Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Episode 7 - Northern Lights/The Golden Compass Chapters 18-20

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

Lyra gets dropped in the middle of bear politics—literally. After falling from an air balloon, Lyra writes her own version of a Declassified Svalbard Survival Guide with trickery from all sorts of characters.  Links shared by @@igelkottenskamp http://www.tobiashubinette.se/swedish_whiteness_2.pdf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sweden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statens_institut_f%C3%B6r_rasbiologi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States Intro by Jonathan Segev, "Cursed Lullaby" --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon covering His Dark Materials. Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, His Dark Materials, Episode 7, Northern Lights, The Golden Compass, Chapters 18 through 20. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. You know me from the internet as Liza Narber on Twitter, Tumblr, and LizaNarberGold.com. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana, and you might know me as glass table girl on reddit or as arithmetric over on twitter and she likes horses and i do like horses sometimes i just want to like introduce you or any guest as like i don't know how a journalist would you know like i sit across from her and she's glam with her heavy lashed eyes and her swift hair with the ease in her face that says she's thinking about horses yeah that's not

what i look like right now everyone just just spoiler this is very uh this is very inaccurate journalism right now i would be a great journalist yeah she writes for what the daily mail oh my god out here no i'm a sun reporter obviously so we're on part three spalbard we are we've transitioned from bullfar to the land of the bears. Yeah. And actually earlier today, I was stumbling around on the internet and I came across an article about the 2011 bear attack in Svalbard. I didn't really read it, but there was a bear attack in 2011 that was horrible. Killed a bunch of people.

Oh. Yeah. I didn't realize that still happened in this day and age. That sounds really dumb to say. Yeah, I guess. But that still happened in this day and age. That sounds really dumb to say. Yeah, I guess. But, I mean, there's always bears. I mean, my parents live in a northern state, and there's bears up there all the time. They see them all the time.

My grandparents have them, like, on their porch. Really? Like, they've seen them, and they're, like, they have hunting cameras, and they've seen them come on their porch and stuff. It's crazy. I think it also depends. I didn't read this incident. I know you sent it to me i'm sorry but it depends on what kind of bear it is because i know some are way more aggressive than other ones for example polar bears or ice bears depending on what you are reading right are very aggressive and for some

of these bears as we know from reading this book that is actually non-fiction some of these bears it's like taboo for them to fight yeah that's true that's true unless the there are times that it's really really ass of you yes this is real life

so Eliana when can a bear be brave oh my god i can't bear you oh wow don't roar at me so eliana will you tell us what what we're about to do here tonight what's coming up chapters what what are we doing what are we doing on this podcast so we are reading this book northern lights slash the golden compass not watching we did that already on a patreon episode So we are reading this book, Northern Lights slash The Golden Compass. Not watching. We did that already on a Patreon episode that is out near you. This week, though, we are covering chapters 18 through 20 of Northern Lights slash The Golden Compass.

First part of Svalbard, which is actually part three. I'm doing a terrible job explaining this. Chapter 18 is Fog and Ice, A Song of Fog and Ice. Chapter 19 is Captivity, and Chapter 20 is Mortal Kombat. Yeah, all of that is followed up by a discussion, originally led by Eliana, still led by Eliana. She can leave if she wants.

I mean, I guess not really. I'm too far gone. I'm gone, you guys. I'm gone with the dust and the wind. Dust and the wind. Thank you. Thank you for understanding the reference. Discussion is our book spoilers after section. Tune out if you don't want

to know what happens in the Golden Compass Northern Lights or Subtle Knife or the Amber Spyglass during this. And honestly, quite honestly, you're near the end. This is our second to last Golden Compass Northern Lights episode, right? So at this point, the discussion is going to be mostly Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass.

But then there is an even dustier discussion, the dustiest discussion, if you so will, where I get to spoil everything. You guys, I have finished everything. I am done with all of the pieces all of them i'm out here messaging eliana going i'm thinking about doing a chronological reread where i read everything in chronological order of when it would have happened in events and she's like what and i'm like i don't know what is this one thing i'm also just like what yeah this is gonna be where i make connections through the books and talk about my discoveries because i did your dust discoveries yeah my dust discoveries i finished commonwealth though so yeah i didn't know that i'm a scholar congratulations

on saturday sunday something like that the lord Yeah, the Lord's Day. I think it was Sunday. Metatron's Day? Metatron's Day? Daddy? Whoa. The Daddy's? The Daddy? The Holy Spirit? Oh, damn. No, he's not the Holy Spirit. He's just... He is to me. Kind of. Oh, damn. Okay. What? Um... Yeah, so

we have the discussion, and I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I'm sure that a lot of you who are here at this point in the books right now, you read ahead. I know you all finished the books already by this point, but whatever, we're going to keep pretending that you hadn't. Like, for this book specifically. I mean, it's only three more chapters until the end. Well, last week we did cover some really fun stuff with Tana. We covered the Silver Guillotine in The Witches with Tana Ford last week we did cover some really fun stuff with tana we covered the silver guillotine

in the witches with tana ford last week uh we did have a really weird audio issue at the top we re-uploaded a new file the morning of the release so if you haven't please clear your cache re-download that version if you haven't gotten to listen to it yet it is a better version eliana was just quiet which doesn't happen happen. That was very strange. I don't know. I mean, are you talking about me in general or like, like you're, I mean, well, and your, your audio though, no, you are always, uh, you're, you're a loud roarer, uh, and, uh, you're a great torment in our discussion. Yeah. but a loud one. So I'm just saying that generally your tracks tend to be bold, and it was not this time. So it's fixed now.

She is bold once more. Bold, bold. You're back. Yeah, that is true. There are times that my audio has actually blown it out, et cetera. So very, very strange. It's probably because it was almost Halloween. It's probably just some spooky things going on, you know? Yeah, we even have another Friday the 13th in December, very strange. It's probably because it was almost Halloween. It's probably just some spooky things going on, you know?

Yeah, we even have another Friday the 13th in December, I think. Wow. Fun never stops. So, Chloe, you did something also very exciting this past weekend, didn't you? I did something. I did something a little exciting. something a little exciting eliana i got to see the very first episode of his dark materials the bbc hbo new line produced series wow before everyone yeah even before one of our friends warren likes to joke oh i'm gonna see it first but nope i beat you i beat you all so i saw it on the what the 26th i think on Saturday. No, you traveled forward in time. Yeah, I traveled forward

in time. I am a time traveler. I travel through worlds and obviously time is not a straight line. It's not linear. It is a wibbly wobbly thing. A Jeremy Baramy. Jeremy Baramy, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey. But I saw the episode. My local library did a pre-screening

with HBO. Yeah yeah so support your libraries please please please it was fun they had a really cool scavenger hunt you had to go around and get different stamps and find like there there was like it was really cute you had to find hester or there was a bunny that was like a statue that you had to go find there was a big witch's shoe with like a broom against it in one room that it was in one of the it would tell you hints about where you could find it and that was for seraphina you had to find like a cat statue that was all lounged out or something for stell maria and we got stamps and once you got enough stamps you got a really cool book cover uh it has the show cover on it has lyra

from the show as daphne keen as lyra yeah but you got a little paperback which was awesome of the golden compass northern lights and there was also a make your own alethiometer arts and crafting i didn't end up getting to that but the best part and i don't want you to be jealous during this was that we got to get our photo taken with eoric you got your photo taken with the king of the bears? Okay, spoiler alert, we're not at the end of the episode yet. Chloe got her picture taken with the king of the bears. Yes,

I did. We got our picture taken with Eoric, and it was fabulous. It was, like, obviously very cold where they were keeping him. I'm just kidding. It was green screen. We all know this. It's up on my Twitter. No, it wasn't. It was a real bear. Yeah. A real bear. it's up on my twitter it's a real bear yeah a real bear it's up on my twitter so if you guys follow me go scan it you'll find it or something but it was fun uh the episode was really fun i know you guys don't care obviously about that you want to hear about the episode and i'm not going to give anything away no spoilers i want

everybody to have an enriched experience on their own. There were some good things, though, non-spoiler things. I would give it, like, I don't think it was a 10 out of 10. I think I would say it was, like, an 8 out of 10, which isn't bad. It's still good. It could have been better. It could have been way far worse. Obviously better than the Golden Compass, which I think gets, like, a 4 or 5 out of 10. It's, like, 70 to 80% faithful, I would say.

There's a handful of changes. Nothing would say there's a handful of changes nothing crazy but just a handful of changes i would say the most like non-spoilery things i could say are mrs coulter yeah she's zero to 100 already i'm just nodding my head going yup that was it's good ruth is ruthless she is thank you. I'll take my raise. She's amazing, though. No, she's great. And she really pulled it off. You guys are going to enjoy her character. I'm really excited. I mean, just thinking about what's to come in season two, I'm so excited about, you know, lots of cool scenes. Really got the character right. Roger. So good. I love Roger. i love him so much you'll love

him you'll be happy aliana oh i do love roger uh this one is decent um you'll like it there was no respect for a handful of characters in my opinion interesting this is non-spoiler unless you've read the commonwealth but no respect for alice lonsdale or malcolm pulstead but there's another character who gets a little disrespect, in my opinion, adaptationally. I won't say who it is. It would be a spoiler if I said it for the plot moving forward. But I was just like, I see you. I see you making this adaptational change.

You could have done differently. Interesting. Yeah. Otherwise, there were just like tiny little changes that I kind of see why, like we talked about in our Golden Compass Patreon episode, oh, they set this thing up by doing this and putting it here instead of here. And there were a few things that were like that

that I was like, okay, they moved this around to do this here. Some of it worked, some of it I was like, eh, fell flat, but we'll see what happens later. So, oh, the Gyptians also were great. They get expanded on a little. You and Tana, I thought, needed to know that. They bring that in. The first episode. Interesting.

Yeah, the pacing sounds interesting. I'm curious when they would decide to bring things in, of course, because they don't have to do it as chronologically right. And I mean, I guess we do see the Egyptian children in the first few moments of the book, so I'm excited. I know

that they have moved the setting just slightly a little more modern than it seems to be in the books a little bit but not much not much i think it's still indistinguishable i think uh you'll watch it and you will you'll be immersed in the show enough to not think about that or notice uh there wasn't a lot that jumped out to me that was like oh this is much more modern um definitely still get you get zeppelins you get everything you get oxford looks beautiful i mean the nice thing is that oxford is classic right that's a classic look yeah i hear it still looks like that i guess i don't know oh yes and the one thing that i would say we get during during the scene in with the scholars with lord asriel which we know happens you do get that scene and you get to see

things better uh the pictures in the photogram are better and you get to actually see things and you'll see something within it for sure he shows all the details that he talks about in the books so it's very cool very cool it was just like beautiful too and the intro's pretty and everything's pretty so well damn i'm super excited yeah i'm worried i think that comes as a game of thrones a song of ice and fire fan it's also different because there was no tv show of this yet so now i'm kind of invested and i'm kind of worried like, oh, no, what if this is how people that were invested with the Song of Ice and Fire books felt? Like, I'm just worried.

I don't want to be let down. But I think I can enjoy it for what it is. I think it'll be harder just because Pullman's already been burned once. Everyone's already been burned once, right? The ones who loved this book series and had a movie come out so i think you know assuming pullman has retained a little bit more of that creative control i he doesn't want to make the same mistake twice there's definitely religion i mean there's definitely some religious stuff going on now that i I think about it, I'm happy about that because that was

obviously what they removed in the movie adaptation, if you can call it that. And, I don't know, I just hope they go there. I think that's my biggest wish for this, right? I hope they just go there. I hope they dig in and just get there. Because it's edgy, it's dark, it's gritty, right?

And this was the first episode, so that's the other thing. It's opening us to this world. There's no Kate bush song though in it i can't tell if that's like a hit or miss it was stuck in my head again like after editing that video which by the way so if you are really excited of course for the upcoming tv show until then you can spend some time hanging out with us watching the movie that flopped it was my first time watching it that weekend with chloe because i knew i knew that i was gonna be mad but thankfully you know we have a second chance at life but on our patron for five dollar and up patrons you can find a video of chloe and i together going over the golden compass movie yeah we're drinking wine

together in the flesh it is uh it's weird we did have one of our friends uh shadow fox over on patreon said really cool kind of weird but really cool to see you guys together, like, drinking wine and joking and chatting about stuff. And I'm like, yeah, that's it, guys. This is, there was a whole, like, 45-minute Skype session before this. It's terrifying. Yeah, that's just, like, who we are in general.

We just happened to not be on the computer this time. Yeah, it was really cool. It was nice, and I will be visiting again, for sure. Yeah, or I will be visiting. Yeah, you do owe me a trip, actually. I do. Eliana, go to Philly trip.

I think that's in the future, for sure. Maybe a holiday special. Anyways, Chloe came over, and my place isn't even unpacked. It's a mess here. And she came over and stayed here. Yeah, well, I'm a good friend. You are.

You're a good friend, too. El, well, I'm a good friend. You are. You're a good friend, too. Eliana made me lunch. It was great. Next week, we're going to finish Northern Lights and the Golden Compass. We've been saying it's going to be before the episode, but we had a change of heart, right? We consulted our alethiometers, and we think we're going to let it come out after, because we want you guys to have a couple days to get into his dark materials that episode and i think we want it to resonate because this is the end of book one right this is this is big and this is this week is the pre-finale right next week is the finale so if this was game of thrones someone will be dying horribly this week

someone does oh shit well there's probably gonna be death throughout all of it let's yeah Game of Thrones, someone will be dying horribly this week. Someone does. Oh, shit. Well, there's probably gonna be death throughout all of it. Yeah, this is the penultimate season one episode? And by season one I mean season one as in these books, not the actual season one,

which is premiering in a few days. Oh my god, can't wait. So yes, it is the end of something right after the beginning, right? Like, we are ending this, but you guys will have something new to start with. We will be doing episode reviews definitely after this for you guys, so stay

tuned for those to come out after the episode sometime. Yep. And until then, here we are. And of course, as you'll all remember, we have this other series that we read it's called a song of ice and fire and we do episodes about that too we read the characters so we are going to be back with our john snow chapters on november 8th for the public once we finish northern lights and the golden compass we will probably be taking a break from the main his dark materials books to focus on

these episodes that are coming out the time you know don't want to put too much on our plate and of course finishing john snow chapters winter is coming after all yeah we'll be back in the new year start up some subtle knife action. I think everyone will be jazzed and ready. Hopefully those of you that maybe are listening to us right now for the first time, you might not be listening when this is aired. Maybe you'll be coming to us as new readers after the show has aired

and finished. It's an eight episode show, so it will be finishing up around the holidays. Hopefully you come back to this and join us for Subtle Knife. Yep, it ends on such a beautiful family note family friendly god it's a family friendly book it's a family friendly lord of the rings it's a family yeah that's the golden compass movie for shirzies but of course before we jump into reading today and getting on to that golden compass i did want to come talk about some

tweets and emails of notes we won't go into any spoilers this is very no context but our friend stephanie stephanie coldell on twitter s-m-k-u-l-d-e-l-l tweeted at us that if you think about it fergie's hit big girls don't cry applies to the end of amber spyglass i think you should sing it i don't think i remember the tune for this exact part. Oh, I got you. It's like, yes, you can hold my hand if you want to. I want to hold yours too. And then she's all like, we'll be playmates.

It's like, we'll be playmates and lovers and share. Yeah, and like quickly. Secret words. And it's all but it's time for me to go home interesting I could see that another one that would be good is closing time that's a good one too I imprinted

because I finished rereading the last book a few hours like once more I'm gonna relive this traumatic story for everyone I took a red eye flight to London and have imprinted Daniel Penningfield's song. What is it called? If You're Not the One or something.

If You're Not the One. It's that song. It makes no sense in many ways, but you can force it to fit the ending if you want it to fit the end of the ending if you wanted to when you're delirious right when you're delirious have not slept in about 20 hours and are about to go into another like 12 hour work day beat too like that melody and beat like even if you're

not hearing the words yeah i imprinted that and also adele's hello hello from the other side so those are the songs i now associate with the ending it makes no sense i was in a very emotionally vulnerable state the good news is like i've i've listened to a lot of rose tyler playlists from dr who and no spoilers, but there's some stuff that could work for it. So I feel like I could compile one. I haven't compiled any yet, but I could do a playlist. I could make us a playlist. Maybe we'll do that. We'll put out a Girls Gone Canon His Dark Materials

playlist, and maybe I'll do some Aeswaf ones. We'll see. I made an Aeswaf one for end of season six or something back then. I've got a handful. I've got a handful. I've got a handful. Character one's so perfect. We'll work on it.

Yeah, it's always fun. I like making playlists. To totally switch gears, another tweet of note. So when we had Tana on, we read a lot in email regarding eugenics and experiments that had taken place at Bovangar and how that relates to a history of Lapland and the Sami people who lived there who were persecuted.

And we actually got a follow-up tweet from the sender, who is Lojatko Murer on Twitter at Eagle Cotton Scamp. And they said so a content warning about eugenics here and goes hi thanks for reading my email i want to expand a bit on the things i wrote after you talked about lobotomies and gender and the forced sterilization i mentioned there was definitely a gendered and

classist aspect as well as a racial one poor people especially women were considered quote-unquote unsuitable to have kids were targeted i couldn't find that many resources in english about it but there's an excellent article about the history of racism in sweden that mentions it lo links it and we'll include those links in the episode description along with some other wikipedia articles and, you know, some parallels that you see around that time also in the U.S. And Chloe, of course, touched on these, which is why I think this is a really interesting follow-up. Yeah, especially to look at what was happening, especially in the same time period around the world, right? It wasn't just like this happened

in a land far away a time long ago. This was happening in recent history all around the world. And there's a lot of oppression. I mean, you can look at Hong Kong and things that are going on in Syria and just there's a lot going on in the world that it's always happening and it's war and people, you know, mutilating other people for their own gain and power and just because they can.'s it's very sad and it's very exhausting sad and it's crazy to see all this stuff happen around the world with similar things like what lo is saying about the eugenics movement in the u.s as you said it's very timely i'm interested in how they might address some of those issues in in the books i think that a lot of popular media has the power to be able to bring issues like that into public conversation so you know thanks thank you so much lo for sending

us all this and like educating us about it because we didn't know about this and i think it's important that people understand as you said it's much more recent than people think it is unfortunately a lot of these and i mean if we don't understand where we're coming from if we don't understand that history then we don't understand those systems that are at play and risk repeating them instead of actively fighting to to stop them and make things better. Yeah, for sure. Just like Lyra. And so with that, we enter Chapter 18, Fog and Ice. Right now, Lyra and Roger are

curled up asleep, and Lee Scoresby throws some furs on them. Yeah, he does. Thanks, Dad. God, this all actually feels really snow Ice Queen like we were talking about, right, with the different fairy tales, the grim fairy tales. Everything feels like they're going to the snowy wonderland. Lee is chewing a cigar and he gets deeper into furs and he talks to Serafina Pakala,

me in the background like shooting off air horns, about how important Lyra is. And Lee wants to know if he needs to prepare for more danger and war he's not trying to be rude at all but he was paid for everyday problems and he was paid kind of like a courier service right not an act of war insurance yeah he was paid to be like a driver not a soldier I would be mad too I'd be like this is not what I signed up for and of course the whole conversation i mean the gist of what we're going to talk about here is like she's like well that's too bad because now morally you have to because it's the right thing to do but i'm like yeah damn straight and he's like i mean i guess but also that kind of sucks i mean it's a little immoral right and granted it just kind of happened for him that he got wrapped up

in it that's the thing is yeah you're in war you don't know when you're gonna eat next you don't know when you're gonna sleep next like there's no security and he literally says i didn't get active war insurance and it's more than that i get that it's a livelihood what he's doing is like a independent entrepreneur taxi company you you know, and I did a little research. There's not a lot, but there are a couple of free e-books and there's one called the American Aeronaut. There are free e-books?

Yeah. And it's in the early 1900s. There was a pair of brothers that they ran a ballooning business. So this isn't exactly the same. And there was no info on what they made for actually each trip or anything, but they were offered a salary of 25,000 francs. So like $25,141 today.

And a weekly salary for workmen was around 1900 US dollars today here in the US. So it was an industrial shop. So the workmen would work on eight machines at a time. And I don't know how long it took to make them, but obviously each one probably sold for a pretty penny. And that was just a business. Like it wasn't for someone flying an already made on his own one and upkeeping it and finding a clientele. And it's like I said, it's like Uber and Lyft, right? Except he has no box. Literally Lyft.ft yeah it's literally oh my god you know i'm

right though yeah you know ballooning can make like hot air balloons can make you 30 to 100 thousand dollars like today depending on your clientele and your balloon and your upkeep and there's limited data but also in the 80s the university of illinois put 600 000 into their aeronaut funding for the fiscal year so it's obviously a growing field and always was just not in the entrepreneur way that Lee was doing it right and I don't know the government

also would probably call it illegal right like the authority would be like interestingly that you're flying and we aren't getting any cut of all these things it's very firefly Lee Scoresby is very firefly you know I never watched that yet oh my god i'm sorry yeah we'll work on it fuck god i know i'm a disappointment all the time i don't know it's like it's like taking an uber like i take an uber across town and then that guy

is over there and someone needs to take it upstate and he can only cancel on a few people before he starts losing money and business and the ability to run his hot air balloon right and the next person then needs a trip over the state boundaries and the next person's like well i'm going here and then all of a sudden he's hours away from home trying to make money and survive and feed a family and they're like these are long trips man interesting being attacked yeah and now throwing a war lee is like the buddy in the high school group with like the mom van that he gets to borrow and he could cart everyone around i guess because i didn't really have friends but i mean that's what i imagine everyone's just like cool we could take your mom's van lee thanks i did have a friend like that and that was a ride you know we didn't

for some reason the first time i went in that van, the seats weren't up. And also, so we, I guess, just didn't wear seatbelts, and that was dangerous. Kids and adults don't do that. Yeah, it's kind of like that, but only way more intense. And he sounds

way more like an adventurer than my friends did in their mom's van. Anyway, so the second Yorick lands in Svalbard, though, he's like, they're like, there's gonna be a war, alright? Can't do that. Seraphina tells Lee that there'll be danger and war, and Lee stresses, okay,

but my contract is only about transportation, alright? I didn't agree to fight, and if I'm going to meet lyra's enemies and risk my life like you know all this is just like talk though yeah like they're they're in war already seraphina says whether you know it or not and you're gonna have to make a choice which that's like the big advertising gambit right now for season one of hdm isn't it right like they're like choose a side and i'm like i don't know if that's i guess it's foreshadowing right but uh i feel like it i

don't know i guess that's great they're gonna bring that in though so the time is called to choose a side exactly right and i'm like okay i get it it's dark it's foreshadowing oh it's spooky but the first episode is like you know oxford shit so you're like scholars dusty whatever dusty haha um seraphina responds you don't have choice in this matter do you want me to be lee because i can do my voice okay sure this is my ship okay oh my god are we your ship? Yeah, right now, this passage. Oh. Oh, I like choice, though, he said. I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while? Serafina Pakala considered and then said,

Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Which is oh nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits. And as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition and that takes time and trouble i see that but for us to fly all we have to do is to tear off a branch of cod-pine any will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight, nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us? Inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did? assault a witch what would it matter if you did okay several thoughts but first i love witch queen socialism holy shit if another witch needs something then another witch gives it to her

that's girl code right about tampons that's girl code seraphina piccolo's like hang out in the bathroom what you need girl some hairspray some tampons body spray i got you bobby pins bobby pins she always has bobby pins and ponytail holders that hair's got to get put back you know but that was just my first thought like that was the first thing that sprang to mind the second holy crap free will where is he haha um what a good speech that encapsulates where these adults stand and who they are as people because we spent we spend a lot less time in their emotions in this book than we do in lyra's so it's a nice

touch for pullman to finally let us in they kind of would feel like npcs without this chapter explaining where they come from and their motives and then the next two for eoric yeah i do like that we have this moment between them. A lot of some of this conversation is a little of exposition, but it's good. It feels natural. Yeah, that idea of choice is a big thing, of course, as we've discussed, like you said. But what I also love about these three chapters together, because I assume you've all read these three chapters since you were listening to this episode is a lens that we get into the cultures of the witches and the

bears a lot of it is of course told to us through this like from seraphina but we see the bears in a moment and i think that their cultures are actually supposed to juxtapose one another because the bears like all seem to be within like a singular like culture right the singular nation in Svalbard whereas the witches all have their own alliances clans they have different leaders they're different tribes and Serafina points out that witches have no notion of honor I don't think she means that in like a bad way but and we know for some of them there is an idea of morality but what she's saying is it's not this like codified sense of like rules. There's no rituals behind it. Whereas we know

from a different conversation from Serafina and like literally the next chapter, because the two kind of go into each other, that honor is very important to the Panzerbjorn. Like Yorick killing a younger bear in combat who was supposed to surrender was a deep violation of that honor and going off of that for like him to kill that other bear unprovoked is another taboo in bear culture which again has more of these structures and rituals around combat and other ways for their social strata that we'll see and that stands in deep contrast to how we see the witches who have their own alliances and like as we're going to how we see the witches who have their own alliances and like as we're gonna see like have no qualms with killing other witches there isn't like always

a ritual to why they might kill someone they're just like i don't know it happened whatever and of course like the witches have demons the bears do not and i i had a last thought that doesn't really go with this but it's something that just came to mind throw away throwaway thought about how she was saying, like, I don't know, things don't really matter when you live for hundreds of years because you know that opportunity will come again. It reminds me of an idea that Milan Candera was exploring around this idea of, like,

the weight of life and choices in the unbearable lightness of being. Real different, different philosophical discussion. We can come back to it another time in my life that is not now. Oh yeah, and we're definitely going to have a reason to come back to it another time in my life that is not now oh yeah and we're definitely going to have a reason to come back to it eventually especially in subtle life i'm sure but um yeah the when you talked about how witches don't have honor this chapter especially maybe this is reading far too much into it but like witches

don't really have honor so much as they have pride though. I feel like we see the witches have a lot of pride and we'll talk about it in a few minutes for sure. But yeah, there's, there's definitely some stuff coming up that they have a certain pride and maybe that comes from, from being a female even.

I mean, I wouldn't go that far as to give that credit to Pullman on this one, but like I said, totally a dig like into it, like too far too deep here not to be too deep it ain't that deep well we'll get into it later i think regardless of whether it's intended or not it's something we can really discuss in the way that they're portrayed so that's for the discussion yeah well even before that we'll get there there. There's something else. True, true, true. Lee says that he agrees with Serafina for the most part. He wants to end his days with no drama, on a little farm, some whiskey, some cigars,

a good life, right? Dude, mood. This is my dream. Me too, Lee. I wish you and Serafina would just settle down and I'll smoke the cigar. I'm Lee, remember? Oh, that's true.

He says he dreams of the day he can trade his balloon for retired life which is the opposite of what witches would do seraphina tells him because flying is to be perfectly themselves and breathing and flying are on the same level for them and lee says he envies that but flying is just a job but he chose that job and his problem with this situation is that he did not choose the war. But neither did Lyra, and Seraphina reminds him of that. This brave little girl is destined to help Eoric as well against the king. He doesn't believe that Lyra's fated. He says that Lyra has more free will than any of them. We are all subject to the fates, but we must all act as if we are not, said the witch, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child.

She is destined to bring about the end of destiny, but she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail. Death will sweep through all the worlds. It will be the triumph of despair forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life. They looked down at Lyra, whose sleeping face, what little of it they could see inside her hood or a stubborn little frown so this is where they start to sign the adoption papers right here with

a big old quill and they're like what it's signed with a feather from kaisa oh the goose feather yeah actually kind of fun yep so that's what they do here um wow whoop there it is that prophecy though um we're gonna come back to that i guess also in a bit just touch on it a little it's definitely acting like it's setting something up but it kind of isn't we later find out so it's very weird it's an interesting thing interesting concept i thought it was something very immediate and it turns out maybe not but well i think that it's a little of both right there's the things that are going on now right she's is she destined to do it or is she not and i think that asks the question of what's the difference between nature and destiny right and what is your choice um how are the two different of how like

how would you know when the prophecy really is complete i mean she's about to betray eoric in a way even if it was meant to be good she does betray him technically and she thinks it yeah i was thinking that too there's a lot of like i don't know red herring betrayals yeah but it's not even like oh the reader has to figure it out it's just like oh okay yeah anyway no it's not as deep as like a song of ice and fire always has us going is what i mean like not saying it's not deep but that isn't like i think i'm digging too deep because that's how that goes yeah there are things that are deep in this and they're just it's exploring different of course. It's a different type of world building. It's a different story. Wow.

So, yes. Goresby asks, why are her witches joining then? She says, well, what happened in Bolvanger fucking sucked, dude. And Lyra is the enemy of the authorities. So, I mean, if that's Lyra's enemy, I guess it's our enemy too. And of course

Asriel has ties with Egyptians and, like, we're friends with Egyptians. Seraphina is like, I'm friends with Egyptians. Yeah, Lee asks if the witches are going to be friends with him and tow the airship back after that

or if he has to rely on the wind. She says, if we can, we will. You're a bitch. But once they reach Thalbard, things could change depending on Eorik's situation and Lyra. Ha ha, about that. LaMau.

They move through the sky. They're 10,000 feet above the clouds, floating along with the witch's help. The basket is rocking and bumping more than normal because of this and lee tends to his instruments it gets colder and colder as they rise and he unrolls a canvas sheet to protect his children roger and lyra and then he lies down with his back against eoric to stay warm i'm saying that that could be a ship too i'm just saying I'm saying that could be a ship too I'm just saying

Lyra awakens in the sleepy basket and asks Seraphina how close are they to Svalbard it's about 12 hours or so apparently if the winds are favorable even though theoretically the witches could help pull them they want to avoid landing at the cliffs though because there are creatures living there pew pew

cliff gas hate those fuckers they're kind of goofy yeah they're somewhat lovable in like a weird way i don't know there's a character in the second books that like i like more probably but like a type of monster that we meet that ends up being like the gross lovable ones in my opinion there's a lot of gross lovable things in my opinion there's a lot of gross lovable things in my opinion the monsters the creatures i love them it's very spooky tomorrow's halloween so this is spooky she is wondering how she's gonna find asriel and she thinks maybe she should tell

him about you know the whole i know you're my dad thing but seraphina explains that asriel doesn't plan on going back to oxford his work is bridging the worlds in the war to come but seraphina explains that asriel doesn't plan on going back to oxford his work is bridging the worlds in the war to come but seraphina says he needs something to complete his work this sells her on it lyra takes this as the alethiometer realizing it's her reason for going north and protecting it saying the master couldn't have really wanted to poison asriel it's a little yes little no yeah a little column a little column b yeah but seraphina doesn't have any answers for her about the alethiometer and lyra almost wants to try to read the alethiometer but it's too cold so she shuts that notion away man this would be a

different story if she had done that you know right lyra asks why the witches don't get cold. To Seraphina instead, not the alethiometer. But they are. They don't mind it, though, because they aren't harmed from the cold. Without the cold, they wouldn't be able to feel the tingle of stars or the aurora's music or even the silky moonlight on their arms. Lyra says she wants to feel these things, but Seraphina says if she took her furs off, she would die. She tells Lyra that witches live hundreds of years. She is only 300, but the oldest witch mother is almost a thousand. Nice.

One day, Yambe Aka will come for her. One day she'll come for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die. Serafina tells her that only women are witches and they take men for lovers or husbands and that's many of them serve the witches. She then gives her some womanly advice. Men pass like butterflies. They're brave and beautiful and they die. The witches birth their kids and the kids live, if they are witches, as

well, or die and they go on. Lyra asks if she loved Farter Coram. She did. Oh. When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride and beauty. I loved him at once. I would have changed my

nature. I would have forsaken the star tingle and the music of the aurora. I loved him at once. I would have changed my nature. I would have forsaken the star tingle and the music of the aurora. I would have never flown again. I would have given all that up in a moment without a thought to be Egyptian boatwife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you cannot change what you are.

Only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human. I stayed with him for long enough to bear him a child. But unfortunately, there isn't a happy ending to this, even in the child factor, because the child was a boy and he died in a sickness 40 years ago from the east. It broke her heart. It broke Coram's. And then her mother died and she was named clan queen and had to fly off to do her duty.

quorums and then her mother died and she was named clan queen and had to fly off to do her duty she never saw quorum again but she watched over him sending him herbs when he needed healing in a battle and she stayed away hoping he'd forget her and find a human wife damn i'm fine so first i want to point out this whole idea of like you know she couldn't change what she is she accepted who she is and i think that's a big part of these books, right? It's a coming of age story for children, we hear it about the demons and the people who understand what demons they are. And the ones who don't, we're going to see it in a moment with Joffre Rackinson, being unable to accept who and what he is, and what it what that means. but something that I do kind of wonder on a different note regarding

this relationship between Serafina and Farder and seeing how much they care for each other Chloe, how can you ship Lee and Serafina when there's Farder and Serafina? I legitimately wonder this. I'm not trying to troll, I'm just curious

because in life you can love a lot of people and sometimes even if you know you break your heart over that person and i mean look at seraphina and again it's something that we're going to come into play there's even more this wraps up into what we were just talking about above, that the witches have a certain amount of pride. And Seraphina and Fardecorum both have pride in this matter, right? Lyra tells Seraphina, you should see him. And Seraphina's like, no, I don't want him to feel human.

And it's bittersweet because it's not just that, but it's also Seraphina doesn't want to feel human, right? She is severing herself from that feeling, from that life. It's something that sometimes when you push that person away for so long, there's so much scar tissue. And she's connecting with another person, right? She connected with Lee on the ride here and explained her way of life and they connected on it. And later on, the time's passed, right? Like, connected on it and later on she the time's passed right like have you ever had a love where the time's passed come on man that happens yeah for

sure i mean it's been 40 years and more what did she say earlier that for her time is like nothing like she's like okay well maybe in a couple you know decades or so or maybe a maybe you know the next century turn we'll see it happen again whatever time is different for her it flows different for her um and lee and her have a lot of parallels with flying different reasons for choosing to fly and different reasons they would choose not to and i do love especially after learning more about farter quorum and future books i do love this relationship but i do also love the idea of just, like, Lee and Serafina maybe finding happiness,

right? It could happen. For a time until her heart breaks again when he dies, like a small, plushy human. Yeah, we all die. Well, he'll never die, though, so. Anyway, yeah, thank you.

Here on that 1,000-year old witch level i'm i'm over here not even 300 i'm here like 260 well i'm next yamkeaba come get me oh lyra asked seraphina so why do people have demons uh and seraphina's like i don't know no one knows it's what differentiates us from aminals. But you know what Eorik said to me. He said that his armor for him was like what a demon is for a person. It's his soul, he said. But that's where they're different again, because he made his armor himself.

They took his first armor away when they sent him into exile, and he found some sky iron and made some new armor like making a new soul we can't make our demons thanks high five yeah i just like the way that she i think pullman does a great job of writing child dialogue he does and lyra is worried about yorick and tell seraphina that she loves Yorick so much that she wishes that Yorick wasn't coming to Svalbard because he could be killed. And then Seraphina's like,

I'm gonna reveal it. I'm gonna tell you who Yorick really is. He is the true king of Svalbard. Had he not committed a crime. It's not Joffre.

Gasp! Oh my god. I did not see this coming. Did you or did you not? I am curious. No, I don't think I really did. I mean, I kind of did. It's not like well foreshadowed or anything. She tells Lyra that Joffre is quite curious. He makes

treaties and alliances. It's pretty weird. And he lives in a palace unlike the other ice bears. And rumors have swirled around that Joffre tricked Yorick into his crime. Oh my god. What a drama.

This is very telenovela. I know. Lyra then, in very telenovela. I know. To pull that out here. Lyra then, in true telenovela style, lays out her daddy issues of why Eorik reminds her of her father and asks what he did in depth. She's like, you gotta tell me, Seraphina. I gotta know

this is just what happened to my dad. And I'm like, don't think it's... A little. He wasn't... So, Seraphina tells her the fight was over a she-bear, and the male bear that Eoric fought for her would not display signs of surrender, even though Eoric was the clear winner in the fight.

The young bear kept going, and Eoric ended up killing him, not wounding him. Okay, that is a little bit like what happened to the Azrael. Just a wee bit. Yeah, that's true. Now that we lay it out like this, I'm like, okay. Yeah. I guess. But did he surrender?

The other guy? No. But, like, I mean, the parallels of, you know, getting everything taken from you for... Because you were in a love triangle and decided to stop making it a triangle. Yeah. A little bit. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Bears, man.

Bears, I don't get them. Lyra remembers the Palmeirian professor who had said that Joffre tricked his way to the throne and Lyra had been told by Yorick though that bears couldn't perform trickery. We had an entire, an entire chapter named after it Fencing Seraphina says when bears act like people

Maybe they can be tricked When they act like bears Maybe they cannot And no bear really drinks alcohol Good for them But Yorick did in his depression of exile Which let the troll of some people trick him And Lyra's like yeah yeah, that's pretty clever.

I think you're much more clever than Mrs. Coulter, Seraphina. Yeah, like already adopted by Seraphina. Now she's hashing out mommy issues with her. It's going good. It's going good. You know, mommy issues, daddy issues. We're covering it all with Seraphina Piccola today. But so my next topic, if Yorick was acting like a human and that's why he was tricked

do you think that serafina was acting more human than witch with farter coral i mean whose pride is it that she stays away for his or hers i think it's a little bit of both, right? Because, I mean, I think you gave such a great, mature answer about love, and I think that's part of it too, right? I'm not saying people need to like themselves, right? But ideally, in healthy relationships, people are able to support each other, right? To become the best version of who they are themselves. And the fact of the matter is, I guess

in Serafina and Farrakh Korm's relationship they couldn't because what he needed to do and what he wanted to do was live on boats and sail and that's his culture. That's who he is as a person. For Serafina it's to fly and it just doesn't it can't. Right? They can't live their or that's who he is as a person. For Serafina, it's to fly, and it just doesn't...

It can't. They can't live their full lives and be able to support each other being that, because for her to be with him, she would have to have given up who she is, and that's not the best version of herself, being Farga Coram's boat wife. And that's where the comparison of that idea of a

relationship between Lee and Serafina come in because for him for a time they could be fleetingly happy together. They both fly and sometimes it is fun for him to fly and he goes places and I would say that in the end their relationship does improve the other from them knowing the other right they do improve each other and learn things from each other in this conversation where they learn and grow and i'm sure in future conversations yeah yeah it's possible and i mean friendship does that too sure yeah i know i'm just saying i'm just saying that's fine whatever okay no i'm not i'm not going against what you said i just felt like adding that on because i thought about our friendship but um never mind oh my god like no it's fine

i'm gonna edit that out even though it's a beautiful moment what that's like now that we're lee and Serafina yeah we are oh my god how come you get to be the witch this is so unfair I want to fly I don't know cause you thought you can be the witch we can switch it up you just were like should I do it cause of the accent we can switch it up next time

no no it's fine I'll just look I'll pine and look longingly you'll clog pine yeah exactly so Lyra then asks her next question pine and look longingly at the pine branch. You'll clog pine. Yeah, exactly. So, Lara then asks her next question. What's dust? And Serafina's like, I don't know.

I mean, witches have never really worried about it. She knows that I don't know, there's dust. And where it is, it is clearly what this dust is. But there's also fear. See the authority and the magisterium and coulter and the witches actually see everything to do with dust and they wonder at it and they're like I don't really give a fuck about that don't front and tear things apart like the church

does to understand it the language in this passage reminded me of something in a song of ice and fire that I burn the character says he says to like to understand the living you you take apart dead people to understand death he takes apart the living and it's a very religious statement and that's very much so what the church does right like in this story that's what they're doing um they're they're taking apart life to understand death and understand their religious values and things and it's interesting there's such an interesting thing here going on too speaking of that which is like

they're on one hand trying to understand it but at the same time they're afraid to understand it right so because it might go against what they thought in their order of things anyway no i get that i think it is interesting like this is how they're trying

to understand it and their experiments don't stop you know like even in the other books obviously you guys know that like the outside spin-off books are gonna have some sort of magisterium presence in them. Like, the villain's never defeated, right? The final villain is really death. I don't know. But I actually don't know that. I want the next book. But it's just interesting that that's how they go about experiments. And they, like, are constantly trying to understand the mysteries of life and how they can relate to their authority and power well i think what we see is and you see that even in bull vanguard they're trying to understand it not necessarily in pursuit of knowledge in the way that asriel is right or the way we see other characters do so they're in pursuit of it as learning how to use this thing to control other people yep how to harness this power yeah they're using it uh they're interested in it as a form of power and control which is seems in line with the way that religion functions for him. Yeah, absolutely. Lyra remembers some of the particle information

from the intercessor at Gabriel College, who was clear that elementary particles and religion had a link. She says that dust ain't old, and most church things are old. She wonders if Asriel will tell her, and gives into the cold, telling Seraphina she needs to lie down or she may die. Very dramatic. I love her so much. I feel that way all the time.

I feel that way right now. 24-7, every minute of every day, that's me. I could die at any moment in bed, just curled up. If you put me in a blanket, yeah, Yom Kippur comes for me. I'm gonna start saying that shit all the time. Yamke Abba's coming for me.

In the Sims, the Grim Reaper literally comes for your dead Sims to come take them. You can plead with them, and I'm just imagining you pleading with Yamke Abba, like, don't take her. Like, she can't. What will I do? What will I offer? You know, I decided

to Google this literally just now. Akka is a female spirit in Sami shamanism. In Finnish and Estonian mythology, its worship was common and took the forms of sacrifice, prayer, and various other rituals. This is all on Wikipedia.

But I think that there might be different kinds of Akkas and Jambe Akka spelled with a J instead of a Y probably same deal the Akka of the dead is a goddess of the underworld who soothes spirits of dead babies but all other spirits

dwell in sorrow her land of the dead is said to mirror the land of the living where everything is opposite so the dead are buried with the essentials of living I'm only reading these aloud from Wikipedia everyone I've not summarized this e.g. knives and anything that would make their afterlife better interesting that is interesting i love it also still wish she would come for me yep old woman of the dead is another way that Yanbei Aka is described

on a different website called Occult World, which has a lot of gears on the... It's got a steampunky-looking logo. But anyways, I didn't realize that this came from the Sami culture, which makes sense.

It ties back to what Lo was telling us earlier oh yeah about those influences podcast yeah probably actually fucking been in these places i guess i know we are we have not well you came close to some right you've come close to them no yes no maybe at least still like oxford you were like within the square continent that's true i was within that same country the square continent yeah well the bean i don't know all countries are beans in a way you've been closest though so you get the gold star sticker wow amazing so wow amazed so lyra snuggles up next to roger with pan it's real cute sad i love them seraphina wakes lee up she needs his help to captain as the winds and the cold

began to attack them the witches were struggling and holding the balloon, and if they let go, it would hit Nova Zembla at 100 miles per hour. He lets out some gas. Me too. Because they're too high up, and Lyra and Roger stir from the noise. Lyra's focused on not leaping up in fear, and Pan and Roger's demon, Selcilla, are clinging together. Roger is being really sweet and cheerful. He's trying to keep Lyra in good spirits telling her it's all okay we'll get warm soon Lyra

and the balloon starts descending into thick fog Lee lets out a little more gas so it brings them down farther and suddenly they're attacked it's a creature with leathery wings and huge

hooked claws and a wide mouth and bulging eyes it comes climbing toward lee in the basket york hits it and falls out of the basket york tells her that's a cliff ghast not in that voice that's not my york voice y'all know that they need to bring the balloon to the ground to defend against the foul-smelling creatures and then comes another jerk and And another, and the balloon begins to hurtle to the ground at high speeds, crashing into rock walls. Lyra sees Lee shoot a cliff guest with his long-barreled

pistol, and then she clings to Yorick in fear, eyes closed, noises from the creatures and the wind hitting the basket. She then finds herself hurled out of the basket, into the snow, shaken, breathless, spitting out snow, and she and pan slide so far they're lost from the others they land in some snow drifts where visibility is low

and they hear nothing but cliff ghasts and waves on rocks she calls for yorick and roger but no response comes and decides yelling out is probably a poor decision in these unknown lands she checks the alethiometer no damage they only find yeah it is it's like hard it's like that that alloy is just like you could break shit with it but like is the outside gold because gold's not a very hard any anyway sorry getting off topic it's not at all so i don't i don't know maybe it's like fake alchemized gold by an alchemist which obviously wouldn't be a real thing i was gonna say maybe it's gold plated but then like after everything it goes through like that shit would

have rubbed off by now you know and it's old yeah a thousand years old no it's not a thousand years you know this it's like what 300 ish or something yeah only find, the only thing they find out in the snow is four emptying sandbags that were punctured that had been attached to the balloon. And they walk up and down the beach climbing rocks. And Pan is in owl mode, animal corner. He's observant. Like I've said right now, he's being observant. And he then changes into his mouse form to comfort Lyra because she's frightened and worried their friends are gone forever. But then she sees a familiar shape until it becomes unfamiliar.

Oh. She's about to shout, you're a- And then she stops herself in time. She's like, you're not who I thought you were. She doesn't actually say that aloud, but that's what's going on probably. And anyone said in that moment, I have definitely done this multiple times. All the time. I know. I'm like,

I'm waving and you're gonna just have, I'm gonna pretend it's someone behind you. Pretend I was waving at literally anyone. God, life's a simulation. The sims. Kill me, Akka. Anyway, so it's not Yorick that's why she stops herself it's a different armored bear hashtag not all armored bears and then and then another and another one oh my god and then what another one

another bear another one and another one. Look under your chair. Boom, boom, boom. She asks, where did you all come from? Oh, no, wait, sorry, my bad. It's the other way around. They ask Lyra where she came from, and she's like, the sky? They're like, alright, well, you're coming with us.

You're a prisoner now. Alright, everyone, turn down your earbuds, because Eliana's just gonna be a bear for the next two chapters. A lot of background roaring. She's been practicing all day. Right now she's drinking something to help her throat so she can roar. This is not helpful for my throat. I realized I should have actually had water and not just bourbon.

No, bourbon's good for your throat. Is it? Yeah, it smooths the vocal cords wow the first ep i recorded an ep and i was nervous and the guy gave me a shot of whiskey he asked my mom he's like is it okay if she has a shot of whiskey because my mom was there and i was recording an album and uh my mom i was like 16 or something i was like yeah absolutely you recorded an album it was a long time ago it's uh i know a couple people that have it. I don't think I even have it anymore.

Well, we need to find that. We should make that a reward. I think it should be. Listen to 16-year-old Chloe sing and play songs into a microphone. Amazing. Amazing. Ron Chapter 19.

Captivity, you guys. Yes, in silence, as in with no roaring, the bears take Lara up the cliffs. And then finally a bear tells her to look up and she sees a massive building. It is filled with carvings of bears.

I quite liked this description. It's carved all over with representations of warfare warfare showing bears victorious and scrailing surrendering showing tartars chained and slaving in the fire mine showing zeppelins flying from all parts of the world bearing gifts and tributes to the king of the bears jofer rockinson is someone projecting oh are you saying that i'm Yopher? Oh my god, no, I meant Yopher is projecting, but... Oh, I'm like, excuse me.

No, uh... I'm like, I can't take gifts. Like, I didn't really think about it, I was like, oh, that's crazy, but like, this motherfucker... Actually, I've been using a new one, you guys, you should get onto this one. This mother clucker... Oh, cute. It's a very good place. I want it to be in my vernacular, so I'm just gonna start using it. But this mother clucker...

What was his name in the Golden Compass again? Uh, Ragnarok or Rockinson. Oh, yeah. Ragnar. The Ragnar of Thun. So, this is, like, all metal and crazy-looking, but, like, also, Yofur has...

This isn't what he's done like what he thinks like the world is bowing to him yeah i mean that's what he wants right this is his goal man this is his uh his goal wall or what is it called his wall in which he manifests his ideas and dreams exactly yes that is the term and lyra uh lyra takes his word for it she can't really see that far and the carvings are covered in bird shit and then it turns out as they get closer everywhere in the palace is filthy everywhere bears are like demanding passwords from her her password she's like i don't fucking speak bear she compares them all to eoric which of course is best bear and this is a fucking metaphor this kingdom is made of shit literally like lies and poop lies and pooper gold oh my god and like it smells like rancid seal fat and lyra gets thrown in

prison among her rags of clothes lyra consults the elite theometer about yorick and she learns yorick and roger are a day away and their plan is to bust into the place okay no plan at all. They're just gonna go in there and just wing it. Yeah. But Paulette... Oh my god. Lyra is like, I wish we were witches. I wish we were like witches, Pan. And that Pan could carry a message out

to Eeyore. It could escape and separate painlessly. He's not a fucking... He's not your owl. I mean, he could be. He could be. Let's talk about that in the Dusty discussion a bit. Maybe in the Dusty discussion, too. The regular discussion, but definitely in the Dusty discussion.

I have some thoughts. Some thoughts. Wow. But until, unlike those thoughts, there's another voice from the Darkness and Rags. It's a guy with a serpent demon, but not that guy with a serpent demon. This one

is Jotham Santillia, and he is very salty right now, because he's a professor of cosmology at the University of Gloucester, and he's like, fuck that Professor Trelawney, and no, not that Professor Trelawney. I like that one.

He's very mad at this Trelawney. And no, not that Professor Trelawney. I like that one. He's very mad at this Trelawney, a.k.a. the Palmerian professor who we said before. And I like this insult that he uses for him. So I brought it into this episode. It's a coxcomb. What? What is it? No, I don't know. I just like the way it sounded. Hold on, I'm Googling it now. I was going to say, I feel like we should know what it actually means. So a coxcomb, I brought it in because it was a funny word but dandy i know dandy a vain and conceited man but i also just like the idea of a honeycomb a silly honeycomb well that's how it comes about in my mind

anyway shalani's not that sweet though no absolutely not yeah so Lyra lies to Santelia about knowing whether or not Trelawney has published a paper on gamma rays and dust Santelia calls Trelawney a thief and she's like yeah yeah I know this guy's mad in her head

she's like this guy's totally angry and mad and crazy but she's like I'm gonna feed him some info to try to get stuff out of him so she flatters him telling him he deserves a good student with all his knowledge this is great warm-up for later for her lying she's gonna do a lot of lying and then santalia says something mildly profound yes he said yes i believe you're right there is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out there is alive and there are grand purposes abroad.

The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose. Your purpose is to remind me of that. Good, good. In my despair, I had forgotten. Good. Excellent, good. In my despair, I had forgotten. Good. Excellent, my child. So I do want to touch on this in the discussion.

Apparently, it's going to get even dustier with Chloe. But before that, it turns out Trelawney was invited to be vice chancellor by Joffre until betrayal. Oh, my God. Because apparently he found out the last piece to that Barnard-Stokes theorem that we've been talking about before regarding other worlds. So, you know, quite interesting that the last piece of the theorem is here in Svalbard where Asriel is. Anyway, more world building about bear culture and how Yorick is fucked. Yeah, Lyra asks about Asriel and Trelawney flips out. He's like, don't talk about him that loudly.

He's not to be talked of. Yeah, he's actually imprisoned here by charge of Mrs. Coulter, which is one way to take revenge on your ex-lover. By the way, Yofur is very taken by Mrs. Coulter and I quite like this scene so i like mother like daughter yeah this one i thought was just kind of cute it's in the family uh yeah actually you're

right they take naps they fuck bears no never but he's afraid of lord asriel too you know yofer's playing a difficult. But he's afraid of Lord Asriel too, you know. Eofor's playing a difficult game, but he's clever. He's done what they both want. He's kept Lord Asriel isolated to please Mrs. Coulter, and he's let Lord Asriel have all the equipment he wants. To please him. Can't last, this equilibrium.

Unstable. Pleasing both sides. Eh? The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon. I have it on good authority. Really? said Lyra, her mind elsewhere furiously thinking about what he'd just said. Yes, my demon's tongue can taste probability, you know. Yeah, mine too. when did they feed us professor i just love this scene because like this guy goes off and lauren's like yeah for sure my demon can also taste probability yeah of course weirdo yeah that's for this moment it's a bummer too because this just like oh man uh no spoilers but man this guy actually writes a book about his imprisonment in Spellbound. Oh, I didn't catch that.

Yeah, it's referenced in Lyra's Oxford briefly. No spoilers. But it's good in-universe stuff. I do appreciate that. Lyra's Oxford is very short. If you've finished the series, everyone, it's an easier lift than La Belle Sauvage, which now, obviously, Chloe has surpassed me on. Hey, La Belle

Sauvage is an easier lift than Commonwealth, so you have no excuses. Well, no, Lyra's Oxford is literally only like 40 pages, but in enormous text. Don't tell them. I want everyone to read La Belle Sauvage. You can do both. Hashtag... Can you,

Eliana? I guess not. i picked one all right i only picked one and it happened to be lyra's oxford sorry chloe that's it and that's the furthest i'm gonna go you gotta do both you said it it's recorded on a podcast you're editing fuck um so who uh uh there's a lot in here about azrael and coulter and how Lyra feels about them though right she was furiously thinking about the information that he just said about them um and I think she's feeling defensive of Asriel right

yeah you know sometimes we give men in our lives including our dads just way too much leeway too much creditway that they don't deserve. Not gonna unpack it. Moving on. So Lyra

had just asked when they get served food and Trelawney's unhelpful, so she starts listening to the cell for some clues. Pan is a bat. Yes, because it's Halloween season and this is spooky and Pan just knew. Pan knew when we were doing this episode. Yeah, listen to our intro music.

It's spooky. It's spoopy. Anyway. So as Lyra's scoping, she remembers what Yofur wanted most. A demon. She hadn't understood it first because they used the word pantsierborn, but now she's put it together. So Lyra

hatches a plan. She realizes that what Joffre wants is a demon because he longs to be human. I love this quote. The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap

bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away away thinking about something else and it's absolutely the way that it's described that someone should be using the alethiometer oh my gosh i don't know i liked it i thought it was nice so i know i did i did too um i think it's so interesting, though, going back to the whole he longs to be human because it all comes into place. Like, this all slides into place.

You get Serafina projecting a little bit, right? That, oh, well, humans can be tricked, so maybe he's a bear acting like a human. And then you get all of a sudden that bubble, that idea just bursts. And I love this passage coming up i'm finally human and we're gonna be first though before we get to that passage it's seal meat time lyra's like hold up on the seal meat you gotta take me to yofer right now it is hashtag urgent because yofer's gotta know first because he's the king she tells the guard i mean you have to believe me it's the law not really but you gotta be polite

which is in a way kind of the law the guard's like okay okay he agrees and takes her further into the palace where it smells even worse somehow than it did before she was made to wait in a corridor then in an anteroom then outside a large door while bears discussed and argued and scurried back and forth. And she had time to look around at the preposterous decoration. The walls were rich with gilt plasterwork, some of which were already peeling off or crumbling with damp. And the florid carpets were trodden with filth. Have you ever thought of bears just like trying to live in a castle but they're bears so they just shit everywhere and fuck it up?

Yeah, I have watched We Bare Bears before and you know what? Ice Bear's really fucking clean, alright? These are not my Ice Bear, okay? Pan is the messy one, as is Grizz. Well, Pan's like, okay, Grizz is the super messy one, Ice Bear's the clean one. So, this is on

Yofur. But also like, as you were pointing out earlier like the palace is made of shit and what we're seeing here right now is that yofer is of course masquerading as a human and that it's all a in every sense of the word facade i'm really proud of myself for that one. The bears look at Lyra because none of them are actually in armor. They are clad instead in fineries. And I think that it's very Emperor's New Clothes in a way, right? The bears probably seem a little bit confused as to like, why are we wearing these weird things? But it's fascinating what Pullman is critiquing this idea of like dressing

up because he's not really critiquing these bears for wanting to be human he's critiquing Joffre for wanting to be human and these other bears for putting stock in this finery and for dressing up and wearing a costume because they are all unsure of who they are unlike Yorick but they're also unsure of who Joffor is and it shows obviously because of this hesitation and it's interesting because he has hidden this dishonorableness that he has committed which is the only reason why they're still following him that's true that's true lyra describes eofor as the biggest bear she's ever seen and in his eyes she sees humanity as though there was a man in there he has lots of bling, and the effect on Lyra almost makes her quail.

There on his knee is a doll that looks not like Cynthia from Rugrats, but Mrs. Coulter. It's his demon. Because of this, Lyra knows her plan is safe. Mrs. Coulter, she's a really cool dancer. Mrs. Coulter. I saw that in the notes when we were typing this all up

we have a shared google doc and I just started laughing it's all I could think of and just like her hair sticking up for more information on this really important insight check out our patreon for $5 and up patrons in the video in which chloe

and i watch the golden compass and dissect it together oh it's something something lyra hides pan and comes close and quietly says to eover our greetings to you great king she said quietly or i mean my greetings not his i love that line i i thought that was so clever it's so clever because she almost trips well she does it a little i i don't know if she trips or if she did it on purpose yeah it's ambiguous yeah right she's like oh wait sorry i meant me i'm used to it though because i'm a demon yeah you know it's natural she entices eover with news of eoric and then reveals she is his demon gasp she flatters him saying this is all very secret and not foreshadowed throughout the entire book and not to harm her because she wants to be Iofor's demon instead of

Ioric's. She totally dodges the question when Iofor's like, whoa, I don't understand how Ioric got a demon and how- Why Ioric? Why not me? And she's like, I'm gonna answer this other question instead. And she's like, I'm like a witch's demon. That's why I'm able to go

far away from Ioric. Dusty discussion. Just had to announce it. I feel like a witch's demon. That's why I'm able to go far away from Yorick. Dusty discussion. Just had to announce it. I feel like it's important to announce what you're going to hear if you stay on for the Dusty discussion. But not me. I'm not going to hear that. No, you won't. You're not allowed to literally. I'm too clean. I'm too clean. You're not that clean. Yeah, my demon hasn't settled yet. That's the real problem.

Yeah, well, godliness is cleanliness. So Lyra alludes to the experience at Bulvanger of intercision. Wait, I think that's actually a thing that's going on here. I think that's literally a thing that's going on in this story. Like dust? Cleanliness? Yeah. Absolutely. Whoa.

Mind blown. Oh my god. Billy Corgan wrote the story. Oh my god. Lyra all wrote the story. Oh my god. Lyra alludes to the experiments at Bulvanger of intercision, and that there are other experiments involving animals and demons. She reveals Eoric is on his way to retrieve her, and that she knows what he's up to, but she wants to be Eofers. Lyra continues to explain that she told Eofer all of this

because he can't just kill Eoric, the last bear with a demon, according to the story, or she'll disappear. It must be single combat. Duh duh. So there's something to be said here, I think, about why Iofra believes Lyra. Because obviously he believes her because he really wants to. He desperately wants a demon. But I think there's another part of it right talking about bear culture where to the extent that yo for us for the most part shed his

armor which is supposed to be like his soul and he's donned all these jewels and a doll in its stead in his attempt to be human and i think that there's a bit of a misinterpretation of how demonhood works right or what a demon really is based on the way that panther-muron culture and, like, literally how they are works. Because Yorick explains, like, a bear's armor is like his soul. He lost his previous armor and he made himself a new one. Because bears can just do that or whatever. And technically, if you think about it an armor can be worn by anyone it can be stolen yorick's armor was stolen from him so i wonder

if the mindset where yo for things i can just take yorick's armor if i kill him take his demon is what's clouding yo for his judgment i probably won't cover this in the Dusty discussion. It might be something someday we come back to when we hit it. Maybe when I'm too dusty. Yeah, you'll be dusty too. Maybe. I'm only 300 years old. Bitch, she got dust all over her.

No, you might even be pretty dusty by then, so it might be worthwhile then, but I think I just realized something that repeats itself. It's really great. I like it. It was interesting. Thank you. Thank you, Eliana.

You stirred something. I have no idea what I've done. But you did it. I love that, though. He has to shed and sever himself from his idea of armor, basically, and it's like a coping mechanism. We see it in both bears when you think about it we've seen a lot of the adults and a lot of the villains act like this right like

colter does not treat her demon like lyra treats her demon currently right like it's you don't see colt you don't see lyra treating pan inappropriately you don't see you know separating from your demon it It's not natural. And Iofre's not an adult, obviously. He's kind of more of a villain in this section of the story because, you know, the whole, like, killing his dad on accident-ish thing. And then, like, the hush story. And then, you know, like, the whole rare battle thing that pumps up this whole ending of this. And, you know, just all the things. But my more basic interpretation I also had was was like, the rich in general, right?

Like, they always want more to fill their empty soul. My soul's not enough. I need the trendiest thing. Enslaving a human demon to do my bidding or tell me I'm clever? Yes. Who was it that cloned their dog? Didn't someone clone their dog? Like, that's greedy.

What the fuck? You don't need to. He doesn't know the first thing about what it means to have a demon and or be a human even though he's trying to be one and it's obvious because he doesn't actually care about his real soul or is greed yeah a big part of humanity who knows whoa deep hashtag deep that's why he's so greedy oh my god okay. I think that's all really good points though. Thank you. Especially the stuff you don't understand.

Yeah. I'm so clean. I'm so pure. Stop saying that. You're not. Only 300 years old you thousand year old hag. Okay. Oh my god. Chloe's actually younger than me.

Yambayaka, come get her. Yofur is like, how can I fight him? He is an outcast. Impossible. That's not actually the wording that he uses. This is my dramatic reenaction. Lyra continues this charade and stresses like, this is just how it's gotta be.

Alright? And now she's also like terrified for gork because turns out neofor especially when he's angry is massive neofor is like all right well prove it where where's the receipts show me that you're a demon it's like okay well what do you want to know and neofrit's like tell me the first creature that i killed which is a weird flex right she's like okay but first i have to be alone to consult the alethiometer and not you know the demon mirror right in front of you for reasons for obvious reasons so she's like asking the alethiometer how far is yorick and he's four hours away she asks how she can tell yorick and the dude adds like you just have to trust him she can't worry him and then she gets a vision from

the alethiometer she asked further and learned that eofor had been alone on the ice as a young bear on his first hunting expedition and had come across a solitary bear they had quarreled and fought and eofor had killed him this in itself would have been a crime but it was worse than simple murder for eofor learned later that the other bear was his own father bears were brought up by their mothers and seldom saw their fathers naturally eofor concealed the truth of what he had done no one knew but eofor himself and now lyra knew as well wow wow deep deep cut it it's not something that happens again like in the main plot but it almost feels like a foreshadowing or feeling of some stuff to come and I see now I see

it I see it yeah a little bit right but interestingly enough yeah it's like a total plot twist though like it does feel like a little foreshadowy and it's also interesting about like just lyra finding out about murders right like through the leithia it's like these are the things she does need to know to get through situations and navigate but it's not the direct answer obviously it's fascinating that she's never daunted she's like all right well now i know that he's murdered his dad and she's like okay interesting she's like yeah that. Interesting. She's like, yeah, that's it. She basically takes it as a deadpan. Interesting. That's all. Also,

congrats. Welcome to your career in politics, Yofur. Like, you're murdering, covering things up. You're on the way. Yeah. It's not a long-lived, not a long-lived career. Anyway, something that I thought was interesting about the way yo first uh

first kill goes right is it kind of is almost like this weird oedipus homage but this is a children's book so polman's not trying to go zero to 100 right now right with yo for suddenly you know banging his mom and but that's what happens in the story of Oedipus of course right he comes to a crossroads and kills this other like guy and then finds out

way way later when it's way too late like that was my dad and I married my mom but like it's an irony I would put irony argument in that pullman says too that it's not a children's book it's just he writes books for anyone that will read them and his publisher wanted it to be a youth book sure that could be a retcon but i'm just saying i think he just may i mean maybe i think he just wasn't trying to be like and the bear fucked his bear mom

yeah i mean he's not flashy about that, right? About sex in these books. There's not a lot of like, and then we fucked. There's no like, George R. R. Martin level descriptions of like, weird body parts you didn't want to know about, you know? Yeah, so I mean, like, I think it's a slight head nod to it or inspired by it, but it's not anything big. The separation of gender is interesting there, too. Yeah. I mean, the one thing.

Is this true of real bears, first of all? Anyway, sorry. You know how, like, lion cubs tend to be raised by lionesses. cubs tend to be raised by lionesses. But anyways, so the one thing is, I guess, if it is like a head nod, maybe it's talking about, you know, Thebes

under Oedipus wasn't necessarily thriving. It was a city in sin. And so is now Svalbard. I could see that. I like that a lot. Maybe. Maybe. It also reminds me of that

opposite gender demon thing that the sons are raised with the moms. Oh yeah. Maybe not. I mean that happens a lot in animal stuff I think like you were saying. I'm gonna look up polar bears for a second. No but actually I am like they might I mean maybe this

is like real of of bears like mama bears is like a thing people say every now and then one second sorry yeah i mean they are supposed to be more territorial etc you know so it makes sense this is too much text i give up oh my god the wikipedia the wikipedia article was too hard everyone so pan is urging lyra to flatter eofor and she does she calls him great and strong to be able to do any of that and eofor is like nice this is great thanks and lyra tells eofor so if we're into this maybe you should tell your guards don't't attack Eoric. Don't tell the other bears. Tell them you're going to fight Eoric and make the bears think it's your idea.

And then she's like, cool. Well, good. Everything's good. Yep. Everything's going according to kick-hacker right now. But I do wish I could tell Eoric the plan. Well, too bad. You know, Santelia can be a hater on the palmerian professor who is arguably the worst i

agree because stealing someone's complete foundational concept and thesis that they've worked on and then passing it off as your own thought that was created in your brain with no help or credit from anyone in a community that helped build it is wrong but in this moment really helpful for lyra. So good for that. That's not related to anything. What can we get out of Chloe by telling her? Yeah, me too. Chapter 20, Mortal Kombat.

Which you cannot convince me. You cannot convince me that this title of this chapter was not inspired by the Mortal Kombat with a K in its name series, the video games, which came out in 1992. I, this is canon for me. Actually, I'm just gonna solve it

at Philip Pullman. I like, I like the idea of you not actually solving it better. Too late. I'm tweeting at Philip Pullman. I like the idea of you not actually solving it better. Too late. I'm tweeting at Philip Pullman right now. Oh no! Philip Pullman, who's your favorite Mortal Kombat

character and why is it Chun-Li? So, I know I can't convince you it wasn't because I think it has to be. I think it's about Sub-Zero. Literally. Like, pun intentionally. Because Animalities were originally a fan rumor in the development

team for Mortal Kombat. They ended up actually putting it into the game. There were people that believed before Mortal Kombat 2 Sub-Zero could morph into a polar bear and there was a strategy guide that was publishing fake pictures with that happening.

Are you telling me that Philip Pullman pullman was in that like mortal kombat deep lore shit dude i hope so i really do i hope he responds is the way that philip pullman feels about mortal kombat the way that we feel about these books is ass off like do you think that if this were modern day would phil pullman a either make a podcast or b have a twitch channel about mortal combat i hope podcast because i don't know if twitch would be right for his uh pros but i mean like so they actually explode into cartoon animals in mortal combat 3 and or sorry that's ultimate because the regular mortal combat 3 there's like differentiations there's so many damn moral combat games but the third one introduced these glowing looking realistic animals that practice animalities and then in the trilogy

for mortal combat that came out for n64 the polar real fatality move is given a sub-zero and i don't know i know more about like tekken than this sorry but uh i don't know much more about mortal kombat and some of that lore but i thought that was nuts like i think you're right i think you're onto something you heard it here first everyone on girls gone canon that the mortal kombat title is in, it is canon that it is inspired by the Mortal Kombat with a K video game. And if it's not, we're not wrong, first off. And also

This is an artistic critical interpretation? If Philip Pullman doesn't respond to us, then we can't be wrong. I mean, obviously. You're a thousand years old you know everything yep but all but we also know is that it was rare for a bear to kill another bear usually it was accidental or because of mistaken signals like with yorick and the bear that he killed so yo for murdering his father

was also rare but bears still settle disputes using fights, although seldom, and it's usually ceremonial as well. The combat ground and Joffre's armor and claws are groomed before this. He gets a manicure. They give him some, like, stick-on nails. They're all with gold, and they peel the gold off. Huge waste. Lumber washes in dread. Yeah.

Another betrayal, right? Leading Eorik into this she feels. She's just dreading it. Eorik is likely to be exhausted from marching to find Lyra with no food in his belly. Maybe even injured. She doesn't know what happened to him in the balloon crash.

And here Lyra is, making him fight for her with no knowledge of anything about to happen eofer demonstrates his sharpness of the claw on a dead walrus and lyra is like i'm gonna excuse myself and sob for a little bit yeah and speaking of uh fighting video games the moment prince is described as him crushing that skull of the dead walrus they use the language of it like an egg. It reminds me of that scene in Wreck-It Ralph with Zangief talking

about crushing man's skull like a sparrow egg between my thighs. Iconic. Iconic. There's no optimistic remark from Pan. All that Lara can do is read the alethiometer and see it say the same thing. He's now our way. Trust him. And also the alethiometer seems to actually mock her

for asking the same thing again, which I think starts pointing towards some ideas about it. Yeah, it's sentient, it seems. Like, it can make jokes. That's interesting. Like, who is controlling this thing? Is it Lyra or not? Huh. Bears begin to crowd

the combat ground as the word gets around about what's going to happen there are several tents for high ranking bears and a separate one for she bears lyra wanted to learn more about that but figured that may have to wait for another time so sorry us sorry tana sorry lyra none of that no she bears for you i bet pullman really did want to go there and was, we're just not going to. I hope we get some sort of she-bear-ness. Yeah, we deserve

it, first of all. It was such a tease. Yeah, and it seems like it's obviously a big part of how the fucking culture survives. Yeah, they only raise these male bears. Right? Ugh. Whatever. Garbage.

She stays close to Eofor, and the court is acting really snooty. They're all decorated in plumes, badges, and tokens. This is some medieval bear shit. Some of the court carry- It's a knight's tale of bears. It's a bear's tale. Wow! Thanks.

Some of his court carries little mannequins that are a lot like the demon doll, but Eofra's discarded that now. So like you said earlier, Eliana, they're all like baffled. They're like, what do we do now? Lol. I don't want this doll. Right? Lyra realizes none of these bears know what they are. They're all uncertain. They're copying people and each other, well, bears and each other well bears in each other and lyra is just quiet and watching the air as the fog begins to lift and she longs for a warmer sky with better memories tears are freezing as they fall down her face and pan can't comfort her he has to hide he tries from her pocket but bears don't understand tears and pan is in the pocket so

lyra is feeling truly alone. I love this description, though. Honestly, real talk, for a split second, she's pretty lucky that bears don't understand tears, because that would have been real confusing for a lot of people. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Thank God. Yeah. Thank Metatron. Well, the authority. Thank the authority.

I love this description of Eofur, though. He reared like a great metal tower, shining in polished steel, the smooth plates inlaid with wires of gold. His helmet enclosed the upper part of his head in a glistening carapace of silver-gray with deep eye slits, and the underside of his body was protected by a

close-fitting sark of chainmail. It was when she saw this that Lyra realized that she had betrayed yorick burnison for yorick had nothing like it his armor protected only his back and sides she looked at joe for rackinson so sleek and powerful and felt a deep sickness in her like guilt and fear combined i didn't broaden in a while. I just love that. I think it's a magnificent

description and terrifying, right? She's terrified looking at him in all this armor. Eofur looks so put together. He's the mountain. Yeah, exactly. This is about to be Cleganebowl. Get hype. Oh. You're kind of right, though. I know.

So Lyra wakes the courage up to ask eofor if she should speak to eoric first as the bears roar behind them at his entrance to fool him i don't know if it sounds like roaring or just like weird noise i added a couple of roars too to like make it more you know full i think it's full yeah thank you eoric is coming up the way eofor is so excited to fight he doesn't give a fuck what lyra does he's like go for it and she confronts eoric she apologizes repeatedly to him spilling the plan saying i kind of fucked you over she tells him she made him agree to fight eoric first instead of killing eorc right away and the winner gains the crown

and you know she's all worried because this is awful but he thinks it's brilliant right and me as a reader also thinks this is brilliant because I mean how else was she going to get out of it you knew Eorik had to come back and finish what was started and uh she gave him a chance a fighting chance because otherwise he was just walking in death So she explains she had to make sure he had a chance. And he cuts her off and he says, Blakwa, no! You are Lyra Silvertongue. To fight him is all I want.

Come, little demon. Oh, Sandor, I love you you have a good clagame bowl still better than season eight oh my god the bears part as they approach and she touches eoric briefly telling him to fight well and that he's the real king all in act right obviously all in actorik gives a speech to the bears, and it's excellent. Bears! Eorik Burnison roared. An echo rang back from the palace walls and startled Burr down to their nests. He went on. The terms of this combat are these.

If Joffre Rakinson kills me, then he will be king forever, save from challenge or dispute. If I kill you for Rakinson, I shall be your king. My first order to all of you will be to tear down that palace, that perfumed house of mockery and tinsel, and hurl the gold and marble into the sea. Iron is bare metal. Gold is not. Joffre Rackinson has polluted Svalbard. I have come to cleanse it. Ah, Joffre Rackinson, I challenge

you! Then Joffre bounded forward a step or two as if he could hardly hold himself back. Bears, he roared in his turn. Eoric Burnison has come back at my invitation.

I drew him here. It is for me to make the terms of this combat, and they are these. If I kill Euric Burnison, his flesh shall be torn apart and scattered to the cliff ghasts. His head shall be displayed above my palace. His memory shall be obliterated. It shall be a capital crime to speak his name. He continued, and then each bear spoke again. It was a formula, a ritual faithfully followed. I just love that they both begin their speeches each time with BEARS! Like, the people of bear!

Ice bears. Oh my gosh. I thought of a lot during this as we read it i was like oh there's some shit in here that we're gonna see soon uh you know eofor is threatening to have his flesh all pulled apart and scattered to the cliff guests and eoric i think is more honorable than that which we're gonna see in a way um he does something that you know it's very metal and to us it might sound evil but eating his heart is also kind of more honorable than giving him away to the cliff guests i think i don't know if any other characters would agree but we'll casually talk later i can see why it would be also um for me indiana jones that was a traumatic thing to watch as a child i died when i was reading this because Eofor is like,

his head is going to be displayed in a very prominent viewing place where everyone can see it. But you're all going to forget him because his memory is going to be cleansed. And I'm like, Eofor, you're a stupid bitch. You're a dumb bitch. Eofor is stupid. He kind of is. I'm going to put his head up and then everyone's going to forget him forever. And I'm like, no, kinda is. I'm gonna put his head up, and then everyone's gonna

forget him forever. And I'm like, no, Yofur, you're putting his head up. Medieval bear shit. Yeah, everyone's gonna remember, because literally his head's there. Right. Lyra then watches the two, Yofur looking king-like in his well-tended armor, Yorick looking small,

his armor dented and dusty. Whoa. But it is his soul, so it is already better than Joffre's, who has no regard for his soul. He's discontent with it. He's greedy. She sees the other bears sizing them up as well. She thinks that they represent two different futures and destinies. Whoa.

Deep. It means something in the context of this story. Interesting. Interesting. Whoa, deep. It means something in the context of this story. Interesting. Interesting. The bears begin to fight like rock loosened by earthquake,

crashing and snarling and biting. Maybe more like icebergs, but I guess he says like rock. Anyways, things start to look bad for our hero, and then he gets a good grip on Yofur's chainmail and pulls his cute outfit apart bit by bit. This is lewd. Thanks. What are we reading reading he's bleeding and panting from the attempt oh sexy so back to not looking good things are bad again oh this is a

great match right back and forth the yard begins to turn crimson mud after a while of this and iofre's armor is starting to look shabby he no longer looks beautiful the king has been pulled down lyra can tell ioric is limping on his left forepaw and his blows have started becoming softer eofor notices it too and begins to taunt him and like name calls him some pretty inappropriate names like eofor you are a king show some class where's your honor nowhere he has disregarded it like his armor honor and armor disregarded uh lyra is in tears she's like i've lost eeyore he's gonna die and she looks up thinking she must be brave for him and her tears pretty much block her

from seeing what's about to happen or it was tricky and she just wouldn't have seen it you could not trick a bear but as lyra had shown him eofor did not want to be a bear he wanted to be a man and and Yorick was tricking him. Yorick finds a firm rock to back up on and then chooses his moment. Yorick comes in on Yorick's weak side and Yorick moves, exploding up into his

footing and slashing at his exposed jaw, which comes clean, flying through the air. And I am also not convinced that this is not inspired by wrestling. Also, you know, like going up against the ropes. Not at all. And I am also not convinced that this is not inspired by wrestling. Also, you know, like, going up against, like, the ropes. I love it. I also love that it's playing with, like, the wounded gazelle gambit kind of trope,

right? Like, Pullman does it really nicely, though, because it's almost subverted. Like, it's not used generally by the morally gray people, right? It's like either a villain or a hero is playing it, or a damsel decoy, but it's not used generally by the morally gray people, right? It's like either a villain or a hero is playing it, or a damsel decoy, but it's not like a warrior bear who's made clear that he's doing the impossible and tricking a bear.

Like, it's a great setup. It's a satisfying finish, and it's metal. Metal as fuck, because Iokir's tongue wows out. His throat is open. The king is voiceless and biteless, and Iokir lunges and tears into his

neck and finishes him and then tears into his chest pulls him open eats his heart and i do think that's more honorable than letting him be torn apart and given to cliff guests yeah i mean he takes like you said his heart and i think um what you were saying about the trickery that york pulls here we discussed this earlier on in the series series, but it's a book where we see our protagonist, our hero, Lyra, she uses trickery, right? Trickery, again, is kind of a... here, amongst a lot of characters, trickery is a heroic trait. trickery is a heroic trait yeah for lyra i mean it's good until it isn't obviously but she uses it for survival um she uses it to get by and we learned that it's impressive right like what when he said you're lyra silver tongue that's amazing and it's also diplomacy in a way, right? We see Asriel obviously has a pretty high diplomacy skill, even though he's kind of a douche.

Kinda. Like, he, like, shows up at the beginning of the story, and he's all like, ooh, give me money for something you probably shouldn't fund me for, but you should. And he's very sly and slimy, and, like, it's an admirable quality to have the ambitious, like, slyness and cleverness. The Slytherin qualities. Asriel is a Slytherin because he has ambition.

He'd be a Ravenclaw if he actually cared about the knowledge for the knowledge and not for what the knowledge could give him. Yeah. Anyways, we have this scene at the end. Yorick Burnison's voice rose above the clamor. Bears! Who is your king? And the cry came back in a roar, like that of all the sea-smooth pebbles in the world in an ocean-battering storm. Yorick Burnison! Yorick Burnison!

The bears knew what they must do. Every single badge and sash and coronet was thrown off at once and trampled contemptuously underfoot to be forgotten in a moment. They were Yorick's bears now and true bears, not uncertain semi-humans, conscious only of a torturing inferiority.

Oh my god. Yay, Yorick King! Yorick King! Yorick King! Yorick King! Wow. oh my god yay you're a king you're a king you're a king you're a king wow and then of course as the demon regent lyra she gets to release human prisoners from the dungeons she tells eoric you better get those people out of there they're all down there and they're suffering and eoric agrees because they're going to be smashed in the ceremony the bears are participating in soon if they don't get them out, which is tearing down Eofur's castle, the kingdom

so to speak. What does it mean? Wow. Is it a metaphor? Is it a metaphor? Don't know. It's also like a literal, but is it a metaphor? Yeah. I love both. Both. Lyra tries to tend to Yorick,

and he gives her some blood moss to patch his wounds with, and he tells her to fold his flesh over it, and then hold snow until it freezes together. Hmm. Is that... I didn't know that would work, but I guess so. I mean, is that magic? Do we have blood moss here?

Did you see the thing going around Twitter of the people with the bio glue? I think that's what this is. But moss. But not at all. Yeah, but blood moss. Maybe it's blood moss extract. Phillip, what is blood moss? Dunno.

It's just interesting. I wonder if it is a real, real, real thing. I don't know. In the north. Because I just don't know if the snow will let it breeze together but it makes sense i don't know it's that cold it's made up it's also in like i mean they have things that are like blood moss-esque in a lot of other fantasy video games but it doesn't seem to be no i figure it's some sort of like that makes sense i mean cal drogo and game of thr has been like that, right?

No, he rubbed the mud on himself. That's what it was, but in the show I was saying, doesn't Mirri Maz Duar give him something to hold to it and say he needs to put a poultice to it? Yeah, but it's not, like, guaranteed to heal him, as we can see. Because he rubbed the mud on himself.

I just meant that it's something that exists in fantasy, right? Yeah. Obviously there's some magical leaf that you can put there and sew up and you're good to go. But snow, that's the weird part that I'm most interested in. I don't give a shit about the blood moss. It's the snow part. Like, does that fuse skin together? That's crazy.

I guess in the freezing cold. Lyra's mittens are wet with blood when she's done but the bleeding has probably finally stopped she finds out there's no point talking to santelia because he's mad and she's anxious about getting back to her group so she curls up and keeps out of the way and then she piles snow on her and makes pan be a wolverine to keep her warm this is how bears sleep and you're not a bear lyra again she's stealing a new identity in this book. I mean this lightheartedly. Especially when you think of how she's so alone. Aw. She just wants to belong. She doesn't know who she is.

Yeah. Are you my mother? Yeah. No, but filter. Yeah. Before she was trying to be a sailor, then Egyptian. Now she's trying to be a bear. Yeah.

Aw. She's eventually awakened, though, to speak with the king, who, by the way, again, is now Yorick. And she's freezing cold with her eyes all frozen solid shut until Pan thaws them out because maybe, you know, she's not a bear. She fails to stand. So the bear has

her climb on to ride over, and she lands at a steep hollow where bears and Roger are standing, and he updates her on his journey. They crash into a mountain, fell down a slope, and luckily, Roger ended up with Yorick because I don't know where everyone else is. The bears are creating this new shelter out of driftwood and canvas in the background, and they're all happy to be working.

And I thought that was great. I like this rebuilding. Yeah. This rebuilding is nice and they're rebuilding out of much humbler ingredients right i thought that was great materials they're the the materials are not his dark materials oh his humble materials wow his icy his cold materials oh my god the young bear who woke her up offers her food. So she eats a raw seal kidney for the first time. I'm very interested in all of this.

She also eats blubber from the seal, which tastes like hazelnut flavored cream. And there's a couple things here. I love that we started the last chapter with her thinking the kingdom smelled like foul seal blubber. And now she's actually open-mindedly trying it and it tastes delicious, right? It's a metaphor for king york's rule good king york and for friendship right all the friends we made along the way but truly it turns out that like raw blubber does taste like cream and that it only gets fishy when you cook it or if it's like bad and rotten and apparently seal is super gamey but good dark meat

and there's this translated anthropology book by fritz joff nansen that goes into detail called eskimo life and he says this is translated the blubber of seals and whales is generally eaten raw my dainty readers will of course shudder at the very thought of eating raw blubber but i can assure them that especially when quite fresh it is good it has a sweet perhaps ma mockish taste, reminding one of cream, with nothing of what we would call fishy or oily flavor. It does not make itself felt until the blubber has been boiled or roasted, or when it grows rancid.

Yum! Yeah, I mean, like, that doesn't sound bad. I really kind of want to try raw sealed meat now. Me too. I'm like, I'm adventurous. I wouldn't eat, I don't know if I'd eat the regular gamey meat raw. I guess I could, but I don't know if I would. I'd probably not cook that.

If you don't like it, spit it out, you know? Yeah, exactly. And like, is this a survival tip? Because they don't just eat the blubber, right? They also eat the seal kidney, which, remember kids, seal kidney, not bear kidney. Yes, yes survival tips this is like meds be classified but us oh my god okay coconut head let's keep going not that night oh my god

coconut head oh i actually really liked that show that was a cute show it was really fun uh she and roger pig out on seal for a while. They start to finally feel warm, which is probably a nice feeling in that coldness. She is finally taken to Eorik, sitting under the aurora, roarer, proudly with her friend, the king. And she learns Mrs. Coulter was probably the reason why Eofor's dominance was like a spell on all the bears. She visited Eofor before Eorik's exile and gave Eofor a drug he administered to hjalmir hjalmirsson what that's a fake name the bear that you're he's real not anymore he isn't to make him forget himself she's just drugging people though is that like okay no it's not it's really not you can't just go drugging people coulter you can't and she's not gonna listen to my

warning probably but so the way that yofer's palace is presented as full of like all these gaudy things right the language yorick uses to describe it as this perfumed house he has other words too and he has this call to destroy it and it kind of actually reminds me of a couple moments in the bible because i'm going to keep heralding back to this because of course this is reacting against christianity so i assume everything can be like tied back to some sort of allegory or biblical story and it reminds me of the idea of casting down false idols which comes up a few times in the bible but it especially comes up within stories of figures like jezebel right who swayed king ahab king of israel away from worshiping yahweh into the worship of these

false gods and idols and she brought her religion and tempted them towards sin as an outsider and i think that's very much how m. Coulter is presented within bear culture, right? In tempting the bears away from their nature, from being bears and introducing all these weird human things that have tainted them and the sullied and created this

opulent palace. She's Jezebel here. Yeah, she is the temptress for the bears. The bear temptress like mother daughter and since the human laws don't actually apply on svelbard coulter had basically used this to set up a bull vanguard here probably with worse things going on and eofor was going to let her they all ask what coulter's doing now and lyra asks the alethiometer while she waits for them to get a torch that she can see properly

she asks them what happened to scoresby and the witches i think it's interesting that these future books coming up they incorporate more of the judicial system right they start talking more about law how the government is incorporated into this system and i think it's interesting coulter was planning to keep setting up these testing facilities and they were all going to be cooler than the last. Hmm. That is kind of interesting. I mean, she specifically chose this place so they could have more

fucked up, Qyburn-esque experiments. So, yeah, I think that is interesting, but till then, the witches, turns out, were attacked by another clan, maybe allied to the gobblers, maybe not. Yorick didn't see what happened to Seraphine or Lee. Besides Lee and the balloon soaring upwards.

Probably because, like, four sandbags fell, whatever. In Torchlight, they learn that Lee is heading toward Nova Zembla. And he's still afloat and unharmed, which is good news. But there's bad news. No! Mrs. Coulter knows their whereabouts and she's bringing an armed transport ship to spilebard and soon she'll know about eofor's defeat from cliff gas who are gossipy little fuckers and witches she'd been planning to come to take eofor's power away from him with

a regiment of tartars and plans to have asriel killed wherever he's being kept because she knows what asriel is about to do and she wants to stop him and finally she learns that colter is after well her lyra again because she wants something that lyra has and asriel wants it too she's puzzled she's unsure and she's like i guess it's probably the alethiometer but she doesn't feel like the alethiometer is referring to itself like it usually does therefore that's not the missing piece but she doesn't trust her gut and she just moves on accepting it lara asks yorick then how far is it to my father he says i can take you lara then closes her eyes before they leave for the journey feeling exhausted from all that reading and goes to sleep for a bit before they wake her and off she goes because is it

I mean is it the end of a Northern Lights slash Golden Compass chapter if Lyra doesn't fall asleep at the end? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it is. It has to happen at least once

every chapter. It does so good call. Lyra gets to happen at least once every chapter it does so good good call lyra gets to sleep more than most people in this book so i'm super envious same so we're gonna move into our dust discussion next you guys as we've mentioned this will cover the main three books in the trilogy we will talk about some connections to the future uh and then we will move into the dustiest discussion after that where i will monologue like an evil villain about the books i have read that aliana has not so i wanted to start quickly before we get into some other deeper discussion things uh with coming back to centellia's speech that i thought was

really nice about to to reiterate he goes there is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm the stars are alive child did you know that everything out there is alive and their grand purposes abroad the universe is full of intentions you know and this kind of ties into stuff in the later books right of course this idea of everything being alive as we see what happens with the dead as their atoms release and join with everything else and and then there becomes sort of life everywhere right but this idea of the universe being full of intentions on one hand like this doesn't stress it that much but we see that this starts creeping up a little

bit in these chapters right with the alethiometer kind of scolding Lyra, and then we find out later on, uh, Yorick, right, who plays a prominent role in these chapters, he warns Will of, like, I mean, everything has intentions. And it's even more suspicious

when you have a knife where you can't see the edge. How can you know what that knife's intentions are and that ends up playing a really big role towards the end of this trilogy of books and so i i wanted to call that out i thought that was um a really poignant little speech uh especially the intentions it's and i can't tell you because i'm going to talk about it again however uh it does not cease to be important in this entire series so it's a great thing to call out because this continues to be important this is a very hard theme that we hear even in the following two

spin-off books but yeah that santelli is interesting especially because she's just like this guy's crazy but i can use like 10% of what he's saying. But he's not crazy. Like, most of what he was saying was true about Coulter and Asriel, and Lyra's just rejecting it about Asriel because she doesn't want to believe anything that he's saying. I mean, how could she? Like, Asriel's been her hero for so long, and like, she... Yeah, all she has. She is refusing or unable or unwilling or a little bit of all

to see what the alethiometer is telling her about Asriel. And, yeah, that alethiometer has to be eyes of the beholder for what you interpret, and she is. She's avoiding it. And I think it's the same as that feeling in her stomach that it's not the alethiometer that he needs right yeah and everything in these past few chapters has sort of been hinting at that they're like yeah because she the only reason we think it's the alethiometer is because lyra keeps saying i mean it's got to be that right yeah and it's like no it doesn't

got to be that lyra and she's just well what's like, no, it doesn't gotta be that, who Eofur would have just had him torn apart and fed to the cliff guests. And Eoric later eats Lee's heart so that the cliff guests don't get him. So one could assume that it was an honorable death. He was still trying to respect him in his death, even though the guy was a total dick.

And he ate his heart A, because he won. B, because then the cliff gas couldn't have it it's a little of both i think there's um an aspect to it that is what you said as well as fuck this guy on metal there's that and i think there's a respectfulness as you said because he's taking yo for into him right as... I'm gonna rephrase that. I hope you keep it, though. I'm gonna keep it.

He's taking Joffre into him by consuming him. He does the same with Lee, right? Because people don't necessarily always want to consume things that are dirty, so in doing so, I think that's a very respectful

uh we've talked about this or touched on it a little in our song of ice and fire series podcast but uh there's a i want to say it was in papua new guinea i could be wrong a culture right of cannibals and they practice cannibalism as a death, right? And it was respectful. It was because you loved these people, and so you would eat them because then they become part of you, and you bring them with you everywhere, right? And it also shows his growth, right? Like, he's no longer the guy that went and killed the dude in that battle. He's the one that, when he killed that other dude in his battle, that was showing. That wouldn't, you know, he's the one that when he killed that other dude in his battle that was showing, you know, like he was obviously something was wrong.

But he finally did it just to because he just wouldn't call it. He was drugged. And I mean, Eorik's not that kind of bear now, right? He's not that kind of bear. He's not. He's really not. He's a different bear now. And we're all different in life as we grow and learn.

And Eorik did learn. Some people don't learn and they stay dumb bitches like Eofurt. But Eorik learned and he won. Not a person. So, not a person. To go Janet. Actually, I don't know what I am. We need to talk about the witches. We do need to talk about the witches. I know we talked about it with Tana

last episode, but why is it always a crazy fucking witch who is love scorned by some earth man that has to come be batshit crazy and cause trouble like we get this in lyra's oxford and future books what we see this all the time and i'd be dusty discussion i think add one or two times there too what what is up with that yeah i think on one hand it seems like he's trying to say they're above human rules but on the other i'm like uh there's a different subtext here especially because a we know that all the witches are women and b the bears with the exception we've heard about

she bears but a lot of what we see of them is very male coded um also like he's literally set up the whole book they're free spirits they don't subscribe to male rules they don't care about earth human boys like if you go then it is too bad and like yeah seraphina piccolo had her heart broken by the whole farter quorum situation she had to go and like made herself leave but that situation if that's supposed to be not normal obviously falling in love with a human like some do but most keep it keep it breezy it's like an in and out you know going on there um some do the children bearing etc but i just feel like if this is their life and in a hundred years they'll have a new boyfriend then why is it also some of them are crazy and they want to kill men for scorning

them i just don't pick one yeah i feel like it kind of counteracts itself in the story that's all and like and i guess there are different kind of witches and different witches in general and witches aren't you know the same as seraphina pakala obviously but it just was a little like i don't know she says witches feel this way except for these seven witches we meet in the story who are really pissed this guy cheated on them or did something else or i don't know it's great to show they're vicious it's just why is it always witches no i agree um it's very suspicious yeah it's something that it does cause the raising of eyebrows and i'm like what are you trying to say about witches and and what is like that they're

emotional and maybe it ties back to the pride thing but also at the same time like you said like they live for hundreds of years what did they give a shit like yeah if jerry down the block cheats on her with britney from the fucking 7-eleven like what would they care they just go find a hotter guy to be mesmerized by their beauty and ferociousness yeah so i don't know whatever it's not uh realistic philip we should chat about it so there's also this cool contrast i felt this whole bear chapter is a is a very loud violence right you get the sense that you're yeah you're amidst bear roars and blood is boiling and boom boom boom and the ending almost feels more like quiet violence right because it just like slowly pulls you in and then the boom there

like happens like you're like a frog in a pot slowly boiling where this is like you're a frog thrown into the boiling pot you know that that quiet violence of the children being mutilated and uh destroying the connection to life and i don't know bear riots are just in the streets and i see kind of why the movie might have thought this was too hard to pull off tonally, because A, they had already fucked the whole movie, and B, the page context helps a lot. The inner thoughts help a lot. The movie's happy tones probably couldn't pull off this change

from, like, we're all bears, to then all of a sudden a very low-key, like, we're walking in to hang out with Asriel, we're with Asriel gonna do some father daughter time things are awful but like I feel good about it you know like we're here I'm gonna help him he said I can help him and then like

oh no Asriel's killing my friend oh what the fuck yeah yeah so I feel like it's just like a like all of a sudden day crescendos you're like wow what a great story now they're gonna go home in the next three chapters and you're like nope's just like a like all of a sudden day crescendos you're like wow what a great story now they're gonna go home in the next three chapters and you're like nope nope that was a lie

yeah I think it's part of what whether you like it or not makes it such an iconic ending right because it ends on that high note like you said or it seems like it's ending on a high note and the next thing you know you're like Lyra you did it you're the best amazing and then you're like oh lyra no that's what you did

and it's all that subversion of um as we've talked about earlier that that dramatization of finding out like wow my parents are human and they're not these like built up figures that I thought that they were, as happens for a lot of people at this age. Right. Going through puberty of like, oh, mom and dad. Not what I thought. I mean, not everyone finds out like, oh, mom and dad, child murderers, but whatever. A couple of things that I wanted to touch on before you get super dusty right and i'm sure you're going to expand on this a little later in the dusty discussion but as seraphina talks about having to give up frater quorum and and what that meant it also kind of reminds me of the end of the books right where she makes that choice, and she does what she can, but it's as Lyra and Will have to give each other up.

And Serafina chooses... In a way, it's similar, right? They had to give each other up if they were going to live full lives as what they are, because otherwise, either Lyra or Will were going to have to sacrifice the rest of their lives with the exception of one decade. Yeah. And, I mean, that's what she does, right? They have to go back to their worlds. Yeah. mean that's what she does right they have to go back to their worlds yeah and that's what seraphina does she goes back to her world but part of it

also had to do with seraphina feeling it was too painful and um perhaps far decorum felt the same um unsure because i have only read these three books and Lyra's Oxford and I don't know exactly how they felt and um oh my god you know for them it was like a choice and there's an aspect of it that's sort of pride on each of their parts for Lyra and Will it was a choice that they made so that they could live out their full lives but but it had nothing to do with pride. They still wanted to see each other, etc. And I think that's a different kind of pain in and of itself. No context spoilers, but quote, my Serafina, unquote.

Oh, why would you do that to me? Just wanted to make sure that you open your books and someday go back and not just read Lyra's Oxford over and over again. And not just read Lyra's Oxford over and over again. Why would I read Lyra's Oxford over and over again? You probably know the birds by heart now, innit? I have Once Upon a Time in the North somewhere in these boxes of things. Scavenger hunt. Oh my god. Oh, there's so much stuff.

Anyway, and the last thing before I let Chloe take it is this characterization of Joffre, right? We're obviously going to talk about this way more once we get to book three, but Joffre and the interaction he has with Lyra is very similar to the interaction that Metatron has with Mrs. Coulter. And I think that we're supposed to see other kinds of parallels between them, right? Because Metatron, of course, is standing in for this idea of God. And we don't get actually that much time with Metatron, we get some third hand accounts of how he's terrible and has usurped all these things. But we actually get I think, a lot more face time with Joffre, and therefore characterization of him. So I think that in a way we can sort of

transpose one of like the characterization of one onto the other. And I think what I see from this is this idea of if Joffre is supposed to be a sort of lower stakes parallel to the god that is being critiqued at the end of these books and Philip Pullman's Critique of Religion, I think what we're seeing through Joffer is an interpretation of what is called a jealous God. He's hungry for praise. And throughout the Bible, God actually says that I am a jealous god right and that's why they should have no false idols no other gods before him this is actually language from the bible and that's why he is jealous and exhibits that when he finds out that yorick has a demon and not him he's like how come yorick has one why not me it's about that position of. Am I not the fairest of them all? Exactly. And in fact, there's this word zealous that people are supposed to exhibit,

this fervor and enthusiasm when they feel religious connection with God. And that actually has its roots in the same word as jealousy from the Greek zealos and this emulation. There's a fear of being supplanted. And you see that in Jopher, right? And I don't think that in the Bible, it's necessarily that God has that fear per se. But this is what Pullman is choosing to portray it as. I mean, there's differences in connotations and cultural meanings of words that are lost because it's been like hundreds of years and we're translating this over and over again right yeah but there's also the way

that lyra's flattery actually works on yofer and that has to do with the fact that yofer is hungry for praise and i think i'm reminded that in christianity it is sort of drilled into you that you're supposed to praise God constantly. And that is what Lyra does in order to convince you for like, oh, yeah, this is totally what's happening. I will be your demon, your servant, part of you. And that allows her to be able to play him because he exhibits these traits of God that are in the Bible. But Pullman puts a twist on it that jealous god and the god who wants your praise yeah and she's just the body of christ amen exactly and and i just i feel like that's something that's going on with the way that

you see that connection with metatron at the end of the book yeah absolutely layered in jewels the false god and there jewels. The false god. And there's even a false god in the Commonwealth, I would say, too. You get lots of different false gods and idols throughout all this, and it's very interesting. Puppets, right? They're puppet rulers. They're being played with strings, and they don't even know.

Yeah. Well, Eliana, this has been really fun, but it's time for you to sign off and for me to take over the Dusty Discussion, which covers any extraneous books outside of the main three in the trilogy, including La Belle Sauvage and the Secret Commonwealth, the Books of Dust. There's a bunch going on in here. This is your like weekly connect with me, you guys. A bunch going on that I am tying to LaBelle Sauvage and also to the Commonwealth.

There's been hundreds of millions of references about Lyra wanting to be a witch. Lyra wishes Pan and she were like witches in this. A little too soon there. Pan could carry a message to Eoric then. And what she learns, of course, is that that is her ultimate betrayal in the third book right separating from him and leaving him when she has to go underground to get roger but after finally all these references come common well here's lyra pretending to be a witch to survive without her demon uh all of these books it's taken so long. She even in this chapter says

she dodges the question of how a bear could have a demon and why Eorik explains that she's a witch's demon able to go far from Eorik. Exactly what she's doing right now in the Commonwealth. Absolutely. Another thing that really shined to me, and I'm so mad Eliana cannot hear it but the professor's speech about intentions really stood out about the microcosm and the macrocosm the stars being alive and that everything out there is alive there are grand purposes and that the world is full of intentions everything happens for a reason and this is what the big theme of the first three books are right it's destiny everything is faded Lyra's faded and she's being made to forget this now in the secret commonwealth and that's a big reason why pan has left her she used to believe everything had a reason and people

like simon talbot and brant are poisoning her otherwise with their books which by the way i love that it's a critique on writers by Pullman right and their flashy empty essays essayists that are young and in college just writing like I don't know barstool articles it's a great commentary um I didn't realize how well it connected but this theme is very important moving forward when she finishes it she will totally I hope. Okay, here's my big one, you guys, for the discussion. What the fuck is up with Malcolm's eye, Polstead, and is this a similar thing or what? In Captivity Chapter 19, there was the paragraph, the idea hovered and shimmered delicately like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst but she was familiar with the way of ideas

and she let it shimmer looking away thinking about something else that's so interesting because it's worded almost exactly like the migraine auras that malcolm gets without the migraine of course in la belle sauvage and the commonwealth uh philip pullman was interviewed by npr and said that malcolm experiences these auras or the spangled ring as he calls it and he himself gets them as well i thought that was great uh and migraine headaches are caused by changes in the nervous system and there's several stages they can progress through not all of the people that have it experience stages or visual auras and it's like an electrical or chemical wave that moves across the cortex of your brain, and the visual cortex processes signals,

so when the wave spreads, you have hallucinations sometimes. The more common visual aura would be like a fortification spectrum, and it looks like, almost like medieval fort walls, small holes of light that are shapes and lines. So the language above of the shimmering comes back with Malcolm later and this passage almost sounds exact. The black and silver patterns on her back seemed to flicker and shimmer for a moment and Malcolm felt as if the spangled ring had changed its form and become a demon. But then Lord Asriel spoke suddenly. If that's not enough,

there's also that line in chapter six where Tony Costa tells Lyra about different creatures in this world, like the ghosts who look like children with no heads, but he also talks about some called the wind suckers, which remind me of another character that we'll talk about. They drift about in the air. You come across clumps of them, floated together sometimes, or caught snagged on a bramble. As soon as they touch you, all the strength goes out of you. You can't see them except as a kind of shimmer in the air. And in The Subtle Knife, we meet specters in chapter six as well. Specters feeding on adults as a transparent moving shimmer comes up. And of course, there's the shimmer of dust surrounding

people. Neat callbacks, but I want to know what's up with the migraine aura. Is it acute self-insert from Pullman? Do we know that Pullman arguably has self-inserted himself as Polstead now? Because if you read these books, it kind of feels like it, a la George R.R. Martin's Sam Tarly. Does this eye thing have anything to do with dust? It feels like it does. It reminds me of opening a window with the knife or stabbing a specter with the knife. Is it going to amount to nothing? Will it be like a migraine thing? I don't know. Will the rose oil and its application to the eye come in back? It has to come back after Commonwealth, right? The Commonwealth has to be about it. These are all mysteries that I now cannot solve until the next book, you guys.

So that's a wrap on this week's discussion. Just some food for thought, some dust for thought, and we'll go from there, right? We'll talk next week and we'll see if Eliana's gotten any further. Fingers crossed. Well, that's a wrap on the discussion. Eliana, you're welcome back into the fold. Wow, thank you. You're welcome.

Sorry, sorry. It's all right. This is how it is. I am like Yorick, you know. Welcome back after all this time. Well, that's a wrap for this episode. We got through so much and next week we end it all. Wow! Fuck. Next week we end it all.

Okay. But also it's the beginning of something new. Feels so right being here with you. And now something in your arms. No. Don't know what you're going for there. High school musical. We're doing a high school musical next.

Anyways, you guys, thank you so much for listening to us every week. We're so happy that you're tuning in still and you're into this. We're hoping to get into Subtle Knife next year. And I can't wait, personally. I love Subtle Knife. And it's a good connector book. Amber Spyglass is off the chain. That's going to be wild when we get there.

But for now, you guys can find us on the internet. And if you want, you can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. If you are interested in chatting about the episodes or tweet at us at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com if you are interested in chatting about the episodes or tweet at us at girlsgonecanon on twitter and of course keep up with us right we're going to be putting out new episodes soon about the bbc slash hbo series which we're super excited for this live action adaptation you can find this over on Podbean, on Spotify, on Acast, on iTunes, on Google Play,

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I have been one of your hosts Chloe and I have been another one of your hosts Eliana bye guys that sounded more like a Wookiee sorry I can't do it, the Wookiee thing

I can't, I have a friend who's really good at it but gotta start practicing I guess I don't know it's the season