Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials Novellas - Lee Scoresby’s Spaghetti Western: Once Upon a Time in the North

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Originally released for Girls Gone Canon Patrons April, 2020 ~ become a GGC Patron @ patreon.com/girlsgonecanon where patrons in the Stranger tier & above receive monthly bonus episodes ~   Spoilers: MAIN TRILOGY, Novellas, and hints/foreshadowing toward things we may see in a future book of dust. We sit down to discuss the novella Once Upon a Time in the North, which focuses on Lee Scoresby - and Iorek Byrnison! (And NOT Victoria Lund, bye).  Join in and listen to some musings, as we speculate on what Poliakov was really mining for, a "severing", and even some fragrant oils.   -------------------------- 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 

Hello everyone and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Patreon episode 21. Hello everyone and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Patreon episode 21. Once upon a time that our patrons were all legal to drink. Once upon a time in the north. You know who we are. You guys know who we are. You all know who we are. We don't have to tell you. I would be concerned if you didn't and you were here.

Like, very impressive. Thank you for being a patron if you don't and you were here like very impressive thank you for being a patron if you don't know who we are uh so i'm really excited to explore this story it is a side novella by philip pullman set in our his dark materials world and it covers lee scarsby and york burning sun as they uh become friends and get into some mischief together that's like the cutest part of the chapter and yes it is as you all know I didn't shut up

about this novella after reading it and when we were introduced to of course Lee Scarsby in in the books and started talking. Or maybe it was the show when he came in. I think it was in the show. Honestly, I loved Lin-Manuel's entire thing.

I can see how this Lee Scaresby is very similar to that. I understand people saying that uh the current iteration right of 59 year old lease and now i'm like trapped saying lee scares me lee scores b is not quite like that but i can see this yeah i'm it is odd uh lee's 24 we'll talk about in this this is this takes place 35 years before main events basically which kind of actually sets a timeline. I know in our first few His Dark Materials episodes I tried to figure out

the timeline because I'm kind of crazy like that immediately and Eliana was like Chloe that's not how this is going to work. They actually have an inkblot over the year in one of those documents at the end so yeah if you're tuning in, our Subtle Life chapters 7 and 8

episode will be released this week as well. Yes, they will, and we'll be covering the Rolls Royce and another chapter. Did you all know that Rolls Royce is hyphenated? We'll talk about that in a bit. Not in this episode, though. But in our upcoming patron episode but in our upcoming patron episode in our upcoming public episode on the subtle knife yeah and you know they recently did a tweet along this past

sunday they did kind of like a live his dark materials ask hdm tweet through we did some retweeting of those kind of questions that popped up but there were a lot of really cool things that got said by different production members cast members from the tv show and apparently although covid19 has been a sucker a real jerk they are still releasing season two before the end of the year yeah and it sounds like they actually got greenlit and maybe they're starting pre-production on season three or something now. So that's promising.

That means that they were able to complete everything that they needed to for season two. So not only are we getting season two, we're getting a complete season, right? Because a couple of shows have had to split up or shorten the amount of episodes that they're putting out per season. So that's pretty exciting. the amount of episodes that they're putting out per season so that's pretty exciting and my understanding is that chloe you got some closure on a character yes uh apparently alice lonsdale a character in the story uh was included originally in the drafts for season one but they

cut her they just had other characters like the librarian for example him and his husband the master uh and i say that not lightly because they did pretty much confirm they wrote it specifically that way this week uh jane tranter i believe confirmed that on twitter which i believe they grew yeah we did say it so i'm just saying there was a lot of stuff that was confirmed this week yeah there's a lot of cool stuff going on on twitter i was excited about that the internet was like okay kind of maybe uh also also this past weekend for those of you who are following us for a song of ice and fire content chloe was part of quite a few great panels ice and fire

count unfortunately was postponed due to the pandemic. But very cool. They did a bunch of content online, virtual content with content creators and friends from the community. So I did one of the biggest panels I was on was the Drunk, A Song of Ice and Fire and Drinking Game of Thrones presents Season 8 Game of Thrones. What does it all mean? It was too spicy. YouTube shut us down literally five minutes before we finished, but we'll throw a link up for that.

It was a very fun time. It was really funny that they like stopped, right? It just stopped. We were literally about... I know. And the weirdest thing is, is that it is actually up in full on the channel including when it said that it was copyright stop we were behind like the scene still talking and that's up

it's very strange i think i guess maybe someone reviewed it later or something right then they're like oh i guess this is okay so who knows how because i didn't edit it is the funny thing like i edited every single clip yeah i can see why they would have thought but oh yeah absolutely i should have gotten shut down like hours before that yeah but i digress hbl got strong lawyers. They do. You know who else? So in this chapter, actually, this novella, we meet a lawyer. Lee Scoresby. Yeah, Lee Scoresby, 24 years old. He's traveling over the White Sea in his cargo balloon for the Barron Sea Company Depot, looking for some work and some trouble.

So we are going to be covering in this uh episode about once upon a time in the north all three of the books from the main trilogy and we may very very lightly mention a couple things in passing on some foreshadowing that we might come to see in the books of dust or things from lyra's oxford but this will stick to the main three books. We get the famed origin story of his balloon. He won it in a poker game six months before and also won with that a half copy of very ragged, very torn up of the elements of aerial navigation as well. We do get a page of the book to read much later on in this story, but I must distress because i don't do math like that you know i just don't it's not gonna happen so i'm not gonna talk about it or if it's smart or if it means anything

maybe you can eliana but it ain't for me yes and yeah so so from that book i thought it was a first of all really funny that we're seeing as you pointed out that lee got his balloon six months before i guess we always like kind of took it for granted later on in the books right or in the book series everyone was just like yeah of course he's an aeronaut this is what he wanted to do and it's like no he just wanted in a game and was like yeah this is my living now and didn't fucking know how to do it he's just like literally in some ways winging it with half a fucking manual and this is an interesting manual it does not actually exist i tried googling to see like

did philip pullman base his like a balloon manual on a real older text it is not and there's some like hilarious footnotes in chapter six of Aerial Navigation, such as one footnote. As a matter of fact, this is impossible. Footnote number 5 in Chapter 6, only a fool would suppose so. Who knows what that was supposed to refer to, because we don't actually see where it gets its attribution. But yes, as Chloe said, there's a little diagram here. And my understanding from what i remember of physics class that i took literally a decade ago uh now and actually a little less than a decade it does seem like it's mostly right on a simplistic level i'm sure there's like way

more stuff that you can calculate but more or less like this mg at the bottom that is weight, that's mass times gravity, r pointing up, right, stands for like resistance, and I think that these are all correct, but also, again, I haven't really thought about physics in a long time. I would like to point out that I got an A, and I'm proud of that. I just felt good that, okay, I'm gonna say it, I felt good that okay I'm gonna say it I felt good that I got an A in physics majoring in like English literature and fine arts and I did better than a bunch of the people doing like STEM or pre-med I'm just saying

and now you do absolutely what nothing with it I do this you sit on a throne of lies I sit on I rest on my laurels you rest on podcast laurels I rest on my laurels

with the millions of money HBO and BBC hand us every month all I need so Lee is accompanied by his demon Hester the best rabbit to exist and well maybe not a rabbit as we'll find out better than a rabbit but they crash land at novi odense roughly everyone is commenting on it and they also as soon as he lands everyone is all over him and they're like

are you working for the big mining company taking over here larsonen Manganese. He actually gets asked this twice within like the first 10 minutes he has landed. That's how you know it's important. Yeah, right. First at landing, then again at customs. And I know that Pullman is pulling out a lot of, you know, Scandinavian names, different etymology. And I've noticed a few things things from here odense is in real life a city in southern denmark near the odense fjord and it was founded in the 10th century and it's actually the birthplace of hans christian anderson huh that is interesting i knew the name from somewhere and i was like what is odense odense is a city know that. And I just thought that was really strange. And there's a lot more even of this etymology I find like in Larsen Manganese. The first thing that popped out to me when I read this, because I did not read this until recently.

This is the one I was waiting to read. Manganese is one of the metals in the alloy in the subtle knife. Yeah, that was interesting. Interesting. There's also a Swedish professor of philosophy, a very famous historical professor from Lund. I have to pronounce it right. I told Lo that I would try to pronounce it right for them. Hans Larsson, who was born in 1862, lived till 1944, was a famous Swedish professor of philosophy at Lund University, Sweden.

And he had a doctoral dissertation on the transcendental deduction of categories in Kant. And I thought that was a really interesting couple different pieces he had besides that because he spoke also a lot on anti-Semitism. Wonder if that has anything to do with it especially with what we come across with some of the lore of the bears definitely i didn't realize you know i i knew that manganese is like a metal i didn't realize that it was in the subtle knife so i think that's such a great thing to call out as well as all these other ways that it ties in with the ideas that Pullman is interested in.

Yeah, because this was written far after The Subtle Knife came out. This was written, or well, published, sorry, in 08. Subtle Knife was published in 97. But it's interesting to think that he may have had this in mind. And we're getting a lot of these different pages in here. We talked briefly about that one above from the Aronaut book. And it does make me wonder, he went through and did the lantern slides in 2007 as well. So a lot of this stuff is written kind of around the same time.

I'm wondering, I believe it was 2017, those slides were added in and published. That would make sense because if it's was published for the copy i guess that i have or for that omnibus copy yeah i yeah i think the omnibus copy might have been the original and then because that one this came after because i have the one with the pictures as well for for once upon a time in the north yes same but um you know my copy of his dark materials has those lantern slides and it is uh i bought it i i should check when that was uh published but i bought that before a little before labelle sauvage came out because i was intending to read it for i want to say it was 2007 was when those slides

were added to publish oh never mind what i've researched never mind then that that's way earlier now and this was own so this was originally published uh by david fickley books which we'll get into and alfred a knapf books also published it so i wonder if that's the differentiation hmm or if maybe it was just published at first like as a side novella in a magazine somewhere or something i'd be interested to find out that yeah it could be he's just like oh i have this idea right and i mean yeah a lot of things get published like that but then anyway fun stuff i was chatting with our friend lo that we talk about from time to time on the podcast about the flag there's a navy and white flag flying from the roof and it kind of reminds me of finland's flag uh or any of the scandinavian cross flags

and it has same colors as the g flag. And I actually went through and learned Iceland unofficially had a navy flag with a white cross on the field of navy. And it was unofficial. They had them from like 1897 up until 1915. And it was too similar to the Greek flag. So officials didn't approve of it. There's a lot of culture that's painted, right, of how we get to understand novi odens. And some of that has to do with this legal body

that we come up across very early on, the customs. Yeah, and they're really painted as bad guys, right? And maybe that's just because we're used to the government being the bad guys. But it turns out they're kind of good. Local government for the win. Getting shit done. They're like, okay. They're okay guys.

And yeah, it seems like a normal town though, right? Except for, I guess, the huge bears wandering around. Which maybe that's normal in the north, is my understanding. Based on his dark materials, like the main series, right? And we have this quote there was no mistaking the immense power in those limbs those claws that air of inhuman self-possession there are more of them further into town gathered in small groups at straight corners sleeping in alleyways and occasionally working pulling a cart or lifting blocks of stone on a building site

hester notes that the humans are ignoring the bears, that they want to pretend that they're not there. I had a couple thoughts here and we'll get into a little more of kind of this feeling of almost racial tensions between these people and the bears. It feels definitely like times of desegregation, right, where bear rights are being considered at all for the first time outside of their homeland it reminds me a lot of indigenous people and their lands being stolen i don't know there's something here we're going to go into later but also the way that they ignore the bears and want to pretend that they're not there the wording kind of reminded me of specters for a second i just thought of this had to had to share don't know don't know

yeah except the bears are nice and fluffy and you could be right next to them and sleep next to them and cuddle them ride them like not like sexually settle down lee and york lee and york everything is tense in this town and full of anxiety, so Lee does exactly what I would do, which is head to a bar, grab pickled fish and vodka. But he finds there's some sort of quarrel happening in this dive bar, and then he gets this breakdown from the bartender as the bartender, like, throws the shot down the counter, you know, like, Ah, yes, catch this, son.

Because of course he does because i don't know if this is like i'm not well versed in this genre enough and i keep meaning to do a deep dive and watch of it so then and then re-watch the mandalorian but i feel like maybe once upon a time in the north is a play on the westerns right of course like we have our character elise gorsby and then he's coming to this new town and at first they're like oh it's like kind of quiet but not it's like weird uh it's not quite a ghost town but you kind of get that sort of feel and then of course lee goes into a bar and then has a bar brawl like of course there is and then like much later on in this story right we get a shootout and i i don't know it's kind of funny if it is playing on that and then it's so explicitly in

the title like set in the north like a it's the north but in the west you know what i mean yeah especially when you get down to like the resource wars and and even like the idea of like granted of course it's portrayed so much differently in Westerns, right? How indigenous people are portrayed, American Indians and so forth, but obviously very different people, but then I guess bears. characterizes places like oxford has like its core defining feature is academia right like that's their industry and how lyra sees it she's like yeah there were just like a bazillion universities and here when lee lands he's like oh yes novi odens there was like a billion different kinds of oil industries like fish oil other kind of oil all these different kinds of like he's like fish oil seal oil and rock oil and then there was a tannery and a fish pickling factory right so it's just a very industrious place it's very different there's also something that i thought

was going to be relevant but i i don't think it was like there's this rundown or a church or something where their patron saint is saint petronius and i thought i was like oh maybe that means something so i looked it up and i don't know maybe pullman is just like i don't know petronius petrol that that could be funny but turns out it doesn't fucking mean anything saint petronius actually sounds kind of boring like he fixed the buildings and seemed like okay and then people made up like cool stories about him later on and explicitly they're like yeah they just made up stories about this guy later on because i guess he was that boring they didn't say that i just find him kind of boring as a saint no i'm bummed now i thought i was right i was like that was a great that was a great catch ellian no it wasn't i caught nothing

just like nobody caught the stockfish anyways well there Well, there's no St. Petrel, after all, but there is a red-headed Dutchman at the bar who is the one that's getting into a quarrel. His name is Captain Van Breda. His cargo is tied up, and they are not letting him leave the town with it. He seems to be accidentally getting into fights, frustratedly, in the bar,

like shooting himself in the foot, so to speak, over and over and over again. Again. Maybe a trip in Westerns, I don't know, but I think Philip Pullman just loves this in general. He just loves having very drunk men

get into fights in bars and then get kicked out of them, as I can tell from La Belle Sauvage. Oh yeah, the framework in this entire book is very much like La Belle Sauvage. Like this entire time, all I've been thinking is how it's almost like a microcosm of a labelle sauvage story again just in a different setting with a couple other characters not the same things at stake but yeah and also at this bar we have a stranger you know we just meet strangers in bars i guess that

actually happens in real life whatever billableman anyways stranger in a faded black suit who turns out to be and he's very excited to be like i'm a journalist and poet named i don't know oscar searson sigurdson sitting next to lee yeah i thought maybe it was oscar sigurdson but i wasn't really sure i don't know i have no clue lee is uh lee basically chit chats with this stranger he seems up and up and knows stuff and he's like oh let me buy you a drink and of course the guy's like yes the most expensive cognac and hester like and him are just like uh but they get to know about the dilemma going on in the room some other town news like there's a huge election for mayor that's going to be happening soon totally one-sided and then they also chat about

being men of war so this election is taking place between the current mayor who sucks and uh this new guy ivan dimitrovich polyakov who's running an anti-bear campaign it reminds me of leon poliakov the french historian who's not a parallel here whatsoever because uh this guy is actually someone who wrote also a lot about racism and nationalism and anti-semitism in europe he wrote the aryan myth but i thought it was very funny that this guy is a total dick but the only poliakov really that i know is leon poliakov the french historian like how throughout this we're like yeah and i thought it was this thing and then it's not like this person at all that's us this episode yeah and uh we have this quote pulled out here

he noticed the other man's glance which had strayed to the belt under Lee's coat. Whoa, Oscar. In leaning back against the bar, Lee had let the coat fall away to reveal the... pistol he kept at his waist, which an hour or two before had done duty as a hammer. And a man of war, I see, said the other. Oh no, every fight I've been in, I tried to to run away from this is just a matter of personal decoration hell i ain't even know i ain't even sure i know how to fire this uh what is it revolver later or something ah you're a man of wit as well. I actually want to call out that line, which she says an hour or two before had done duty as a hammer because when they're in the balloon landing, he beats the crap out of the pistol, like while using it to like fix things as they crash land. And so the pistols like not looking too good.

So something to note, because it will come back at the end of the story. And it does feel consistent, again, with the portrayal that we get in the current His Rock Materials series. And I understand the movie version of Lee may be more similar to the books, but this Once Upon a Time in the North does feel a little like Lin-Manuel hitting the meter in the balloon yeah it definitely feels like there's more characterization and lin-manuel did actually read that this book so i see it to put it out there oh yeah absolutely uh we'll talk about it when we get there but the bill of lading speech is just too fucking good it is so good the cognac has an ad in the book it's a label mont julien france shipped and bottled by the maté brothers of thor shaven uh i couldn't find much i just wanted to see if this was like

real it might be based off of louis napoleon maté who he had an aperitif wine named after his native cat course which is a peninsula of corsica that juts into the mediterranean it's a territory of france uh it i don't know he he had a bunch of craziness basically that he discovered beneficial properties of a certain tree bark in the caribbean and he brought it to cap course and blended it with local wine and fermented it and started adding different spices and then exported across the globe. And it's not too far off from cognac. It's specifically like a type of brandy produced from distilled white wine.

And it gets distilled usually using copper pots at least twice and aged in barrels for at least two years. So it's kind of a similar thing. I'm wondering if that's it. It's a French merchant, so it's kind of a similar thing i'm wondering if that's it it's a it's a french merchant so it wouldn't surprise me yeah i think it could be something where he's just like playing on that as he does for a couple of things for this world yeah lee spends his money on oscar's booze he's out of money hester is bummed for and so is he, and the talk comes to the bears finally. Yes, indeed, worthless vagrants. Bears these days are sadly fallen from what they were. Once they had a great culture, you know, brutal, of course, but noble in its own way. One admires

the true savage, uncorrupted by softness and ease. Several of our great sagas recount the deeds of the bear kings. I myself am working, have been for some time, on a poem in the old meters which tell of the fall of Ragnar Lókison, the last great king of Svalbard. I would be glad to recite it for you. Nothing I'd like more, said Lee hastily. i'm mighty partial to a good yarn but maybe another time tell me about the bears i saw out in the streets so as chloe was noting earlier there's quite a bit here with how the bears are being treated and you've already started laying down some of that groundwork for the xenophobia that they're experiencing here and you have a couple of ways that pullman has been relaying that to us I mean of course first

of all we all read like these three books I mean I don't really know why most people would pick up this novella if they hadn't read those other books but whatever uh you have Oscar boasting of basically his ingrained biases and stereotypes that he has of like the bears have followed by grace and he's leading on that trope slash myth of what's called the noble savage he even explicitly uses the terms noble then a few words later savage right uh and says true savage and of like oh they were so much purer and better and closer to nature then that's like part of it that's part of that uh stereotype and it others the bears right as opposed to seeing them as a people even though

i guess side note they are a people but are they human based on the criteria of they should appear in the underworld and lyra doesn't see them but she sees like the malefa and the galavaspians and i i'm i'm unsure what constitutes as humanity even but the bears themselves are like we're not human they're like quite proud of that so i don't know they deserve bear rights is the point but regardless um then you have this great moment here where uh lee knows that oscar is full of shit because he cuts him off and then also he says like i'm mighty partial to a good yarn meaning he knows it's a lie because later on within the same story he tells york i need you to watch my back here because i'm gonna and he says spin a yarn which is what he is referring to when he like says like i'm about to like go talk some bullshit about laws so yarn means like oh this

is bullshit i would also like to say do you remember when you tried to say that lee learned from lyra oh that's true uh chapters ago and i called your ass out on it i was like i don't know about all that i'm just saying this book yeah this book i think maybe it's more just like you know he's just one of her many real dads he is him and yorick do great parenting they're i'm just saying chloe they could be i know this is a controversial ship and i will not apologize thank you for subscribing to my patron thank you for being here you're already all bought in i love that in this book lee ends up meeting a future king of Svalbard. So by hearing this great fall of Ragnar Lókason, the last king of Svalbard

or the last great king, we come back and we end up finding out, like, in a couple books, you know, in a book, depending on how you want to talk about the chronology, in a book you meet Yorick, the rightful king, where this

whole time we have this great yarn being told already i don't know yeah something i kind of wonder like was pullman going to make more books of the adventures of lee and yorick between like then and now we do hear about other adventures in the books i mean because right now he doesn't know that yorick's the king he's just like hello random yeah bear on the streets chilling fighting well this is a great intro to this question too because um the work he's doing with his own map here I did a little digging into it uh there's a map that came with Lyra's Oxford if you I think you have that or saw that I have it somewhere it's in series yeah it's in series made by the Globetrotters, they're called. The Harlem Globetrotters.

A Globetrotter, you know, a Globetrotter, someone who trots the globe. It's a fake publishing firm that he calls Smith and Strange, but he put the address for it in the series as the same address as his real world publisher, David Fickling. That's cute. I thought that was cute, yeah. I like that. In the full list of the Globetrotter publications, we've actually seen a bunch of them.

The Maps of the Kingdom and Clove Islands, Trade Routes of Muscovy, Empire of Peru, Electorate of Zimbabwe. But there are other books in series two that he says are included, like the Proto-Fisher people by leonard broken arrow uh to the sensational true tales of adventure such as a prisoner of the bears there you go by jotham sam hilarious uh-huh and i don't know if you ever noticed but this but in the scene with santa lea there's a book that's mentioned in the scene in the background called Fraud, an Exposure of a Scientific Imposture by P. Trelawney.

I like that he- I never noticed that and I thought that was hysterical. I just think it's great that he like went on to do this. Good for him. Yeah, right? Well, and so this is, you'll have to read this. There's a published John Hopkins journal by Pullman that talks a little more of these fun details but there is a map of the known modern world from the Globetrotter series that for Lyra basically that states that Muscovy where this is supposedly taking place has a town on the island of and called Novi Odense where this is and the description of Novi Odense and of the flags feels very scandinavian like it should be closer to sweden

or iceland but they're actually closer to tartary kazakhstan turkey and egypt in this world a little closer to kind of i guess central asia which is interesting no spoilers but considering we know there are adventures in central asia in the books of dust that happen. Wonder if it's related. Yeah, I don't know much how they're related yet, right? Because so I think something that was interesting is like, as you're pointing out for Novi Odin's and it taking place and being in like Muscovy, right? And it being close to Tartary as we get in the appendix sort of like, or a clipping from an appendix of like shipping history,

that there is a Russia, there is, as've pointed out a muscovy and also there's a tartary in lyra's world right now so there isn't like a larger russia is not as large as it is in our world right and there it there likely wasn't like a ussr it seems maybe or like Russia's not the superpower that it is in our world it's split up into several different nations and I mean the USSR became that like several different nations but still like Russia is of course still considered a large international power and it is really interesting how they move Central Asia to be mashed into it. Yeah. Very interesting. And, I mean, if we think about the Amber Spyglass with the bears talking about possibly going to Central Asia and being able to survive there, that makes you wonder if this is a connection as well. Dusty three.

Two dusty, two furious. Three dusty, three furious. Yes. Oh my god. too dusty too furious three dusty three furious yes okay so right now oscar is also himself furious about bears calling them vagrants and scavengers drunkards they lie they cheat they were great craftsmen once able to work with any metal actually they're still pretty fucking great oscar shut the fuck up but now they only have crude armor allegedly and they're not allowed to wear it in town they just want the bears to be naked that sounds right oscar's a pervert well i don't know there's more that's actually slang really nice the the addition that he's all like

their armor is ugly and then like lee later is like no, their armor is just perfect. It fits them well. Like he did a good job making his helmet. Wow. It's not ugly up close. And I thought that was a really nice metaphorical moment that we'll talk about later. But overall, I think this was definitely like a time of desegregation for the bears. But there's really weird framework here. And it is really confusing. I mean, when we get to polyakov's speech he speaks against

and condemns these bears their existence their rights but they seem to be before polyakov in a gray area in this story with having rights outside of spalbard i imagine if polyakov has his way or gets an office he obviously will be causing more trouble for the bears and sending them on their merry way or not so merry way it might not be done merrily so to speak that might be a little violent there's like there's no timeline for this like are these bears just other pantsierborn that chose to come here because the laws were maybe more relaxed so i mean these are questions i shouldn't have to be asking out loud though like these are things he could have written these are questions that i i mean i think they're

valid questions i'm not sure and i don't have an electronic copy but i don't think i remember reading the word svalbard in this book is svalbard it was just bears well i'm just wondering is svalbard like were the bears ousted from these human towns and then set up svalbard were they there already and was svalbard set up or is it the opposite? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's something we should ask Philip Pullman. Because, but no, but here's the thing is because

Asgard was just speaking as if it was completely like, oh, they used to be great with metalworking and they once had a great empire and the last great bear king was ragnar locuson i just like don't know that svalbard exists yet as its own like bear state yet or if like this was once a bear state and then humans moved in and then the bears are like forcibly displaced or something or if it's the entire yeah exactly i just don't know and it's interesting because they're solitary creatures so that makes sense but for a bunch of solitary creatures to choose

this island is like their settling place that's interesting um and yeah i don't know there's a lot to it reminds me of like how our country displaces the homeless by giving them a bus ticket to go elsewhere when there's too many bears etc you know stuff like that so yeah i don't know i guess maybe they just exist everywhere and it's just that spellbard is like their capital maybe yeah but it just feels like maybe we could have some more details about the lore there i mean we we seem to learn about bears working with the gob right uh as one-offs and mercenaries like we hear about from yorick and we also hear that like yo for selling out the entire bear troop you know to do a deal with coulter was kind of an ultimate betrayal on their level like becoming human the

more human you become which great you know anti-parallels with jofer and coulter and york with lyra obviously i don't know it's a thought it's a thought yeah but yeah it's something that you know as you said we don't have that clarity from philip pullman unlike his opinions on you know how excited he was for the musical cats being turned into a movie so i think that's something that he just like really needs to make clear to us the bartender like me with aliana has had it with the captain van brita at this point from the beginning of the bar scene and he interrupts lee's discussion by breaking through walking through it and trying to beat van brita with a stick but lee sees what's happening he gets up he gets between them to break it up and he gets himself thrown out in the process he gets no thanks from the captain for it who's drunk as hell and hester is like wow

thrown out of somewhere within an hour interesting he gazes around the town and he notes you know it's not very busy although it's supposed to be teeming with business for oil yeah we have a quote on the first quay to the left there were two smaller and barric cranes the first busy loading barrels of fish oil into the hold of one small steam coaster the second unloading the timber piled high on the deck of another beyond them lay a schooner at which no activity of any sort was going on and lee guessed that to be the unfortunate captain van brada's vessel that couldn't load her cargo lee couldn't see anyone lee couldn't even see anyone on deck the ship had a forlorn air uh what a drizzle like a very like just a sad kind of look in place right like an empty harbor basically just four ships four ships, five ships. Ghost town-ish. Yeah, very ghost town, right? You imagine the saloon doors swinging.

Yeah, Lee getting kicked out and swings while he's on the ground. He inquires with the harbor master, Mr. Agard, who has a cat demon and not-so-nice disposition. He tells Lee that business is bad and they only have four vessels currently as it is. Lee insists, though, that he counted five, and Agard insists four. Vanbrita's vessel is the one that's being unsaid. Obviously, something is up with this vessel at this point. He goes to a shop to see if he can get more info and snoop around,

but the shopkeep is like, mm, no, and so he just leaves. Doesn't buy anything. Goes home, gets back to the boarding house that he's staying at for dinner, we meet some of the boarding mates for the week there's a photographer from oslo an official from the institute of economics in novgorod miss victoria lund a severe tall skinny woman who worked in the library with a swallow demon i love her you're doing amazing she is she deserved better uh lee like tries to charm her like i guess he's done with everyone but his charms seem to fail here as well he talks about books asks her about

her life gets very short terse answers and then when she's gone the men clap him on the shoulder and say that's the most we've ever heard her speak 14 words or 15 depending on who was counting between the two men yeah uh i don't know i've got a lot to say about victoria's characterization and i won't do all of it here we're going to come back to some of it later especially when we talk about olga polyakova uh but it's mostly light and fluffy the whole story with some heavy western action as we talked about up top but when you analyze some of the finer bits of this story like these side characters victoria and olga it can fall apart a little um she's a woman this is 35 years before the current plot which is already pretty conservative how the characters behave right so it seems managing or running a library

or working in a library is kind of a big deal especially since even in the current canon we see so few women to men in general, especially in workplace environments. So these men are kind of being assholes, right? And harassing her is a game. Where Lee does it because he wants to learn about her. And when she puts up a refusal, of course, he's like, I got to keep going. Come on, I got to get something out of you.

But it was like differently framed for him how he wanted to talk to her. It was cruel sport for them. But Lee Lee in general I've noticed in here and of course in the main series deals in information right and her stoniness and these men being kind of assholes uh made him be genuinely kind to her repeatedly I would have liked to see maybe more develop than completely making inferences about it, but I think that's what Pullman wants us to think, right? He wants us to leave here thinking that.

But I don't know. It's kind of this usual way that I've seen Pullman write these male characters that he has in the hero light. They get rewarded or saved by being nice to someone like this and it's kind of weird when we get to tomorrow morning of the story after she comes and talks to lee i'll probably have a little more to say too but hmm yeah interesting we'll talk about it in the tomorrow morning i agree lee tries to rouse the remaining men into a card game but they're busy and. And, you know, Lee scores, but he's like, but what about a second balloon? A ship, maybe? He's like, try my luck. The economist asks Lee if he wants to come to the town hall meeting with him, and Lee's like, uh, sure, that sounds good.

There's a great deal at stake in this election, said the economist, whose name, Lee had learned, was Mikhail Ivanovich Vassilyev. In fact, it's the reason I'm here. My academy is very interested in this man, Polyakov. He used to be a senator, but he hates to be reminded of the fact. He had to resign over a financial scandal, and he's using this mayoral election as a way of rehabilitating himself. Hmm, we've seen politicians do that one before. Yeah, interesting.

Big red flags. And yet, interestingly interestingly not ruled out of this election for all that also seen that happen anyways he tells lee about the larson manganese men and that they will prosper if polyakov the if polyakov becomes the mayor he says they're pushing for a confrontation with customs we have a quote of it's happening elsewhere throughout the north private companies invading the public sphere security they call it hmm interesting is this a real world parallel is this is this a lot of this reminds me of private military companies in general

iraq and somali are decent examples of this, but maybe on a smaller scale, depending on some of our before speculations about the series and what exactly Polyakov is looking for besides this local government power. He had already resigned over the political financial scandal in the Senate in Novgorod, as mentioned above, and the talk of oil is being loudly said, as mentioned above, and the talk of oil is being loudly said, but Lee notices there's no big trade happening. So it kind of seems to be a cover for something. And maybe he was mining for a resource, but it wasn't just oil. I don't know. I know other governments who have hired armies as contractors that wouldn't have to face local laws whenever they they deployed these armies you know as a gray area and because of that they committed atrocities while saying they were doing it to stop terror instead but they were really just like you know putting colonialism down real hard on the table

and exploiting the place i don't know i've never heard of such places i could think of yeah i don't know just you, exploitation of resources in indigenous places and Polyakov cared enough to murder people and build a huge war machine about resources getting away. I don't know. I don't know.

It's just a thought. Yeah. It's a... We have like... We'll get to it in a bit. This illustration that really drives it home within the novella.

But right now, poet laureate journalist... No, he only describes himself as a poet journalist he wishes he was a laureate oscar seardson is also at this meeting and he beckons the urgently over the crowd from afar where he waits in a parlor area he notices men examining a model of a gun slash ship hybrid okay well you know what you know what? It's here, you know. Real interesting when you see the illustration of it. It's a tank. It looks like a tank. Yeah, it's a tank. Literally, this is all I'm like,

do you have oil for me, sir? Yeah. Mr. Scoresby, so glad to see you, he said. Miss Poyakova, may I introduce Mr. Scoresby, the celebrated aeronaut. Celebrated my tail, muttered Hester. But the young lady at Sigurdsson's side had Lee's interest at once.

She was about 18 years old, in a contrast in every way to the starched Miss Lund. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes were large and black, her lips were soft and red, her hair was a mass of dark curls, her demon was a mouse. dark curls her demon was a mouse lee took her hand with pleasure okay so he said it himself like in this paragraph that these two women are contrasts to each other but i i guess i mean i don't know if he thought about how he

wanted to make such different women with such different agency and stuff and i don't know if he thought about how he wanted to make such different women with such different agency and stuff and i don't know if this is like a critique or a negative remark like i'm gonna be critical and i mean anyone that listened to our secret commonwealth episode could have seen this critique coming just because of some of the things that pullman tends to do that i don't like but she's the only female in the story olga and victoria are the only two females in the story and their characterizations are the following olga 18 dim-witted gullible beautiful not very free thinking damsel mouse demon victoria lund austere frigid bitch won't smile and say hi swallow demon i don't know if this is just like a critique on lee as what his character's doing i do think it's a critique on storytelling though

lee's reward at the end of the novel is that he was nice and not like the other boys and he told miss lund yes to a very vague question and the customs guy got talking to his girlfriend and was like yeah i'll do a favor for this guy it sounds like he's in trouble i get it like i still enjoy the story and it's supposed to be taken lightly but i just don't like pullman's go-to with how he writes some of these women uh look at the flimsy storytelling of the witches and liars oxford especially and in subtle knife when we look at all that i don't know it just falls flat and Lee's 24 years old that's the other thing I don't take his like dopey charismatic flirting that he does and pushing as asshole-ish I'm not saying he's an asshole at all because I mean we know Lee's character from

the main series he's respectful uh he's just a stupid 24 year old boy that you know has enough blood to go either up or down in his body. I get that. But I think it's Pullman's writing that's bothering me, not Lee's actions. Yeah, I do think it's absolutely Pullman's writing. Because, like, what? He gets so little on Victoria and Olga.

You know, I don't know if this is supposed to be playing on tropes of how, like, women are portrayed in, like, Westerns, not while versing it, but I get the sense that it's probably not like it just feels like this trope i don't know it just feels bizarre especially like contrasted with like characters like dame hannah alice lonsdale lyra mrs coulter like how they're written but as you said you know a lot of the witches and how they're written fall flat and i don't know maybe is it supposed to be a condemnation of 24 year old lee scoresby i i just don't think i don't know because like our narration style in the his dark materials books is of course third person omniscient we see that lee doesn't think or talk

much in this way it just feels so weird and off maybe it's supposed to be an age thing but maybe it's like just not as uh yeah well well written i mean like we have what a third of the story to action sequences and we have this for victoria and olga yeah yeah and and to be fair with what you're saying about it playing on the western trope, it is in a way. Okay. I mean, most Western women are either like virgins or villains in these movies, right? They're either tied to train tracks and they're waiting for their savior. Or they're widows with guns. Exactly. There's an idea too.

But that's the thing is like she wasn't even tied to a train track, you know, screaming help me. And Olga wasn't either. And in fact fact like they each get two scenes and then they're gone yeah olga gets one actually like olga i can see maybe i again not too well first like maybe olga victoria not as much i don't know it they're just so jarring the way that they're written there's it depends on what movies you're looking at like there's two mules for sister sarah which is a spaghetti western where she's like a total uh total madonna and a whore all rolled into one good for her you know she's all of it they you see a

lot of that but that's the thing is they just don't have characterization. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Lee goes on and he's flirting with this girl or trying to and she plays coy and dumb. And all the while he's like, is she being stupid? Is she just pretending to be dumb? She must be flirting with me.

She can't be stupid. I'm in the mood to flirt. And it turns out like she is dimwitted. Lee's just horny. And Hester is really funny through all this as well. She's rolling her beady little eyes at him. Yeah, and of course, turns out, part of that I guess is because Olga is Polyakov's daughter and we have these lines of, meanwhile Sigurdsson was pressing close at his other side saying something that Lee couldn't quite hear and wasn't interested in because the closer he got to miss polyakova the more he was aware of the delicate floral scent

she was wearing or perhaps it was the fragrance of her hair or perhaps it was just the sweet fact of her young body pressed against his side anyway lee was intoxicated Can't wait till you finish Secret Commonwealth so we have more to talk about. Anyways. Hire me, Audible. So flower scent? I thought that was very interesting. If you remember our coverage of the

His Dark Materials lantern slides, we did the Subtle Knife lantern slides as well, and Boreal used a fragrant oil that actually became spoiled smelling in those slides. There's a line that he had stolen it from a bazaar in Damascus, but the Damascus of another world where flowers were bred for the flesh like exuberance of their scent. And I actually noticed today that in the subtle knife, when Will and Ly go into boreal's house it smells of beeswax and flowers and i also wanted to backtrack because coulter's apartment smells of the fresh roses that she keeps uh lyra had only imagined it she could smell mrs coulter's scent again the roses and the

smoke and the scent of other women so rose oil is a major plot in the secret commonwealth i won't spoil much of that but it's an interesting thing to consider that pullman's been laying little fragrance oil hints throughout the books and actually really wanted to write on it and it's not the only oil we hear of as you said this town is laden and rich with oils but it also makes me think a little bit of the Mulefa oil, the seed pods. Oh, interesting. I just wonder if it's all going to wrap together in the last Book of Dust, and I have a very strong feeling it will.

Oh, wow, you're an optimist. Okay. The whole oil stuff going on in this book. I think it will. I think so. We're going to get into a little more theorizing as we keep moving forward and we discover what Van Bita has in his cargo. But I think there's more to this book than what many people would think. Like, I've already seen a handful of connections that I think are important. Just not regarding women's characterization.

Yeah, well, you know, that's not important, Aliana. well you know that's not important Eliana Sigurdsson tells Lee you know you could be useful for Polyakov's campaign as they pass the banners that say Polyakov for progress and justice we have a line again yikes

Lee's attitude to fathers was that he preferred to keep them at a distance fathers did not want their daughters doing what Lee had in mind but before he could think of an excuse he found himself in the front row where all the seats were reserved oh lee they end up sitting in the front row lee's like i shouldn't be here i'm not classy enough these are for rich peoples he asks olga what her father's policies are like after being asked to stay by everyone and she says they're

basically about the bad bears the horrendous bears and the speeches start and lee actually falls asleep during that i can't tell on one hand yes that tells us about lee on the other hand i was like pullman was too lazy to write the whole speech yeah big mood that too i mean it's a novella i mean that's the other thing is we're asking very much from him when he just wanted to write 100 pages. That's true. But also it makes me wonder every time Lyra falls asleep in the books, is that just Philip Pullman being like, I've been feeling writing this. Fuck you guys. I imagine so. I really imagine so. I wouldn't either.

We have two bits of the passages that I just wanted to mention because I really thought like this look for poliakov his eyes glared out across the hall and his demon a kind of hawk lee didn't recognize sat on the lectern and raised her wings till they were outspread now what technically if it's a type of hawk that he doesn't know this is foreshadowing doesn't he mean another hawk that he doesn't recognize in his journeys joe parry's osprey part of the speech that uh philip pullman did feel like writing This is foreshadowing. Doesn't he mean another hawk that he doesn't recognize in his journeys? Joe Parry's Osprey? Part of the speech that Philip Pullman did feel like writing by Polikov, which is friends and citizens, friends and human beings,

I don't need to warn you about this insidious invasion. I don't need to warn you because every drop of human blood in your human veins already warns you instinctively that there can be no friendship between humans and bears and you know precisely what i mean by that and you know why i have to speak in these terms there can be no friendship there should be no friendship and under my administration i promise you with my hand on my heart there will be no friendship with these inhuman and intolerable did someone fuck a bear jesus right that's like what i'm starting to get from this did a bear break his heart this is some goldilocks shit but like goldilocks from fables you know it reminds me of plato's teachings a little bit uh just how plato was suspicious

of speakers that rouse emotions from audiences because everyone after the speech is like jeering and they're like totally mobbing and he thought mobs are easily misled which is true and people who were trained to respond to reason are more likely to see truth for themselves and this is really really apparent in fedris apparently apparently this is really apparent in fedris uh we get kind of a couple lines from 275 D through E. You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they're alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You'd think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that's been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing

forever. When it's once been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn't know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father's support alone it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support this could also be seen to be about season eight game of thrones discourse oh my god but i do agree with what you're saying it's something that i've been wondering about like why oscar keeps being characterized not just as a journalist but also as a poet because plato was very suspicious of poets for the same reasons that you're pointing out like that's something he explicitly calls out he's like yeah i don't know art's suspicious music's okay i guess he's like

music is almost like okay and true he's like but poets can't trust them uh for for all the things that you said here and so that is something that I was wondering as and, you know, now that I've never realized, reading it aloud how often I noticed before the no friendship. But it's obviously because Polyakov doesn't want people and bears affiliating with each other, because then they might realize like, oh, God, bears are chill. Not not just because they're in the north, but chill. And then that's why it's so significant that we have this Lee and Yorick friendship. But again, it makes it sound like someone fucked a bear.

And he just keeps repeating it. It very much sounds like certain ways that certain politicians speak, right? That redundancy. Many politicians. i don't know if i'd say certain i'd say most politicians but the speech patterns uh have been called out for some but something i found significant though in this language that polyakov uses beyond the friendship is again that idea of friends and citizens friends and human beings how he starts his address while we never get to this actual part in the story and hopefully it doesn't happen, I don't know, Pullman does seem to be

alluding to this idea that we've brought up in some of our other episodes for Like a Song of Ice and Fire of ethnic cleansing and here's how it's defined by the UN in the UN Commission of Experts. One of the lines was, a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. population or murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial executions, rape and sexual assault, severe physical injury to civilians, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forceful removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, use of civilians as human shields or bear shields, destruction of property, robbery of personal property, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel and location, among others.

And of course, genocide is a subset of ethnic cleansing. And as said in this definition from the UN, like, also largely it includes forced migration and intimidation, which is something that we see happen to the bears. I mean, they're being intimidated right now, but we see that forced migration for them later on through forced climate change, when you know, Lord Asriel blows a hole in the door between the worlds, but whatever, whatever, that's a little different from this instance. But coming back to this, like, and why that language stood out to me in 2004 michael mann published a book called the dark side of democracy that dives into that whole question in history of ethnic cleansing and man discusses two ends uh a little confusing when i say it aloud now that i think about it discusses

like murderous ethnic cleansing right is very much linked to nationalism and the creation the creation of democracies not where they're already established right because minorities have should have protection already from the laws and not within authoritarian uh states necessarily but where they're being established within that process because when it comes together and is linked with nationalism that's that's why I think Polyakov's language is interesting, because then it's about defining in that moment, right, as they try to create this democracy, who is a citizen, and who isn't. And often in the real world, it gets delineated through ethno-religious lines. And in this one, through ethno-religious lines and in this one they're bears um yeah anthropomorphic bears anthropomorphic bears there's obviously ethno-religious lines they're also bears and

you know of course we're coming into this novella with like all of the backstory and weight of his dark materials so we already know like the bears we already know them like as a culture and the bear people and we have the framing to know that what's going on here is wrong, like, we don't need to be told that. The antagonist, like, is pretty well telegraphed, it's, like, pretty straightforward. you know, it's great. They have their own rites of passage and like, for adolescents as they like build their own like armor and he's like, but they suck now, but whatever. I'm like, what the fuck? Also, side note, as to whether or not this is something that Pullman is thinking about, you know, Michael Mann got his PhD at University of Oxford, which is not Oxford University, I think. I'm pretty sure they're different. But anyways, we know that Pullman hates people like

Polyakov though based on his twitter account and how outspoken he's been about Boris Johnson and I do kind of wonder there's a part of me that wonders like after all these events you know it seems like it ends on a great high note of like yeah Lee Scoresby took down Polyakov and you're like there's no way right like you kind of wonder did he win the election or not like in 2008 or so when this novella was published maybe pullman would have said like yeah of course polyakov didn't win his election and like we as a people would be like yeah lee scoresby took him down but like now in 2020 i'm like i don't know polyakov probably fucking won his election I think there's a little commentary at

the end kind of about that when the lieutenant you know he says hey what's gonna happen to Polyakov and he says hey he'll probably go to court get tried get off and go somewhere else and try to be mayor or something okay something like that just like not here I guess but like I'm like there's no way he doesn't like seeing the way and this is just such a cynical way of looking at it I understand but like seeing the way the world has gone, I'm like, so Polyacom eventually succeeded, right, on this, like, platform. There's no way he fucking did it. It wouldn't surprise me. I mean, there's no way that he wouldn't.

Like, obviously, maybe people could be better, but I don't know. Yeah, but the problem is that usually they're not. Someone fucked a bear. Who fucked the bear? That's what I want to know the problem is that usually they're not someone fucked a bear who fucked the bear that's what i want to know why is that the speech lee is ready to peace out after the speeches are done and he's like this guy's a nutbag but then the hot daughter shows up again and she's like come talk to papa and so he does and papa tells lee he needs lee's gun arm to help deal with someone who's fleeing the law capital l law someone who has cargo on hold because they have property belonging to someone else and it's

currently a gray area being explored and he tells him all i want you to do is make sure it stays in the warehouse till the lawyers do their work but what about this lawyer lee Lee Scarsby, attorney at law? Oh my god. This lawyer, attorney at law, Lee Scarsby, interrupts the proposal by noticing a man on the wall. Too many men to remember this book, holy shit. Yeah. This guy, so this is really interesting. This guy has a snake demon, which we know means bad, usually. And Lee names him the almost mayor's other gunman in his head and he asks the mayor why would you need two people to perform your task for you mr mayor which actually that's funny

because later on he ends up having two people as gunmen after all so you learn why he needed two people in the warehouse i didn't really think about that till now but there were two gunmen in the warehouse yeah it always needed Lee would have been the downstairs one. Yep. One for each floor. This gunman, who goes by the name of Morton, is familiar to Lee, but under a different name. He knows him as McConville. I've never seen you before.

Then I got keener eyesight than you do. You better not forget that. So that was a fighting word right there. All that. It is. right there all that it is you know his name is morton for how salty he is but also oh my it's funny because his name is mcconville because he's a con man i'm i'm very sure this is like intentional completely could not keep my tenses correct for this and it was like i just put like morton conville mort conville mcmorton throughout the documents i really don't remember i intend on reading it aloud as such

later on when i come across them i can't wait the uh hot daughter breaks up the tension she says something stupid about bears and lee's like all right gotta go and the very last face he sees is neither the almost mayor nor his daughter nor morton it's Oscar Sigurdsson looking gleeful at all the tension happening back in his room Lee is reflecting on McConville Morton Lee testified against him a hired killer who was on trial after a bounty and land dispute McConville Morton got off of course as, as the bad guys always do. We learn more about him. McConville's bony face and lean frame, his deep-set black eyes and giant hands were unmistakable, and the way he stared across the court for witnesses for the prosecution,

with a measuring sort of look, a look of cold, slow, brutal calculation, with nothing human in it at all, was unforgettable. And now here he was on novio dance guarding a politician and lee had been damn fool enough to provoke him i thought something also interesting here was that uh he just like polyakov yeah got off for crimes he committed that's the parallel right it's that and they're remaking themselves in a new place. But absolutely. They're perfect for one another. What's weird is when I first read this, going in not knowing shit besides it was a Yorick and Lee thing,

I thought for a real hot second, because of how vague he was, he didn't talk, he didn't do anything here, I really thought he was somehow going to make this boreal for a second. Oh. Just because there was no description. You know what I mean? They just said he was somehow gonna make this boreal for a second oh uh just because there was no description you know what i mean like they just said he was in a suit and he had snake demon and uh and 35 years before it might have been too young but it could have lined up and i don't know it's just odd that he has this affinity for evil characters with snake

demon who don't play fair it's something that i was like thinking about earlier that it's kind of weird right that he's so the books right his dark materials is in a way sort of aggrandizing satan's role right in paradise lost as this like revolutionary he asks mary malone supposed to play the role of the serpent right of tempting lyra things like that and yet we're like why do we keep portraying characters with snake and serpent demons as villains lyra things like that and yet like why do we keep portraying characters with snake and serpent demons as villains that's the thing that i don't wonder it seems counter it does seem interesting and maybe it's because it is supposed to like be power like the the temptation for power maybe so it's my understanding is sometimes snakes can be like cute and you can like snoot the boot from my friend you know our good friend san rixian yeah who loves snakes so i don't know but yeah um i also like i know that

she's not a jackrabbit right but we live we live most of this story thinking she is i i just feel like it's interesting that lee isn't quite like the i'm in danger picture with his jackrabbit demon against a rattlesnake and a hawk both of which are predators of jackrabbits i love that i was thinking that later especially with the way that hester kills the snake yeah uh awesome but before we get there lee hears muffled crying in the hall and he finds out that it's Miss Victoria Lund. She comes crying to him to ask advice about something very vague. And it's about a question someone's asked her. He gives her the best advice he can do with absolutely no information whatsoever and tells her, follow your heart.

And if you want it, you should say yes. You know, like literally, I'm like, OK. She ends up shaking his hand. And when she goes lee's super confused but hester had been whispering with her demon and hester's like it was about a marriage proposal you big idiot yeah victoria lunge she posts on our relationships for help on deciding whether or not to say yes to this enormous life decision that's her yeah yeah because they don't know how to follow their heart but they knew the real listen to your

heart also like if you need someone to tell you to marry him come on girl um the next morning at breakfast the other men are making fun of miss lund again after she leaves vasilev says that she has a sweetheart in the customs office a hint to us and the guys shove off of making fun of her vasilev asks lee how he liked the spectacle last night, and Lee implies he was moved, then very unmoved. He prods at Vasilev about Captain Van Brita's cargo and if it had anything to do with what the almost mayor was asking him to do. Vasilev doesn't know, but says that guy's probably gonna win at that one, too. Lee tries to make a bet about it with Vasilev,

but Hester starts biting him, so he stops mid-bet and changes his tune, asking Vasilev to come see the ship with him in the harbor yard, and he says that he has to go do an inspection at the tannery and leave, or else he would. Yeah, and then Lee heads down to the harbor. He meets Captain Van Breda once more. Van Breda doesn't remember him,

because he was super shit show drunk which you know relatable mood yeah mood been there this week i like how he's also like but maybe he's just pretending he doesn't because he was so drunk and very embarrassing so either either one van brada is hostile he doesn't trust lee but he's also obviously as pointed out by history they're like maybe he needs a drink to take the edge off and then a bear watches them from not too far off he says you know what captain i'm gonna buy you a drink they go to a bar van breyda explains the situation to lee they claim that he has to load his cargo by high tide the next day but they won't open the warehouse and they say he owes the harbor authority money from a made-up fee it's a lie because really they

just plan to impound the boat so that polyakov mayor pants can buy it at the auction the cargo is full of actually drilling machinery and rock samples so that was something that really stuck out to me and we did not revisit it in the story, right? Like it was not revisited of why it was so interesting to Polyakov. And I kind of wondered if this was GOB related or dust related somehow. And went to the first book and I actually found something interesting. Just maybe it's a parallel or maybe it could be a parallel. But when we were in Trollesund, Martin Lancelius told us that there is a branch of an organization called the Northern

Progress Exploration Company, which pretends to be searching for minerals, but is really controlled by something called the General Ablation Board of London. And he says that this organization, I happen to know, imports children. It's not generally known in the town. The Norway government is not officially aware of it, and the children don't remain here long. They get taken inland. Also, shout out to the green serpent demon that Lancellius has. Kind of forgot he has one, too.

Oh, good. It does make, yeah, right? There's a connection. There's one. Okay, guy. He's not a dick. So it makes me wonder, knowing that, and knowing that the mayor resigned

over a financial thing in the senate over in novgorod which is where the lubana the lake lubana witches have their council it just makes me wonder if they might possibly have their own progress board uh that reports to a government and reports to a general oblation board as well since we know that the gob are everywhere, dog. I mean, that's what we learn. The magisterium has its roots everywhere. And it also cracks me up that we know Lee isn't very supernaturally

tuned into this world. Not till he meets Lyra and co. Like, talking bears are one thing, but he knows not shit about dust when we get to him. So it's interesting that all this magical stuff could actually be happening around him. So it's interesting that all this magical stuff could actually be happening around him. Not magic, but you know, mystical stuff.

Unfortunately, we might not go into it too far today, but like the floral perfume, the minerals and rocks and mining, and the army that's hired is named after an alloy and the subtle knife looking to get back into power and the government. I don't know, interesting thoughts. I think it all comes together to kind of be like maybe it's a nod that polyakov was looking for more than just oil because we quite obviously have seen the front that no one's fucking looking for oil right now

that's true no one's looking for oil there's a front in their mining metal and then what and then the metal getting used for i see nice see what i'm thinking it could be for the because that alloy is also what the blades are made of that the gob uses yeah i think that's just what i was thinking i think that's really interesting and now that would explain things that uh let's come back to this also at the end with some of that uh some of those uh little excerpt things that we see. Ties into that pretty interestingly. But, you know, right now Lee's deciding, you know what, I'm going to help you, Van Breda.

Load your cargo, help you get out of the city. And Van Breda in return gives Lee some advice. Don't trust Oscar the journalist. And Lee probably, I mean, anyone's probably like, no fucking shit. But anyways, Lee leaves. The bear that had been spying on them is waiting for him outside he asked lee so are you gonna help this man and he's like yeah yeah i will be oh and the bear responds he's gonna help since lee's gonna help and he introduces himself and first we get this description that face to face he's formidable young his body's enormous and he has small black eyes quite unreadable he has ivory colored fur

that waved and ripples as the wind played over it and lee could feel hester's little heart beating fast close to his which is somehow i think so that's what ally sounds like when i hold her my cat sometimes i hear her heartbeat and i hold her plump little body against mine i'm just like i got you it's okay okay, little Hester. Because she is my Hester. Anyways. Yes. So Yorick says he'll help.

And he introduces himself as Yorick Burnison. Because I just spoiled it. I'm sorry. This bear is Yorick Burning Son. Yes. So exciting. Lee is like amazed to meet him. He's like, do you have armor?

And Yorick is like, I only have a helm. You know he's a baby. And we get a look. I know, little baby York. And we get a look at it, which just makes me think he only has his helm made, so he can't have been exiled yet. No, I think he just showed up there. He's like in an egg situation.

So when does he go to Svalbard? I gotta know. God. So this helm the bear reached down past the edge of the stone morphed to the top of the flight of the steps and lifted up a battered clumsy iron sheet of a curious shape and curvature

a chain hung from a corner and Lee blinked with surprise as the bear deftly swung it over his head and hooked the chain from one corner to another under his throat suddenly the metal didn't look clumsy anymore it fit him perfectly the bear's black eyes glittered in the depths of two great eye holes i love people consider their armor crude as we said earlier and lee almost does too but the second york puts it on he realizes it fits him perfectly and it's well made for what he needs yeah absolutely and okay this is like my favorite part of the whole novella where uh they don't

really know what each other's names are because they cannot understand each other's names and accents. And first, Yorick's name is, per Lee, is Yorick Burningston. And then Yorick corrects him and he's like, alright, Yorick Burningston. Still not quite there.

Almost, almost. Slowly, slowly. And it's funny that Yorick corrects him because it turns out Yorick doesn't quite get it either. He's like, yeah, this is Lee Scarsby. As they get to know each other, you know, they get closer to their real names as they get closer in their hearts, but

best part of the whole novella. Right. And so the real best parts, though, are not just that, but the next like passage okay this part's also very true the next bit of time is like literally the most classic stuff so 30 people have gathered outside at this point as the party is making their way back and they're like we're gonna get his stuff back uh they're going to the harbor master's office and we get these lines from lee which i've been practicing so don't worry aliana i can't do the lee stuff for you i can't do accents i know i can though

are you ready because i'm gonna blow your mind i'm gonna be mr agard so lee says to yorick thanks now i'm gonna be spinning a yarn york burnison so my attention will kind of be occupied and i'd be obliged if you keep an eye out for any trouble. Love it. Love it. Lee approaches Mr. Agard and lays it on thick, saying he's representing Mr. Van Breda and all this as his lawyer and gets doing his sweet talking, which we actually, again, we talked about this when the show was on. All right, here I go.

I won't be as good as Lin-Man Manuel, but I'll give it my best. Well, Mr. Agard, said Lee, improvising happily, I think you should keep your law up to date. The letter is correct as far as the merchant ship in Act 11.3035 is concerned. Absolutely correct, sir. And I congratulate you on this terse and manly eloquence with which you've expressed this fragment of correspondence. terse and manly eloquence with which you've expressed this fragment of correspondence. However, let me remind you that a subsequent piece of legislation, the Carriage of Goods and Cargoes Act of 1911, Part 3, Subsection 4, miscellaneous provision specifically in bond name supersedes the Merchant Shipping Act by stating that the right of a carrier to load his cargo once the bill of laden has been signed and countersigned,

and I stress that, shall in no way be impeded, obstructed, or prevented by any provision of the previous act, notwithstanding any local interpretations that shall be put in place. Now, Captain Van Brita, have you such a bill of laden? Yes, Mr. Scoresby, I have. And is it signed and countersigned? It is. Then, Mr. Ogart, I invite you to stand aside, sir, and let my client go about his lawful business. Mr. Agard, I invite you to stay aside, sir, and let my client go about his lawful business.

There's also this great moment right after this happens where Hester, like, congratulates Lee and the term she uses is, like, on his oratorical flamboyancy. Yeah, he called Polyakov's speech that earlier. He's like, it was quite the oratorical for the buoyancy these yards all over Lee asks Van Breda if he has any firearms on deck as they pass their first boss level and he says just one that he's never had to fire

and they make their way toward the ship but are met by five men one who has who Hester warns Lee is now cocking his gun Lee tells the boy holding the gun to drop it, and he does, but another shoots, although it misses, and travels over their head past a crowd of people who scream for, you know, quite obvious reasons, far behind them. And then Lee fires a shot in response, which didn't miss. He aimed for the guy's hip, and the bullet hits. He falls into the water, and Lee's Lee's like well I guess you gotta go get your friend

and save him cause he's not gonna be able to swim back if they don't but turns out we have a problem cause as we know about this hammer pistol from earlier Lee only has one shot left that's why you gotta count your rounds I learned this from Archer you know and like

that was it he's got one shot left that is one thing i will always commend in pride pullman on that he pays attention to when you have one shot left and this actually not to make us sad but you know this isn't the only time in lee's story he only has one shot left wow because at the very end of his journey when he has this rifle actually this very rifle that he's getting uh he has one shot left and he says to hester shame to die with one bullet left though and he aims it up at the zeppelin itself and shoots it that's my that's my man

damn he grabs the gun dropped by the younger guy but it's bent to shit from the fall and it'd backfire if it had been shot again so lee sadly chucks it into the sea they come close to the ship finally but as they do something appears in the waterfront and it is the huge gas powered machine the gas gun the larson manganese people have been showing off the monstrous one and the steel wheels and the half-track are grinding. York is like, I can take care of this one. And it's actually a really cute exchange. He's like, a gun?

And Lee's like, yup. And he goes, I do this. And he runs off silently into the alley. And Lee's like, okay, bye. Yeah, Lee once more asks for the rifle from Van Breda. And the gun machine is stopped. They hear a man shouting into a horn at them, but they can't make out the words. Yeah, Lee once more asks for the rifle from Van Breda. And the gun machine is stopped. They hear a man shouting into a horn at them,

but they can't make out the words. Van Breda gets the gun, and apparently it's a very gorgeous rifle. It's a Winchester, so Lee's very jazzy. He's like, wow, amazing. He loads up, and they make for the warehouse. But the gun machine, a.k.a. the tank, based on this illustration that we have in the novella stops moving or starts moving and then out of nowhere yorick bursts from an alley he smashes into it and then the gun bath the gun blast pisses him off so he just keeps fucking it up

apparently i mean i guess that makes sense if they can like cut their metal with their their claws but he's just out here he's just yeah it's a bear versus gun what else could you just pissed him off more yeah yeah as they make toward the warehouse lee thinks he sees something in one of the windows but keeps going anyway while hester checks into it and keeps a lookout he asks van brita the whereabouts of the booty, and Hester tells Lee she thinks the sharpshooter is definitely in a warehouse, and she warns him it might be Morton or McConville, and Lee's like, I already knew it would be.

I knew that before we got here. He instructs Van Brita and his team to lay low while they deal with the gunmen and just work on getting ready to peace out, and he and Yorick rush in to deal with them. He's not really sure if it's one or two, but one of them shoots immediately, clipping his shoulder, partially giving away his position, which answers the one or two question. There is one upstairs and one downstairs. They split up, Yorick takes down the downstairs guy, and Lee goes upstairs to deal with Morton Mccconneville they play a game of hide and seek until mick whatever hits lee with a bullet it passes through him it doesn't find a bone but sure isn't pretty it's almost over mcmortonville gives this villain speech telling lee how he

remembers him and that he's had him on his list to deal with eventually and then he admits to other awful cruel crimes some of which lee also had seen or heard of that he committed against evil or against innocent people yeah and because he's like giving this speech and it's just like taking all this time and he's kind of basically giving away his position i love that lee's like mccortonville he's like oh he's not really that smart i guess just going out there and giving away his position like this i'm like yeah actually when i think about it that is pretty consistent with the character that we hear about him earlier on in the story.

Because, like, he's, I mean, like, if he was smart, he wouldn't be out here fucking just murdering people in broad daylight in front of everyone and being like, this is not going to get me in trouble, right? Like, he wasn't, he just wasn't powerful and important enough to be the kind of person who would get away with it you know yeah polyakov could not at all he couldn't yeah you know well lee is kind of bleeding

out in a pile of fish oil right now he's leaned up against fish oil barrels that got shot huddled with hester who's also injured and hurt mick khan mortonville says he's gonna draw lee's death out longer than the last guys, which was 30 minutes. And his demon sets out to strike first against Lee. And this is interesting. Hester pounces on it, bites into it, tears into it to save them. She drags and kicks and she pulls his demon away from him before she kills him. And mcmortonville is all like oh you horrible bitch of a demon he's like cursing because she pulls his demon away from him and i wonder if maybe she was separating them too not just like injuring it yeah she absolutely was because they

were like well you know that's an idea that's an interesting idea that you would give us on how to hurt someone mccortonville what if we did that to you yeah i think that's an interesting idea that you would give us on how to hurt someone mccortonville what if we did that to you yeah i think that's intentional and it's meant to be a sort of like cool karmic thing before they execute interesting very interesting and then he he does execute he does end up shooting with his face though he doesn't die from separation no he does shoot him and when it's over he holds hester tight and he says we better move before we're completely covered in the blood and the fish oil meanwhile outside polyakov is at the head of a mob he seems to be trying to guide them in to attack the schooner which of course like we said that mob mentality earlier yorick is holding them

back lee gets over to his side and he's like hey buddy the big trouble's gone and then he pretty much passes out yorick catches him and sets him back up by the back of his shirt no friendship i know right it's very cute and then the larson manganese attempt to kind of come on in and yorick bolts into the water to swim away as they attempt to disarm Lee. But at the very same time, someone from behind Lee shows up and says that Lee is under arrest. Oh no, it's Lieutenant Hogland. Lee protests that they will stop Ban Breda from leaving, though, if he goes with the lieutenant,

and the lieutenant's like, I'll take care of it, and orders everyone to leave, and if anyone is here when I come back, all of you are under arrest, and everyone disperses except for Polyakov. He's like, my free speech, and my rights. This is not an actual demonstration. Protesting in a pandemic? Yeah, actually, though, that's Polyakov. He's saying this is an outrage. Hoglund's demon and Hester are quietly chatting

now during this. Hoglin says he'll arrest Polyakov too if he doesn't get the fuck out within two minutes. And then, again, Polyakov says, my free speech. Meanwhile, Van Breda says goodbye, giving Lee his rifle as a gift for his help. And Lee

is like, ooh, my second amendment rights. Lee's like like my second waifu and the hogland orders you know you know what what if you put both the rifle and the pistol you have down he's like okay fine then probably he passes out again for a hot second whatever it's fine that's what that's how these books go. People fall asleep, they pass out, that's normal. Alright? When it comes to the officers supporting him and he's told to follow along.

Yeah, but he's not going to the customs office which is very confusing for him. He is led instead to a ship in the navy and white customs colors at the end of the launch where he sits in the cabin relatively close to his weapons that are set down next to him and he's like huh why is he letting my weapons be by me hoglin then tells him to take his equipment and he's very confused he does and he explains he's taking them to the sea

company depot where his balloon is filled up in full ready for takeoff and they will meet yorick who's following and has something to give to lee too and lee's like wow what a crazy morning usually i'd probably be dead by now and the hoglin tells him like the fact is this mr scoresby there's a struggle going on throughout the northern lands of which this little island is a microcosm on one hand there are the properly constituted civil institutions such as the customs and revenue board and on the other the uncontrolled power of the large private companies such as Larsen Manganese, which are dominating more and more of the public life, though they are not subject to any form of democratic sanction. If Mr. Polyakov wins this election, he will make life easier for Larsen Manganese and

its fellows, and worse for the people of Novi Odens. He continues explaining that this was basically a cover story, the upfront story for the anti-bear campaign Odin. He continues explaining that this was basically a cover story, the upfront story for the anti-bear campaign, but that he'd be using it to distract people while enacting his further plans. Hmm. Interesting. We kind of see how someone can have this exact kind of political campaign,

especially as a contractor, when you think about some of the characters like Mrs. Coulter. In real life, but but also you know like this as as uh hoglin says right this is a microcosm not only of things that are happening in the northern lands but of the sorts of ideas that i mean philip pullman has been exploring this whole time right like this is something that he loves he's like oh that hidden but interconnected secret war. And in historic materials, it was in heaven, you know, really big scale, probably the biggest scale that he could have done it. And then next, right, we have also my assumption, not having read it, but from what I can surmise, those secret powers that be, right, in the secret commonwealth, I assume, and this is that same idea, but small.

in the secret commonwealth i assume and this is that same idea but but small yeah no spoilers but yes there is even in oxford there's this little microcosm happening of uh the the government and the private contractors and i really do feel some tie-ins with this novel and the secret commonwealth i'm really excited to explore them with you yeah but someday i almost ordered it recently because i was like i wanted to but then um i didn't order sandwiches from that place so then i didn't get the books anyways so lee assesses the damage done to him once they're in the bathroom his ears a little messed up and there's no growing that back but uh the shoulder is going to heal thanks to the clean shot the officer knocks on the door saying the medicine man has cometh and lo and behold no not low it's yorick uh yorick shows up and he has

blood moss in his hand blood moss blood moss in his hands his paws to attach to or his paws his bare hands uh to attach to lee's wounds yes exactly his second amendment and of course who else shows up before lee leaves but oscar sigurdsson he wants an interview with the town hero and lee's like yeah sure and invites him somewhere way more private to the waterfront to talk he asks sigurdsson if he can see that ship over there on the horizon, and as Sigurdsson looks, Lee gives him a swift kick to the asshole into the water. He turns to go, and another guy from the story who you probably don't even remember, Vasilev, shows up, saying Polyakov and Larson Manganese are on their way, ready to fight, and also they want to kill the bear. Lee asks Yorick if he's ever been in a balloon

and he and Yorick finally correct each other on their name pronunciations and say goodbye to people. You ready, Yorick? He said. This is strange to me, said the bear, but I will trust you. You are a man of the Arctic. I am? How's that? Your demon is an Arctic hare.

A what? said Hester. I thought I was a damn jackrabbit. Arctic hare. said York briefly. And Hoglin nodded. Lee gives Lieutenant Hoglin his best thanks and asks how he knew where to find lee or who lee was hogland says well you can thank miss victoria lund who is now his fiancee pew pew pew thanks lee yeah that was it that was that was the uh closure for victoria lund everyone that that was it

but i did find something that's a deeper parallel. So this might make you sad. Are you ready to be sad? I'm ready to be sad. When Lee checks his luggage, Victoria left a sprig of lavender on top for him. And Hester made fun of him for smelling it deeply. But I wanted to pair that with when Lee Scoresby dies. This is rude.

Yorick. I know. You're telling me. You know I'm going to cry. When Lee Scoresby dies, Yorick goes to find him after speaking to Serafina. The boulder was pitted and chipped with bullet marks. Everything the witch had told him was true. And in confirmation, a little ar arctic flower a purple saxifrage blossomed improbably where the witch had planted it as a signal in the cranny of the rock this is rude yep yep i thought that was rude um yeah so i thought that was a parallel for sure there's no way that pullman chose two purple flowers to mark the beginning of lee scores these adventures and the end of them damn

yeah oh shit lee yeah damn did i fuck you up uh it's fine this is fine 35 we get another passage that i want to, like, throw myself off a building. Yeah, we get the passage where- Off a balloon. Lee, yeah, I want to throw myself off a balloon. Lee left her to it and checked the barometer. The gas pressure gauge and the compass again, not that the compass was much of a help in these latitudes. And then he took out the rifle looked it over thoroughly cleaned it and

oiled it with a new can of machine oil which he found to his surprise in the toolbox he wrapped it up again carefully before making sure it was safely strapped to a stanchion he'd learned his lesson he looked after it well for the rest of his life and 35 years later the winchester was in his hands when he died, with one last shot. Wow. Yep. Philip Pullman ripped my heart out. But the last passage is happy. Yeah, that's true. This one's cute.

This is fine. Hester and Lee discuss the end of their trip, right? And we close the book out with something happier. Well, all right, then. Finding out that you're an Arctic hare, that's surprising. Damn, I was surprised. Surprised? Why the hell were you surprised?

I ain't surprised, said Hester. Yorick's right. I always knew I had more class than a rabbit. It's the best line in the whole story. I always knew I had more class than a rabbit. Other than Yorick Burningston? I don't know. That is up there.

That is up there. I don't know. What's wrong with rabbits? I don't think anything's wrong with rabbits. It was cute, though. Like, they're low class. I get what she meant. She's like, I'm a rich bitch. I just wasn't sure if there was something I'm missing. Maybe. Maybe. About rabbits. Rabbit stands? Can you speak up?

Am I uncultured? Rabbit stands in the club tonight? Explain rabbits to me, please. So, it's not really the end of the book, right? We still have a handful of slides at the end of the book that we can chat about.

Not too much crazy stuff in this one, but I really love that he still put these scrap notes in. And from what we were discussing earlier, it seems that possibly these were added in the 2017 edition and not the 2008 edition. So a lot of these letters might be stuff he put in before he wrote La Belle Sauvage, which we're about to talk about soon too,

or during when he was writing La Belle Sauvage which we're about to talk about soon too or during when he was writing La Belle Sauvage I would imagine yeah yeah I mean like that would make sense considering that the hard copy I'm holding is like advertising again the book of dust yeah now these things as you said reference stuff from there um we talked about some of the the geography i do also like you know speaking of themes that pullman's interested in and how they carry out throughout the books like i kind of wonder like would oscar searson like have pain and lee in a better light right like his quote unquote town hero if they hadn't kicked him in the water because we have this like little excerpt from like how oscar like writes in news clipping or a clipping from oscar uh regarding this incident painting lee and yorick as like villain and accomplice bear flee by balloon oh absolutely

and yeah he paints them like as villains i wonder like would it would they have been in a better light if like lee didn't kick him in the water? But it's also very much how Pullman's interested in, again, those secrets and how things are portrayed, how stories end up getting twisted over time based on the authority figures telling them, etc. There's also a thing towards the end where Oscar kind of says, like, that Polyakov is still the leading candidate who writes in a current edition of the Novi Oden's Courier and Telegraph. So that kind of, uh, bodes to what we were wondering, like, does he get elected or not? Maybe. He was the leading candidate still. I'd also say he probably gets elected because we see the current state of things and how bad they are in the main series.

And, like, obviously corrupt government is happening. So it makes sense. Yeah, true. And if, as Hoglin said, if not here, somewhere else. Yeah. I love the letters we get. Yes. This one is, we won't go too far into it, but we get this letter to Tom from Lyra.

And it just says to Tom. far into it but we get this letter to tom from lyra and it just says to tom and lyra tells tom she can't make her piece about the alethiometer without people knowing we end up realizing it's about a thesis uh a dissertation a thesis that she's been working on right and she says ideally there'd be a whole panel of people to judge that type of work as well but she only has dame hannah to examine it and she's kind of getting past Dame Hannah's knowledge. She says that econ as a body of work is nice and clear, and that she has a good subject and lots of personal knowledge, I'm guessing from Lee, and documents.

And she says that her writing... Having gone there. Right. She says that her writing is about developments in patterns of trade in the European Arctic region, with particular reference to independent cargo balloon carriage from 1950 to 1970. Ta-da! The timeline's really interesting there, though. It's very, yeah, it's very obviously about lee's work is what inspired her here but this has to be a letter to thomas nugent who is the head of an organization called oakley street

in labelle savage and uh unfortunately human's age so i don't believe he is in the secret commonwealth but it talks about the alethiometer reading so candidly it almost secures it yeah that's true and also knowing like about dame hannah absolutely um lyra wouldn't just send that to anyone so that is very clearly from thomas nugent who was also the chancellor of formerly the lord chancellor of england sorry i don't understand the political systems fully and then of course next we get a letter to malcolm from lyra she needs some dissertation help specifically regarding bibliographies on rare clippings from newspapers that you know people in england would be able to get their hands on especially because they're personal clippings and they don't have the internet yet yeah and i love that this letter is very vague to malcolm um if you recognize malcolm's name at all you might have read the

lyra's oxford story that i believe also has some malcolm letters in it does it or does she see malcolm am i making that up i haven't read it in a while it's only 15 pages i guess i could reach for my phone. But uh, Malcolm is a professor. And she very vaguely speaks to him. But if you've read La Belle Sauvage, Malcolm was a very big player in La Belle Sauvage. And he would understand pretty much anything she's saying. So I think that's really funny. Because at this point in the story, she very obviously is younger and likely does not know, like, anything about Malcolm Polstad. Just that he's a professor that annoys her. I kind of think it's just, like, a funny, weird, like, meeting of worlds. Must be something Philip Pullman thinks about.

I mean, like, you know, the next page, right, is her filing for that master's in philosophy and in economic history yeah it's 28 950 words damn yeah yeah i mean like that that tracks right and um but i guess she's candidate number 23 which is cute and this all goes together, right, of course, with some of those previous letters. I do like that we learned that Lyra is going to go get her master's because, of course, Philip Pullman, academic, would have her do that. Like, of course he did. He just has to have the knowledge keep on moving.

Of course. And, like, also, I think economic history is interesting. Like, as you pointed out, a lot of it has to have the knowledge keep on moving. Of course. And also, I think economic history is interesting. As you pointed out, a lot of it has to do with her personal connection with Lee. And I don't know, are we supposed to see this as a cover? Is this a cover for her to be able to stay in academia by the alethiometer? Or not? Or is it something... I mean, obviously she's probably actually somewhat interested in it

i mean like it makes sense right like there there's a lot there in terms of you know understanding how story and the powers coalesce in the north how her world came to be what it is especially the things that she experienced and trying to track down and maybe take down some of like how that power structure was built like i the the as i'm sure all of you know in the book that i haven't read right those power structures that have been there for hundreds of years don't fall down overnight and you know a lot are trying to understand the things that happened in the north and i'm sure there's a lot there to argue about reading the signs and patterns when it comes to economics understanding

meaning and the flow of capital and power right i think that all makes sense in terms of picking economic history and of course history is a story just like whatever the alethiometer would tell her but at the same time i'm kind of like is it a cover i mean i i'm not going to answer this in full because i wouldn't want to spoil you. Thank you for respecting me. You're welcome. I would never spoil you like I did that one time when I revealed that beeps, demon is beep when it settles. And, but I would say like on that note,

I would say that you are onto something. And I do think those themes are very much so explored. And Lyra in the Secret Commonwealth is a 20-year-old young woman. And I think you're going to see that the journeys in the North definitely did have an after effect on her, right? Like she has grown from a child into a young woman. She understands the way the world works more. And in some ways she doesn't. She understands the way the world works more and in some ways she doesn't she understands the way the world works even less in some ways now um it's just like also true of

growing up yeah it's very much so a big metaphor for growing up i think uh i think when you get into that book finally it will throw you because it's not tonally what i expected at first and i have grown to love it but it's very much so a grown-up book it's very much so this is the after and Lyra's a little more analytical I think as an adult now and her brain processes more functionally and I think these notes that we see right here also kind of show that that she as she says to Malcolm like it's a more scientific slash clean process for her to go through with this, where as a kid, we know reading the alethiometer is different than being an adult, right? So as a kid, it was just like when Will would find the notch with the knife and it just felt right in his hand. For Lyra, reading the alethiometer is not easy when you're not a kid anymore.

It was easy. It was like finding that notch she would just find the third rung below and figure it out and she would just get it and as in a like the second her and will canoodled you know like that no longer the same um so i almost wonder if it's just like your entire mindset changes and it is a big metaphor for adulthood and i think we'll have more to talk about that when you read the secret Commonwealth coming soon. It actually, I think is coming soon.

I've been itching for it lately. So I think you should do it. I think you should pull the trigger. If you have one shot left, I mean mom's spaghetti. Oh my God. Knees weak. Oh my god, knees weak. Winchester on his chest already. Lee's spaghetti.

Lee's spaghetti western. Hey, this is a- Lee's spaghetti western was a great episode. I'm so glad we read this again, like, together and figured it out. And I think we made some big ground. I think so. I think we covered quite a bit yeah for a hundred page book holy crap with illustrations with illustrations in the time

and the text is pretty large you know so a 50 page book yeah it took me like an hour and a half pretty big and like 30 pages of it is just like action sequences which you guys i'm gonna be real i don't i don't love written action sequences unless there's actually something really going on there. I love great choreographed fight scenes. Pacific Rim is one of my top five movies. Not a joke. Very serious. Pacific Rim 2 is dead to me and garbage. Pacific Rim 1, amazing masterpiece.

Wow. Well, no, I know that's your thing. Written action sequences don't do anything for me. Yeah, this was fun. It was definitely, like, a side novella, though. Oh, absolutely. But it was good. And as you pointed out, there's a lot that connects it to, like, the main story. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for listening to this month's Patreon episode Once Upon a Time in the North the love story that blossomed and bloomed for Yorick, Burning Sun and Lee Scaresby I mean kinda

no friendships, only romance make sure to tune in this week as we release chapters 7 and 8 of The Subtle Knife. Yes, Rolls-Royce, which does have a hyphen in it, is one of the chapters. Eliana has confirmed the hyphen for us. And we'll be back with A Song of Ice and Fire next week. We'll probably have a A Song of Ice and Fire themed episode for Patreon next month for our stranger tier and above patrons.

Thanks again for supporting us we really really appreciate it in these times yes thank you very much everyone and of course take care be safe absolutely bye stay well oiled oh my god