Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Episode 26 — The Amber Spyglass Chapters 32–34

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Sorry again for the delay! We're back with a sweet episode about sweets, eating them, and growing up while enjoying a safe garden of earthly delights.  CHAPTER 32 — MORNING CHAPTER 33 — MARZIPAN CHAPTER 34 — THERE IS NOW Song mentioned: 'All We Have is Now' by The Flaming Lips — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGdXf7uago   --- 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, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Reads His Dark Materials, episode 26, the Amber Spyglass chapters 32 through 34. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe. I am, I mean, we're in the final countdown. This is it. We're reading Morning, chapter 32, Marzipan, chapter 33, and there is now chapter 34, which of course will be followed by a discussion. How this works is if you have not finished the Amber Spyglass, no worries. We are gritting our teeth together and not spoiling the very last handfuls of chapters of the book to you today.

However, if you're like us, I'm sure you sped ahead and finished it by now. It's like right there. But if you are spoiled, I mean, it's so close. How could you stop? I couldn't. Maybe the tears blurred in your eyes are stopping you. But in the discussion at the very end of the episode we will make sure that you know that it is time for you to log off if you have not read the novellas the end of the amber spyglass

or the books of dust labelle sauvage which we have covered here on our podcast or if you have listened to us cover the secret commonwealth with the dark material podcast and her dark materials indeed and you know what yeah we are getting close to the end of the books but we are actually starting to become in mourning ourselves not just i i mean this is sure this is about mourning the time of the day but i'm just saying i don't know it has a double meaning in my opinion like it's kind of clever i know he thought about it at least once i'm sure this does feel like the calm before some of the storm like you think that all the fighting is over it is mostly but everyone's gonna be so not the fighting of the soul not the fighting of the heart and the soul yeah that continues on hey you know we have to apologize we've been a little off schedule

the last couple months as we near the end of the book i know you're all raring for the end of this book but it turns out when you're traveling the worlds through windows with only an alethiometer and a spyglass to accompany you and two worthless demons who have fucked off to frolic right you end up moving some episodes around so you will hear from us at the end of the month again this month so that we can finish the amber spyglass next month june 2022 what a journey it's been uh after that we're going to take a little bit of a break from his dark materials on main we'll probably talk about his dark materials here and there in our discord or for patrons at some of our bonus episodes like this month's patreon we'll talk about but we will

return eventually i'm sure with book of dust 3 whatever it's called and book of dust 2 right we do still have to cover the secret commonwealth but when will we cover it that's a secret even from us just like yeah i don't know it's fine i'll throw it around yeah still secret from lyra probably not till next year i mean i think uh or after series three you know we will come back for series three that'll probably be the next time you hear from us after the book ends after we finish amber spyglass you'll hear from us when his dark materials series three on bbc hbo kind of pumps back up right i'm sure we'll come out with a couple couple little teasers and we'll do our weekly coverage but until then we will take a

little break we don't want to we don't want to overdo it because we're going to have a lot of book to get into with the secret commonwealth and i think you know depending we'll see like if anything inspires us and stuff for patreon episodes as well but i know that we've we've batted around a few ideas that we haven't gotten around to yet on patreon but yes several apologies i mean like just in general we know that the schedule's been kind of crazy we've just been going through you know a lot of different things in our lives and also illnesses etc so a lot of changes we too are going through puberty i mean yeah i don't know my body is changing i'm just i just wanted to change back right now so yes so this month if you're a patron in the stranger tier and above that's the five dollar tier and above we will be releasing a imagination chamber episode and pullman just put out the

imagination chamber it's a new novella more like lantern slides right if you recall the lantern slides at the end of each of the books this is this is basically lantern slides and interestingly enough it is being released in the uk only uh our friend warren you might remember him if you've listened to our labelle sauvage episodes he received a response when he asked philip pullman on twitter that his u. US publishers didn't want it. Yeah, very interesting. So we'll see how this goes. Sorry to our US listeners, if you're not able to, I think, get a hold of it as easily. It seems like it seems like you can order it from the UK. And I mean, like, people do that all the time with books yeah it's just like i guess shipping etc but it seems like maybe ebooks aren't available at the moment in the u.s um if that's your preferred

method of consumption which yeah is mine chloe is very sad it depends i like my e-reading yeah like i think i have i have the collectors as an e-book but i would have preferred to have i would have preferred to have this one i think as an e-book um but i want to have both i think the book's really pretty the cover yeah from what i've seen i'd like i'd like a collector's copy haha of i mean i'd like to own all of them which collectors is coming out again this year that's right our episode on it at patreon uh we did talk about it but that is coming out the collectors will be out as a novella as like a physical nice hard copy it doesn't exist very many places in hard copy so that's interesting but that's coming out as a nice special edition and i do want an ebook version of this book because i kind of feel

like it's a waste of paper imagination chamber from what I'm hearing it's just like there's 80 pages or something and only 50 pages of actual info I wonder if it's like really nice like if it's stylized etc and like I know that my copy of Lyra's Oxford I know someone was

putting this out and yes I know that there are inserts and all of these um bonus things at the end of lyra's oxford and at the end of once upon a time in the north these ones i do have physical copies of and so that's that's really fun it really makes those feel worth it and special and i wonder if imagination chamber has those like like you said it sounds like it's a collection of vignettes but perhaps there are illustrations like serpentine serpentine has illustrations which i think make it really fun yeah i thought serpentine was definitely worth it when it came to that uh from my understanding

it's it is a little bit artistically inclined it's very fleetingly though it's like supposed to be a fleeting glimpse into these bits of the imagination chamber. Yeah. But I've heard some stuff. I've heard there's some tidbits about a certain William that we like and some stuff about a certain Mrs. Lonsdale, even, that I like. Yeah. So no spoilers.

I haven't read it yet. We're trying to. I just know. I'm trying. I will say, if you've got a friend in the UK, I know over at the Girls Gone Canon Discord, where patrons in the Thunder tier and above hang out, a bunch of our UK friends have been so generous

to offer to get us copies. And anyone that's kind of looking for a copy, they've all been like, hey, we'll get you one. We'll ship you one. So if you come hang out there, if you want to be a Thunder to your patron and above and hang out with us and bitch about his dark materials, they got your back too. Yeah. Though, again, it seems like it's available to purchase online through some of the UK publisher certain sites that will ship.

um yeah some of the the uk publisher certain sites that'll ship sorry we're just trying to not like stand certain sites you know but we use them that's where i get my ebooks um anyway so yeah other historic materials activities that are going on in the girls gone canon world so this is something that has been really fun and great to watch the community do. We do have a His Dark Materials rewatch going on that has been spearheaded by our friend Pete, who has roped in other members. Yeah, Pete wanted to share the love, so he has joined up with a bunch of our patrons who are all hosting their own week this week our friend janice who is quite a poet is hosting it actually for cave and i want to say uh our friend jimmy is hosting the tour d'angely episode from series two

and one of our newcomers who just finished the series and just is finishing the show, Britt, she is doing The Scholar. I don't think that she knows what a fucking good rip-roaring episode she chose. She's watched it and she thinks it's the best of the season, which I agree. It's such a good episode. Has a lot of great Mrs. Coulter and Mary Malone parallels and also contrasts that really make you think about their characters. It's a really great episode. If you haven't watched His Dark Materials series one and two, and you are a fan, it is probably the purest adaptation of any book to show without sacrificing a lot of character

and, you know, just storytelling. I think it's a really great adaptation and you should check it out. Yeah, and it looks like they're trying to keep a lot of the same themes, et cetera, and the same character beats, which is really great. Even if there are some things that they have to adapt every now and then, I mean,

times have changed, right? Since these books have come out as well as the constraints of literal budget, you know, we can't only watch things in an imagination chamber. Things require budgets and real people and physical constraints are not real um so capitalism as far as i know well also just like standing physical physical limits you know um like how they do their best yeah like people cannot actually fly yet i'm like what you're like eliana what

don't give it away all right god it's really crazy you guys we miss you you know we don't talk to you for a month i feel like i haven't talked to you guys in a month a lot to tell you uh brunch this month brunch slash happy hour if you are a thunder to your patron we do a monthly hang where for a couple hours right now on sundays because of the his dark materials rewatch on saturdays from uh usually either one to three or three p.m on for the rewatch but brunch is on sundays from one to three eastern time eliana time zone and this month it's going to be on the 22nd of May. So you got a little time. Come

hang. I bet we'll play some games and chat. Again, I feel like it's been ages. We've missed you guys, so we'll have fun. We might try to, I know that we discussed doing a like PowerPoint karaoke as opposed to a PowerPoint potluck where someone is given a PowerPoint

presentation they know nothing about and must therefore present on it. So that's an idea that's floating around as a possible activity. That could be fun. That could be really fun. You know, I'm bummed about the timing. We've been so crazy this month

with everything happening. I went to Ice and FireCon. We had a live versus online brunch, right? That was very fun. We've just been a little crazy. And we really wanted our friend Ariana to come on this episode with us. It didn't work out for timing. She sent a really great email that had a bunch of stuff that we can't tell you about in full because some of it is a little dusty, a little little spoilery but she had sent us a great message about marzipan and how she had wanted to talk about it being kind of a rebuttal to

turkish delight in narnia so we'll talk a little bit about that later but missing her wish she could be on with us maybe some other time yeah um it was it was a really really great email and i i think i i would have really loved to have Ariana give those thoughts. But again, we might, if Ariana's fine with it, share some of the other ones later. Again, a little dusty, but this was like a wonderful, wonderful point, and we'll get to that. But first, here comes morning, chapter 32. The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations william blake ah william blake that's right i hear pullman likes him yeah it's not like he has almost every chapter

so a lot more of him lately we have a soft breeze whistling across the golden prairie that lee scores these ghosts had gone to the insects insects, flowers, creatures, they all cheer up. The only living things, silent and still in the waking landscape, are a boy and a girl lying asleep, back to back, pale and hungry, and they seem to be in the last stages of exhaustion. Lyra's the first one to wake, murmuring, pan, pan. She's weak and weary and doesn't move for some time, listening to the insects and the birds, remembering how good the world was. She watches Will, asleep,

filthy, dusty, sweaty. Uh, Will stirs, and she looks away, not wanting to be caught staring at him. That is embarrassing. She looks at the grave that they had dug for Tialis and salmachia prying the flat gravestone up and setting it at the head of their graves and then she shades her

eyes looking out at the ever-stretching plains yeah i love that the way it's intercut you know they're you know they got a little crush for each other because it's starting to get these heated, figurative glances going on. And Lyra realizes she's thirsty. She doesn't realize she's that kind of thirsty, but she is. But she also realizes she's actually literally thirsty when she sees a pod nearby and she walks towards the gurgling spring, washing her hands of grime and mud and lifting water to her mouth. She wades in, standing with the sun on her body in the mud below, dipping her face in the water, wetting her hair.

And once she's clean and appropriately watered, she sees that Will is awake, doing pretty much just what she had done. Marveling at the extent of the planes, which also probably looking away. Very much so looking away. I love how biblical we're starting starting right uh with bathing in the stream obviously there are adam and eve connotations throughout these chapters that we'll talk about but in biblical israel water was pretty scarce right so this would be a huge momentous event full of religious significance if we came by it you have the story of ruth bathing and anointing herself with oil in preparation for

a nighttime meeting where she intends to persuade Boaz to take her as a wife. Or King David who fasts and prays for God to spare his son who bathed and anointed himself when his son died, showing he's ready to finish his grieving and move on. And of course, Leviticus wrote that bathing was cleansing contamination or protecting God's sanctuary, your body, your temple. So opening here with this mourning chapter, as we discuss the possible double meaning of mourning, Will and Lyra have had to wake up and now they'll cleanse themselves to move on from their last battle. Yeah, there's a sense of it that kind of feels as though they are baptizing themselves right and um i like that you brought up king david i mean he was famous for being among many other things he's quite the renaissance man um also a musician who played the liar right that's right oh that's right i forgot about that he's quite the poet too yeah he uh he

wrote a lot of songs uh so i guess we call them psalms but whatever they're songs anyway so lyra returns to find will cutting the gallivespians names into their headstones and setting it firmly in the soil and it's just a really beautiful and very noble and therefore not base just a very high usage of the subtle knife yeah i love that because that set of rules always stuck out to me right like don't use it as a common instrument no buttering bread with it you know no uh cutting a steak with it foolish i mean yes foolish but way easier well i'm saying this that's a in my opinion that's not base that's a stupid rule like what if it's a great what if it's a great steak uh i also love that they're like this wasn't in the rules of do or don't do right it's actually like there was no rule of use it to write something so they're almost forging new

rules with their instruments right both will and lyra especially after being given those base instructions they kind of get to exist out of those loopholes with their own creativity and they actually excel because of it, right? Like, I feel like they keep surviving this story on accidental loopholes. They do, and I think Will speaks to that a little later on, too, those, like, little accidents that add up. But I just love this. It's just a very wonderful usage of the knife. Will asks Lyra if their demons are near,

and she can't quite tell, but she can still feel them. She asks if he remembers what had happened, and he does. He picked up Pan, and she picked up the other demon, and Will then put Pan down to cut a window, and then Will's demon just jumped out of Lyra's arms. Animals, they're like that, you know? But it doesn't feel like they're in the world of the dead anymore. And it doesn't feel like when they were separated from their

demons when they were in the world of the dead, their demons feel like they're near, like when they were young and they used to play hide and seek. And Lyra says it didn't really work though, because I always knew exactly where Pan was, even if he was camouflaged as a moth. So this time she doesn't feel torn apart. She feels safe and knows that Pan must feel the same too. And Will thinks that they must be together. How sweet, right? It's, you know, there's this quote in A Song of Ice and Fire that has such very different,

very different mood of what's about to happen and one of my favorite characters sansa's story right where she steps into some snow and she thinks that it reminds her of innocence the taste of dreams and of hope and like just what a nice young hopeful feeling that they know where their demons are and they feel safe and even will knows where his demon is right he's not worried he's never had one to be worried about i guess but yeah he hasn't really known that worry until recently or maybe he was worried he was like something hurts a lot and that is worrisome it is i am in pain i'm like he's always in pain he's been in pain for two-thirds of this story literally he's been bleeding for like how many pages so he's like i'm used to it this horrible feeling inside of me get ready for more they hear a sound a low

persistent rumbling and they see moving shadows but the shadows disappear and the rumbling goes away a movement starts again and it starts to get closer suddenly will's like all right i need water before i deal with all this and he goes to wash up and get hydrated side note is will drinking lyra's bath water like how much does that cost online then i was like oh my god la belle sauvage delphine or is it like la belle delphine sauvage that's that's what i have for you oh my god thank you yes thank you i really appreciated that thank you so the rumbling noise finally approaches and with it come creatures on wheels they climb the slope to have a look a herd of beings come to them on wheels like a cross between antelopes motorcycles and elephants

will takes out the knife but lyra's already working her alethiometer which says they're friendly and they're looking for you guys not just that but dr malone is with them confused lyra says they should go to the creatures that they won't hurt them some of the creatures pause to drink at the pond but not passively like a herd of cows they're individuals people i like that we get this immediate understanding of that from lyra right we've already come to that understanding through Mary's plot, but Lyra, after what she's been through and her understanding of so many worlds

and so many different peoples that live within them, she already knows just by looking at them that they are people. It reminds me of what you've said, like, and calling that out of when we hear that demons look like a human to other people, right? Like, it technically might look like an animal, and, you know, being unfamiliar with the malefa, they're saying that the malefa are also four-legged, right?

Like the other herds. But they realize, wait, no, this is a people, and demons are like that. Yeah, but they aren't quite like animals. Like, you can tell if it's a cat or a demon. I've never thought of it that way, and I like that demons are people yeah wow shit together we can do this form of a bucket of water so lyra then moves to speak to the leader of the people while will keeps his hand on his knife and the leader tells her to come see Mary you ride, we carry

that's my malefa that's the best I can do right now I love this detail where the malefa realize to communicate to Will and Lyra in our world's language and it shows us how much

Mary and the malefa have really been able to exchange about each other's cultures yeah they've learned a lot from each other i love this passage too because it's so fun that lyra had ridden a bear and will had ridden a bicycle but neither had ridden a horse which was the closest comparison however riders of horses are usually in control and the children soon found they were not the reins and stirrups were simply

there to hold on to and balance with the creatures themselves made all the decisions it's not often that our children let their fate be up for grabs and trust other creatures trash people right like yorick is very rare uh and it's weird that it's described like this because as you say like what mary and the mulefa have kind of learned from one another

lyra and yorick have also had that similar parallel relationship right where yorick kind of learns a lot from lyra and learns a way back, even, from where he kind of went to. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I'm kind of surprised that Lyra's never ridden a horse. I don't know why. I just, like, assume people kind of needed horses in her world. I don't know. Also, the know um also i feel like they have little buggies like little uh ford buggies it feels like you know so yeah ambaric ambaric buggies yeah i think you're right it's just like for some reason i think of horses being more common there than it is and also like i it's good that the malefa are benevolent um you know people carrying the children because

the way they describe this I'm like I live in the year 2022 smart cars are on the horizon and this sounds like a dystopian like this could like in a different context be a dystopian like smart car storyline so yeah like if we were sci-fi we would just exploit the Mulefa immediately like Gomez is trying to do that's also true oh I was just thinking like if it weren't the Mulefa right like any other thing where they're like

yeah they didn't have any control over where this sentient thing they were taking them right god Elon Muskville oh my god it actually yeah exactly exactly literally so they speed through the malefa made roads which are quite unlike the brutal sharp roads in will's world and the wheels make too much noise for them to speak so they point instead an amazement at everything around them the birds the lizards the sun the air the

salt it's beautiful to imagine and i really appreciate once more the reinforcement of how the malefa and the world have coexisted and developed in a sustainable way it's just nice even the entire the whole chapter with the lacquering of the spyglass and the rope and the braiding of the rope. I just feel like the detail in it is so nice for this, right? To tell you how they've developed in that way. Yeah. Yeah. And had a balance, right?

That they respect nature as opposed to exploiting it. Yeah. I mean, as opposed to the magisterium as opposed to Asriel even as opposed to us yeah us too I mean I wasn't talking about us okay first of all we're still in fiction Eliana this isn't real we're fucking

a hole in the atmosphere another way oh god authority they reach an area where they're going the same pace as they would have if they were walking. So they're like, hey, can we get off and walk for a little bit? The Malafa are fine with that and the children move along, happy to just walk along the hay-scented, grass-warmed creatures. This is going to be insane on TV. Yes.

Everything is so alive in this chapter, which is so opposite of the land of the dead and the abyss, right? everything is so alive in this chapter which is so opposite of the land of the dead in the abyss right so just imagining how this would even be adapted for tv is like what episode six and seven is going to be in pure utter terror and darkness right apocalyptic crap in the afterlife and then you're going to come back here where it's like a happy prairie glowing in the sun what a contrast yeah it's going to be like quite a whiplash they're gonna go between so many different worlds this entire book is whiplash exactly it does it really is though um it's a lot of whiplash in those last few chapters whoo your move multiverse of madness the children observe how the mulefa move and as they come to the top of the rise the leader says

mary close mary there they look down at the blue gleam of sea on the horizon and see the home of the mulefa trees vegetation thatched houses crops they climb back on and the mulefa make sure they're safe before riding it at a thunderous speed the air whipping past lyra and and Will's face, joyfully laughing. They're delivered to the center of the village, where Mary Malone emerges from a hut. She kisses Lyra warmly and then welcomes Will. And then came a curious mental dance of sympathy and awkwardness, which took place in a second or less. Moved by compassion for the state they were in,ary first meant to embrace him as well as lyra but mary was grown up and will was nearly grown she could see that that kind of response would have made a child of him because while she might have embraced a child she would never have

done that to a man she didn't know so she drew back mentally wanting above all to honor this friend of lyra's and not cause him to lose face. So instead she gives him a very like adult handshake, which kind of sounds awkward in its own way, but for some reason this works. It's an understanding of respect that passes between them. And then we have this line of each of them felt they made a lifelong friend as indeed they had. And I just thought that was an interesting line.

A couple of times throughout these books, we see that the text breaks from the present like narration and gives us a glance into the future. One of the ones that I like, this one is I think a little more oblique and subtle, but the one that I think where it's very obvious and stands out is I believe it's in book one where Lyra, you know,

we learn the text tells us that lyra becomes the person or one of the people who knows the most about dust of anyone everywhere so this is i think one of those as well and i think there's another fourth wall break i want to say whether it's like lee or maybe with joppery one of the two but there's another one with them i want to say about and it might be joppery it might be his two. But there's another one with them I want to say about. And it might be Joppery. It might be his fate, like something about how he knew his fate or whatever. I really like those.

And I'm a sucker for it when authors pepper them toward the end of their series. You know what I mean? Dust them on in. Because it does give you something, especially if you're ending the series in a way. I mean, obviously obviously we have sequels which is great which is really fun we're having fun they're fun sequels but we didn't know we were gonna get those sequels they came like exactly i didn't know i was gonna get they came like i don't know 17 years or a little less 15 years or something like after this book which that's great though like that's you didn't know you had that though so it gives

you a little hope towards like you know what you wish for yeah it gives you closure a little bit of extra closure right a little bit also of him reassuring the reader like you're gonna be okay you could be okay without this series you're gonna move on after i philip pullman ruin your life with this book you're gonna move on from it eventually someday the wounds within you will heal he says out of the meta back in universe in the story we're talking about i do want to say that i love the respect she's giving will because yes it's so awkward and it sounds like it was an awkward moment very much so however that is like exactly that feeling that a child who was growing up to be a man here like a young man that's that awkwardness is what they demand though that's the respect he wants right uh and i think it's very important in asserting

yourself in puberty like when you're growing to not be smooshed by some older woman even if she's like in her 30s right we know that's old to someone who's 15 um you know now i'm 30 and i'm like bro 80 is so old yeah but and i'm like 60s young yeah exactly exactly it changes as you grow and she could see he's been through a lot she already knows he's been through a lot just from talking to Lyra a little. And he's becoming a man and giving him room to grow is great. You can't smoosh a beautiful flower in a corner with a bunch of other flowers and old flowers and think they're going to grow. Right? An older woman don't always give that space to young boys. Like think of aunties, right? Your auntie just smooching on a boy. He's trying to find his own and to be his own man after everything he's lost, like his father and this connection with his mother that probably will never be the same for him again. How do you do that? Mary's no auntie. She's good. She knows that people need room to grow, space to grow. Yeah. Yeah. And as you said, right, it might be awkward, but that's what growing up is.

Growing up is awkward. Yeah, that's for sure. Shit. But Mary's fantastic at this whole, like, respect thing. And it's her giving Will that space to grow and become a young man. You've spoken before about the contrast between Mary and Mrs. Coulter I mean Mrs. Coulter in many ways

did not allow children to grow she kind of smothered Lyra right didn't really give Lyra the space to grow or anything she was like I'm going to just keep her in this little box and also she killed and she also killed a bunch of kids or tried to sever a lot of them

which would have prevented them from growing as well whereas again she drugged her yeah and she also killed a bunch of kids or tried to sever a lot of them right um which would have prevented them from growing as well whereas again you can just contrast that with mary here nothing says i'm not letting you grow up quite like murder um or quite like keeping you drugged asleep and saying that you can never leave yeah nothing says don't grow up quite like that oh which is like the saddest right because her intentions are i mean it's not her fault right uwu leave her alone poor baby meow meow i love her um leave her alone she just loved her daughter and has no clue how to love I never learned how to love either Marisa

you love your children fine that's fine I haven't drugged any of them at least not consensually which is a shock really because every day they test my patience you know speaking of people and their parents and growing up lyra has introduced will already to cowboy dad to bear dad and he's introduced her to

real ghost dad um i guess she only introduced him to ghost cowboy dad now she's going to introduce him to surrogate mom i guess he also met her biological mother too, but here's her other better mom. This is her second mom. This is her second mom. The mom she chose. So everyone's like, you know, real dating. So Lyra introduces Will and Mary to one another,

and Mary says that they look half-starved, probably because they haven't eaten in a long-ass time. They just hiked up a whole-ass mountain in the Land of the Dead and didn't eat a meal or a snack before going in, which is probably the right call, to be honest. But anyway, some of the malefa bring them cushions, as well as bringing wooden bowls with what seemed like milk. But it had this oddly refreshing lemon astringency. And then they bring them small nuts like hazelnuts,

but richer and more buttery, as well as this fresh salad from the soil. We have this line because this is also a food podcast of sharp peppery leaves mingled with soft thick ones that oozed a creamy sap, and little cherry-sized roots like sweet carrots, as well as a slightly scorched floury bread and i appreciate that the text for the second time tells us that this bread is kind

of like chapati or tortillas in case you were wondering what to envision i even love that we have kind of a return to some of these flavors from the first book right uh like the hazelnut oh yeah the hazelnut reminds you of the seal blubber in the first book yeah in fact even just mirroring them at the arctic institute having that fancy lunch versus here with the mulefa having something grown uh i don't know so homegrown right something they created like you were saying sustainable living and having it be just as delicious and filling right um and and there's something about that peppery tang the the lemon the acidity and the sweetness right going on there's like a little bit of sweetness in the carrots and in the hazelnuts

um it's kind of metaphorical right the bittersweet that's going on here because we're about to have some some bittersweet throughout the story i think yeah and i was thinking for the sharp pepper oh yes that sounds delicious actually i would like some arugula like right now uh the sharpness i could see too yeah uh i don't know it's too rich for them to eat all of right a little bit is quite enough so there's even something reminiscent of like the elves and lord of the rings with their food being more filling right the leavened bread and how just a little bit is more filling and there's almost something culturally right uh with the mulefa living in this peaceful society right uh sustainably living there creating their own food upkeeping that and their food being more filling than like a regurgitated chemical piece of shit that

you know like craft singles processed for just this gorgeous salad that just grew in the ground for them uh that they worked hard and that is somehow more filling than any other food that feels metaphorical yeah and that they don't over farm things right like mary later on is going to be gathering these like kind of muscles for the malefa and shows that they're not like over farming them right like it's there to be part of the landscape keep like upkeep the ocean and all those things likely and it's it's just really shown that this is like this land of plenty you care for the land you care for each other right because this this feast is likely it seems like something maybe they

do together as a community and people come together with their different parts to create this meal and it takes a village you know and and it's like this land of providence and the children don't have to worry about what to eat yeah and that is true like that's the biggest part right there that you don't think about that when you're a kid you don't think about where any of it comes from but that's the goal ideally ideally but but that's like the goal like that you create a society where you can have your children fed and you're not worrying about it i mean if you're listening to our other podcast our song of ice and fire podcast you might hear me and eliana talk about sometimes things we're watching and me and my husband are

very slow watching the walking dead i think i've mentioned it over there lately with some zombie stuff during our sam chapters so uh that's one of the biggest things right is like sustainable living where can we go that we can protect our people from zombies and grow our own food right since there is no longer any food create our own resources and live sustainably and everybody pitch in and do their own job uh and societally i think that's something that we strive for in our society too against the chains of humanity and capitalism yeah and and how do we keep our children fed how do we keep i mean and you think about that will will hasn't really experienced that much, right? Like, even from the start of when we meet him, this is, I think, the first time. this time with the Malefa is the first time he gets to

I think experience being cared for in that way because even when he was in his own world he was the one caring for and he's the one who had to manage the food and feeding for himself and his mother and for him and Lyra yeah exactly

because that girl does not know how to cook no she knows how to nap and eat hot chip yeah hot girl does not know how to cook. No, she knows how to nap and eat hot chip. Yeah. Hot girl shit, you know. Hot savior shit. Yeah. Hot chip, hot takis.

What is it? Hot Cheetos and takis. There we go. So, Mary, that's not sustainable, everyone. Neither hot Cheetos nor talkies are sustainable that's processed well that like we were talking about processed food that is for us that is bad for you craft singles craft singles um so mary manages to avoid asking too many questions she realizes the children are not ready to talk,

quite obviously. So she instead answers their questions about how did she get here, who the malefa are, and finally she lets them take a nap because they both really need a nap, and that's how we move the story forward. Meanwhile, Atal asks Mary some questions about Will and Lyra. Like, how is Mary able to tell, like, and discern to Atal that they are of two sexes, and Mary explains that they have different shapes of body and move differently, but that they have less shroff, and she doesn't know when it will come to them, right? And this is something that I imagine, like, Philip Pullman might write about, like, just a little bit differently or more nuanced nowadays but i also understand like the caveat of you know he's trying to talk about these like biological contrasts especially when we

have focused so much on the evolution i guess of the world of the malefa i do think that he kind of boxed himself in in a few ways by having this tied so heavily to binary gender too right yeah like oh it's the opposite and if it's not you know if it's the same they might be gay uh that's as far as he got so i think today i mean the 90s i don't expect it to be much more advanced i don't he's grown a lot even like in the past few years right publicly we've watched that growth yeah i've been very proud of my grandfather exactly exactly so i think that's been really great and i i just want to give him every now and then people deserve credit for growth yeah he deserves some kudos on that and

i do think he would probably write a little differently about it and not box him in yeah you know into that exact kind of corner because it is a little bit of a corner but at that same exact token i i do appreciate it being explained you know base fundamentals to a towel because a towel wouldn't necessarily understand why and how and that's something that i think um is very human to think about it's not something that a towel personally might think about all the time yeah and. And even just like- These weirdos with their flesh bags. How do you tell? Like a scientific, I guess, interest, right?

That's human. Atal's like, our girl, Mulefa, can swing their trunk up and down at the same time as tapping their belly. Yeah. She's like, I don't know. I got friends, I guess. It's just a vibe you get as a Mulefa. It's just vibes. Yeah, it's not really explained interestingly

for the Mulefa. Atal doesn't know when Shroff, the whole Shroff thing, happens to humans, because they don't have wheels, so it's a lot less obvious when pu thing happens to humans because they don't have wheels. So it's like a lot less obvious when puberty happens to them. Also, some of the worlds, you know, don't have demons. So they continue weeding the garden together. And Natal goes on, surprised that Mary knew that

they were coming. And Natal asks if it was the Yijing. But Mary embarrasses, no, it was a night picture, a dream. And she'd seen them in her dreams so clearly and a voice said prepare for them and then get ready coming like the dwight and angela the office meme what the fuck coming soon to a theater near you to a chapter near you yeah atal asks well wait how did the voice speak if you couldn't see it unable to imagine that without the trunk movements and mary's like i did see it though a woman a female wise one very old but not old at all at the same time yeah so we're gonna see this person like in a second there's just one of the ghosts so uh but it does remind me of the witches a little bit that description right of a female wise one

old but not old me yeah old but not old atal asks if the children would be able to stop the sraf from leaving mary knows without looking at the spyglass that the shadow particles are streaming away faster than ever oh just that feeling that you could like without even looking yourself you could feel the shadow particles are streaming away faster than ever oh just that feeling that you could like without even looking yourself you can feel the shadow particles leaving and running and how it kind of just ignites your veins for what's to come here in these chapters and the adventure is still ahead at early evening a group of stranger other mulefa arrive new mulefa will and lyra are sleeping as usual because you know this is their second nap in this chapter, and then they wake up. The new Mulefa have found something. Mary must go with them to investigate, and she promises to return. Atal will watch with the children. Mary goes off,

riding on the leader of the other group, alarmed a little bit by the speed, having never ridden in the dark before, but amazed at the beauty of the world. She can't pull out her spyglass yet, but she's ready to use it. They lead her toward a gully to an opening similar to the ones made by the subtle knife. From the opening comes a procession of ghosts. Mary's shocked and catches herself, watching the ghosts walk into moonlight, then vanish. Their faces are full of joy, and their arms outstretched. They held out their arms as if they were embracing the whole universe and then as if they were made of mist or smoke they simply drifted away becoming part of

the earth and the dew and the night breeze returning to the earth right we're seeing it in action this is this is the workflow the workflow of the ghosts they finally are returning to nature indeed and i like that call out of the dew and the mist because i'm like it's happening it's happening the little boy lost in the vapor but instead of it being sad it's happy and with all this talk of sustainability and the way the mulefa live like seeing this process happen like it's supposed to be and them kind of going to become the atmosphere and become part of the world they live in and maybe again there's that little mermaid uh the actual original little mermaid that she like she decides to kill herself and become seafoam

and do good deeds for a thousand whatever years to earn a soul and that's kind of what it feels like right like this is the alternative they're now seafoam on the breeze earn a soul. And that's kind of what it feels like, right? Like this is the alternative. They're now seafoam on the breeze, earning a soul, earning their afterlife instead of being stuck forever in that horrible land. Yeah. But the little mermaid didn't deserve all that. She did nothing wrong. No,

she did absolutely nothing wrong. Maybe she came on a little strong, but you know, he should have been more vocal. Yeah. Everyone let her on. Everyone should have communicated better. And I guess she didn't have a voice and that made it hard, but you know he should have been more vocal yeah everyone he let her on everyone should have communicated better and i guess she didn't have a voice and that made it hard but you know what it's a two-way street eric prince eric

so some of the dead seem to be coming towards mary to tell her something and their touch is cold i don't know how she's not freaked out like i'd be like what the fuck absolutely not get the fuck away from me absolutely not absolutely not um and finally one goes an old woman she makes it right she motions to mary to come close then tells her tell them stories they need the truth you must tell them true stories everything will be well just tell them stories then she vanishes too we have a great line in the text that basically likens the experience to recalling a dream you've forgotten or re-experiencing that emotion she realizes it was what she tried to tell a towel but as she tries to grasp it again she loses it once more and she remembers only to tell them

stories as she watches the ghosts pour out horrifying um no it's it's actually a really lovely sentiment though and i love the reiteration of tell them stories throughout the rest of this novel and i've actually heard of people getting this exact line tell them stories tattooed on themselves and i love that um and i think phil is philip mr pullman i don't know how intimate we are has really done a great job of how he's woven that idea through the entire book series right because from the start we've seen lyra telling a bunch of stories a lot of them were untrue they were not true stories they were lies literally and i mean telling fiction isn't bad right like this is fiction literally like i this is not a this is not a biography or a documentary as much as i like telling people

things for documentaries this is not but there's an importance to i think that story that fiction having a truth to it something that like can echo in people and that people really feel and that you can take with you at the end of a story this will happen to those we promise even though it's going to destroy you oh my god if you haven't finished it already and you're listening, you're so brave. You're the bravest person I know. Because it is beautiful. It is a great, great story that we're finishing in the next couple months.

And Tell Them Stories makes me so fucking emotional. I just think it's so perfect to bring it. Especially when, like you said, Lyra has told lies and fictional little stories. makes me so fucking emotional i just think it's so perfect to to bring it especially when like you said lyra has told lies and fictional little stories but that's what actually but look at the harpy look at her telling her a story but i mean that's been such a very strong thread and we'll talk more about it as we get through marzipan and there is now but first we'll head to chapter 33 marzipan which opens actually with a poem from george herbert sweet spring full of sweet days and roses a box where sweets compacted lie you know i don't feel that way about springtime i get allergies um but roses huh roses i mean this congestion is not allergies this is illness but yeah this is from virtue by george herbert and the it's about basically the importance of nourishing

virtue in a person's soul in the first few stanzas the first three we we kind of learn that everything's gonna die in the end but then in the very last stanza he contradicts himself and he says a virtuous soul can live even if everything dies so very much the bittersweet tone that the entire last five to ten chapters of this book take encompassed in a poem and i think it's perfect right it's it's about fleeting life and unavoidable death of mortal creatures to eternal life of a virtuous soul and what living really means right having lived and living what that means the ghosts crossing over into the night sky in mourning right and mary watching them go and of course not to cross this line but virtue is often equated with virginity right virtue of person, innocence lost. So really strong poem.

I'm sure that he read that one for inspiration throughout the end here. Yeah, he probably did. Well, we start out with more dreams. It's a dream of spring, if you will. Lyra waking from a dream where Pan has settled and she loved his shape. But what was it? Speaking of dreams you can't remember i have no fucking clue what mine is lyra and we're getting really close we are getting close to game time this is getting dangerous no clue no clue all of our patrons that are running our

rewatch for the show right now over at discord they are settling they are showing us their settled demons each time they present with the idea that when we finish this book we will present ours what if mine doesn't settle in time well oh well you know you'll have time you know and we're just we're just so young at heart that's why ours haven't settled yet we are both old women who are not old wise one boys i don't know that anyone would describe me as such no comment lyra listens to the sounds around her and enjoys the morning and then she realizes oh shit i'm naked and she starts to get mad for a second and then she sees clean clothes loaned by mary so they fit

pretty loosely i get it now upon rereading this didn't stand out until like i don't know a couple of times reading this um so throughout the series we've obviously seen lyra becoming more and more conscious of her body right in a second like in a few lines from now where she's about to be worried about will being there if she's gonna bathe and like that it's different now she can't really bathe in front of him and the closest that we've had to this moment was when lyra was bathing back at the end of book one and roger was just sitting outside the door talking at her you know kind of through it and before then a call out of mrs coulter right having pan turn away which kind

of in a way first of all they were like that's kind of weird i guess like there's an assertion that pans are like another gender right but like it also in a way shows this lack of self-consciousness about lyra's body right as that's her own soul and that's when we start getting our attention drawn to like this aspect of puberty and i mean bodies are a part of that right like bodies change during puberty i think we kind of all know that and It's like a painful self-awareness that begins. Yeah, it's a self-awareness. And it doesn't end. It doesn't end.

It's weird. And you start realizing that your body, that you become conscious of your body and you become conscious of the fact that therefore other people are conscious of your body. Right. Or you think. Yeah. And then there are sexual aspects to that right like i think a great show that covers that and that really weird age and in which the characters are technically lyra and will's age in these books is pen 15 love that show yeah um but i

think it does a great job of navigating like hey yeah this is a young age but sexuality starts like becoming something you think about and we'll see that desire and curiosity become more of a focus in the next few chapters. It stands out for Lyra for the first time, I think, throughout the series, right? She suddenly is like, oh, wait, no, this does matter, I guess, huh? I kind of thought it mattered before, but oh my god, I feel different about it. She realizes for the first time, she's just like, is naked and i mean she hasn't really been like surprised naked in a while or like that change of clothing that is kind of disturbing but she has a very visceral reaction to it she feels mad and like worried about it for a second and it becomes this moment that is like Adam and Eve biting into the

fruit of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. And here's the line from Lyra's world's book of Genesis after, you know, they see their demons suddenly settle after biting into the fruit. And it says, and they saw the difference and they knew good and evil and they were ashamed and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. And it's kind of similar to like, the lines are practically the same in our book of Genesis for that specific moment, but then it continues on to, but the Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid.

And he said, who told you that you were naked have you eaten from the tree that i commanded you not to eat from and the answer is yes we all know that the answer is yes okay and mary it makes sense here right you have mary who is playing the serpent and she speaks of desire later and it's also she who loans her own clothing so that lyra may cover her nakedness as she comes to this knowledge oh i love that because this entire chapter is literally every part of it is supposed to evoke that it's the garden they're in the garden they're literally in the garden of eden right now where everything is perfect and there's great salad there's salad there's tortillas

there's shellfish now don't be shellfish aliana i love that you've brought it around to their version right of that passage because that because that stood out to me so much with the demon replaced in there. And it's come full circle here. Yep. Yep. Lyra feels Pan nearby. She can almost hear him. She hopes and thinks that when he forgave her and came back, hours they'd spent just talking just telling each other

everything come back i'm in pain this is painful to me for no reason pan pain pan pain oh pan pain for my real friends and real pain for my pan friends instead of champagne uh will is still sleeping and lyra's like he's lazy which that's unfair lyra he's very tired she wants to wake him but she decides to go alone to the river to swim naked and she blushes to think of doing it with will around there's a bird that's kind of like a heron there she finds the river water really strange because for some reason it's salty it's seawater and she's never swam in seawater before. She thinks usually Pan dries her off and then she goes over possibilities for what he might settle as.

And she's like, what if, what if Pan isn't thinking about me? Eventually she dries, she leaves, she dries herself, she redresses. Someone has replaced her and Will's clothes. They're nice and clean. Will wakes and Lyra assures him they are safe. And he copies her and Will's clothes. They're nice and clean. Will wakes and Lyra assures him they are safe and he copies her idea of swimming. He goes to take a bath. Lyra wanders around the village trying to be polite, admiring the subtle patterns in the wood growing into a certain shape. As she walks, she admires the order of the village, reminded of her

lithiometer's patterns as well and the different meanings. She kind of takes joy in thinking about, well, thinking about patterns and her lithiometer and about the place they're in and then she starts to wonder how long they'd be safe here. So there's definitely something there about this whole thinking and like pondering thing and that being important. We'll get there, whatever.

But I just want to say, these poor kids these poor fucking kids, they're always wondering and worrying about when they can finally be safe and happy. And now we have here, as you said, right, a place. Seems peaceful. But these poor fucking kids. Yeah. So Will eventually returns, and so does Atal, and they see the village come to life as they eat breakfast. And Mary addresses them, saying that they should share what's transpired for all of these parties involved and that they can make

nets while they do since it's probably going to take a while so something to do and mary teaches them to make nets being wary about where they go so as to not run into the tulapi and lyra tells everything from the retired room there's still no sign of the tulapi so mary takes them to the fishing post where it's safe and when the tide is out as the tulapi. So Mary takes them to the fishing post where it's safe. And when the tide is out, as the Tulapi only come at high tide, and they walk along a hard path of mud maintained and in tune with nature. And then I've put in a bunch of really long quotes because I was like, these are good. This is good writing. Will asks if they made the stone roads themselves. And Mary says, no, they made them. The themselves, and Mary says no.

They made them. The roads made the Mulefa. They'd never have developed the use of the wheels if there hadn't been hard, flat surfaces to use them on. She thinks they're lava flows from ancient volcanoes. She says, so the roads made it possible for them to use the wheels, and other things came together as well, like wheel trees and the way their bodies are formed. They not vertebraes they don't have a spine some lucky chance in our worlds long ago must have meant the creatures with the backbones had it a bit easier so all kinds of other shapes developed and based on central spine in this world chance went another way the diamond frame was successful there are vertebrates to be sure but not many there are snakes for example snakes are important here people look after them and try not to hurt them anyway she

says their shape and the roads and the wheeled trees coming together all made it possible a lot of little chances all coming together amazing and i do have to say i love that she says snakes are important here yeah that's for sure you sure are Mary because it was revered because the snake was going through the little wheel hole and was like why don't you put your hand in

yeah that was a foreshadowing for our Mary Snake Malone right there she's the snake in and out of the wheel pod she should get a snake tattoo. She's like the, what are they called again in fucking Riverdale? Oh my god, the

south side snakes. Yeah, the south side serpents. Serpents, there you go. I'm more of a silver serpent person, you know, from what should we call it? Legends of the Hidden Temple. Yes, thank you, from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Yes, thank you. From Legends of the Hidden Temple.

Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Yep. You know, I love some of the talk here because it's just some of the way that Pullman has laid this out and talking about these little chances. Our first roads were actually spontaneously formed, right? By humans walking the same paths over and over to get water and find food.

So as small groups of people combine into villages, towns, and cities, walking paths became more formal roads. We actually have the earliest stone paved roads traced to about 4000 BC in, well, Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq. in, well, Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq. The Romans kind of continued to create them, making the very first superhighway because they needed to get their armies out faster, but our first roads were kind of like cells becoming complex organisms. That's very cool. I like that.

I do think of cities sometimes as cells, as an organism. One of my favorite bands has a song and i won't go into it but they have a song where they like talk about cities being you know little tanks of people and people being the oxygen cells and you know cars being traveling through the airway to get the oxygen cells places it's very interesting to think of everything as one big functioning unit yeah nk jemisin's uh the city we became is kind of about this um it's fun it's fun it's cute i will say regarding the roman roads this is just on the side uh i believe they were just like super good right like they were they have this concrete and we like don't even have the recipe for that anymore but it was just like

real good yeah yeah they were supposed to be really intense yeah lost you know like most things yeah over to time mary then asked for will's story and he starts off with lots of little chances for me too he began thinking of the cat under the hornbeam trees. Yeah. I like that idea of all the little chances. It's what makes it feel almost like fate. I mean, that is like, that's what makes us so ridiculously human. Right? That we

take those little things as signs or that we like, I mean, how many times have you loved something or someone and had some little memory spark that felt like fate that led you to them right whether it was fate whether it was you whether it was the world aligning at that same time i don't know yeah it's kind of nice it's kind of nice yeah these little these little moments these little chances all come together and and i mean to really

show that right you know the timing it's just a bit off in this or Will is also thinking of it if the timing had been just a bit off that he would have never found the window or Chittagatse or Lyra and then he tells his story up until the part where the witch kills his father

quite the cliffhanger and Lyra's like yeah witches are fierce and will's like i don't know if that was like love though and then mary says love is ferocious too um we all know i have qualms with like that scene but yeah and then will kind of will kind of fights back about it right because he explains john loved elaine and was never unfaithful. And I'm just telling you, this is how John Perry became a wizard. Just like in that one famous anime meme. That is how it works to become a wizard.

That's how it works? Yo, do you want to get sad? Are you ready for this line? It's so sad, you guys. Lyra, looking at Will, thought that if he fell in love he would be like that ferocious never unfaithful oh wow you know and eliana again you have not gotten through dr who we've we've already bashed you for it shamed you for it dr who woo uh we we've already bashed you for it, shamed you for it. Dr. Who-woo. We've already bashed you for it enough, but I just have to tell you

that the next part, they're on a beach during this scene, right? And beaches are never good if you've watched Dr. Who, I'm telling you. Nature surrounds them. They are to an extent. Nature surrounds them. The beach clear and beautiful and the text pontificates about

ecosystems once more mary scans for tuolapi danger for the dualipa and then shows them how to find a mollusk they're hard for the mulefa to gather so she gathers as many as she can while she's there to provide a special feast and then she shares part of her story so i kind of wonder are the mollusks here i earlier i said they were mussels they're just general mollusks here earlier I said they were mussels they're just general mollusks are they meant to be like oysters right are they supposed to be like the aphrodisiacs

I don't know that kind of makes sense though if they're supposed to be semi aphrodisiacs because everything about this is kind of aphrodisiac yeah also I just like oysters love an oyster I just hope it for them you know

so the stories take too long and it leaves no time for them to get to the discussion about the underworld yet even mary's gotta wait for the next chapter will explains that he does know about demons and ghosts and m Mary is interested in the, she says, three-part nature of human beings. And, you know, she talks about, like, the church, the Catholic church that I used to belong to, wouldn't use the word demon, but St. Paul talks about spirit and soul and bodies. So the idea of three parts in human nature isn't so strange. And Will's like, but the best part is the body. That's what Baruch and Balthamos told me. Angels wish they had bodies.

They told me that angels can't understand why we don't enjoy the world more. It would be sort of ecstasy for them to have our flesh and our senses and the world of the dead. And Lyra's like, hold on, hold on, spoilers, cliffhangers. Alright? She smiles at him and then we have this beautiful

line of a smile of such sweet knowledge and joy that his senses felt confused he smiled back and mary thought his expression showed more perfect trust than she'd ever seen on a human face and i just put that in for that passage to hurt you um the other parts i don't know mary doesn't get out much as we've learned i guess i guess i mean i also put it there to hurt everyone let's be well that's fine that's fine um all that part about the body though and whatever the three parts i feel like you and i've kind of covered this already like 20 times throughout the course of this podcast so yeah the daddy the son the holy spirit amen all that and like these parts right like soul spirit

things about it and i just like i don't have anything new to say that i didn't say in previous monologues absolutely not absolutely not me either yeah when they're back at the village they prepare the feast mary lets the kids stay and hang out at the riverbank to watch the tide return and atal is super excited about shellfish night which me too i love that she actually puts that extra work in right to make sure they have a special night like that that makes it that much more important and again shows that hard work that like this isn't something normal or sustainable but to have something special you have to work hard to have something sweet and special you know it's not always easy can't always be one dollar oyster happy hour yeah not always buck a shock

you guys you can't just walk 10 minutes down the road go and have a shooter with your girlfriend okay that's how it works here in a tal's world no but mary has some bad news sure this dinner's gonna be nice and sweet it's just gonna have to make up for the graver news that the tuolapi have been destroying villages up the coast and it's unusual usually they only destroy one village and retreat but it's been several villages she takes a look at dust through her amber spyglass, which is moving even more swiftly. She feels some responsibility suddenly, and she remembers, tell them stories. The only thing she can think to solve it all. So after dinner, Mary continues her part of her story, starting with just before she met Lyra, when she was researching dark matter and the funding crisis. I love that lack of funding is such a big part of the plots for both of the

worlds. Scholarship. It spurs Asriel and Mary. I still love the joke around the time that I think series one aired. People were like, you know it's a fantasy show because Asriel got that funding way too easily.

Yeah. Mary explains how she programmed the computer to let her talk to dust, and then she did anything this stranger told her to do over the internet. And Will points out that Mary as a scientist may not have believed in angels, but Mary's like, I was a nun.

She thought science could serve God at one point, until she lost faith and decided, as the book says physics is more interesting anyway and then we get into what was probably the part that like made a lot of people angry at philip pullman specifically and got him a lot of criticism and he has a line of the christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake that's all oop there is there it is uh yeah that is probably i think that's the one yeah everything else he could have kind of skirted around but once he got to that part plus the killing god together is everyone's just like what the fuck no no no this book is about those other guys with the bad organized religion gosh don, don't get upset, Mr. Pope.

I actually really love it, though, because I'm an intellectual, and I am not beholden to the rules of religious men's. So I don't know. I find it interesting that Mary thought science could possibly even serve God for a bit, right? She talks about the bargaining stage of religion, that she was like, what if I could have science and Jesus? And that's actually the opposite of what the Magisterium was doing, right? Like that's, the Magisterium had the same thought.

What about science and God to end Asriel? Scientific atheists have believed in multiverses for ages right so i don't know historic materials kind of gives you that in between is that's like what if all of it's real but we're missing the point you guys yeah i you know just like i agree i agree with everything you said um though there's the part where she's like yeah i thought science could serve god but and as you pointed out the magisterium puts forth one way and i'm like she could have still like done science and served god and not been celibate that was an option um that's true well that's like the thing right is like you can live by this horrid set of rule book

right this this old rule book some people wrote and it got telephoned around and it got copied down several times yeah and through history it got changed it just became a book of fables you can live by this weird book of fables that you know whatever or you could just live your life a good person lovefully and then get judged eventually if it's real or not you know like living in fear of it's like preventative care right it's real or not, you know, like living in fear of, it's like preventative care, right? It's like how you're supposed to go to the doctor and get all this preventative care and that's free on your insurance. But when you're actually sick, they're like, nah, give me $8 million. That's literally what life is. It's like, well, you know, these 10 rules from this Bible here are telling me that if I do all this, which I mean, those are good rules.

The golden rules are like, they're right. You shouldn't fuck with BFFs person. You shouldn't kill people. Don't fucking covet your neighbor. Don't covet your neighbor's fucking partner. Don't steal. Be nice to people, whatever. Treat old people nicely and smile at babies or something.

You can make faces as long as it's fun i don't know as long as it makes the baby smile yeah but then it's just like all of this complicated stuff like cut your kid in half and send it down the river and strike women with stones and like how could you know maybe we read between the lines on some of this maybe it's just fables and jesus was like don't don't throw stones what if novel concept everyone what if we didn't throw stones um yeah yeah technically he's didn't he said let's not he was it was a mind game to not cut the baby in half you know um yeah but yeah absolutely but everyone for some reason took away from it let's throw stones uh it's it's yeah a powerful as she said powerful convincing

mistake and lots of it yeah and it's interesting you know, her perspective on it coming from someone in our world, right? Where there are presumably less constraints than in Lyra's world and on someone like Mrs. Coulter. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a sec. Yeah. So Lyra asks Mary how she stopped being a nun. And Mary says she was great at physics. So she pursued her doctorate while being a nun. She was in an order that let her do that. They didn't wear habits. They dressed soberly and wore a crucifix. She went to a research conference in Lisbon, which was her first time

leaving England, and she was dazzled by all of it, wondering, what if people did turn up and listen to me? What if I mess up my presentation? But but she was excited she'd been obedient to the church she'd wanted to serve god entirely until the evening after she gave her paper she was relieved proud and had some well-known people listening in and was invited to a dinner after she's like why not i've grown i've done some great stuff i should network what's your linkedin the atmosphere is warm the conversation is great and after discovering she loves wine and grilled sardines she goes to the garden first mistake biblically speaking you never want to go to the garden sitting under a lemon tree is a man she'd seen around the conference italian and they spoke a bit that's a fruit tree too you know lemon tree yep this is it's the garden they're in bravos oh my god oh wait

danny no she explains that this guy isn't good looking or else she couldn't have spoken to him but he was nice and clever and funny and fun to talk to which that to me is sexier than good looking right there nice and funny and clever is good looking i couldn't fuck someone who didn't make me laugh you know that's i don't know need that. I think that's sexier and more intimate and scarier overall than a hot person. Yeah, she depends on the point I was trying to make, though. But we did discuss this during our Patreon episode about fools. That's true. That's true. Mary finds herself hoping he would think she was pretty. and she was kind of astounded that she was flirting thinking of her vows and her boyfriend jesus because suddenly her vows and

beliefs seem silly to her to think she'd be fine without having love ever wow if you guys have listened to our song of ice and fire chapters this is for you where have we seen these themes before she compares to having thought love would be like going to china that you know it exists and some people get to go and you don't have to go but suddenly she realizes wow i've been to china ish ish it sounds like she hasn't i don't know i don't know she hadn't though this is about marzipan now, because someone had passed her something sweet and tasty. Marzipan. She remembers it. Sweet almond paste, march pain. She recalls tasting it for the first time as a young girl of 12 at a friend's birthday party where there was a disco, and a boy had asked her to dance. and we have this long passage where mary describes what it's like to have a crush on someone when you're young she's like i like i liked him a lot they talked and there was birthday cake and then he takes a bit of marzipan then he gently puts it in her mouth and i guess she really liked that right she tried to smile blushing and feeling foolish it does feel like a foolish thing i'd be

like what the fuck is going on why is someone feeding me something and she fell in love with him just for that and she says for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan and then we have mary describing um as mary describes this uh the text tells us as barry said that lyra felt something strange happen to her body she felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow deep inside her. And as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on. And I think it was at that party, or it might have been at another one, that we kissed each other for the first time. It

was in a garden, and there was the sound of music from inside, and the quiet and the cool among the trees, and I was aching. All my body was aching for him, and I could tell he felt the same. And we were both almost too shy to move. Almost. But one of us did, and then suddenly, without any interval between, it was like a quantum leap. Suddenly, we were kissing each other, and oh, it was more than China. It was paradise. And we saw each other about half a dozen times, no more, and then his parents moved away, and I never saw him again. It was such a sweet time, so short, but there it was. I'd known it. I'd been to China. Lyra knew exactly what she meant and half an hour earlier she would have had no idea at all and inside her that rich house with all its doors open and all its rooms lit stood waiting, quiet, expectant I don't think Mary's been to China

No Okay, we'll get there I don't think she has either Let's talk about the US Um, god Jeez, Lyra's loins are lighting up. Oh my God. I mean, that is what the fucking passage is.

It's like Lyra is having a small sexual awakening within her and realizing, wow, there's a tingly feeling within me. There is something interesting, though. So what you just read most of and paraphrased for us is the u.s version and so if you're not aware the north american edition alters passages describing lyra's sexuality her awakening here the uk edition includes this passage so the long version is as mary said that lyra felt something strange happened to her body She found a stirring at the roots of her hair. She found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller coaster or anything like one.

But if she had, she would have recognized the sensations in her breast. Exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued and deepened and changed as more parts of her body found themselves affected, too. She felt as if she had been handed the keys, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, she sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe as Mary went on. All of that is amended down to Lyra felt something strange happen, handed the key to a great house turned the key felt the doors trembling deep in darkness sat trembling as mary went on she doesn't hug her knees actually in the u.s edition either to herself um it's very much so slimmed down right it's very slimmed down

the uh passion of the moment is very censored pullman has actually said about this awakening that this is exactly what happens in the Garden of Eden. It's why the Christian church has spent 2000 years condemning this glorious moment. Well, he doesn't know. That's a mystery. He says he wants to confront that by telling this story that this so-called original sin is anything but. It's a thing that makes us fully human. And it is like this is the moment where you know your mom and dad are trying to stop you from listening to rock and roll and getting into sex and drugs right lyra don't get into sex and drugs i don't know it's kind of like the funniest part though of

the entire meta fucking publishing experience especially as people that aren't going to have a u.s version of the imagination chamber we can leave that one to our imagination chambers that the US seriously censored this when it's about feeling alive, being alive having a human experience for what it's worth the US didn't censor the imagination chamber I just think they didn't think they could profit off of it

which is not necessarily the same thing can we profit off it no skip it uh um yeah so i uh yes yes to everything you said i i i think it's so funny that they changed it it seems so unnecessary of a change like a friend of mine uh who actually does listen to this podcast um she was telling me about how and she and i have long discussed this series for a while and she also read this about i think and so did her younger sister around the same age that i did um and then we read these books when they were older and i think her younger sister by that time was living in the uk and noticed that but you had called out that difference in passage and like

told her she's like no no it's different they censored it they had to have censored it in the versions that we had she's like i would have remembered i would have remembered a line like um like she recognized the sensations in her breast she was like furious uh about the whole thing but i mean everything that you said right and pullman saying this is what happened in the garden of eden and this is what i i feel is just really pointed this idea of this sexual awakening being something the christian church has been condemning for a long time right this condemnation of pleasure as though the denial of pleasure is for some reason virtue that innocence is somehow virtue versus experience which is what a lot williams blake's poems are about right that

condemnation of that uh corruption of the christian church and it just feels really pointed especially today yeah yeah especially today i guess we could give context on what today is um today there was a leak and usually when we talk about leaks we're excited because it has to do with fictional media but this is not fictional media that was leaked this is real life media that the supreme court would like to strike down the case roe versus wade that is existing to keep abortion legal in the united states and let a woman have a little bit of control over her body and they are voting five to4 it seems against it existing anymore so with that in mind the states

will each take in the United States especially for those of you that may not know this yet the states will be able to decide what will happen to the wombs of America and some states like the state I live in will probably go red

they will go up with that no for me some states, like the state I live in, will probably go red. Ha ha. They will go up with that no for me, so. You know, who knows? Who knows? Things might turn... I don't know. Things might turn different yet, you know? They did here and overcame insurmountable odds. Who knows?

If enough people... I don't know. Enough vote blue oh my god no that's not what i was saying that is not what i was saying okay vote vote really hard all right so um so yeah back to uh bodily autonomy and you know people that have quote-unquote values quote-unquote yeah um i i just i'm sorry i just take umbrage with this whole like i'm just like so mary so you haven't been to fucking china like she keeps talking about china all the time it's really weird it's so weird and i'm just like you know, someone gives Mary Mars a pan and she's like, and, and like the line then goes like, and I thought, am I really going to spend the rest

of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought, I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. And I'm just like, what the fuck? Love the other thing that you, the other ideas that we have here, Philipip pullman i do not love this what the fuck is this one i'm like this is china's the same people have sex in china like you do people fall in love in china like everywhere else in the fucking world all right it is very exoticized romanticized both yeah yeah it's weird it's like this weird like orientalism and i don't know i was just got my hackles up because it's like asian american pacific islander history month as a southeast asian american myself and i'm just like mary really picked a place that actually exists in her world that actually

exists in my world alright and was like wow it's so strange and so full of mystery and I can just never know what China is really like but I've been to China without having been to China I'm like I don't know like literally we're talking about this into context of like you are chilling in the world of the

Malafa right now you have seen people exiting the world of the dead you're with two kids who just came in the world of the malefa right now you have seen people exiting the world of the dead you're with two kids who just came from the land of the dead and have met galavespians and like people from all across all of the different worlds and have been to chittagatse and seen specters and you've been to chittagatse and seen specters and you were like china you picked a place that like literally is real and exists in your world and that's what our author picked a place that is

real and decided this was the metaphor to go to. Anyway. Don't blame her. Don't blame Mary Malone. I understand the sentiment but I'm just like so China's real? It's a real place? Well that's the biggest part here here i don't know she literally

comes to mulefa land she learns that the mulefa have taught her way more than she ever would have known right she literally is like wow i've learned so much from the mulefa this is great and they've learned from me so in her mind she has realized that these people have brought her new things to learn and that aren't like other people and that when you go to new lands the people there are all different and you can learn from them and none of them are the same but they're also the same they're also still the same and human you know that's part of it too but offer you new things and a new view on the world so she just came here and thought all this and now she's like oh but i've basically been to china

what yeah but you haven't the whole point is that you came here and you met all these new people that taught you so many different things and communicated with you differently so if you went to china you would also do that yeah and those people are way more similar to you than the malefa the people the chinese people are more similar to you also does lyra have a china like i forgot what the term is in her world as well as she's just like what the fuck is going on what's that mean uh and i will say you actually put it in a perfect way as two people that used to go to anime cons all the time when we were younger much younger uh eliana referred to this to me as what we call a weeaboo right someone who's very very fascinated and obsessed to the point of

fandom you know like this is their fandom obsessed with everything coming out of japan culturally the fashion the pop culture um and that she is you know got a little china china weeaboo going on here we fetishization i mean actually literally is a fetishization of it if you think about it because she's just like oh china's so sexy that's what it is my sexual awakening um but to what you were saying as a quick side note you know and explaining the weeboo thing i found this meme i just sent it to you chloe it says anime fans over 30 are now called weeaboomers oh my god oh man yeah we've all been there you know we've all been there. You know, we've all been there. We've all had our anime con days. I don't know, Mary.

It just might be time to pack it up a little. But I don't know. I do think there's something to talk about in the discussion as far as location. There may be something for future novels to talk about. So we could talk about that for sure. We'll come back to that. We won't just hate on that. Yeah, I'm just i know i

know you are i am too how dare he during aap it is in front of my filipina princess how dare you phil he's not putting the phil in filipina you know what i mean oh my god he's not oh god that is named after a philip but yeah god damn it god damn it anyways so i do want to talk about marzipan in totality uh marzipan's origins do stem from the east right and there are a couple lines of origin they're not necessarily contradictory they actually might be complementary there's always been mediterranean trade and cooking influences but it's believed to be introduced through Turkey. Other sources establish it in China, where the recipe moved to the Middle East and then to Europe.

March bread, right? March pain is another name for it. Marzipane. It's documented earlier in Italian than any other language. And the sense bread for pan is from romantic languages. And the sense bread for pan is from romantic languages. So the very first origin that you can really find could be from Latin term, Marchus Panis, which is the bread of March.

And there's even something interesting about it, metaphorically, right, which represents sugar, sweetness, purity, white and yellow, just like the poem at the front of this chapter, Virt earlier we talked about our friend ariana emailing us about narnia and turkish delight and in narnia they have turkish delight which is a sweet made with starch and powdered sugar often flavored with lemon or rose water interestingly enough it was edmund's favorite sweet and a magical version of it was offered to him by the white witch like all of her magical food it was highly addictive making those who ate it want more and more making them easy for her to control and she was able to get information of edmund with that right uh to to help betray his siblings and family and bring them to her

and the turkish delight she offered him made him feel sick afterwards probably from the effects of too much sugar and the addictiveness of the witch's food so ariana had emailed us kind of talking about how it's kind of the opposite right that this marzipan that mary is offering them is very much symbolically the opposite she's offering them knowledge and offering them a way to be out on their own and to operate on their own in the real world yeah i i really i thought that was just such a fantastic that's brilliant yeah it's such a great thought observation i think it is his response to that oh i i think i think ariana has like literally right on the nose like has hit the nail

on the head like it's i think it's a brilliant call out of yes this is this is his rebuttal of saying no take joy in the sweets in the sweetness of life and don't avoid it right it's not bad to take pleasure in things and i i thought that was so great and as a rebuttal it's also an end cap rebuttal right we started the books with lyra in the retiring room bursting out uh hearing that yes hearing knowledge and here she's accepting knowledge marzipan knowledge right that's the response to turkish delight as that was the response to narnia uh in the front in the retiring room. Yeah, like busting out of that little wardrobe, right, or closet.

Same as how the wardrobe is the portal in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And also there's a you know, Mr. Tumnus, right? The Fawn Tumnus. That's fucking James McAvoy, a.k.a. Lord Asriel in this series. James McAvoy, a.k.a. Lord Asriel, in this series.

James McAvoy plays Mr. Tumnus, the fond Tumnus in the Narnia movies. My god. So there's that. Yeah. So thank you, Ariana. Thank you so much for writing that email and sending those thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. So Mary thinks that no one will be better off for her going to bed

she resists the temptation no one is better for her denying herself no one will commend her for her obedience she says heaven was empty i didn't know whether god had died or whether there had never been a god at all so there are a couple of things happening here a as you all know lyra and will have just killed god um just a quick reminder but b oh my god oh my authority we'll come back to that in a second but this line heaven was empty stands out to me first of all it reminds me a little bit of evangelion but ignoring that um it also feels like a play on that famous line from Romeo and Juliet, which those of you who watch Westworld would probably

know by heart by now, hell is empty and all the devils are here. Only, as we all know, yes, heaven is in fact emptying out within this story. The angels are flung across all the worlds, and the souls that inhabited heaven, well, they are in fact here

mary just saw them they were all clamoring towards her and she's like whoa this is very cool it was not um and their atoms are drifting across the worlds they are drifting across this one here and it shifts that focus from being about heaven to again returning to here, this spot, where the not-devils are, but I would say demons, if you will, have been this whole time. And Mary speaks of God having died, and we know that Lyra, again, and Will have more or less accidentally killed God. They're like, oh no, he's trapped, and freed him. And Marisa and Asriel then killed the other one pretending to be God. His Dark Materials takes this phrase on a much more literal plane. There are some who do believe that it is a literal thing when it comes to theological beliefs in our own world. And by that I mean in the real world outside the context of the story. And I'm sure others have probably

discussed this in the context of His Dark Materials. I'm very, very sure. Like, it's very clear. It's very obvious. Like, but where they are, some folks are probably going to speak to it also. There's a couple of different philosophies and theologies, again, around this idea of God is dead. I think the most famous one is probably from Nietzsche. It's popularly quoted as God is dead, God remains

dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned, has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe his blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? That feels pointed. You might get there. But this line comes from The Gay Science by Nietzsche. And again, the idea of God is dead is further popularized in Thus Spake Zarathustra. And there's an aspect of like the latter work that proposes the idea of an ubermensch. And I'm not going to go into that too much because that idea ends up controversially getting appropriated by Nazis and eugenicists in pursuit of a Superman or perfect human doesn't go well for us in real life and the idea all there's also this idea of like women's standards like measurement of how well they are like are getting

to producing an ubermensch and i'm like i don't know how well this philosophy holds up to be honest but but really get back to just like the idea phase this like more themes idea area of the Übermenschen, ignore that. There are echoes, I would say, in historic materials about like freedom that nihilism can promise, right? This idea of like the open sea, the malefa, and this town is like right by this large expanse of sea. And we also see a shift in focus from living for an other world, right, or heaven, for then a focus on the this worldliness, which is part of that philosophy when it comes to the Übermensch, and embracing therefore that earthly delight, and seeing the soul as part of the body, that's part of that philosophy, which we see put forth throughout this series. And there's

also this emphasis on living, so that there will be stories to be told, so that you can use that as payment to return to, again, this world and the world of experience. There's also another aspect of God is Dead that Hegel discusses of, like, the pure concept, however, of infinity is the abyss of nothingness in which all beings sinks, must characterize the infinite pain which previously was only in culture historically and as the feeling on which rests modern religion, the feeling that

God himself is dead. And you know what? I'm sure that you can all start to see maybe where I'm going with this just a little with the idea of the abyss and nothingness coinciding you know in timing with like the death of God in this series but honestly

you can like ponder on that but I am going to come back to this in a later episode because it's so close and I just don't feel like doing it in the discussion no I get you and i think that's smart because and going back to nichi like i i think we've talked a little bit about a will to nothingness and a will to power from him too as well right and haha which will free will his fear of nihilism and the reaction to come was actually shown in will to

power and he says what i relate is the history of the next two centuries i describe what is coming what can no longer come differently the advent of nihilism for some time now our whole european culture has been moving us toward a catastrophe and you see that reflected in the book right through the specters through the metaphor of people walking like zombies through the streets being denied their free will i think that's a great connection to kind of bring some of those thoughts maybe not the not as far as the uber we don't have time today but uh from the gay science especially that's a great connection to draw and and we see the risk of it right like the specter if you will

of nihilism even raised here when mary has that crisis she's like well what the fuck is the point of anything that now she's like i know i pondered this back then but now i'm really pondering it now that i've relived this and then comes to an answer and the series gives us an answer for that too so because that's the biggest thing like once you give that up in life it's hard you can't just have it back without you know all of these little these little rules these rules set in your life once you give up that choice of loving yeah and once you've experienced it you can't just give it up yeah choice of loving loving choice of experience and a point of it all. Yeah.

Because otherwise it's just the abyss. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and again, the series does propose an answer to that, which we will get to.

Yes. Yes. So Mary Malone had felt free and lonely in her story, in her memory. She ate the marzipan and the guy knew that something had happened to her, but she couldn't say, so she just left him. And she walked along the beach and threw

her crucifix into the sea. The guy at the conference had been named Alfredo Mental. Lyra asked if Mary kissed him and she says yes, but not then. Good for you. Yeah, make him wait. Will asks if it was difficult to kissed him, and she says yes, but not then. Good for you. Yeah, make him wait. Will asks if it was difficult to leave the church, and Mary says yes.

A lot of people were disappointed, but it was also easy because it made sense. She explains she never married, but she did live with someone for four years until they decided they were happier not living together. And that guy had taught her to climb mountains but she prefers solitude and work so that's how she survived this whole place that's how she made it through chitagatse um i do think there's something powerful there for mary to suggest like a different way of living right that doesn't fit with the western ideal of the nuclear family also that walking away at the church especially when you look at it in contrast with marisa coulter right um mary's a woman who chose solitude and work rather than motherhood and i think it's fine for her

to like want motherhood but again you think of her in contrast uh to marisa and azrael marisa wanted all of it right she wanted companionship she wanted motherhood she wanted ambition and power and love. And she was told you can't have any of those connections. You can't have any of the joy, only the church and the power that it gives you. And whether or not like Lyra's parents could understand, I think that's a question, right? Did their love run its course or not? I don't know. Either way, they don't have a choice now. They're hurtling through the abyss together forever. And I don't know, I personally am a romantic. So I don't know how I feel about those things. But I do respect that there are alternate paths for adulthood. And again, ideas that love can run its course etc in this story yeah and i actually think there's something really nice in that and like marriage is a construct right in many forms i mean people couple off peoples have always coupled off or found a love and that doesn't mean it's everlasting

right but historically like it's easier to find a partner to share your life with however it's a construct it doesn't mean you have to sign a fucking piece of paper to the government to love someone and i think that's really important in this world for lyra's world right especially for mary for mary to be able to have loved and to say that she is still open to love but that she enjoys solitude that's okay that is okay i think that's good to enjoy yourself in solitude and to love yourself because you are the only person you're given at first in the world right until you build a community of peoples around you that's a great point yes absolutely absolutely

mary doesn't really remember this aww wait you love me? we've been together for four years just like Mary and this man is it time to pack it up? we just had apparently pandras have called out it has been our four year pot first episode anniversary or so

it's true and you know you make me climb mountains Eliana no I don't we're not doing that. It feels like a fucking mountain. Yeah. Metaphorically to China. So Mary doesn't really remember the little boy at the party when she was a kid other than his name was Tim. And Lyra's suddenly remembering. She's like, what about the time me and you met? You said you became a scientist

to not think about good and evil. Did you think about it when you were a nun? Mary says no, but she knew she had to agree with the church where science let her think about other things. Now, Mary says she still believes in good and evil, but not that the powers are external. We have this line of, I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do,

not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed because it helps someone, or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels. Lyra agrees and asks if Mary misses God. Yes, terribly, and I still do. And what I miss most is the sense of being connected to the whole of the universe. I used to feel like I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation. But if he's not there, then... And then, you know, Mary trails off. And as she does, nature sings around her. We get a lot of, like, beautiful imagery. And she is also surrounded by Atal and Will and Lyra.

And finally, we end with the line of, Soon, she thought, soon I'll know. Mary was tired. She'd run out of stories. No doubt she'd think of more tomorrow. I love that this is her sole mission now. She's like, I just have to find the right one that is going to make it so they save everything. You know, and stories are so powerful.

They connect us to one another, right? To our shared traditions, truths, oh my god, emotions. They help us share enthusiasm empathy sorrow joy to celebrate each other to connect through these emotions and experiences they create threads that tie us to one another that make us a people not a person ancient storytellers were powerful bards troubadours minstrels orators playwrights primitive artwork in caves, murals depicting rituals, ancient Greek legends, myths, the epic of Giklamesh, up to the Bible, to Shakespeare, to the first photograph in 1826. In the 9th century, we have Scheherazade, a storyteller who was the main character framed in the Middle Eastern collection of the tales of 1001 Nights. She was said to save her own life by prolonging her storytelling,

entrancing with her stories, able to delay another day. Storytelling shapes the reality of world in our minds. Just last night, I was sitting down to watch Degrassi The Next Generation, season four, time stands still part one slash part two, where there is a very upsetting school shooting, right? It was a pretty big component of millennial aughts pop culture in its time and at the end of the episode there is this crazy moment i am being serious you guys during this like this was powerful there's this moment yeah you're presenting drake was in this yeah this is this drake was in this

um i'd say this is a huge moment of its time but like re-watching this i've just been re-watching degrassi you guys that's where i am in the pandemic starting it um i hope you do you know whatever it takes uh so there's this moment you you go through these children's stories and why this character shoots up the school right you see him pushed to his limit uh and at the very end there's kind of an antagonistic news reporter who has been recently introduced maybe once or twice who has a one to two sentence summary of how it all happened the two episodes summed up to like two sentences and it's totally meta because it's erasing everything around it you see how this child was pushed to his limit and how his classmates also

were treated poorly too, right? Like not forgiving anyone in this. Everyone was bad in this episode. But the reporter was able to swiftly erase all of the storytelling we watched in those two episodes into two sentences. Like that's a silly example, but it's not, right? That's life. You watch a news headline and that news headline could never be a replacement for hearing tales of what people have been through right uh you could take will and lyra as this the fated children right the prophesied children saving existence through love and virtue adam and eve but that's likening those these three books right to to a headline when we've read their struggle and their journey and their story. And it's so much deeper than that.

So I love tell them stories. I love that as a theme. Thank you, Pullman. That's beautiful work. You did good, Phil. You did good. He did. He did.

And what you've said, it's beautiful. And it's true, right? Like, I mean, stories do connect us to one another. And I mean, that's how you and I met, right? Like, that's how you met your husband. It's how we've made like a lot of our friends, right? Like, and it's powerful. And it's something that beyond just like bringing people together it's a way that you get people

to understand um you know like you you talked about this de grazie episode and how like just one to two lines like doesn't sum up the whole of all that experience but through a story maybe you'll never live it right maybe you won't but it helps bridge the gap between one person's experience and another by telling them that, hey, this is my story. This is what I've been through. And the hope that you close the little gaps, those little abysses, and seal up those cuts in the world so that people can become closer. Yeah. Well said.

And I also like that you brought up shaharazad's one thousand and one nights it's a story within a story and also she goes yeah just gotta keep reading she was like no spoilers gotta go to sleep so tired the ultimate cliff oh she was a master of cliffhangers i guess she must have been yeah she was real good. She didn't have any lingering books, man. She just... Every day, a new chapter.

Okay, she wasn't allowed to have any lingering books. Well, there is now. Chapter 34. I just keep thinking of that Flaming Lips song. All we ever have is now. can't i can't sing right now i i don't know if you know the one i don't know if you know the one i know exactly what you're singing yes i'll link it everyone we open with a line of shoo you alive the world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy. And that's by...

I mean, you guys are never going to guess which poet this one's from. Is it Lizzo? It's Lizzo! It's Lizzo! No, unfortunately, it's William Blake. William Blake. Wow, Billy B? Baby Billy Blake? Baby Billy Blake? Baby Billy? Oh my god, that's right.

It's been a couple episodes. Oh my god, that one. One of the actors, Quinta Brunson from Avid Elementary, her handle right now on Twitter is Uncle Baby Billy. Oh my god. Uncle Baby Billy Blake is Uncle Baby Billy. Oh, my God. Uncle Baby Billy Blake.

Uncle Baby Billy Blake. It's too much. It's too much. You know, we talk so much about Baby Billy Blake and his influence in Pullman's works. And believe it or not, Pullman has spoken at length about William Blake and his influence in his works. And I really love this interview, which I will link for you guys. I have it linked here in our notes.

One such impulse of certainty concerns the nature of the world. It's twofold, consisting of matter and spirit, or is it all one thing? Is dualism wrong? And if so, how do we account for consciousness? In the opening passage to Europe, a prophecy, Blake recounts how he says

to a fairy, tell me, what is the material world and is it dead? In response, the fairy promises to shoo you all alive, the world where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy. This is close to the philosophical position known as panpsychism. This is known as the philosophical position as panpsychism, or the known as the philosophical position as panpsychism, or the belief that everything is conscious, which has been argued back and forth for thousands of years. Unless we deny consciousness exists at all, it seems that we have to believe either in a thing called spirit that does the consciousness, or that consciousness somehow emerges when matter reaches the sort of complexity we find in the human brain

another possibility which is what blake's fairy is describing is that matter is conscious itself and why shouldn't it be why shouldn't consciousness be a normal property of matter like mass let every particle of dust breathe forth its joy i don't argue this i perceive it says pullman i i love that pullman perceives this it's such a wonderful way to explain like how i mean yeah where we're going with the story what dust is about low-key reminds me a little of the song colors of the wind from the very historically inaccurate movie pocahontas. But yes, absolutely. Great call out. I will say about William Blake,

we might end up actually having to talk about Blake more in the Book of Dust. There's definitely, of course, some influences. I learned that there's a William Blake MCU. This poem, Europe, a Prophecy, is part of it. You all might remember we talked about the other poem, America, a Prophe part of it. You all might remember, we talked about the other poem, America, a prophecy. Anyway, it's like this whole thing. There's like, one of the guys is called like Urizen, spelled U-R-I-Z-E-N. But it's supposed to be that he represents your reason,

like your reasoning. And I did not make that up. Like blake did that um he's got an emanation aka like counterpart ahania who represents like pleasure but also wisdom and intellectual desire with a sexual twist right they have like a bunch of kids together and shit in some mythos they have more than like it's different and by that i mean within william blake's mythos, they have more than like, it's different. And by that, I mean, within William Blake's mythos, his extended universe. And we've discussed before, like things like Albion, et cetera. But anyways, Blake's mythology definitely influences historic materials, especially considering, you know, Blake's influence by Milton and like the themes of religious criticism and stuff.

And I also get the sense like i said we'll probably have to discuss this more with books of dust i don't think that's a spoiler just ideas no it's definitely something that's coming back he uh i mean he relies on blake a lot for his his little inspirational moments that's really what inspired him the most about this series is bringing some of those thoughts into it. I love that. But now Mary can't sleep. Fear is creeping whenever she closes her eyes instead of, you know, night pictures and dreams. Probably because a bunch of ghosts came after her.

I, too, would be afraid. But anyways, after three to five times, she realizes she's just not sleeping. She gets up and goes away from the tree. It's a beautiful moonlit night. Mary hears large beasts migrating and thinks that the animals migrate for a purpose. The clouds move by chance, however intentional it seems,

and she feels so different and purposeless. Yeah. She has this thought. Unlike her, the clouds seem to know what they're doing and why, and the wind knew and the grass knew. The entire world was alive and conscious. She climbs a slope to look at mudflats and fleeing shadows knew and the grass knew the entire world was alive and conscious she climbs a slope to look at mud flats and fleeing shadows and then she goes up to her

climbing tree which right now it's conversing with the wind which is one language she cannot quite understand i kind of love that she goes to her tree as a hangout almost like a tree house and full of sheer innocence like will and lyra are almost putting herself into the same mind frame it's a place of serenity right and it reminds me of keats that negative capability getting her thought process into place and it's almost a sanctuary is that a theme almost a sanctuary she longs to join up into her climbing tree to talk to the wind, thinking of what she told Will about missing God and missing feeling connected to the alive world, to the meaningful world. Christianity made her feel a little bit connected, but she left it and she felt loose and free and light in a universe without purpose. Finding shadows brought her here, eventually, but she still feels cut off from meaning. So she heads to the tree to climb and lose herself in dust, and she hears a groaning.

The tree she knew so well begins to fall. She finds her rope still tied to its branches as it lies on the ground. I don't know if this is like a symbol or something, right? Like, obviously these trees have come to symbolize knowledge. Is it like the tree of knowledge falling down and the constraints of the dead god thrown off and that good and evil knowledge? They're now here on the earth, accessible to all. Yeah, I mean, I think especially the way this chapter ends, right? This is definitely showing that there's still danger out there.

That too, yeah. On top of it. So I think that's to come and you know knowledge has fallen to the earth yeah it's uh she did her job i think that's definitely also the sign like you did it even though it seems like a negative connotation you did it mary you told your story it's gonna change the world i swear she climbs what she can what's left and she looks through spyglass watching the movement of clouds, and then watching dust. It was flowing faster as though it's taking the whole world with its flood.

And suddenly Mary has kind of like a science genius thought, putting all these dates together of the subtle knife was made 300 years ago, and the Mulefa, the Sraf, 33,000 years ago, it started falling 300 years ago and failing this raft stopped flowing right the subtle knife's owners have been careless leaving windows open which must be true if mary had seen some and she thinks that suppose all this time little by little dust had been leaking out of the wounds the subtle knife made in nature. Interesting. I don't know. What do you think? It's an interesting theory.

Well, Mary realizes that the knife might be responsible for the smaller leaks, but this flood was new, bigger, and catastrophic and it would lead all conscious life to end. The malefa showed her dust came from living things, bigger, and catastrophic, and it would lead all conscious life to end. The malefa showed her dust came from living things, being self-conscious, not

the same kind that I am, and it must be nurtured with thought, imagination, feeling. Otherwise, it would snuff out in every world. Yeah, basically we all need to take a giant leap into the imagination chamber, is what Pullman is saying. Basically, we all need to take a giant leap into the imagination chamber.

Chamber. Is what Pullman is saying. Give Philip Pullman your money for this new novella. Oh, man. Yeah, that's a free ad, Pullman, even if you didn't want to let it be published here, you know? Even if you didn't want to argue. He wanted it to. He seemed bitter. Only for Chloe.

Yeah, he did seem better. He seemed a little bitter. He was like, well, the U.S. didn't want it. You should have fought for me, Pullman, is what I'm trying to tell you you know should have fought for me should have yeah should be all right to the editor we could we could write to the publishers we should honestly we should honestly every american should because even if there's only 17 of us that wanted it we wanted it god damn it we want goddammit. I don't remember how we do it, but I know

I've been... Anyways, I'm sure there's a way we can do it. More to come. If we get just 50 of us, I think at least 50 is enough, right? There are hundreds of us, Aliana. Hundreds. There literally could be.

There might be. Let's do this for Philip Pullman pullman well i i want to bring up something uh actually i read it from a essay that i really wanted to bring up by avshalom m schwartz who wrote about plato and imagination right and kind of breaking down some of what plato thought about imagination. And he wrote that Plato thought imagination is primarily associated with the irrational part of the soul, dealing with the visible realm, especially with images, shadows, and reflections. Imagination's capacity to perceive and process suggests it plays a role in the higher activities of the soul. Both reasoning and understanding require use of images. So while the imagination partakes in the production of knowledge and understanding,

at the same time, it's unstable, prone to mistakes, susceptible to deception. The sensual perception of shadows and reflection can create confusion in our souls, which is abused by various agents, most importantly, mimetic artists, the imitator. Plato argues is nothing other than a producer of appearances and phantoms, which are directed at and operate on imagination. So it's an exploitation of our soul's weakness by various products of mimetic art, in turn, compared by Plato to nothing less than witchcraft or a mighty spell or charm that can capture the soul.

I thought it was so interesting that Mary's kind of getting this understanding that dust must be nurtured by thought, imagination, and feeling, and not false thought and false imagination, but you know, pure virtuous thought, innocent thought, pure thought. And it's interesting that imagination is put in this book so much as a threat to political order when we see the magisterium copying some of these very things that plato says right mimetric artists basically turning tricks mighty spells mighty charms to keep a society down under their belt yeah it is that i mean with imagination you can imagine that a world that's better than this one, right?

Yeah. It's a threat. Exactly. Absolutely. That's a threat. That is absolutely it. Like, if you can imagine that there's better, then maybe you could attain it. Because as we're reading of this consciousness, that maybe consciousness is active and real and alive.

What then? What do they do then? How do they stop us then if we can do anything through the power of friendship through the power of your imagination but literally your imagination chamber open the chamber doors let it all out so thinking about all this thinking is hard okay and like mary feels burdened old, like she's 80 and longing to die. Same. It's a big mood.

It's a big mood. She heads back to the village and looks at the stream one last time and then sees the purpose of the clouds and wind and trees and everything. Realizes they are trying to keep the dust from leaving. We have this passage of matter loved dust. It didn't want to see it go. That was the meaning of this night and it was Mary's meaning too.

Had she thought there was no meaning in life? No purpose when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. Well, there is now, she said aloud and again louder. There is now. As she looked again at the clouds and the moon in the dust flow they looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the mississippi but they were trying all the same they'd go on trying till the end of everything. Ah, that's a metaphor too, just like the battle against the authority.

All the little people. The world is big, but little people turn it around. Yeah, like the Galabespians. Exactly. I mean, it's just Les Mis, my God. Mary doesn't actually know how long she stayed out, but as she heads up, she sees something strange in the mudflaps. She sees a steady white glow coming with the tide.

It's a loam but has a very similar shape, which is strange for Tualapi. She's about to warn the village when she sees a man leave the single Tualapi's back. On his back is a long stick, and he moves like a hunter down the path. It's a gun. A chill runs through Mary as she sees him step into the village, going house to house. She wills herself to not look under the tree where the children are asleep, and when the man gets to her house, she can't take it and she runs down the slope. She stops herself from yelling so as to not wake the children who would reveal themselves.

A stir of dust goes up when he enters her house. Lol, not that kind when he leaves he looks past the tree and mary realizes what an easy shot she is but the man is only interested in the village and he leaves on the birds back again everything was feeling far too familiar and sweet and magical at this point so it's very good to have this awful interruption of horror because we have daddy gomez father gomez which look if you're not paying attention to casting news for the his dark materials series they cast kind of a good looking guy so i'm just like why are we making the colonizer hot all over again this is arian bakar 69 all over again yes they do love doing that and

i understand it's partially just like show business like cast beautiful people i guess but also hilarious hilarious um yeah last you know earlier on you're talking about how like the danger is still looming in this story as we find out at the end of the chapter here's the end of the chapter you know like we talked last episode i think about the usage of thief in the night in the bible and needing to prepare be prepared for when the lord comes and rather than using it about marisa's love for lyra you know aka our messianic figure coming back or whatever we're flipping it around now and having it be a reminder of the church coming to your door and this is the bible warns somehow like you know through a beautiful little chance they were prepared sheltered by the tree and innocence and they

were not in the house so they did not die thankfully it's also a great inversion of showing us that yes as we see throughout these two chapters before, one, humans, amazing, full of wondrous discoveries and beautiful sharing of stories and wonderful things, as Mary does when she sees the importance of dust and matter. And we have that double entendre of, like, we have now, right? Like, she's like, it has meaning now now and also now is important but you have that juxtaposed against humans are also capable of really great horror as well as we saw in the first book with all the kids dying and shit to god say and now we have like just one man here has organized all the birds and led a bird rebellion all right birds aren't real okay no um went too far but he is weaponized

oh my god leave to a leap out of this you know yeah it is crazy because in the you know you feel like you've won we've defeated god we've killed god or fake god or whatever you want to call him and we've It is crazy because you feel like you've won. We've defeated God. We've killed God or fake God or whatever you want to call him. And we've stopped this oppression that was coming from the magisterium. And maybe we'll talk a little bit about this in the discussion. But it's not over.

Evil is never gone. It is always there lurking. And here he comes riding up on a Dua Lipa. Call that levitating i quit i quit this podcast i'm not even firing you i just quit spent a great four years i hope you have a great four years alone stories did not save us goodbye don't tell them stories oh my god i just kidding. I thought that was very funny. You're very clever, Eliana. Thank you.

I'm glad when you tell me stories or bad jokes. Well, if you have not caught up with the end of the Amber Spyglass, the His Dark Materials novellas, or the books of dust that are currently published, La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth, you may want to log off. We have a quick discussion to talk about today shouldn't be too long so you won't be missing too much but we will see you hopefully at the end of the month for our penultimate penultimate his dark materials the amber spyglass episode i feel we have given you enough time. Here's the discussion.

Let's get dusty. All right. There's some rudeness in these chapters, Eliana, as you've pointed out. However, I have to point these two lines out. She hopes and thinks, when Pan forgave her and came back, the hours they'd spend just talking, just telling each other everything. And then, a follow-up thought. She thinks usually Pan dries her and goes over

possibilities for what he'd settle as and then wonders if Pan isn't even thinking about her. Ugh! Ugh! The secret commonwealth! Oh my god, the beginning of the secret commonwealth literally manifests all of these fears that lyra has about pan and their relationship being broken forever

and ever it's so sad how hopeful she is in these chapters that like i can feel everything about pan we're still one and then we open the secret commonwealth and it's's all broken. For me, it makes sense. I know that's actually the part that I liked about the secret commonwealth. Oh, yeah, same. I like this exploration of puberty. But that's actually, I think, for me, that part of the secret commonwealth. Yeah, that's such a really great capturing of actually entering young adulthood, you know? Yeah. No, absolutely. Being being like i'm like lost i don't know myself yeah it is that's honestly it lyra in the secret commonwealth

makes sense it makes total sense like we've all been the heart you know you have a first love you get heartbroken a little you're lost you're finding yourself maybe you're making decisions that like aren't with your fullest confidence like what you used to do when you're a teenager you changed i think it's the best way he honestly could have taken it like yeah it you have to i mean that's what we want from the end though right of book of dust three like they have to come together in some sort of compromise to live with one another right god i mean yeah or she i don't know she can get therapy oh my god the rest of us have to do that girl needs some closure on life you know okay so coming back i want to come back the one stipulation i will put in for mary's obsession with China makes me wonder if Pullman is really just hoping to lead his books of dust east. And maybe he was really, really into making that a thing.

Like he obviously has some fascination with it. He won't leave it alone in these books. And from a standpoint of life, the beginning of life, the beginning of many myths, right? We talked about how you have your Turkish delight. you have your marzipan coming from the east. Going east makes a lot of sense. Holy grounds, right? Places where all of our stories stem from. A journey east, a pilgrimage for Lyra, in a way. So that's interesting to localize it, to put that into context for the later books so i'll give him that that's the only stipulation i have but during aapi month my god phil yeah how dare how dare um

but no he wrote this in the 90s also was during aapi month how dare he during may does he not know what i'm going through. Yeah, no, I agree. I think it does show that he's always been kind of interested in that and exploring his world more in that way. So absolutely. I do think it does signal that. It's interesting. I think that's what he's going towards.

I don't know that I necessarily think he needed to lay it on so thick. He didn't have to do it like, yeah, the way that he did. But like, I mean, just to what you were saying, right? Like, you have it in there, you have it in like, I think, you have hints towards it, if I'm not mistaken, in like, Lyra's Oxford, which came out not that long after the series. Yeah, that's true. with all of her college notes yeah and i don't think that i don't think that came out i don't think that's from a later edition it could be but i don't think it is no i don't know i don't think so at all i think and we talked about this a little bit in our lyra's oxford episode actually kind of talking at the end about some of the meta implications of what that means Pullman had planned and this would have been originally published in 2003 Lyra's

Oxford so in my opinion it means that he's always had kind of this I mean it's his character right like these these are his babies Will and Lyra are his babies of course he knows where they go in his head whether it's fully fleshed out or not and i'm sure as we see from the lantern slides we know that there are tons tons tons of places that he wants to take them in his mind yeah so and i mean and that's changed i mean it's also probably changed a little bit here and there uh but i think the broad strokes have remained the same yeah he's changed the scope of it i think and like i i don't blame him i think we see a lot of people right they build a fantasy world and obviously they want to explore it and i think that's that's wonderful that's beautiful tell us stories shit yeah but don't tell me bad stories that that is a great good story it's a great thing.

Well, sometimes you have to finish a story, Eliana, before you can judge whether it's good or bad. Because you can't just judge a book by its cover. And how many pages is the Secret Commonwealth? However many pages. You can't just judge a book by however many pages the Secret Commonwealth is, Eliana. I'm judging it based on your reaction. It's also. But yes, agreed. is eliana i'm judging it based on your reaction it's also but yes agreed um it seems like the judgment that i've come to isn't the wrong one based on your responses i don't know i really

look forward to slow reading it with you again yeah just so i can kind of slow it's like slow dancing yeah yeah it's like a slow dance through the story. Oh, I thought... Okay, cool. I can add that too. Waltzing. Waltzing through it all. Waltzing.

Yeah, waltzing. Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta waltz through it. Truly. Well, I think that wraps up this episode of the Amber Spyglass. Oh, God. It's hurting. It's hurting. It is. Thanks so much for listening the Amber Spyglass. Oh, God. It's hurting. It's hurting.

It is. Thanks so much for listening, y'all. We missed you. We're glad to be back with you. Glad to talk at you. Yeah. Sad. Indeed.

Indeed. If you're here, that means that you know what happens. And you know it only gets sadder. But thanks for being on this journey with us. You know, it's the journey that really matters and the friends we made along the way. Oh my god. That we are torn away from at the very end. Wait, hold on.

Thanks everyone for listening. If you have any thoughts, just like Ariana did, feel free to let us know. You can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. That's C-A-N-O-N. If you have any thoughts, just like Ariana did, feel free to let us know. You can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. That's C-A-N-O-N. Or you can always find us on Twitter and shoot us a tweet or a DM at girlsgonecanon on Twitter. Yes. And if you're not already, make sure you're pressing the follow button over at a podcast streaming platform near you, whether that is Spotify, Google Play,

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Stranger tier and above, or the $5 tier and above, get a bonus episode. And this month, it is the Imagination Chamber, which, if you are a US listener, you may want to order now. Yeah, get that on order now so you can read it by end of month so we don't have to spoil you. And if you are interested in joining our Patreon in the stranger tier or if you want to upgrade to the thunder tier our ten dollar tier and above you'll get access to a private discord server where you can chat with his dark materials fans just like you come hang out and come to the his dark materials series rewatches that we're doing we're getting through series two right now through may and june and you know hang at brunch, which will be May 22nd

this month from 1 to 3pm Eliana time. Oh god. Uh, yes. Yes. We hope to see you there, or at one of, again, our Reef Watches. Thanks everyone for listening.

I have been one of your hosts, Eliana. And I have been yet another one of your hosts, Eliana. And I have been yet another one of your hosts, Chloe. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you. There is now. Oh my god.

Tell them stories. Bye.