliant stars were the atoms of his beloved demon. Hester, we're waiting for him. A stronger person would have cried during that. You know, a stronger person.

I'm weak. I came close. Came close to losing it all. I didn't cry. I really didn't, though. No, my eyes are just really pink because they're holding back a lot of dust. Actually, and dust really makes them itchy, so I'd appreciate if no one asked. Yeah, it's springtime. Again.

Pollen. Dust. Yeah. Just as his great balloon had done. I love that. Are you fucking kidding me, Pullman? I didn't ask for any of this. You know what?

Do you remember when he died the first time? That was fucking bad enough. Yeah, and that'd be due in a second, but this time it's, like, happy, you know? Now it's, like, did it. And he even got to see his friend again. Closure. Yorick was so happy. He was like,

wait, how is this possible? That was a mystery. Like, he never thought he'd ever see that fucker again. That was amazing. That wasn't even serious. What a miracle. With the atoms of his beloved demon. Just as they're rejoined with their demons, he's rejoined with his.

Oh, true, true, true. That's a beautiful parallel. Chloe's strong. Oh my god. Chloe's strong now. She god. Chloe's strong now. She did it. She did it. That means that Jopper is back with Phoebe Waller-Bridgerton.

Oh my god. He actually, actually though. Well, I guess we don't, we don't see it, right? They don't focus on it. No, they don't give him. I was surprised that he didn't get that last bit. They're just like, well, couldn't see him anymore. He's gone. That was surprised that he didn't get that last bit. They're just like, well, couldn't see him anymore. He's gone.

That was an emotional bout. You know, the next couple episodes aren't gonna be easier. No, they're gonna be harder, actually. They're actually gonna get probably worse, right? So, good luck. We will be doing a couple shorter

episodes. The next episode is our last three chapter episode everyone we'll be doing Mourning Marzipan and There Is Now that's uh 32, 33, 34 and then after that we have two episodes

left Over the Hills and Far Away and Broken Arrow and then our last episode will be dunes worm and botanic garden uh and that will be the end of the amber spyglass it will be very depressing and beautiful and we won't cry and if i'm not mistaken since we're going to be putting out another episode at the end of this month uh we'll be soon we'll be probably you know june in it we'll be done in june so summer recess summer vacay everyone yeah i don't know what we're gonna do yeah probably i guess a vacay recess we'll see we need a we need a

something we're gonna need a couple weeks to cry at least yeah uh well thanks for listening if you've been here tonight with us so far we have a really quick discussion to cover and again our discussions will cover everything after chapter 31 of the Amber Spyglass and to the Books of Dust and the novellas. So if you haven't read those, hop off. We'll see you next time. We'll see you at the end of the month with our next episode. Thanks for coming with.

Yeah. And like we said, it shrinks me discussion because if you heard what Chloe just said, not that much left. But here it is. Discussion. It's a shrincy discussion, because if you heard what Chloe just said, not that much left. No. But here it is. Discussion. Discussion.

Clouded Mountain. Whatever it is, the force field surrounding it, it's like the labyrinth in La Belle Sauvage. It's even described the exact way. Galleries, terraces, chambers, colonnades. Oh. Remember? Very interesting. the exact way galleries terraces chambers colonnades oh remember melcom is going up the lawn getting lost as he goes in the labyrinth that is the lawn uh he looked out the tree and across the great lawns and flower beds as far as the terrace and the house beyond it gracious and comfortable splendid and generous he thought that one day he'd come here by right and be made welcome and stroll among these gardens with happy companions and feel at ease with life and death and then when malcolm looks the other way at the riverbank he sees destruction not

unlike what marisa saw right as she went from between the intention craft over the war and then arrived at the clouded mountain where it's beautiful with its rolling terraces uh there's kind of that look where he sees desolation and broken buildings burned houses rubble shanties made of plywood and tar paper i mean maybe he was between the two worlds seeing yeah heaven and hell dude he think he was just seeing the underworld and heaven maybe the clouded mountain. Different, similar worlds or something? Because the shanties does sound like the suburbs of the dead. Do you think he was seeing the suburbs of the dead and where the clouded

mountain currently was? It could be. Or it could be the clouded mountain after. Maybe even because time and things are distorted until Lyra and will fix it so it might just be what the clouded mountain was looking like at the time yeah and you know eliana if you would watch more than one and a half episodes of doctor who you would know

all this so i really just want to put that out there i didn't say it earlier in the main episode but if they're listening for the discussion they deserve to hear this you would understand all of it i think it was actually two and a half episodes now that i think about it because isn't the the moisturize me that's like the second episode right yeah it's not the first episode i think so i've actually watched like two and a half so there we go i have watched more and yet i still don't understand all right what do you have well um uh what i have here is like a small little thing right of you know will saying that now he gets to choose right now he is free and he says he doesn't have to be a warrior anymore and when he does finally choose his own path in the lantern slides we're told that his path leads him to become a doctor he chooses to become again a healer rather than a fighter he chose that he's free will

which is so fucking depressing that we open with lyra whose whole life is just like nothing has fucking meaning and i hate myself well like the when whenever will is here right that's much later right like because he has to be at least 28 because he's gotta go to in our world in which yeah he's got to go to university then he's got to go to med school and he's got to do his residency so yeah lyra could be thriving by that point i fucking need her to be pullman i really need lyra to have some fucking something like i bet when will's doing his residency he is not thriving because that's how i hear being a resident like being in residency is yeah it's hell i mean will

you thought you saw the world of the dead let me just say uh that's true yeah we don't know what he went through i hope we do get a will book i really do i i think i think i mean pullman says he wants to and that man actually like writes things so yeah he writes shit i don't even care i'm like what you're putting out another novella okay yeah where's my book i mean that it's okay i'm not a brat yeah it'll come i'm not worried it'll come before it's nice it'll come before long and that's all i have to worry about which is nothing he's got duckies now ducklings i'm very sad very sad chapters but very beautiful chapters very good work philip pullman i know i've you know once in a while look i don't care what they all say about you phil i think you're great they they is us where are they uh guys thanks so much for listening and you all are the best i hope that you

have some hot cocoa or tea or like i don don't know, a fine something after this. Have a hug. Hold your loved ones. Hold your cats, your animal demons. If you have an animal demon, go see them. Give them a little smooch-a-roo. And we'll talk to you soon this month. And yeah, so keep up with us, right?

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I have been one of your hosts, Eliana. And I have been another one of your hosts, Chloe. We'll do this again later. This month. See you later. Yeah, it'll be... Look at all the fun we're having. We're having fun.

This is fun. This is... I love that quote. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.