Girls Gone Canon Cast - His Dark Materials - The Amber Spyglass Chapters 8-10

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

One murderer meets another murderer as both leave old worlds for a new one. Elsewhere, Mary bonds with the mulefa before reenacting a Hitchcock movie. CHAPTER 8 - VODKA CHAPTER 9 - UPRIVER CHAPTER 10 - WHEELS   ---   Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com   Intro: Waltz Of The Skeleton Keys by WombatNoisesAudio | https://soundcloud.com/user-734462061

You're listening to Girls Gone Canon, covering His Dark Materials. Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, Reads His Dark Materials, the book series, episode 18. The Amber Spyglass, chapters 8 through 10. I am one of your hosts, Eliana. And I am another one of your hosts, Chloe, and I i'm not i'm not trying to sell out my girlfriend here but i have to tell you all that eliana really forgot it was her role for like one second and usually i say eliana you know you have to introduce this one right but for one second eliana had no clue where she was and who you people were she was like what what are we doing i was like what is this silence what and who you people were she was like what what are we doing i was like what is this silence what is this void and then i was like oh it's on me i'm i'm the one

who has to lead us shit i was like will i was like will in this episode i was like all right i gotta i gotta be seen uh new Void, who dis? The Amber Spyglass story. That's what this is. That is what this is. And I am excited for another week, another episode this month. Two in one due to scheduling conflicts,

so enjoy this one. We'll go back to one at a time probably next month, so don't get too crazy, kids. Chapters 8 through 10. Chapters eight through 10. Chapters eight through 10. That's Vodka, Up River, and Wheels. Eliana, do you want to tell the folks at home what our spoiler policy is on these bad boys

and how Chloe will break it? I mean, that's just how it is, right? I know people, if you're here, I assume you've listened to our other episodes but those other episodes cover books that we are going to discuss in this episode for example northern light slash the golden compass book one and book two the subtle knife we're going to talk about anything that happened in those books up to this point in the series and we are going to do our almost best to keep spoilers from anything else that happens in the rest of this book or in the books of dust and the novellas and uh we'll we'll play

it by ear when it comes to the television show uh and keep those in the dust discussion which which happens after we talk about these chapters and what's going on um live yes and look if you haven't finished the book yet you're not going to get spoiled on anything big by listening to our main episodes it's the discussion that comes after and i the temptress of the discussion when i rise from the dusty ashes. We'll spoil pretty much every other fucking thing under the sun, right? Books of Dust, La Belle Sauvage,

The Secret Commonwealth, and, of course, the novellas, which we have covered extensively on our Patreon at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. We'll keep all the spoilers

to that at the very end so you can tune out at that time if you're not quite prepared to get dusty and as chloe said you can find i mean an in-depth discussion of our thoughts on the novellas on our patreon and also we have covered la belle sauvage already if you would like you can check those episodes out on our podbean they're all already up there and you know speaking of things on patreon once a month we do a special episode for our patrons in the stranger tier and above that's five dollars and up and so usually every other month we'll do like one a song of ice

and fire episode and then the next month we'll do a Historic Materials episode but you know what because of the way things fell you got two Historic Materials episodes this month and also we wanted to try and do something a little different right you know I was riding the high of Leo season and I was like the world is our oyster we can do anything

we want so we're doing a different different children's book different young adult book for Patreon this month I know it's a virgo season now okay i understand it was a tumultuous it was a tumultuous transition as anyone will tell you but this idea was born during the fires the very embers the glowing embers of leo season and i'm i'm excited it's another fantasy heroine right another young protagonist it's ella enchanted or eliana enchanted uh it's eliana enchanted and i'm prince clar i mean this is just a preview of the episode look if you have not read ella enchanted it's a really fun book there's a couple in the series

but the first book is loosely based on Cinderella with some really fun twists and turns and I love it I loved it when I was a kid we're going to talk about in the episode the nostalgia we have for this story maybe even a little Eliana hasn't seen yet the movie but

I have some nostalgia over both book and also movie and how mad i was about some of the adaptive choices which if you've been listening to us about the golden compass i'm sure you'll know yeah and i mean like exactly so so it kind of really goes well because we also at one point right watched the golden compass movie and discussed some of those choices i don't know there was just like this time i guess in the aughts where they were like you know let's just take all these stories that eliana really loved growing up and let's fucking mangle them oh it just kept happening to you didn't it that's so sad it did and i went to me but i refused to watch those movies because

i was like why would i do this to myself and you know until i guess adulthood when i decided to cover these books was very good at avoiding watching those god i so get that you know and uh it's weird because as a kid you don't remember some of those failures like as a kid i remember my mom got me uh from like the walmart movie bin the five dollar copy of the golden compass it was on sale and my mom was like oh here you might like this movie and i saw the movie when i was younger when it came out i i hadn't read the books as we've discussed but i saw the movie first and i had no clue that there were books that were even a thing until you know as an adult when i was told many times please read them so don't judge a movie by its

cover right because it could still lead you there in the afterlife yeah i was led yeah and i mean again the young actor who does lyra in the movie she does a great job she does oh yeah a good job like a lot of things there were a lot of things that were like, I guess, okay. I don't know yet about Ella Enchanted. Yeah, and I do feel bad. Well, and I think, like, Ella Enchanted, now as an adult, too, I think you can walk into it with a certain, maybe a certain different approach of watching it. Like, oh, this is an adaptation of the kids novelization i loved and it has some core

ideas but also kind of misses the boat you know but that's also what a kid's movie is i guess it seemed like it did based on the trailers also i just like you know not to be like oh but my head casting i just didn't anna hathaway was too old for that role yeah i didn't imagine her in it and you know yeah i agree well this is just a sampling yeah this is just a sampling we've gone off we have lost sorry sorry girls gone off gone around girls gone off yes so please tune into that episode patrons in the stranger tier the five dollar and above tier. You can find that over at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon by the end of this month, August 2021. And that's not the only thing left in August for Girls Gone Canon fans on Patreon.

If you are a patron in the Thunder tier, the $10 tier or above, you can come hang out in Discord where we talk about everything and anything in 30 plus channels all day long. Sometimes streaming games or hanging out with people in the voice chat. But on August 28th, this coming Saturday from 2 to 4 Eastern Standard Time, Thunder patrons and above will be having brunch slash happy hour, which is basically where we hang out for two hours. This month we're doing a potluck presentation themed on congratulations, which is just a big hurrah for everything during this ridiculous pandemic that we haven't really been able to celebrate with our patrons. And they're presenting slideshows on it. It just gonna be really fun and we play some jackbox games after and there are some free prizes that happen and just all sorts of goodies

so come hang out yeah a bunch of people i mean you the listener might have celebrated some sort of milestone over the past like over a year you know year and a half of our lives of the pandemic that perhaps you were not able to celebrate in the way that you would have hoped because again of the pandemic so congratulations uh please imagine uh the scene in evangelion reverend goes congratulations congratulations congratulations congratulations i hope that's what you're gonna be theming the slideshow on Eliana well we can't wait to see you if you get to come hang out with us and uh

I think that's it for housekeeping right other than that and other than our Ella Enchanted Eliana Enchanted tangent I'm ready to jump into the Amber Spyglass with these three chapters. And they're some good three chapters. They are

no Lyra. Very non-Lyra centric chapters. It is. Yeah, that's very true. Lyra's like there. Everyone's like trying to make their way to her. Especially after we ended those dream sequences. Right? So now everyone's

trying to converge building up to that and it's exciting and so we started out with vodka uh chloe's chloe's favorite thank you i think i guess if i were if i were being proper i would pronounce it right it's supposed to be like vodka more of like a w sound but what what what anyway the header the header quote we have here is i have been a stranger in a strange land and that comes from the book of exodus and the bible i love that i know that you have tons to talk to us about exodus later i love the chapter structure we open with these three chapters specifically have a great run with a lot of great parallels running throughout them. And this is some of my favorite Will progression in the novel, right? Without Lyra finally kind of standing on his own. And structurally speaking, this brings me back to a lot of what we went through in The Subtle Knife. While Will has definitely picked up his father's mantle, it also feels like will has taken up lee scoresby's mantle from the subtle knife right as far as his adventures it's structured a lot like a lee scoresby chapter

he's going on a mission looking to help lyra he comes across a holy i'm quoting this air quoting a holy man who turns out to be a bit shady he lies to them about his identity and uh his purpose he drinks spirits with this man and he learns enough information to finally move on to his next chapter and his next part of his adventure even down to the environment right it feels like lee's adventures hey they're both murderers but the biggest difference of course comes to a couple of things lee had already lived plenty of these stories, right? By the time we see Lee doing this in The Subtle Knife on his own, this is kind of the usual. For Will, this is the beginning of his adventures like this.

It's a coming of age chapter for him. And not only is it a beginning for Will, but it's the end for Baruch as we're about to read. Sorry, I know i'm hurt too will in these first two chapters learns what grief and rebuilding means right not only with balthamos losing his loved one especially after starting to process and understand his own grief and trauma of his father dying and losing lyra his only friend, all of that ages you, right? And he ages a lot in these two chapters. He has to grow really quickly. Absolutely. And he's already, you know, had to grow very quickly earlier on, right? Because he kind of took on this parentified child role. But then, as you said, here he is again. And now he's in unfamiliar territory. And we really see Will.

It's interesting because he he takes inspiration this time from lyra as you said we're gonna see that that happened i just love how they inspire one another i really do what does it mean what does it mean well before we do that we're gonna we're gonna get set don't do this to me i know ready. I'm not ready for this pain. I'm in so much pain. I was already, like, in pain last time, and then we get to the aftermath of it, right? I was like, what the fuck? He opened the door! And Baruch died!

This is why we literally... This is how it's gonna be, you know, when one of us goes. When we're still covering all these books. 80 years from now. I mean, they might be. still covering all these books. Eighty years from now. I mean, they might be. Well, Balthamos felt the death of Baruch the moment it happened.

He cried aloud and soared into the night air over the tundra, flailing his wings and sobbing his anguish into the clouds. And it was some time before he could compose himself and go back to Will, who was wide awake, knife in hand, peering up

into the damp and chilly murk. Will is worried that there's danger. Yeah, so Balthamos is flying around, and he's very upset, right? Like, he's flying up, down, across, etc. He'll fly into the sky, and then he'll go to the ground, sobbing, upset,

and be pinned to the ground in grief, but then suddenly he'll remember into the the sky and then he'll go to the ground sobbing upset and be pinned to the ground in grief but then suddenly he'll remember brook's kindness and like fly out back into the sky and then come back down and be like will i promise i'm gonna i'm gonna protect you i'm gonna watch you tirelessly and then he'll be like oh god brook used to watch me tirelessly and fly back into the sky upset again just like setting himself off right like he's just in so much fucking pain and like shock he's in shock yeah it's sad yeah it's really awful and like imagine god imagine having the power to do that to be able to fly and throw yourself into the sky and then throw yourself back down and of course is like, he's not trying to be unkind like you said, but he's just like,

hey, I know there are bad people out there looking for us right now, buddy. And you're just kind of flying that signal right now for those bad people. And I can't do anything about it. And if specters get you and eat you, I can't go up there. Please come down here.

Or other angels, yeah. Other angels, yeah, yeah exactly metatron so will gets him kind of to calm down and he's like i need you to be strong like baruch was because we still have to get to lyra it's very important it's very painful all of this is very painful for reasons that will be also discussed later in the discussion because i feel like there are other sad connections but in the meanwhile balthamos straightens up and he's like okay okay you're right i will i'll take first guard you sleep and by the morning he's finally sobered out of his shock he declares he'll stay willingly and cheerfully with Will, or cheerfully in Balthamos' way, of course.

And he says he'll guide him to Lyra and take him to Asriel. I have lived thousands of years, and unless I am killed I shall live many thousands of years more. But I never met a nature that made me so ardent to do good or to be kind

as Baruch's did. I failed so many times, but each time his goodness was there to redeem me. Now it's not. I shall have to try without it. Perhaps I shall fail from time to time, but I shall try all the same. Oh, Balthamos.

It's very beautiful. Poor Balthamosamos and poor Baruch yeah poor Baruch I just again it's real painful but it's also really earnest right that he's willing to like he's like well the best I can do is use

his absence to be better for him by him and through him and just like to you know to live in eternity without Baruch so sad it's just so sad for him I'm glad that they

you know continue the arc of his grief right into the next chapters and don't let it go because you know they've been together thousands of years there's no way he can get over it so quickly. There's a part of me that wonders, again he's going up there and he's calling for Baruch and it's just so sad

not just yelling his name in pain but like the logic of it, right? Obviously Baruch's not coming back but like that denial and grief and just also that part of me wonders if when he's flying up

there and looking around is he seeking you know a particle or something of Baruch I mean that's all they are right it's just dust stardust that's all the stars are just stardust he's just looking around at all the other pieces of them in the sky wondering

is that you is that piece of you almost like how later the seed pods get scattered in the muwaffa chapter oh yeah um you know all those particles those are like pieces of them too and of their culture and of their people and it's like he's just hoping he can grasp one tiny speck of him in the sky like ashley simpson's pieces of me also i do want to say like there was a movie version of a song of hers on that album that was very good on just putting it out there on on undiscovered wait on the golden steven street no oh sorry on that album pieces of me oh by ashley simpson she had a movie it was called undiscovered and she was in it with steven No. Oh, sorry. On that album, Pieces of Me. Oh. By Ashley Simpson. She had a movie.

It was called Undiscovered, and she was in it with Stephen Strait, you know, from Sky High and the Expanse. Yeah. Notably from Sky High. I think of him as from Sky High, actually. War and Peace from Sky High is a big piece, a big War and Peace of my, uh you know my coming of age story war in pieces yeah that's your original standard click eight listen this is how i deal with pain through humor you know and i'm still real sad here about the death of a angel lover. This is very sad. Yeah. My poor Baruch. It really is.

Our poor Baruch and Balthamos. Will tries to comfort him, you know, best he can. Will's not the best at comforting, I guess. He says Baruch would be proud of him. And Balthamos then soars to the skies to scout for them as they

walk across the marshland. And Balthamus, of course, is holding back a little bit of his fears from Will because it's not just Baruch's death that's weighing on him, but the fact that in that whole kerfuffle, Metatron has now firmly imprinted Will's face

in his mind when they narrowly escaped. Also not just his face, but his nature as well, that part that maybe Lyra would call his demon. And Balthamas knows that he has a he's gotta tell Will about this at some point, but it's just too difficult, alright? Like, his

lover for thousands of years has just died, so I think I would cut Balthamas some slack there. Yeah, that is and it's a big thing to tell him that like hey you're kind of marked forever now buddy uh so we'll get to that soon but will will's been freezing right this entire time so he's like it's quicker to walk it's gonna be warmer to walk i just am gonna go he heads down a potholed ruddy path with the horizon never seeming to get closer.

He's like, this is forever taking. Later, when the light is brighter, Balthamos says that it's only a half day's walk ahead till they get to a wide river in a town with boats that are tied off to a wharf. They might be able to get passage through that village and then onto the town. Balthamos promises he'll translate as his demon, and they walk on. I want to flag quickly, I thought it was interesting that Baltamos says that he had learned many human languages, and that angels don't inherently, like, understand or know every human language.

He had to, like, I don't know, go on some fucking Duolingo app or whatever. So I just thought it was interesting that he had to actually learn it. have or whatever so i just thought it was interesting that he had to actually learn it and it's doesn't like miss me that it's parallel in a way to the 10th chapter right yeah they are with mary malone and learning the language and that like obviously angels had learned the language somehow yeah um and the ways of the people enough and And we see them able to replicate demons because obviously they're made of the same old stuff pretty easily and kind of assimilate and whether that's just from their heavenly powers

or if it's just from living thousands of years and learning these traditions and cultures and passing them on. I guess what else is he going to do, right? You're alive thousands of years, there's no internet or TV. Might as well do something. yeah i mean he's not he doesn't do the best job pretending to be will's demon but he does a job yeah he does the village they come to is shabby with paddocks of reindeer and barking dogs it's apparent the village is recently flooded, the ground

is wet and heavy, but the most curious part of the place is that he felt like he was losing his balance and that the buildings were leaning two or three degrees out of vertical. He wonders if there was an earthquake here, seeing a church with a badly cracked dome, and the dogs and reindeer are looking mangy up close with thin coats. So Balthamos, you know, again, he gets his first chance to show off his demon skills, which is like, I don't know, it's a B, you know, if I had to give it a grade. Right? But for

effort later on, for effort he gets like, I don't know, a C minus. First he goes with a white dog right now, and then a sparrow sitting on Will's shoulder, so he's kind of like showing that he's Will's a child, right? Not yet a settled demon. The men they come across find it believable enough and move on. And Balthamos tells Will to keep moving and don't look them in the eye. The men lose interest in Will as he activates his Will Perry superpower

of invisibility, kind of. But a man calls to them from a house on the road balthamos says it's a priest and tells him to turn and bow which will does the priest has a crow demon on his shoulder and takes everything about will in and then asks him where he came from in a foreign language and balthamos translates will tells him he speaks english and the priest conveniently also speaks English and welcomes him to their no longer perpendicular colonnade. I thought this was so interesting. I love the entrance to this little village. I do have to hearken back there to the dogs that look mangy, right? And really thin coated.

That's such a classic Pullman use in this part of the book right like that is just such classic pullman kind of giving you that something's off about this city because of global climate change look at the dogs and their thin mangy coats that aren't like normal dogs and something's not quite right here we just see it in other stories of his that are related to this we see it in the books of dust used and we've seen it used in some of the visions earlier in these books, right in the last couple of books of whether it's an enslaved human masses, basically beneath industrial buildings and such and yada, yada. So it's of course, classic metaphors, classic metaphors happening here.

But where we are geographically and where we're about to get revealed to be is in his dark materials equivalent of russia or muscovy territory right in tartar land and this in a moment gets revealed through the priest because he introduces himself as a father in russian at. And I love that there's really not a religious connotation that's like a modern version of this, just it's used as father every day, usually. But Pullman has kind of translated it into his little weird geographical map, right? Because as we know, his world isn't, Lyra's world isn't exactly like ours it's it's weirdly similar but some some weird different things about it so geographically willow's in muscovy territory bordering tartary

with western siberia and the himalayas kind of to the southeast of him which makes sense because we get to the bears soon and their voyage southeast to central asia. I was hoping to find something way more exact. Like, I was hoping to be, like, unearthing this heap of knowledge of, like, this is what Pullman was talking about, about a city with leaning towers or a village with leaning towers and, you know, the whole oppression from the government and religion. I didn't find anything exactly like that. But I did find some leaning towers, like the Tower of Neviansk and the Tower of Yekaterinburg, or even the leaning Tower of Suyumbayk,

which actually has a really sad folklore legend associated with it that the Tatar princess Suyumbayk, she was the interest of Ivan the Terrible, who wanted to marry her and rule her people. And she was like, fine, build me a huge tower with seven layers as a wedding gift. And if you don't build a seven story tower, I won't marry you. If you do, I will. But when the tower was completed, she climbs to the top, looks down at her people and home,

and she's like, I'm overwhelmed with emotion for them. I can't marry this dude. And she just like jumps. Damn. And she dies. Yeah. So that was crazy crazy crazy bit of folklore uh but the thing i did find that is a little unrelated but is related i think especially

with some of this talk of demons and traditions and cultures being passed around is that this is a real place this little village is a real place in Belgorod Oblast, a federal subject of Russia. And the Belgorod region plays a really important role in a wedding tradition in Russia of the Russianic. And it's a ritual cloth embroidered with symbols and cryptograms of the ancient world. I felt like I was like when I read this, I was like, oh, cryptogram symbols. I was like, when I read this, I was like, oh, cryptogram symbols. Now we're talking his dark materials. Passed down through Eastern Slavic rituals like weddings and funerals.

And in the book, A Language of Their Own, Roshniki are mirrors of a nation's cultural ancestral memory. The ritual ornaments preserve archaic magical signs, symbolism of colors and artistic folk styles kozak baroque and rococo as well as classicism and all of which continue to amaze and they're super cherished to this day and they're a language of their own they've been forgotten but not lost and i thought this seemed like such a really sacred part of this culture from here, from Kolodnoi. The needle has its own energy. It resembles almost acupuncture and like the intention behind the needle.

Or in our book here, we have the intention behind the blade that Will wields, right? The color of their thread has sacred meaning even. It's usually red representing life and it's the main color used generally it's given to a baby at birth this blanket fabric is and it follows the person throughout their life it's even used in a funeral service and a wedding service and it's almost as if the russianic is like a scrapwork blanket a patchwork blanket perhaps almost like a demon in this analogy, that they're given this piece of their ancestors and this piece of themselves from birth that shows their journey.

And it's interesting in a way that Will is being brought into this culture for these two chapters where he's living his life journey, right, on these pages. He's starting his big life journey. This is a big step for him on his own to go find that woman he loves and he doesn't have his own patchwork demon he has balthamos yeah he does he he's got like a he like lyra they kind of have this patchwork family

that they're creating yeah this chosen they're patchworked together they are and i i like what you've pulled out i was kind of wondering, is the lack of perpendicularness, right, of Kole Noe and these leaning things, it almost reminds me a little bit of what we saw at Chittagatse with the crumbling tower that kills a bunch of kids. Left that one out of the show. And, I mean, I guess I can see why. And then what you're talking about here, right? Like, this thing that is given to, like, a child that follows them as they grow up, right? With all of these symbols and representations.

It kind of reminds me even, like, of Lyra and her alethiometer. Yeah. And representations. It kind of reminds me even of Lyra and her alethiometer. Yeah. You know, connected to her this whole time and is very much related to being able to interpret symbols and symbolism. Yeah, I really love that. I love just cryptograms. As soon as I read cryptograms in some of the research, I was like, oh my god, it's almost like an alethiometer. Yeah. of the research i was like oh my god it's a it's almost like an alethiometer yeah which is not

dissimilar from the knowledge that demons seem to have which in that loo i guess is not dissimilar from your gut right yeah and i mean the demons themselves they're also a symbolic language too will introduces himself and tells the priest that he's going south to find his family the priest offers them refreshment and the man's crow demon begins to curiously examine balthamos balthamos is like i cannot be seen and turns into a mouse and scurries inside of will's shirt adorable and really gives a new meaning to guardian angels right like now that will has adopted this angel as his demon i actually think it's kind of a weirdly intimate experience that they're going through here like yeah you know your demons a part of you and obviously both of them just experienced really great heavy traumatic losses uh many several and that they're both

being really physically and emotionally close to each other in this time even when they don't necessarily want to be common trope right like being forced to be in super close contact with each other when they're not at all intimate don't know each other barely know anything about each other other than just like oh cool all these people you love just died too that sucks just different stages of grieving yeah and i mean this air is like it's an era of forcing them to deal with and confront with this trauma maybe not deal with it totally but at least confront what's happening with what they've recently faced in their grief processing stages and their understanding starts to grow of one

another and i think it's significant like just like when talking about the russianic will hasn't necessarily had that experience of having a demon so in him having to rely on a connection with balthamos and trust him right it's just like putting trust in lyra that he had to do like he had no clue if she was actually trustworthy or not he had to rely on his gut and here he is. He's challenging himself to rely on Balthamos. That's a great point, and that's an opportunity for real growth for Will, right? Because growing up, he didn't have anyone to really trust. No adults, no friends.

So this is something new for him. Something else that's new for him is literally this world. The chapter opens with I'm a stranger in a strange land a line that you may or may not recognize has also been adopted by Robert Heinlein as a title for one of his books but it does come from Exodus as the quote cites

and I believe it's something that Moses said which inspires the name of like his son and in jewish and and christian religion moses is a figure who has been you know he was originally passed off as egyptian sent down the river right um and then like adopted and then he thinks he's egyptian finds out oh my god no i'm adopted and i'm i'm not i'm not egyptian i'm john i'm a starkarian yeah pretty much he's like excuse me um and so it's funny because like you can see parallels with will's story right as he's trying to masquerade as someone from libra's world right now and of, Will is something kind of like a savior-like figure, I guess.

You know, it's not like anyone's been talking about prophecies about him with this knife or going between worlds or anything. Savior-like figure in this war about the intellectual enslavement of all peoples, but whatever. There's a couple of other exodus-y things that we'll talk about later this chapter, too. Yeah. Yeah, he is kind of the chosen one.

You know, they say. One of the chosen ones. The chosen two. It doesn't have quite as much of a ring to it, does it? You know, the chosen two. The priest introduces himself and names himself as Atiyat Semyon, which means Father Semyon.

And his actual name is Semyon, he explains, and his father was Boris. So his true name is Semyon Borisovich. He asks Will's father's name, saying, You would be Will Ivanovich. He asks where Will came from as well as where he's going. Will tells him some truths. He says, my father's a soldier. We were exploring the Arctic, but something happened and we got lost in a great fog.

So now I plan to meet him south. I have to say I'm so proud of Will for like thinking of Lyra, holding her in his mind throughout all this and learning from what they dealt with in the subtle knife, right? Because they dealt with accidentally telling people too much information, maybe not trusting other people enough, you know, blah, blah, blah, lots of back and forth. But here, and of course, he's thinking constantly, she's the better liar. It's in her name.

You know, Lyra puts the lies in Lyra. I'm not as good but he pulls through he withholds enough information that he doesn't put himself at risk uh and and it does feel a little off-putting you can tell he's off-put that he's like wow this guy's kind of pushy just keeps asking more and more details about who i am where i'm from are you am i a witch am i egyptian am i awful am i evil am i Am I a pantsierborn? For me, it felt like he was asking, there are weird vibes from this guy from the beginning.

It feels like he's asking, are you a lone child? Is there anyone you can trust? Oh, gobbler vibes, yes. Yeah, gobbler, but predatory. We'll come back to that. Yeah. Check this box, that one yeah yeah put a pet market um and when you were say talking about him lying yeah it's it's also very different right from lyra's lyra can lyra can just spin anything she's like oh yeah i'm lizzie and all these things about me and like makes up names

and there's like a whole story behind it will has to lean on what he already knows and i think it's uh it's interesting and kind of um painful right probably for him to be telling these kinds of lies because what he's drawing on is these really raw memories right he's talking about his father and his memory and i'm looking for my father. This was his story, like, a few chapters ago. Last book. Now it's not. He found his father. His father's dead. And he's just spitting

it. Yeah, now he's just being, like, forced to remit it all over again. Like, I don't know. Poor Will. He has to shove it down all over again. Yeah. Like, he's poor Will. He has to shove it down right now for this conversation. Yeah. And Semyon is really surprised to hear of a soldier from England.

He's like, what wars are going on there? And he's like, oh, well, I haven't had such interesting visitors in a while. And he welcomes Will, calls for his housekeeper an older woman lydia alexandrovna who brings hot tea to will and a saucer of jam to sweeten it but unfortunately those berries are bitter and sickly and the tea itself is as well however will drinks it and the priest keeps trying to physically assess him again uncomfortable and Will asks him why the buildings in this village slope, changing the topic of conversation, and he explains to Will it was foretold in the Apations they turn to blood they dry out they turn to magma at one point it's pretty metal as we've talked about but they are representative of the water of life which feels kind of significant here and the waters i believe do flow backwards when jesus is baptized earlier on in the bible than that you know uh i i don't know i i didn't realize that

i was kind of just like looking through i didn't find that but i did did refine that one and thought that was interesting especially since we talk about this is like will's big journey and he is kind of being baptized with vodka here right he's getting his eucharist in this chapter i guess so yeah and and you know to connect to the revelations and john i mean his dad's name is john john perry yeah he's a holy man john said he was gonna have to take up that mantle too yeah john told him what he had to do with that knife and told him his prophecy right i mean he did kind of give him a prophecy in a way that you have to take this knife and you have to use it i don't know that's interesting to think of i didn't think of that because of john that's really interesting and will you know yeah

and will's like you know what i know your dad dead but i'm gonna just i'm gonna have my own little teenage tween rebellion and i'm not gonna do what you said i'm gonna go find my friend it does feel like and the last two books obviously we had a lot more of lyra and this book we have it too i mean i'm not discounting obviously this book is like lyra eve lyra eve lyra eve lyra eve eve does that mean eve ill are they saying evil um but like obviously we know lyra has the lyra eve thing going on which should only mean if will is being paired with lyra we're going to see him as also having some uh some adamantium aspects yeah absolutely adam adam like qualities and you know you're talking about the rivers flowing the other way. I just wanted to share this fun fact that there's like a line or something in one of the medians in our world, and when you cross it, toilets swirl in opposite directions. Oh.

Not all toilets swirl in the same direction. Like there's this line, I don't remember where it is, but the toilets will start swirling the other direction. So that's what I have for you. I don't know if that's related, but I think we should put it on our Philip Pullman question list. Yeah, we're inspired by toilets. I mean, ducks are one thing, but toilets? Yeah, that's true. Ducks are pretty cool. I mean, ducks are one thing, but toilets?

Yeah, that's true. Ducks are pretty cool. Speaking of flowing waters, though, the rivers flowed all the way from the mountains of Central Asia for thousands of years since the authority of God created the earth. But when the earth shook, it changed, and the water, as you said, reversed flow. And Ochietsamien calls this the Great Convulsion, asking, Oh, Will, where were you when this happened? And he claims, uh, uh, you know, the fog cleared and I just lost my family and I didn't know where I was. And then Will asks, where are we, by the way?

Knowing the name, but not necessarily the location. And the priest directs him to a book from the shelf, taking this time to continue being very inappropriately close to him and touching him. He points at central Siberia, and Will looks closely at the Himalayas, seeing nothing like the map Baruch sketched for them. Is Baruch, like, good at drawing? Anyways, the priest continues to press Will for details about his life before asking the housekeeper to bring food. Beet, root, soup, and dark bread.

He then offers to play cards or continue talking with Will, but Will says, Yeah, I'm interested to keep moving and, you know, maybe just get to the passage at the river to go south. Yeah, that man will not leave him alone, and I don't like it. Yeah, that man will not leave him alone, and I don't like it. I do think it's interesting that Pullman called it the Great Convulsion here, the breaking of the sky and what's been happening, especially because, like, so obviously we know Asriel stabbed the ozone, right? He straight up just bludgeoned that motherfucker. But Pullman's also like inferring

in this series very metaphorically speaking that it's not just Asriel that has punched the ozone in its hole the ozone has been taking all of this trauma and stress and the people of the world have also been taking all of this trauma and stress due to economic oppression due to religious oppression due to blah blah oppression oppression oppression religious oppression, due to blah, blah, blah, oppression, oppression, oppression. Like, obviously, that's a big metaphor happening here. And I do think that the language of having it being called the Great Convulsion is interesting. And I wonder if it's referencing the book by John Fulton Lewis,

China's Great Convulsion, specifically the decades of China from, like, 1894 to 1924, basically exploring a lot of things from world war one uh and how throughout history for china there were many great convulsions would occur or revolutions and huge political upheavals and in this book basically fulton goes over how workers helped expedite the victory in world war one in china being stationed under the guidance of you know the british and the u.s and the french and how they kind of kept france's factories and farms running an improved kind of porps facility things and military air fields and basically rebuilt and restored a war-torn world uh and I think there's something going on here

of that as you enter this village and see all the buildings to the side and mangy dogs and a world that's war-torn you know we come upon the next place and it's obviously been flooded previously and isn't doing so hot and every place we're coming to in this world not just

where the bears are from in Svalbard where it's unbearable to live as we're about to in this world not just where the bears are from in Svalbard where it's unbearable to live as we're about to hear thanks and uh it's not just unbearable for them it's obviously unbearable for people and in the Mulefa chapter we see how after devastation and destruction the Mulefa come together instead of here we see people pulling apart and we're about to learn why the priest says people should be pulling apart from you know banding together with others uh they're being afraid of people being different than you is the big one right like that's something that we're about to hear in full absolutely yeah there's a power struggle in the wake of it and

i think that's a great point that they're feeling those repercussions all across the world and obviously across many worlds because that's what the story is about the priest warns Will of armored bears on the journey saying to be careful and is surprised and he's like okay how can I make this lie work

and how I didn't run into any armored bears he's like oh yeah we we were a long way from svalbard and the priest is like okay okay but you know be careful still because the bears are moving south they're on a boat and the towns fear them and won't let the bears stop to refuel because they are xenophobic against bears. And so is the priest. He calls the bears the children of the devil and says, All things north are devilish, like witches, daughters of evil. Jesus.

Okay, sir. Please come down. Like ignoring all the red flags up until now. It's like, oh oh this makes sense i mean this part actually like is the least weird thing i think he's done like in terms of what you would expect i guess them to do well get out of there i worry about that boy absolutely and so the priest uh continues and projects a little saying that they will try to seduce will to their ways and that they should all be put to death and then he offers will some vodka because you know

that's a normal thing to do yeah let's offer the kid vodka and says every growing man should have a little vodka okay first of all him they will try to seduce you. Him tries to seduce you. What? Yeah, but not even seduce. He's like, take the alcohol, child. And I'm like, don't do it. Don't do it, Will. Like he's trying.

Yeah, it's like literally he's like, these people are bad. Yeah, it's a lot. I just thought that was the worst of it was just like that. He literally straight up says, those people are going to try to seduce you. He says, shoving vodka into your hand. What? Not even like telling you also the effects of it. Yada yada.

Yeah, he's like, you have to take it. Yeah. What? No, you don't. Yeah, it's very uncomfortable. And as if that wasn't the most uncomfortable thing. So Lydia Alexandrovna, the woman, the caretaker, the housekeeper that he has, he then starts to talk about her with the vodka. And he says, here and i distilled the liquor and here in the bottle is the result the only place where at yet samyan borosovich and lydia alexandrovna lie together he laughed and uncorked the bottle filling each glass to the rim this kind of talk made will hideously uneasy so it's a euphemism for sex right he's saying the only place me and lydia lay because we can't you know bang because

i'm a priest uh but if we could it would only be in this vodka bottle right here we made this together this sweet sweet vodka sex will uh yes it's a sexismism right so like now not only is he lording his power of saying you must have the vodka but now he's like making these great sex jokes about lydia to will coming of age indeed god when was when was the first time you remember having alcohol eliana what kind was it like what do you mean like first time i ever tasted it right or like first time i ever like drank it it right or like first time i ever like drank it your your firmest memory you know your firmest first memory i mean i guess i i don't count the times when my parents were like because you know you you ask your parents as a kid you're like what's that and they're like do you want to taste it because they want you to know you don't like it because obviously as a child you're like

this tastes terrible so obviously one of those on like a wedding but um what was the first time i actually drank i think it was homecoming my senior year i want to say senior year of high school oh yeah i think that's i think that's what it was i think so what was it what was it do you remember no no it was just a mix of many different things because i was like i don't know what i'm doing and you know back then your metabolism's like amazing that's 17 right i get that yeah how about you i get that vodka was my very first booze or the one i remember the most and i don't know which came first, chicken or the egg, but it was either green apple Smirnoff was one of them and vanilla, Stoli's vanilla. That's acceptable. The old Russian there.

Stoli's vanilla. And I can never have vanilla vodka ever again. I will tell you that. It's very disappointing. It's very disappointing. I can't drink screwdrivers because the first time i got so drunk that i vomited it was uh it was vodka and orange juice so oh vodka okay well uh yeah the totally creepy fatherly priest

even like i mean ignoring the too close movements he was you know seemed to be trying to give will all this guidance of the way to live his life and what's right about being a man or not right uh and then of course here he is he opens his mouth and he's like why yes welcome to being an adult will i'm a bigot have some some vodka. He seemed perfectly normal, at least by speech, not by physical action. But then he finally opens his mouth for two more paragraphs and he's like, fuck these guys, fuck these guys.

Interesting that he's pushing a drink into Will's hands because it's very Satan tempting Adam in a way. Here's your vodka. Drink up. Drink this, it'll make you taller. He's in such a shit position, Will is. He has to kind of accept this shot in order to leave.

But also it's such a horrible position to be in ethically because it's like, do I accept this shot from this big asshole? And does that make me like accepting that guy's alliance and mean that I think that way too like that's not the man i want to be you know there's a lot for him to take that vodka and have to drink it yeah like against it's like being like forced to like act like you agree even though you don't it also feels like now that you phrase it as sort of like it's a task or a test he has to he has to drink it in order to get past the stage it feels almost alice in wonderlandy

to me drink this yeah that's what i was thinking yeah yeah yep only you know it's like very strange and at first i couldn't tell if I was like imagining it when they said like, oh, the priest kept stroking Will's arm. And I was like, so is Pullman, and then he moves his hand later on to Will's knee and I was like absolutely not no this is not okay, none of this is okay and the fact that he just keeps finding ways to touch Will and then the language at the end where he kisses both of Will's cheeks again and again and is just very close to him

so I guess it's that insinuation of him trying to, or he does molest Will, right? In the way that the language is set up. And again, forcing him to drink and trying to get him to be vulnerable. And I mean, on one hand, you're like, is this the thing? But I mean, in recent years, right? They've uncovered way, way, way more.

People knew it was happening, but way more of the crimes of a catholic priest and i mean yes you know like i i think that is one one thing that uh is worth bringing up it's like that abuse of power over other people right because there's it's not like it's out of love or sexual like lust or anything it's a it's a power thing that they're getting off on and so will in this moment is facing these sort of dual dangers right not only is he trying to pass as someone in this world but there's also that danger threatening his innocence um and whether his innocence is something that he gets to choose to move forward from or if the threat of his innocence being something that someone tries

to or chooses to steal from him and he gets out of there thankfully yeah it's definitely very uncomfortable and it does feel significantly highlighted like now reading this so much closer the power structure is definitely there that power imbalance is very very prominent yeah and because of that will isn't sure how to refuse this vodka without offending him and i mean unfortunately like that is a mood right like yeah been there yeah all been there oh yeah absolutely and you know i've i've been very lucky i've been extremely fortunate in like the situations that um i've been in where you know i've been in those situations and the situations where yeah i've been put in that position and thankfully i guess for, it was only one and he stands nonetheless.

Blaming his family for him needing to leave and thanking this man for his hospitality. The man like tells him again, I'm going to drink your vodka before you go and shows him how to take a shot. Will does it. He feels sick because understandably so. I mean, I feel like i wouldn't want my first shot to be vodka anyways he falls it all at the same time before then again the priest takes him by the shoulders and toning a prayer toward him and smelling of sweat tobacco and alcohol and then hugging him tightly and kissing his cheeks and telling him to go south and will is just walks around nauseated for two hours until the nausea is like replaced

by a headache nobalth almost helps out at one point right like lings his cool hands on his neck and forehead but will was like he feels cursed he's like i'm never drinking vodka ever again and because he was forced into it right like you contrast that with lyra and Roger's first time drinking. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a great contrast because that was so young and carefree. And they got to make the choice to do so. Yes. And Will did not get that first experience.

No, it was in the time of duress and being forced on him. And, you know, he doesn't get the experience where Roger's like, wait, do adults really like this? And I was like, yeah, so do I. You know, if I had went to university with Will, I'm just saying he wouldn't be a drinker at this point. Right. Obviously, he's probably not going to be a drinker later in life. But I would roll him the meanest fucking blunt. I was smoked down with william perry we would get high on a saturday in the library you know and the or outside the library i guess you can't really smoke in a library people are gonna know it's a fantasy we would do that shit we would get real high read a book i'd be like will you go

on with your bad self yeah will is definitely not gonna be a drinker man yeah well it's not gonna be a drinker for sure lara is um and i going to be a drinker. For sure. Lyra is. And I guess that kind of speaks to, you were talking about the offering and the temptation. And again, Lyra does get that choice. And she chooses to imbibe. She, the E-figure,

chooses to taste. Will can be her DD. You know what I'm saying? Someone needs to watch after that girl. I bet she's going to get crazy drunk in her university. Anyways, eventually they reach a town. They've been walking for a long time, Will's hangovers ebbing away,

but Will can sense there's trouble. There's smoke coming from the rooftops, and he hears a gunshot. Balthamos becomes his demon once more and becomes a lookout, and they go into the outskirts of town where the buildings are leaning even more perilously, and he sees mudstains from a previous flood that reach far above his head. The outskirts of town are deserted, but he moves towards the river and hears the rifles crack louder and louder, as well as people that are shouting and screaming. He finally spots them watching from upper floor windows

as an explosion shakes nearby glass falling out, nearby walls shaking. Through the cries and smoke, he sees a rusting vessel offshore and a mob of people surrounding a great booming turret, as well as another boat with great figures in metal armor aboard.

It's the Pantsierborn. Yes! The Pantsierborn. Yes! The Pantsierbjorn! It's so exciting. I know you're so excited to have them back. And honestly, I really love the way this unfolds. I think it's a fun way that it unfolds. I love them. Will finds a man nearby and asks, What's happening?

He says that the bears are attacking, but that the people only have one gun to defend themselves with and you know the bears they just have a great flamethrower NBD and bears with I mean bears as flamethrowers that's like pretty

fucking metal in and of itself anyway the bears are attacking the town for resources as Will had previously heard because the bears are out of fuel and they are working their way along the river and then the man calls them saying they're like robbers and pirates and will watches a bear come down the gangway with the others following a few human sailors tried to leave and go to the bear's side and a man on the human side shoots one killing them. No! No! And their demon goes pop!

It's like a little seagull. R.I.P. And finally in all the madness, Will shouts for them to stop fighting. And a bear roars at him asking him what he is and what he wants. And he says, I'm gonna fight you in single combat. I challenge you. And if you will

stop fighting the people, the people in question, Jir and Mok and Hoot they're like super jazzed, they're like, what is what's going on? This kid is threatening a panther, Bjorn trying to fight him, but Will turns cold-eyed and says, alright, people if I can make the bear give way, you

have to sell them fuel, alright, and let them go on the river because otherwise he'll destroy them amazing i love that he summoned lyra courage and wit in the face of the bears he's wilding out he's like what would lyra do right that's the first thought what the fuck would lyra do and it does very much so parallel her dealing with the bears in the past, right? Her clever witticisms. But also, just to harken back to what I mentioned at the top of this chapter, this feels very Lee Scoresby in that also Will is dealing with the bears and crafting a relationship with them,

as well as having to kind of mend and sew a relationship between the bears and some townsfolk that aren't happy with the bears. Again, very Once Upon a Time in the North via Lee Scoresby. Lots of Lee Scoresby in the beginning there in the first book when we meet him. I just love that

that Will takes over that plot. It feels great. Yeah, and it's also, like you said, very much like Lyra, but in lyra's chapter right she has to remind yorick of the promise that he made once they uh fulfilled everything here will has to remind the people he's like all right well you agreed to do this right and we'll get there in a second because a voice shouts asking for the bear to agree there says it would be shameful

to fight will you small squishy human i love what he says he goes you're as weak as an oyster out of its shell i can take your head off with a single sweep it's so true though it's so true we'll think so too right because he's like true lmao he's like how am i gonna get out of this this is great though i can't wait to hear uh will's actor in the show do this because i can picture this scene in my head with amir wilson and it's gonna be so good because he's like it it's not fair. You have armor. You're right. I don't have any armor. You should give me a piece of your armor and then we'll be way better matched and it won't be shameful at all.

And the bear's like, okay, whatever. Here's my helmet, kid. No one speaks. No one moves. They're like, you fuckers are crazy. And he hoists the helmet up. That was when they smoke. Yeah, right?

What is happening? This is one brave fucking kid. He hoists the helmet up yeah right this is one brave fucking kid he hoists the helmet up he can barely lift it and he makes a huge show he's like this doesn't look that strong honestly and he takes out his knife and he cuts off a corner of the armor

right okay he cuts the whole goddamn thing into confetti yeah he like just starts shaving pieces off and this is okay am i i'm not alone here right like i think you agree with me this is fucked up like that's his soul did we not do you does isn't that his their armor is their soul and maybe will doesn't get that because he doesn't have a soul, apparently. He just has Balthamos, motherfucker. But you're cutting up his soul.

What? Doesn't that hurt? I was rereading it. I was like, what the fuck is going on here? I was like, I mean, I guess Will hasn't been told, right? You know, how the culture works. But I'm also just confused. Like, why is Yorick notick not like more mad that this is happening he's like this doesn't seem like a big deal and then later on he's like yeah sure i guess

i can make a new one and i'm like wait wait i'm sorry yorick did you forget like we spent like a pretty big portion of book one like there's a whole arc about you getting your armor back because it was your soul and now you're just going to let this little punk destroy it? He went into depression over this. It defies all semantics of the books in general that we've been told. And especially because the subtle knife itself is made up of the same alloys as the blades that sever the demons. Yeah, right? is like made up of the same alloys as the blades that sever the demons right so like connecting all these dots pepe silvio style i'm like can we just talk about the male philip i don't know but here's here's how i'm filling in the blank okay here's how i'm filling in phil's blank what i'm

thinking in my head is that maybe yorick is grinning and bearing it, haha, right now, because if the townspeople knew that his armor was that big of a part of him, of his soul, then they would be able to exploit him through his armor, just like what had happened at Einerson's and how he was kind of indebted to those people there. So maybe that's it. Maybe we just don't see Yorick's POV, and maybe he's in immense, horrible, excruciating,

traumatic pain because of will but i guess like you know i think pullman would give us yorick's pov a little right like because he's he's not like a closed narrator in that sense so i don't know i don't know what's happening maybe yorick's just like you know it's true i've grown a lot i've gone through a lot of character growth since that time that we were all in book one. And maybe he's like, I need a new soul, right? Like, to change new me. And I don't know. I was just like, I was just, I was very worried for Yorick here. Maybe Philip Pullman forgot about the Iron Fleet.

I mean, I think he did. That is actually what happened. he did that is actually what happened well Will put some insult to the injury right not only does he shave off Yorick's soul but then he holds out pieces of metal shavings of Yorick's soul to him and he's like

well I guess you'll have to fight without your crappy ass armor bear and he's like besides he's like besides I could take's like, besides, I could take your head off with a sweep of my knife winky face, and it's really clever, really smart, and Yorick, I mean, the bear, we don't know it's Yorick yet, sorry,

the bear caves, saying, you win, Will, and Will's like, good, now the bargain has to be kept, and he commands the people to look after their wounded, repair the buildings, and then he's like, just gonna slide in, just burying the lead. Just to bury the lead, Will's like, and also don't forget to refuel the bears. Bye.

Yeah. And I actually really like the scene where they talk about how Will, before everything can like erupt into chaos, when everyone's like, we did it. The little boy fucking did it. He like takes control of the situation. It's like, all right, everyone do this. And then, you know, Yorick's very, I'm everyone, do this. And then Yorick's very... I'm sorry, Yorick, not Yorick.

Not Yorick, but is Yorick, the bear. He's very impressed with him. We're going to get to it in a minute. And the whole conflict between the bears and this town, it's interesting to me because, you know what? When a big climate disaster happens climate change right in real life this is actually what's going to happen with no magical knives what is happening yeah is happening and not magical bears you know for the forced migration and conflict over limited

resources and who will share them and and also you know ethnic conflict as well as the other kinds. So, great. Awesome. Yeah. It's fine. It's going well. It is definitely a common theme, right? It's going great. Yeah. And again, definitely feeling the parallels to Wheels

to the third chapter we're going to talk about today as we get towards the end of this. Definitely feeling that. But the bear is watching understanding and he realizes oh that kid's clever and will pockets his knife he exchanges a glance with the bear and they approach each other will using his magic not so magic to be quiet and dull-eyed and slow less interesting which uh big shout to lyra in the first book right when she was at bullvanger this wards off all the people but does not ward off the bear the bear's like i would like to see

your knife and will's like the only bear that can do that is the only bear i trust lyra silver tongue's friend yorick bernison and that boy is in luck because guess what this is yorick bernison pew pew pew it's him it's him it's it's such a funny exchange because he's like i'm yorick burnison and was like i know i was like okay no dude everyone's real smooth all right i see and again so we'll we'll ask like all right so are you gonna be able to make a new helmet because you know you know, I kind of just, like, fucked up your other one. And Yorick's like, yeah, NBD. And, again, I'm just like,

then why did we have an entire plot arc where we deal with the shitty people who stole your armor last time, Yorick, and you fell into a deep depression over it? Unsure. Well, they get the boat fueled up, unnoticed by the townspeople, who also don't notice this strange dropped plot, and Will

boards the ship with them, and off they go. And coming back to that line at the beginning of the chapter, from Exodus and Moses. And Exodus, as you all know, is a great big departure. Big movement of many people,

right? And the bears, they are also going through an exodus. They are fleeing their homeland because their home is melting into the ocean, and if you look at any pictures of starving polar bears, it's real sad. And yeah. And so also

the food that nourishes them, the prey that they would eat uh they're all dying or leaving so again the bears are all leaving yorick is also a moses figure who's leaving the panther bjorn to a new promised land yeah that's actually a great way to close out that chapter vodka uh of yorick also being that moses figure really well done that brings us into the next chapter up river we open up river with a poem from again one of my favorites emily dickinson the quote that pullman puts into it is a shade upon the mind there passes as when on noon a cloud the mighty sun encloses remembering so this poem i love this poem and i actually love there's another reference i definitely want to talk about later on that we'll get into into the story about uh this actually

goes with like the next quote from wheels very well. The next quote from wheels is from one Kings that we'll talk about with Elijah and Ahab. And it just like flows so well into it. I love the way these three chapters flow, but the rest of this Emily Dickinson poem, it actually goes that some there be too numb to notice. Oh God, why give if thou must take away the loved?

Obviously hurtful, very much so, gives you some thoughts of what's going on for Balthamos and Baruch and maybe things that might happen later on in the story. We just don't know. Just don't know. I have never read it. God damn it oh yeah it's it's it is hurtful though like when i think of it with burke and both on us but anyway so yeah up river nothing made of iron or steel is a mystery to yorick but Will Perry's knife is and so is also the

plot point about Yorick's armor and he shows Yorick the healed wounds on his hand, the wounds that came from the knife and Yorick notes that alright, alright, I can kinda smell what healed your hand Will, it's blood moss and

something else and I'm like, it's love it's closure, it's the love of his father that healed it and by that i mean his actual father john perry healing him whereas you know in contrast to the other guy the priest right we see priests throughout this whole story they all call themselves a father but they are predatory yeah love did heal that hand you know the witch's spells wouldn't do it yeah but joppery's love did and will says that he learned from the man who healed him uh that he has to use this knife in the war for asriel but first he has to find their friend lyra and yorick vows once more to help he explains that the bears are moving moving to Central Asia over the next handful of days,

and he tells him what Asriel did to their climate. They would transform into mountain bears for as long as it took the world to settle. Will is surprised. He'd been told they were making war, but their old enemies had actually disappeared. Now they only have the Great War ahead of them. Yorick says he'd fight for whichever side gives advantage to the bears but he has some regard for very few humans he tells will of them

one who flew in a great air balloon and was now dead oh you have no clue will but your dad loved that dude too i know they became real bros you know i mean he lost his life for your dad and for you yeah dude he lost oh shit anyways no wonder he's carrying the mantle the other of course is seraphina pecula the witch and the third of course is lyra silverton he says his priorities are first the bears and second his friends but yes he will help young Will find Lyra. Yeah, I just thought this was interesting, right? The, you know, obviously, obviously, Yorick loves Lyra. You know, this whole, like, chosen family thing going on. But that Yorick, you know, I guess usually the trope that you would expect is he'd be like, yeah, my priority is helping that little girl.

But his priority as a king is putting his people, the panther Bjorn first, even above Lyra and ensuring the bear's safety before her. So I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, he has to now. Yeah. They're unsafe. And he has like, let's be real. He's cashed in a bunch of favors for Lyra so far.

Yeah, that's true. He's cashing in another one right now for her. He's like, yeah, sure. I'd die for that girl. Because many people have. have yeah it's normal you know that's what people do they die for Lyra by daytime Will gathers his strength he's been dozing

on the deck on and off yes we are in the Will napping territory of the book watching the scenery change and chatting with the crew he lacks the instant ease that Lyra usually has Wow! Carlos! a job the sailors also kind of seem suspicious of will's demon this is interesting to me it was much like a witch's to them vanishing and reappearing superstitious balthamos keeps quiet but sometimes his grief will become too strong so he would have to fly out to taste the air and the shooting stars and remind himself once more of baruch and his love oh that just breaks my heart

i know it does remind me a little bit of uh the last time we were kind of on a boat like this which was in the first book with egyptians where lyra learns about demons and people that have demons of the water for example or bird demons and how yeah yeah you know they could only go so far without fear of severing from them from their demon they'd have to be there and like the the man with the dolphin demon is what i was thinking of specifically but kind of feels like the anti that right now of balthamos you know having to fly to the sky just to conceal his grief and be able to come back and do his job as demon so sad we have this line of perhaps he thought will had little sympathy though if he'd sought it he would have found plenty he became more and more curt and formal though never sarcastic

he kept that promise at least hmm yeah sad sad poor balthamos like this has to be so hard because he just spent all this really intimate time with just Will after Baruch died being Will's demon and now suddenly Will has a new friend that's connected to his girlfriend to Lyra and

now he has to kind of split that time and I'm not saying that Will owes Balthamos that time but I just know that like this has to be really hard for balthamos as he just was getting used to will and spending all this time with will and now the war is coming and there's no time to rest yeah and i i almost wonder like is being around will kind of too painful for balthamos right does he feel like baruch died because of him and also just i mean maybe he as a being that is thousands and thousands of years old maybe he just like

doesn't really know how to be like hey human who's like as old as basically a second to me and you know really being able to confide in will like that and he's also kind of just feels isolated right now in his grief and i think will as as is pointed out he doesn't have the same ease as lyra he's not as great as that reaching out and comforting them so there's that and it's just also sad you know i know that he promised will like to be less sarcastic but to see it kind of disappear from him, you're seeing, like, that humor disappear from Balthamos, right, that characterized him so much at the beginning of this book, and you get, and you see that joy disappear from him. Kind of like a morbid topic to relate it to, but my dad's parents, they're both not with us anymore. I always remember hearing things when they were sick and when they were kind of reaching the end of their lives that people would say, you know, when one goes, the other doesn't go very far after. Like, it's hard when there are two people who are a part of each other, right? Who have joined their souls and their hearts together

and been so very a part of each other for so long. It's hard when one goes and that it's not very long until the other one is ready to join them as well. And even weirder is that like when I adopted my cats from their foster mother, she said that about one of them that like one of the cats would be fine on their own, but if the other one was on their own but if if the other one was on their own they would be lost without that cat that they were like oh no they need each other

like they are each other you know and uh it's got to be just so hard when like that other side of you is gone you know like what yeah what do you do anymore all of your routine is gone everything your world rotated around their stars but around their stardust so both almost can't get any sense of normalcy in all of this how could he i mean they're in war yeah they've built a life together and i mean baruch defied like what the laws or something right to become an angel to be with him like so and i mean even though both almost was probably like way older like 4 000 years is still a significant amount of time to spend with someone yeah absolutely and like you don't want to spend a single moment without them once you've found them you know like once you've found the way that your puzzle piece clicks.

Not, like, a single moment, but you know what I mean. I've been through a pandemic. You don't need to. Yeah, I've been through a pandemic 24-7 around my partner. I could spend every now and then a second without them. Yeah. But, like, they don't need to. Yeah.

And now they are. Yeah. and now they are yeah well to come back to Yorick he's examining the knife obsessively he's testing it, he's sniffing it, he's listening to it he even puts it to his tongue at one point and he's like

what does it taste like maybe Will would be nervous about anyone else just prodding the knife this much, but he doesn't fear it for Yorick, who's obviously a highly accomplished craftsman, very delicate touch, and I love obsessive Yorick. It sounds so cute. I know he's a murder bear, but...

Yorick then comes to Will and asks about... So I can see what this edge of the knife does but the other edge looks very different clearly this is not for smashing people or or armor to smithereens and what is it and will's like i will show you later but it's kind of hard to demonstrate on a moving boat lots of risks here but when we stop i show it to you. And so by this time in the trip, the river is changing color, meeting the first floodwaters that have swept down out of the Arctic. And village after village they see houses that are up to the roofs in water and people who are trying to salvage what they can with boats and canoes.

Lots of La Belle Sauvage feels here. No spoilers. We'll talk a little bit about it probably in the discussion. But of La Belle Sauvage feels here. No spoilers. We'll talk a little bit about it probably in the discussion, but very La Belle Sauvage. A flood and devastation and people rebuilding again. Absolutely. The river slows, the earth is sunken just a bit here, and the air is hotter as well. The bears find it really hard to keep cool, some swimming alongside the steamboat in the water. And eventually it narrows and deepens

and the great central Asian mountains appear in the distance. The bears look up in wonder, never having seen mountains most of them before, and they ask Yorick, what are we gonna eat here without seals? He responds there's snow, ice, and other animals aplenty. Life will be different

and they'll have to get used to a different taste but once the arctic freezes again they can go back to claim their home spoiler the new animals are going to eat our humans oh my god i made that up that's not true that that i that's not that's not canon at all unless you know you're just invested in humans being eaten in every story you read i mean it's possible i mean it obviously happened in this one i i obviously i don't think it's humans because first of all yeah they're like what about seals if i were a bear if i were anything i guess like the seals sound like way tastier you know they're like big giant hazelnut cream puffs, apparently. And also, probably not exactly like that. Obviously meat.

Meat and hazelnut cream puffs. And also, I just think humans are not very tasty, apparently. Well, I mean, we don't know that. We don't. But I just feel like Yorick's got other-

He's going out there for the other menu, because I guess he's like, I guess we could have eaten humans if we wanted, but sucks. Now, Yorick goes on to warn them just to be wary of all the strangeness to come, and the steamer comes to a shallow area and a halt

in the riverbed. They draw themselves to the edge of the valley and off they go. Will asks the captain where they're going next, but he speaks very limited English and says, they'll be in the valley now and hands him an old map. The captain turns to supervise their unloading and before long, the bears and their armor are standing against the narrow shore. I love this valley that they are in because it's like the literal Valley of Rainbows,

the actual Valley of Rainbows. The actual valley of rainbows which is at Mount Everest. It's a segment on the cliff which is it's going to get dark. Get ready. This is where climbers and other dead bodies seem to appear that can't either finish their trip or make

the whole trip up Mount Everest. So there's just a whole cliff called the Rainbow Valley. The Valley of the Rainbow So there's just a whole cliff called the Rainbow Valley, the Valley of the Rainbow, and it's just dead bodies. Why the fuck would they call it that? That's what I'm wondering, right? But it's given like interesting context

when you think about it in the story that this is where Lyra is, right? She's in the Himalayas. She is in the Valley of the Rainbow speaking to Roger from the afterlife in her subconscious, right? Like speaking to someone who he himself did not make it up the mountain. Interesting. He did not come back down.

He died on the mountain. Huh. And also, yeah, that they're going up there to go, I guess, get this, in a way, holy figure, Lyra. And I mean, Moses goes up a mountain, right? Yes. Mount Sinai. And he comes back down. He's like, what the fuck happened while I was gone?

This is terrible. You were all doing terrible shit. It's not untrue. But interesting. Sad. Sad. Maybe it's, like, full of actual rainbows and now that's also like fucked up there's a bunch of dead bodies well maybe the rainbows are the souls you know maybe that's what causes the rainbows are people's souls i don't know how i feel about that. Mixed. I feel mixed feelings. Okay, you literally just talked about eating people for five minutes straight.

Yeah, but that's not sad. I think we're apparently discussing tasting. The steamer takes off and Will sits on the rock, as he does, examining the map and finding the valley where Lyra is being held captive. If he's right about her location, the best way there is through a pass called Songshen. Yorick calls his bears to mark the place that they currently are and says that they shall assemble here when they go back to the Arctic, and if war threatens, he will call for them. And he's like, go, enjoy the mountains. Yorick gathers Will and they begin their trip to find Lyra amid's the sun, the pines, and the rhododendrons. Resting on the boat had built up Will's strength, and obviously he sorely needed it.

So now the exercise kind of feels nice. And then Will shows York how the knife works. He's like, look, a tropical rainforest. It's real different from here. Laden with vapors and scents. And York's like, wow, amazing. He steps through to the animal calls of the rainforest, and then he's like,

that's not for me, though. And then watches as Will closes the window, and then he says, you know what? You were right, Will. I definitely could not have fought that knife. And I'm just really glad that Will has made such a fantastic, great impression, like, first impression on Lyra's real father, Yorick Burnison.

He's the only father figure all except for lyra it's true it's true especially because you know lee's dead yeah at least like her uncle i think you know i mean he and yorick could both be fathers that's true anyone can be to make up for that's true anyone the bar is low anyone could be lara's father you could just jump over that bar you could just stab the sky start a climate problem and a whole war seven the master the master of jordan college another father figure yeah i mean look if you're a murderer i wasra's gonna be fine with you. Yeah. So they move on, speaking little, stopping to exchange coin for food at one point for Will, as well as getting some boots and a waistcoat to help manage the extreme cold at night. Balthamos continues to pose as his demon, now a crow, helping the communication flow between the men that they buy things from.

helping the communication flow between the men that they buy things from. I just thought that this was interesting because in the previous chapter, we ran across like that creepy priest and his demon was a crow. But here, this person who's perfectly like decent also has a crow demon and Baltham was taking on the crow demon. So we get to see that, you know, the demons don't always just stand for one thing in a person's nature. But I just thought that was interesting. So close to one another. Yeah, that is really interesting.

The contrast of those are glaring. Yeah. One person's like normal. Yeah, it's almost like Balthamos was trying to, you know, clear the crow's name after that. Yeah. Like, huh, I can be a better crow. Yeah, like a crow can be crafty right here. I guess he's selling and buying things.

You know, crows, I believe, right? They like shiny things. And the other priest, though, he's more of like a sort of scavenger in a way. Yeah, absolutely like a scavenger. A feast for crows. I don don't know it don't know anything about it they get directions to continue on for three more days getting closer and closer to their destination but so are the other parties right like asriel's force squadrons of gyroptors and zeppelins are reaching the opening between worlds above svalbard flying

without pause at king agunway's command a galavaspian loathstone operator is aboard this gyroptor and they get news from lady salmalkia so i'm still annoyed like even now in this chapter i'm still annoyed that they like emphasize him again as african king a gunway and we had previously i don't i want to say maybe it was in labelle sauvage or maybe it was in these books discuss the world building maybe it was in the with his dark materials what the world of lyra is like because obviously some of the countries and the territories different things happened in their history and things went differently right like for example the country of Texas. And we had questioned whether or not Africa had been colonized as it was in our world.

Because it's entirely possible that it wasn't, right? Or maybe it was differently so, but it's possible that it wasn't. There's an empire of Niger, which implies that if it's that empire just there, that it was not colonized by Europe. if it's that empire just there, that it was not colonized by Europe. And the name Niger coming from, in real life, coming from the Niger River, which may be from the Tuareg dialect, which is related to the Berber dialect and people coming from the term,

I'm sorry if I mispronounced this, I wasn't able to find the pronunciation of Egeru Nigerian or Ger Niger meaning river of rivers and if I had to like make a guess of like where

in Africa the enormous fucking continent really really big full of um King Ogunwe might be from i would guess potentially he is from the yoruba people but i'm i can't say that i'm sure because i think it's weird because we explicitly get someone who's called a yoruba person like earlier in this series like explicitly called a yoruba that lee meets so I'm like why would they

why would he just not do that again for King Ogunwe all right and I think it just bothers me so much more because we get all this specificity with like these other cultures right we get the Russian Siberian priest and like a specific town that they're in right or we get information like about the galavespians who are also not homogenous right and they're like oh yes and the galavespians they all have different clans that are very specific and these are their cultures in it and different political factions or even like in the first book i think like the first book does a great job of being more specific in terms of like you know we have the tartarsartars, right, or Muscovy, the other ethnic groups, and talking about the Egyptians and where they live and all those.

That gets fleshed out so much, so I'm just like, I don't know, flattening the whole ass super ethnically, racially, culturally, religiously, and politically diverse continent of of africa was pretty lazy here yeah it's really frustrating uh i won't obviously spoil now what goes on in the rest of the book but i'm just like firmly in agreement because he doesn't get a lot going forward and he gets referred to as only the afric king a gunway or the african king and it's like what about africa how about you tell us more of his culture and all those people and why he's fighting like we talked about last month yeah or last episode we talked about what is his motivation to be in this fight uh but he kind of gets turned into a glorified guard man slash commander and

that's it yeah and i mean it matters you know where he's from like is he north east west central south i mean like that matters to people and like the culture that he comes from because that doesn't even get fleshed out and i think that that speaks to a lot of the valid criticisms that people have said of philip Pullman lately in terms of how he treats people of color not not just written but like in real life and writers of color he was rightfully called out earlier this month defending I guess he was trying to defend I guess Katie Clanchy's book which does a poor job of writing about people of color and very condescendingly so and in writing the other and in addressing the criticisms i'm not going to to name the people who brought up the criticisms i think

you can find that and also i don't know if pullman actually didn't say their names i know people said that he needs to apologize to them specifically i wonder if he didn't say their names because uh he didn't want to direct even more you know attention spotlight them like get people harassing them because he unfortunately did add to that and you know in calling out in what he thought was calling them out was ignoring criticisms of of people trying to say hey this is really dehumanizing. And he leaned instead on, like, Islamophobic comments and calling, you know, writers of color who are, again,

asking for their humanity, for people of color's, like, humanity to be acknowledged. He leaned on, like, calling them extremist groups. And I was like like seems pretty different and yeah especially because when he was initially called out on this he did kind of sputter and backpedal uh and didn't apologize right away he did come out and apologize i will give him that i wasn't really expecting him to do so on twitter and like it was a i think he understood in his apology that he was what he needed to say and what he was sorry for because you know twitter apologies are kind of not always full on that but it still is like a very, I wouldn't say recovering, but it's not seldom.

It's more occasional, you know, that you see some things like that from him that reinforce some of these things in his books. And even some of the criticisms that I know you and I will someday have when we get to the secret commonwealth in a slower at slower analysis of it right like it just really seems there's some narrow-minded thinking for him when it comes to i mean especially women of color but here especially here specifically it is king of gunway yeah i just i'm like not only would i like more thought and care given to black or brown right we don't we don't know freaking a good way literally we cannot tell you yeah um we're in africa okay like and anyways um the one thing that i will say and realize that real life yeah the one thing i will say that. Yeah. The one thing I will say to otherwise, like the only thing I will say is that he has worked towards adding

a little bit more representation in the books of Dust. Sure. As far as like even expanding on Farder Coram's skin color for example and giving him chestnut colored skin. Just things that he never quite expanded on in the initial trilogy that's not really a

spoiler that's just it's true what he says about a character having a different skin color and like i'm glad that he is not against doing that in his story and his furthering of his story like seeing maybe i should expand on this after all or maybe this description is important I just don't know if it's enough to really matter if it's meaningful is more what I mean I don't know if it's really meaningful necessarily but at least he's open to looking

at it I guess at least it's disappointing obviously he's not there yet at analyzing what you know again like his books are so interested in discussing systems of oppression when it comes to power. But he doesn't, he's not at the point yet where he is looking at systems of oppression when it comes to race. And like, maybe that's why he got so defensive, right? If he calls Farter Coram skin color chestnut.

Clanchy, I think those are some of the criticisms. he got so defensive right uh if he calls frader quorum skin color chestnut and clancy i think those are some of the criticisms like there's there's discussion lately of like let's stop describing non-white people's skin colors within using food right and um yeah so so that that that exists in that and um maybe that's part of it and I think he needs to learn to understand that there's a difference right because again looking at systems of power the the the writers that he's talking about that he was criticizing and like what we're doing here also we're not the people with the systemic power what we're doing is we're actually doing exactly what i think the books have encouraged us to do which is question and rebel and try to try to make a more equitable world by calling these out calling out the things that have continued to oppress

i hope but i do think like i think there's a part of what you're saying that's, again, it's so systemic and it's very much so ingrained into our very systems. And his first impression is totally like a heel turn and not to accept it, not to think about it, not to admit maybe he needs to understand that more. And you can't dismantle that system of oppression with the way he is confronting it. system of oppression with the way he is confronting it right like it and there's a certain stigmatism for different generations you know some generations uh beyond us that have grazed and walked the earth before us they have had different things economically and socio-economically to deal with than we have and different mindsets but because that oppression that we're talking about is so deeply ingrained in the system like it's stuff you have to unlearn and it's stuff that he might not necessarily be always open to unlearning with where he is in his life and

i think it being called out recently is good that it gives him a chance to maybe learn more about it and understand more about it i don't think at this time when these books came out yeah i obviously don't think he was anywhere near being open to understanding that and it does it does ring to me like jk rowling style the end of the harry potter series you know like we dismantled all this systemic oppression and now we're cops like that that was and he's not you know uh i hope that he's telling such a bigger story with the books of dust but i don't know that he is telling a bigger story himself i guess we'll find out yeah and i think you know like you said he he is showing a willingness to learn uh in the apology that he put out.

And I think he's shown a willingness for growth. And his writing also shows his growth as a person. And, you know, I don't know that he like fully gets it yet, but I think he's trying to. And I think that in general, in general, I've seen him make a trajectory of trying to learn and understand more, as far as I can tell. And so I hold out hope, but I also understand, you know, I'm reading. This is the drawback, right? And I understand, not as an excuse, but this is the drawback of reading books written by white men. So, and...

Yes. I mean, I'm just going to call it out. But the books encourage us, right? So he's living up to that, that the books encourage us to grow, to deepen, and to question, and that he's going through that process himself. And look, he has at least, you know, a half a book left to write for the last book of Dust still. So maybe it's in time

maybe it's just in time everyone maybe it's just in time speaking of which eight hours ago he tweeted um someone said you know someone tweeted looking for some inspiration today so thought if i could find my demon they posted a photo that is kind of spoilery and they said still impatient for part three of the book of dust and then Pullman responded 8 hours ago with it's coming so that that's promising to me next year I bet it's going to be next year

oh shit what if it's not what if it's this fall honestly I don't think it could be this fall because I feel like it would be announced already they'd be doing marketing but I do think like I mean I'm not saying next year is impossible I think it's concurrent I think it's going to be released after the show i think yeah i definitely think it's possible like i know that he hasn't had ducks lately to inspire him but maybe he has now

pictures of ducks for pullman hi we, Pullman. We just criticized you heavily, but here's some ducks. I hope he knows it's out of love for his story. You know, Philip Pullman, Phil, if I may call you Phil. Oh my God. If you're listening somewhere. Again. It's my favorite running gag, truly. My favorite recent running gag.

Hey, Phil, if you're listening, know it's only out of love of your story and that we love your story and want it to be the best story it could be. Anyways, I digress. We hope that our heroes, right? We hope that our heroes and obviously not to hold them to, you know, too high of standards. People are human. They're fallible. But like a hope that people that you admire can continue to to try and and be admirable you know yeah and i i think even just trying i will happy for an attempt hashtag growth

yeah we're changing we're changing all the time too so well back in the amber spyglass in upriver the galavespian spy lady salmachia watches from the shadows as the arms of the church the ccd and the society all agree to put their differences aside and pool their knowledge that's terrifying. The society's alethiometrist is a little better than Fra Pavel, so now the CCD knows exactly where Lyra is, and Asriel's force is coming to save her. They know that too. Wasting no time, they make their way out. Whoever gets there first has the best advantage.

Asriel's gyroptors are faster than the CCD, but also have longer to fly. Also, whoever has Lyra has to fight their way out of the other person's arms. Except, not the CCD, because they don't plan on keeping Lyra. Oh no, they plan on killing her. The president

of the CCD, Father MacPhail, rides aboard the Zeppelin, but little does he know, others are aboard as well. Yeah, it's Lady Salmakia and Chevalier Tiales, who have received direction to smuggle themselves aboard and leave to save Lyra as soon as they can, protecting her until King Agunwe can come collect her.

And apart from the lodestone resonator, they also had brought something very precious to them, a pair of insect larvae. When the adults emerged from the larvae, they would be more like butterflies than anything, but not like normal butterflies that Will or Lyra knew or that I have seen having sex

in the middle of the air, which is still amazing every time. They are much larger, real big, they are bred carefully by the Galabaspians. Salmachias would be slender and fast and electric blue, glowing in the dark which does not sound very sneaky to me Chevalier Tialises

would be red and yellow, striped with vigorous appetites the Galabespians could just keep feeding them oil and honey to keep them suspended or turn them to adulthood and now they only have 36 hours to hatch them and they need the insects to be born before the zeppelins land. Oh yeah, things are starting to get a little bit

tense here. For sure, it's time. And shout out again to last episode when we talked about this being kind of very fairy nymphs or Thumbelina. But I love the depiction of the dragonflies here. Pullman's really held back otherwise on the Galavespians so far to give them that bit of intrigue it feels like. But as they get rolled to the forefront, we start to get hints at their personalities through this dragonfly, right? Salamachia's dragonfly, slender, fast, electric blue, glowing. Not unlike her own quick wit and vibrant personality

versus her contrasting partner chevalier who is red and yellow striped and has a vigorous appetite and i feel like that's pretty significant because he seems to be more ambitious and red of course is kind of that dominant color of war and flame he seems a little fiery and it feels like there's an emphasis on the pairings of these dragonflies, and not just the dragonflies, but also in these three chapters, pairings, having a demon, having a soulmate, having soul armor, having a partner, Zalif, to help you in your chores. We see this here with the Galavespians and their dragonflies.

And we see Mary kind of working with the Mulepha to do more fulfilling work by doing it together in that next chapter, which makes the human isolation feel kind of absurdly abnormal. And then of course Will and Balthamos are forced into

kind of having that same intimacy and working together as well. The dragonflies aren't necessarily demons right for the galavespians but it kind of stands to reason that they're a part of them right that the galavespians nurse and nurture the larvae in a certain manner to grow them or evolve them through to their next stage of life and metamorphosis in a lot of other folklore dragonflies are often looked at as messengers between worlds. And in Europe, there's even darker lore, like calling them the devil's darning needle or the goddess's horse.

Charming snakes following them, stitching them up. They're even believed to suture close the lips of disobedient children or revive dead serpents in the underworld. Lots of references to them being just tools of the devil but here they're tools of asriel's they're asriel's dark materials interesting very very cool connections between yeah how the galavespians have all been woven together and i know that last chapter um if any of you remember ch Chloe talked about the origins of the term the name Galavaspians and something we didn't

talk about I just think it's funny you know the Galavaspians have now joined the British canon of using miniature people to comment on politics one of the ones that comes to mind first is from Gulliver's travels of the place

of Lilliput and Blefuscu and the political strife between them. Obviously, Gulliver, right? He's there, he's huge, and he's like, what the fuck is going on? He puts out a fire with his pee. And it's a whole hubbub. And obviously, you can see some sort of like similarities right obviously i don't think pullman draws from it that much but the idea of someone traveling between many different places uh just like how we are traveling between different worlds and then another one is i don't know if that i see too many similarities between this but uh the borrowers with uh small people who are like resigning the house and kind of the power dynamics right when it comes to how each of these stories approaches the politics and that commentary using small people and here in his dark materials the big people

are the ones who are agents of the Magisterium. Yes, I love that. And I was thinking about that with Gulliver's for sure. So it's fun. And I think Thumbelina is a great, and the fairy nymphs, right, is a great way that it's woven in when it comes to the dragonflies, because Feli Pullman also has quite a lot of knowledge when it comes to fairy stories i feel like that's so significant like i didn't catch that on the first read through obviously

but now having read lavelle sauvage and the secret commonwealth i'm like aha interesting yeah so i mean they're very much part of this like i mean lots of secret worlds it's not that secret i guess if you lived in that world anyway so the gallivespians continue to eavesdrop and spy but there's one thing that they do not learn about because president mcphail doesn't speak of it he's like put it out of his mind he's like that that's its own thing the assassin father gomez who has been pre-absolved of his sins because he was somewhere else and no one was tracking him at all except for us the readers in the next chapter wheels yes wheels our final chapter of the night which opens with one kings there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand.

So this comes from One Kings 18, 43 to 44. And Elijah said to his servant, go up now, look toward the sea. So he went up and looked and said, there is nothing. And seven times he said, go again. Then it came to pass the seventh time that he said, there is a cloud as small as a man's hand rising out of the sea. So he said, go up, say to Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down before the rain stops you. Basically, Elijah prays for rain and he sends his servant to the sea to look

to the sky for seven days straight, looking to see if it will come. And each time he's like, no, Elijah, it's not here yet. And Elijah says, well, go check again. And he keeps praying. On the seventh day, it comes to pass, and the servant sees a cloud coming from the sea in the shape of a man's hand, an answer to their prayers coming morally that the hand represents an answer not just to the prayers, but that relief comes to those who pray continuously throughout their hardship. It signals a downpour of great blessing, especially in answer to anxiety by a church's member to give salvation to other souls. Of course, in context in His Dark Materials, we know that when the church thinks they should grant salvation to people,

like we just heard, it's not usually good. It is not. it is not it is not and you see something kind of like coming from waters at the end of this chapter but before then again who is watching father gomez we the readers are watching him talk to angelica and paulo you might remember them from book two they were a big deal also. They tell Father Gomez that they saw the woman that he's looking for days ago. They said that she was hot and they didn't mean the way that we think of

Mary Malone as hot. They meant that she was like literally very warm and sweaty and older. They're like, yeah, she's maybe like, I don't know, 30 to 50 years old. I'm like, that's a pretty big range, kids. Kids don't know. No, they don't. They actually don't. When I was their a pretty big range, kids. Kids don't know. They don't know things.

No, they don't. They actually don't. Like, when I was their age, I've been like, I don't know. They really don't, yeah. Calling 20-year-olds 60 years old,

I'm like, I don't know, they're 60. Could be 80, could be 5. Yeah. Anything. But,

but they do know for sure she was carrying a big rucksack. She wasn't afraid of the specters or even aware of them. She just walked through the city. Father Gomez presses them for more info, and Paolo says, he thinks, you know, maybe you're here to bring the knife back to us, Father Gomez. And Father Gomez is like, oh yeah,

that's a great idea. You know what, I'm gonna try if I can. They show him the Torre delle Angeli, complaining about the boy who stole the knife and killed their brother. Then they also complain about the girl too, saying she was a liar and as bad as the boy. And you know what, from their perspective she's not wrong. They're not wrong. Not at all wrong, no. Ugh. And

they go on, they're like, you know, we almost killed those kids, but for the witches who came and took them away. And they tell him she went south toward the mountains and he thinks them, blessing them. And they tell him she went south toward the mountains. And he thinks them blessing them. And off he goes through the hot silent streets. Yet another creepy father here, Father Gomez. I kind of forgot about this scene.

I really actually like the way the good show, his dark materials, the adaptation of the books. They really had a nice change in having a scene with the children and Mary established. They really had a nice change in having a scene with the children and Mary established. And it painted them as just like, I don't know, no details, but just a little more complex in that. I personally wasn't happy with the way that plot was delivered originally, but I do like that interaction. And I don't know, I get the feeling Pullman sees them more as like the worst Lord of the Flies kind of kid scum. Lyra will are evil, they declare. like the worst Lord of the Flies kind of kid scum. Lyra, Will are evil, they declare.

But at the same time, as we kind of discussed and defended during our Subtle Knife chapters, I'm like, these kids are, you know, nature versus nurture, helpless. And Lyra and Will did kind of disrupt the children's safety and entire ecosystem and way of living, right? Like, not that I'm promoting it. It's just like, they took away their only hope lol and led yeah i mean it did kind of lead to their brother dying a little who had the knife that would save them all from getting you know soul eaten by the specters

yeah now they have to grow up in fear in again a resource war type thing absolutely it's another it's another exploration of that so agreed totally agreed and i do have to mention like on that same note of that microcosm of the story uh this chapter for what it is i love it right like it's beautiful and it's written with great prose so i say this with all the love in my heart that it is one of those chapters that is just absolutely so on the nose. Like, there's a lot of subtext that's not subtext, it's context, right? It's blaring. There's like blaring loud, like, obvious parallels and metaphors in this chapter. It's a National Geographic episode with a hippy dippy, why can't we all get along

thrown in, right? With like obvious nature parallels that speak for themselves. I have critique on some of the delivery and what it means, but I just have to put out there that, like, Pullman knew what he wanted to accomplish with this chapter, and it all comes through, bright and clear. Bright and clear. Metaphors. We get it, Pullman. We get it. Yeah, what he was trying to say is some birds are good like ducks but other birds no other birds like to a lot be bad bad we hate birds and yeah absolutely and i think i like the prose in the previous the entrance of the malefa's world more than this one but as you said there's some really really clear things that Pullman's trying to show and I mean I still I still feel for the Chittagatse kids and I like the direction they did in the show but I also really like what Pullman does and as you pointed out stringing the parallels with Lord of the Flies I think that comes through and is very strong yeah I don't feel like he loves the

children like we we do you know i think he's like fine with them being on their own with specters he's like whatever you guys were assholes to lyra i think i think he also though i think there's an aspect of him showing like they kind of have a point right i mean they might not be good but does that mean that they don't deserve to live? Yeah. And I think that's a good question. Yeah. It's good to put that against the Tualapi in this chapter, don't you think?

Those kids are like, birds, no. Oh my god. That's not what he says at all. Meanwhile, Mary Malone has spent three days getting to know these wheeled creatures. Meanwhile, Mary Malone has spent three days getting to know these wheeled creatures. The first morning, they carry her quickly to the settlement at the river, led by their thundering wheels on the ground and the beat of their feet. It's uncomfortable, but she becomes much more aware of their physiology throughout the trip. Their skeletons have a diamond frame with limbs at each corner. The basalt highway slopes eventually, leaning downward, and the creatures eventually freewheel,

tucking up their legs and hurtling along in a very terrifying way, and she's like, she's not in danger, but man, she wishes there was an oh shit handle on these guys, you know? She's like, man, I just wish I had something to hold on to. But they get her there, safe and sound, and at the settlement, she sees a gleam beyond of further water. But she then makes to see their homes beyond it 20 or 30 huts in a circle made up with wooden beams covered with some sort of waddle and dob mixture on the walls and thatched roofs i didn't know i had a feeling of what waddle and dob was like i've googled my way around it but i did think it was very interesting that it's like a composite building method almost like you know when you paper mache but like big scaled up scaled

up used for making walls and buildings in which basically a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material like wet soil clay animal shit straw yeah i thought that was interesting it's just like kind of like a paper mache yeah very cool and you know using that method we see that some of the creatures allegedly are repairing a roof hauling in that out of the river getting brushwood for fire and mary's like so they fire language in a society and then mary realizes that these beings aren't creatures they're people they may not be human but they are people and it's not them they're us she thinks really seeing those connections and i i love that about mary and also i though i am wondering okay so how come the panther bjorn aren't people

and i wonder this like constantly i'm like i don't understand why the malefa are not considered like while why the malefa are considered people in the panther bjorn or not that's all well i think the first thing is pov right like we're getting this through Mary's POV. We don't get the pants you're born through people that would necessarily think of that difference. Will and Lyra don't think that there's a difference between them. You know, like they don't think them or us. They think, ah, those bears are interesting

and they do this. Mary does think that way if she's trying to understand things. I just don't think like we're seeing them necessarily through that. Now, however, I want to say that I do think that's of she's trying to understand things where i just don't think like we're seeing them necessarily through that now however i want to say that i do think that's the point like of these few chapters and of for example the bears as they're fighting for resources for survival i mean right that's the point right like that pullman's like they deserve to live there are people that are you know they have a society and their society has been

fucking devastated because of asriel right now and they deserve to still live it's just interesting because the bears are the they themselves are the ones who keep uh reinforcing they're like no we're animals all right we don't have souls we're not like you all right you're weird and um and even the omniscient narrator right even in will's chapter they're all like so the humans didn't notice will doing his cool invisible magic but yorick who is not human and is an animal saw what he was doing and was like interesting so anyway i will say um that like i find that interesting too because and i wonder if that's commentary in some aspect i wonder if it's pullman pullmaning or if it's commentary on the aspect that like in christianity animals

and this chapter specifically animals aren't looked at as being the same and we'll talk about it as we go forward as humans right like having souls like we do so i know that's a big part of it but it's just like he's making that point you know so like yeah are you tie it together phil i i guess i guess you know if if they were then cutting up someone's soul that much would matter yeah would have a big difference and you can't be like i'm just gonna make more like a like the liver and yeah so clearly that's a difference but anyways Cancer Bjorn writes

and yeah so Mary thanks the wheeled person that gave her a lift but realizes that she actually doesn't know what to call them yet she rests on the term friend she's like this is my friend and when she says thank you he imitates her and goes, angu.

And the others also repeat it and they just laugh at her. They're like, angu. Angu. Angu. I love that. I think it's so cute. And they just like, yeah, they repeat it. They're adorable.

And throughout the next few days, she actually learned so much about them. She thinks that it feels like she's back in school again. And they learn about her, too. Her hands, her joints, knuckles, fingernails. Watching when she picks up her rucksack and how she eats. In return, they let her feel their trunks, which are flexible and strong enough to crush her head. And not only can they be used for both delicate and strong dexterous tasks but she notices they also use them to communicate they move their trunk to you know modify sound so each word

so words that sound like cha for example mean water when they sweep their trunk side to side yeah i love this it reminds me you know some languages they're like tonal or also like even even sign language right like there's emphasis and how something is gesticulated um can mean different things and i love that combination between the verbal and the signing here and that learning a new language is so it's such a big part of this book series right we see it with lyra and the lithiometer in book one we see it when it comes to the cave or even with the yi jing and you know mary meeting and learning about the malefa it's a great parallel to will meeting and learning about

the panzerbjorn the the trunks of the malefa though are curled up at the tip um when they curl it at the tip and they say, Chuh, that one means rain. Curled under means sadness. And it means shoots of grass when flicked quickly to the left. And so Mary's like, I mean, clearly, we don't have a trunk, but she imitates this with her arm, trying to learn their language. And they realize what she's doing and they're delighted with her. And I think that's what's so great. Like Mary does a lot of effort to assimilate. she doesn't make the malefa cater to her she's being she's learning

their culture and she's like i'm here and i should learn about them rather than imposing and exerting power over them and they're also so welcoming of her too right uh they're not great at speaking human language mary has the ability to be the one who can meet them where they are more they mostly speak in the wheeled people's language but she does teach them to say Anku grass tree, sky, river

and even her name this is really hard to say you've got a stupid name Mary this is a dumb name you can't even roll around no they're very nice to her and they teach her their name right they call themselves the mulefa as people but each individual was a zalif she wasn't yet able to imitate the subtle differences for gender but she does start her own dictionary and writes it all down she realizes she should probably consult the ijing

at some point about being here. She's like, you know, I'm starting to have a little too much fun. Should I actually be here? And she asks it if she should, or if she should be continuing on her trip elsewhere. And it says, keeping still so that restlessness dissolves, then beyond the tumult, one can perceive the great laws. It went on as a mountain mountain keeps still within itself, thus a wise man does not permit his will to stray beyond his situation. She doesn't realize, but the Mulefa join in a circle around her, watching her, and they ask her permission to look at her oracle, watching and enjoying her handiwork. I loved this, also. I thought this was a really nice part from this they they like to watch her take her thumbs and do a over and over thumbed opposite forefinger movement which

is what ama was using at that exact same moment in lyra's world as a charm to keep evil spirits away yes i found that awesome and fascinating but like ah that's technically a charm that you're doing Mary Malone and that Amma's doing it I love that it says like actually it's happening at the same moment that's so interesting and it is

a fun movement to do actually but the story brings attention to her thumbs of course and the dexterity of both people as a promise of ability in society and it's also worth noting that just a bit ago they point out that oh yes the panther bjorn yorick he has thumbs that makes them cooler bears and just like for the malefa they have their trunks and that um i do also think it's interesting that one of the motions that mary likes to demonstrate and do uh i don't know if any maybe you readers

have seen it maybe you haven't but i grew up doing it every now and then because i was bored they did it also in one episode of the adventures of pete and pete on nickelodeon i was like hey i know that thing that you do in your board of this is the church this is the steeple open the doors and see all the people but Holman doesn't write about the open the doors and see all the people part so I just thought it was funny that she does the motion for church and steeple

in this series specifically but no doors no people yeah only church and steeple only the building and the institution she doesn't believe in that institution any longer so it makes sense yeah but that's part of the fun of the fingers when you open your hands to show open the doors and see all the people but those doors aren't open to her anymore that's true so the malefa don't get to see the cool hand motion. Sorry. Blame it on her.

They examine her yarrow stalks and her book, and she feels really reassured by her message as they do this. She's like, wow, I should continue doing this is what that meant, and I should keep learning. They live monogamously in couplings, and their offspring have long childhoods, at least 10 years, and they could not yet manage the seed pod wheels themselves due to their size. So yes, they had training feet instead of training wheels. They had to move like grazers on four feet, a little clumsy, like they're in the wrong element. Like when cats walk on grass, you know? Just like, ah, what's that?

Actually, no, I don't know. Oh, man, put a cat on grass that's never felt it before. It's funny as hell. Wow. I digress. You know, just pokey. Just like, what's that? Actually, no, I don't know. Oh, man, put a cat on grass that's never felt it before. It's funny as hell. I digress. You know, just pokey. Just like, what's this? What's this? The speed and power and grace of the adults was startling by contrast,

and Mary saw how much a growing youngster must long for the day when the wheels would fit. She watched the oldest child one day go quietly to the storehouse, where a number of seed pods were kept and try to fit his foreclaw into the central hole, but when he tried to stand up, he fell over at once, trapping himself, and the sound attracted an adult. The child struggled to get free, squeaking with anxiety, and Mary couldn't help but laughing at the sight, at the indignant parent and the guilty child who pulled himself out at the last minute and scampered away. I love this. I love this passage.

It's just showing their life and that they're just like a normal family, right? The kids trying to grow up too soon and getting caught in the act. Yeah. Or maybe like the kids being like, what if I tried to go into the driver's seat of the car? Nope. It's kind of the car? Nope.

It's kind of like that. Yeah. A similar feel, but higher stakes with the car, I guess. You could hurt yourself. Maybe you could get hurt yourself here, right? Getting trapped under a wheel. Anyway, Mary notes that the seed pod wheels are of the most importance to their society, and they spend lots of time maintaining their wheels cleaning it repairing cracks she remembers that oil that she found on her fingers from the first seed pod and gets permission to look closer at azalea's claw the claw seems to be thick with

the fragrant oil and she begins to wonder so what did come first the wheel or the claw the rider or the tree the chicken or the egg, but not that because they don't have that in this world. That'd be silly. And then Mary notices the third element of how this all comes together, the geology. The malefa couldn't ride without having natural highways. So some of the mineral in the roads must be resistant to weathering or cracking, right? The flows that we see that create natural roads. So Mary begins to see the way everything is linked together and it's managed by the Malefa.

And I do think that this is smart and strong. You know, this comes back to what you were talking about, Chloe, about how it feels very much like a national geographic thing. And there's sort of a subtlety of like how this is talking about evolution right which uh at that time and probably still is i know was a big discussion of should evolution be taught in schools or not during the the publication of this book series i think that was a contemporary discussion there's always one of those i guess and i i will say i don't know that evolution,

so I think at the time, you know, this is a commentary, this is sort of a religious or social commentary. I will say that I don't know that evolution actually always works like this, my understanding. Granted, I haven't read as much probably. But natural selection doesn't always mean like that something like evolves to perfectly do this one thing. It means, like, it evolved, that happened to work, and it didn't die out. Great job. Great job, team. Yeah. And I do love, though, along that same note of how, like, this also is showing us just, like, generations of Mulefa have existed, right? Yeah. generations of mulefa have existed right yeah that this road is packed down uh that this road these natural highways they've actually been created by these mulefa you know like they

wouldn't have formed had they not existed and been here to keep impacting the road and make their highways yeah absolutely i i like that. The landscape itself, right? Mm-hmm. What was it? Especially as we have the bears leaving their natural landscape, you know? Yeah. We see them, the Mulefa, chased out of theirs. Yeah, the geography reflects the people.

Mm-hmm. And the Mulefa knew every location, every herd, every grazer, every grass. That's actually impressive. Mary had watched them cull a herd of the grazers, dispatching them and breaking their necks quickly and efficiently, skinning and then butchering the animal. Yes, even trimming the fat and separating it. Then they hang the meat up to dry and soak the skins and tan them. So I guess they're making what grazer charcuterie yep then of course the oldest child of this family is playing with a set of horns pretending to be a grazer

making the other children laugh and i'm like whoa you're just teaching that prejudice to your children respect your meat you know what i mean i was like i was like this is a little insensitive so see finally a negative about the mulefa. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, I would pretend to, I would bear cow horns and be like, yeah, I'm a cow. You don't deserve that beef. Mary is feasted very well with the Mulefa that evening, complete with not only the fresh grazer meat, but also fresh fish they caught. Later, she watches them tie knots with their trunks to catch fish. For a moment she thinks to herself of what an advantage she has, right?

That she has two hands. She can tie knots all on her own with no one else. But then she thinks, wow, I can tie these all on my own with no one else. And she realizes this isolates me from others. That I don't need anyone else. It's not necessarily a good thing that I can do it all on my own. And she thinks perhaps all human beings were like that. I love that.

I love that so much that she realizes human to be human is to be lonely. It is a human condition. That's what the AT field in Evangelion is about. Oh, my God. It's true. That's literally what it's about. But yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that ponderance

of hers. And it also kind of hits hard when you think about it, while technically not human, but in the context of Baruch and Balthamos. Yes. Yes. Sad hours.

And from that moment on, Miri's like, you know, I'm just going to share the task with a female as a leaf. She has one that is in particular her friend, and I just love that she's like, all right, you know what? Fuck it. I want friends, too. I'm going to just use one hand, and we're going to tie knots together. Awesome.

The Malefa send out a group to check on the health of their seed pod trees, as well as bring back harvest. Mary is curious how this benefits the trees, but one day she gets the seed in action. A loud crack happens, and everyone suddenly halts, surrounding someone with a broken wheel. They remount them with a spear, but they take the broken wheel back to the settlement, carefully, within a cloth. At the settlement, they open it and take out the seeds, which are a little pale oval as big as

Mary's fingernail, examining them. They explain that to crack the seeds, the seeds really need constant pounding, and that the seeds are very difficult to germinate without the constant pounding. And so without the malefa, the trees would just die. Yes.

I love this. Again, the microcosm of the story uh that differencing christianity of people and animals right christianity thinking the differences were the only ones that see death coming but obviously as we're about to see the mulefa see death coming they know what it means uh we're not the only ones with intelligence and with a soul, you know, humans think that we're the only higher beings made up of God's power under Christianity and under the authority, but Mary knows that that's not true, and she looks for the answers to show that to her every day,

that that's not true, and she can clearly see the Mulefas have souls, bigger souls than some of the people in the story from the authority, giant beating hearts, and that humans aren't the only all-powerful species with control over land in fact like the mulefa have found a way to be sustainable with the land and work with the land and you know respect the land they live upon this is the whole story but told through a microcosm of nature through the Mulefa with Father Gomez being paralleled in the Tualapi.

Absolutely. And I, you know, that stands out so much, what you're saying about how they've learned to live together with the land and very sustainable in, you know, following those chapters that feel very much like they're about climate change and reaction to it. I don't know. I have other thoughts regarding that. All these people have been thrown into chaos, as you said, because of that. I mean, was it worth it because of As know his mission of we need to overthrow the authority right and and ascertain freedom but also it's like at what cost like why who gets to decide the cost that all these people get fucked because of that yeah i don't know i guess it's still gonna happen right yeah and i think it to me it is also kind of like a, the justification of like, yes, all these people must suffer for this one greater good, but like, who actually suffers for it? Yes.

It's very imperialist, in my opinion. with that i do um especially because like we're watching the people that suffer right now and seeing like them fleeing from the climate change and see like yeah people even the people with the bears fighting like those people don't really have anything to do with it other than they just are scared to give up their fuel because they think the bears are scary and gonna kill them but it's really like no the bears were just driven from their home and if you had the kindness to reach out and say let's get you on your way and help you or to even ask which they didn't they live in fear because that's how they're told to live sheeple absolutely the sheeple the bears everyone can just be friends with the bears and cuddle and hug them this is what i think about the pants i love it i do think that's true they're very very warm and

furry i'm sure i love the passage that comes next that each species depends on the other and furthermore it's the oil that made it possible it was hard to understand but they seem to be saying the oil was the center of their thinking and feeling that young ones didn't have the wisdom of their elders because they couldn't use the wheels and thus could absorb no oil in their claws. And that was when Mary began to see the connection between the Mulefa and the question that had occupied the past few years of her life. I thought it was fun that the story called it explicitly that it's the oil, because you would think they meant it was the seed pods, but they're like, no, it's the oil.

And it really comes back again to bears and their armor. No, it comes back again. It's another way, right? That we're reminded of the bears and the armor and how making your own armor is a rite of passage. Here, it's the ability to be able to move and questions about the soul and learning. Yeah, that's great. That's really great. And I mean, obviously, Mary has done so much research into dark matter and matter, right?

And dust. She's starting to see that connection. I think it's laid out pretty clearly here that that oil is connected to dust so before mary can think more about it as they're repairing a hut the settlement is suddenly attacked mary's watching from atop the roof helping add reads to its hatching when suddenly she sees something in the distance a fleet of tall white wings in the heat the leaf below calls to her and she asks mary what she sees and mary does the best to try and describe white sails without knowing the word for his sails and atal who is her friend calls her to come down and she shouts to the other malefa to a loppy and i kind of think it sucks that like they're called to a

loppy because i think it's a really cute word to a loppy and it contrasts maybe to the time earlier in these chapters that the bears were maybe attacking, you know, you brought this up again just now, attacking the human town, vice versa. Because the Malefa seem to be, interestingly, a very pacifist society, right? They don't fight back against the Tuolapi. And it's interesting to me that all of this time, the Malefa have never developed a weapon or a defense system against the Tuolapi and it's interesting to me that all of this time the malefa have never developed a weapon or a defense system against the tuolapi they're just like i don't know fuck these birds yeah and again it's a total metaphor for what the church does right the the resource warring happening with the bears in the last chapters and the tuolapi are definitely predators again but at the same time like the bears are seen as predators so we don't know yeah uh we just don't know i mean they obviously act like

total assholes as we're about to find out right though like because by the time they arrive they're totally in a disciplined synchronized manner it all moves super quickly there's at least 40 birds with super powerful legs and a super swan-like neck and huge beaks the size of her forearm and she reaches a towel just in time scrambling on her back they all get the fuck out but the birds they actually go and they attack the resources they eat the meat the food the grain they try to open the seed pods but thankfully that's far beyond them they're not advanced enough and they finish up by smashing everything in sight just like in a bug's life when the hoppers come

and then they shit on everything dude they straight up shit they take a giant steaming turd on literally all the housing that they just ripped apart and resources they ripped apart and the mulefa return to their homes they're anxious about the seed pods they're full of sorrow full of anger only two out of the 15 seed pods are left uh the rest got pushed into the water and are flowing away mary spies some in the riverbed and ties a cord to herself waiting out to get five of the seed pods back in full and feeling like she was able to finally do something useful. So they only have seven of fifteen. That's such a bummer.

That's so much less, but it is nice that Mary did that. She crossed worlds in a way. She swam across. Can the Mulefa not swim? It's a question I have. And, yeah. I guess not, because they have legs at their four corners, but the wheels probably don't help, I guess.

I don't know. So we end the chapter with, Later that night, after a scanty meal of sweet roots, they told her why they had been so anxious about the wheels. There had once been a time when the seed pods were plentiful, and when the world was rich and full of life, and the malefa lived with their trees in perpetual joy. But something bad had happened many years ago. Some virtue had gone out of the world, because despite every effort and all the love and attention the malefa could give them

the wheel pod trees were dying no what does it mean what does this mean i just don't understand eliana do you just protest oh i'm not really, I just wanted to say that. Sidebar, I love that they have a meal of sweet roots, because Will eats beetroots earlier on. So there's your little parallel. Is it borscht? Yeah, he has borscht, basically. And she's eating Mulefa borscht.

She is eating Mulefa borscht, wow. Though I will say it's a sweet root you know almost uh it could it be like a fruit like eating fruit from a tree i was thinking it would be like yams because it's like a sweet root like a like a sweet potato actually sweet root from the ground carrots are sweet root and so are beets technically those are sweet yeah people use them for sugar so i don't know um so her and will were eating the same thing at the same time wow and just like she was connected with ama amazing

wow i love that to keep our protagonists in mind here the good guys yeah there's just some great parallels between these chapters you were talking about it earlier right like the wheel pod crisis and the lack of resources that are starting to happen and that that very much you know parallels with the pantherborns losing their own resources and way of life

mm-hmm absolutely I mean for all intents and purposes girls gone canon here hereby declares the Pants of Your Born are a people, if you didn't think that was a thing. I think we've said it already, but write it down, tattoo it. Yeah. And, you know, I guess, I guess, you know, canonically, maybe your armor's not your soul i guess whatever fuck that plot point well this of course is the end of the three chapters in our main coverage however we will be doing a very very quick round of dust discussion at the end here so if you have not read the books of dust the outer works novellas of philip pullman as well please log off i don't want to spoil you this week and we will see you next month for our next

episode episode 19 yes so here's your chance to log off because we are about to start the discussion now. Three, two, one, now. Bye. Yes. So I don't have a ton this week, just because there's a lot of stuff we've talked about in the last few episodes. Seed pod oil being related to the rose pod oil from the secret commonwealth. Do you think that feels more prominent now? It does feel pretty prominent

feels very much so especially because the emphasis again it's on the oil not on the not on the pods and that he's like implying it's part of their advancing right like part of the way that they've been able to evolve to live and sustain and provide for themselves is due to this seed pot oil which i mean that's exactly how it's described for mariela mariette i forget her name i don't know why i forget her name but lyra's friend with the rose garden you know that's roses were sustainability and life for her family and we learned that they're pretty important around the world yeah and provide sight right a social lubricant maybe oh my god wow sexy okay well speaking of dust making oh i was just thinking different lubricant yeah that's socially no sorry i thought you meant physical in my head. Oh, no, I just meant how I'm socially awkward.

Sounds like you need some seed pod oil. I could use it. It does make me think, like, is it CBD oil? Anyways. Definitely some Lavelle Sauvage vibes with the flooding and the manger dogs and all that. Malcolm saw kind of similar to that through the fogs, right? When they were in the maze and the manger dogs and all that malcolm saw kind of similar to that through the fogs right when they were in the maze the fairy area yeah it was so it was so interesting yeah to really see how the flood comes through that great great flood vibes and

here it's much more you know like oh shit's fucked right like not cleansing an evil world and more like the ramifications of it whereas the la belle sauvage one was very much hearkening that yeah and it does make me feel now on like look back to our la belle sauvage covering that there definitely was a great convulsion in that story as well uh we talked about how it could have been something shaking the secret commonwealth from the sea. But I mean, maybe it was much more. Maybe the worlds were torn apart then too. I mean, yeah, it seems like it. We saw the worlds kind of, yeah, torn apart in terms of the fairy world, the magical world, and this one.

the fairy world, the magical world, and this one. And it's kind of funny because at that point, right, in La Belle Sauvage, the flood is carrying Lyra and carrying her to safety. And this time the flood is carrying people to go save Lyra. They're the ones going to her. And what did we just hear from Father Semyon about John's, you know, John's revelation here about the waters flowing backwards? True. And I mean, the river very much, you know, this time this river in La Belle Sauvage, Lyra's baby Moses, right on the river being carried to safety. And I mean, that carries through a little bit here too, but. Yeah.

Well, the final thing I will bring up today on our discussion before we go, before we leave you all, is how much foreshadowing of love and loss there is to come for Will and Lyra that I didn't necessarily understand in my very first read-through of the book, but now I want to cry every single chapter uh whether it's the emily dickinson poem whether it's balthamos throwing himself into

the fucking sky down onto the ground into the sky again sobbing uh i just can only think that lyra and will have had these very very feelings apart from each other wanting to throw themselves into the sky to just even feel the stardust of one another once more so yeah that's how i'm feeling it's so sad it's so sad so bittersweet it's bittersweet because like they save shit and they bring dust back and and the trees can grow again the seed pods can can grow again for now but at what cost at what cost yeah and they choose not to do it right because the the whole point is about people must live humans must live to make more dust to save not only all of the worlds but also themselves and yet it's interesting that balthamos does not do that

right i'm i now that i think about it at first i was like yeah baruch is part of that trope unfortunately of kill your gays this was also a very this was published at a different time where people weren't really interrogating that um and i do think again it was pretty groundbreaking to have gay characters in a children's young adult novel at that time and like explicitly so and balthamos doesn't do it right like he the grief consumes him and unlike how will and lyra must keep going on balthamos dies by the end he granted, it's in service of the greater war and good to protect Will and Lyra,

but he just can't hold it together. And at least when he does, his atoms can go join Baruch's. And that's what I was wondering. Like, is he there looking for atoms of Baruch? And that's what I was wondering, like, is he there looking for atoms of Baruch? Well, that's about all the time I have to be depressed this week. I need to go seek some serotonin, hope for a prey for a speck of dopamine across my sky. Stardust dopamine.

So thanks, Eliana. Thanks for humoring me. Oh, you're welcome. Anytime. Anytime. I'm here. I'm ready to get sad everyone thank you so much for listening we will be back next month at the end of september with episode 19 of the

amber spyglass until then make sure that you are following us over on social media at girls gone canon c-a-n-o- on Twitter for the latest updates, or feel free to send us a DM or even a tweet with your thoughts about the episode. Or, if you'd like to send us something more private, you can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. We love emails, we love

chatting with you and just hearing what's up and what your take was on the story during this. Yeah, and of course, our Historic Materials episodes come out once a month. If you hearing what's up and what your take was on the story during this yeah and of course our historic materials episodes come out once a month if you would like to keep up with next month's episode you can find us and subscribe so it comes right to you on google play apple podcasts spotify Pandora, Amazon Podcasts Podbean where these are all hosted Outcast, Acast

iHeartRadio and I don't think I did as many as last time I think that's good enough, you can google it it'll be there we are all over the place, I promise everywhere just like all of the molecules of Baruch's being anyways and if those

aren't enough for you you can check us out at patreon.com where you will get a private rss feed all patrons get a private rss feed and you'll get this straight to that feed patreon.com slash girls gone canon we will have an ella enchanted episode out this month for all patrons in the stranger tier and above and our discord happy hour and brunch for thunder tier patrons and above will be taking place this saturday august 28th 2021 so look for more details over there at patreon absolutely well thank you everyone for joining us this month in our journey through even more worlds and coming back to the panther

bjorn we didn't read any your I don't think we read any your quotes this time but you know hey next time next episode we will get a good Eliana roar but until then I have been one of your hosts Eliana

and I've been one of your hosts eliana and i've been one of your hosts chloe see you next time bye wow i forgot i forgot how to close forgetting everything