Girls Gone Canon Cast - The Book of Dust Episode 4 - La Belle Sauvage Chapters 9-11

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Things are "hotting up" in LBS as the League of St. Alexander amasses power, different factions fight for Lyra, and a daemon pisses on the priory.  CHAPTER 9 - Counterclockwise CHAPTER 10 - Lord Asriel  CHAPTER 11 - Three Legs Please note that unlike the His Dark Materials episodes, La Belle Sauvage episodes will be spoilers all with the exception of The Secret Commonwealth. --- 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 by Alexander Nakarada; Background Music: Long Road Ahead by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3996-long-road-ahead License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hello everyone and welcome to Girls Gone Canon. We are reading La Belle Sauvage of The Books of Dust, episode 4, chapters 9-11. And I am one of your hosts eliana and i am another one of your hosts chloe and i am so excited to be covering these three chapters because this is when it gets real this is like it's happening it is getting more tension things are building up actions happening the hyena is back uh it's happening it feels a lot's happening we have chapter nine counterclockwise chapter 10 lord asriel and chapter 11 three legs and a lot happens in these three chapters like some of it you know we're moving out of the exposition to like really setting up, setting up the plot, setting up some of the characters, giving a few nods to some of the things in the main series of His Dark Materials.

But it's been good. I am excited to dive deeper into LaBelle Sauvage. And not only is LaBelle Sauvage good, but if you're following other things happening at Girls Gone canon his dark materials series 2 is good it is good good things are happening i can tell you fully esteemed i have not seen episode 6 malice yet but episode 5 the scholar was wow it was wow it was a lot to take in i haven't re rewatched it for a second time at the time of this recording, but I will be tomorrow. And I'm excited for that. I was so blindsided by all of the craziness happening in it and some of the really cool inventiveness going on with the plot. And I do not say that sarcastically. Like I mean that seriously, it was so crazy stuff I did not think

was going to happen happened. And it was awesome. I love that they think was gonna happen happened and it was awesome i love that they're blowing me away so make sure you're checking those out absolutely we might reference the show a little bit today not a lot but just a tiny bit i think we will there's a couple of things in the show that have helped set context for some of these chapters and uh yeah and as of the time of recording same i have not yet episode six, but we have seen episode five. And just like, there's just so many things that are so strong about the show. And like the characters, it not only is it like they're adapting the storyline well and coming up with these different ways or plots, interpretations of like how they're doing this adaptation. But I think that there's like a lot of care given to it visually right they're not

just letting all the words carry the story and and we talk about this during our coverage of the show that the visual storytelling is really strong there's something that i'm super excited to cover that happened in episode five it's like my favorite thing ever it's so small but i love it and um you know i just love seeing you excited about things. I know. I was like, is this what joy feels like? I mean, I think I forgot. I legit forgot what it felt like to be this excited about something.

A thing. Yeah. Is this depression? I don't know. You know, pandemic life, but I think we have at least, you know, there's a lot. For those of you that are a Song of Ice and Fire friends, as well as his Dark Material friends, we'd love a Song of Ice and Fire, right? If you haven't read the series, we do recommend it. It's a lot, but we're here to hold your hands through all of it.

So feel free to reach out to us and hit us an email or message whenever we're available but Historic Materials has felt like a total reprieve right like a total just sanctuary so to say of just sometimes when I need to just read something and feel whole or broken depending

on which book you're reading and if it's the Amber Spyglass I love someone called us out they're like you're reading and if it's the Amber Spyglass. I love that someone called us out. They were like, you're gonna stop talking about it because we're breaking people's hearts. But it's not our fault. He wrote it. Phil Holman wrote this. I did not write this and

the showrunners of the His Dark Materials show know how to give it to us. That's for sure. So check it out. I'm excited for the finale. It's entitled after the knife the subtle knife isahira isahitra depending isahitra i don't it really depends but we're gonna have a guest on oh we are and i'm so speaking of things that are excited you know we're not the only ones enjoying this adaptation of the show we are going to be joined by our friend Cam

Candid59 on Twitter and Tumblr, if we're not mistaken. This is so exciting because they are sad about Will and Lyra. They're sad about Will and Lyra so much, just like us. That's what we do every week here, every Monday. We get sad.

Actually, many times a week together. Most days of the week we are sad together. We get happy anday we get sad uh actually many times a week together most days of the week we are sad together and well we get happy and then we get sad immediately after yeah within a three second it's a lot of emotional whiplash that's that's how i described the podcast a lot of Oh my god. It's not untrue. But no, Candidate 59, Cam, she is very insightful. She's very aligned with some of our thoughts about the Books of Dust, for example, and with the show often. So I'm very excited just to discuss everything. In fact, I'm out here like, is this a third host? Is this?

We should see if she's a Sagittarius. We gotta find that out. First question. If Cam is a Sagittarius, fingers crossed. Third host. But you know what? We have two more chances after that because we have one more guest joining us

before the year is up, before we destroy God in 2020. You know what I mean. We're gonna be joined for our patreon special episode we do a patron special episode for our five dollar and above tier over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon this month's is his dark materials themed and the dust podcast is joining us to break down some of the music of his Dark Materials and some of the music that is inspired by His Dark Materials. We're going to talk about our favorite moments from the series,

some songs with some lyrics, some mixtapes. There's going to be a playlist for our patrons to download. Yeah, that's big. That's so exciting. There's going to be a playlist. You can hear some of Lorne Bell's amazing pieces that he's composed and that have been performed gorgeously, especially from series two.

But also in this playlist, you're going to have some fan picks, some friend picks, things that we talk about that make us feel things. We're here to get through the winter together, the His Dark Materials Long Night. And we're going to cover a little bit of this in some ways, not in the way that you think in this episode, but maybe we'll even throw on Kate Bush's Lyra. Lyra. Lyra. Lyra.

Speaking of which, and the story of Lyra. And speaking of the story of Lyra, in terms of what we are covering in this episode, we are, of course, going Books of Dust and we are doing this read through a little bit similarly to how we did the His Dark Materials one. But because this is kind of a sequel series in some ways, also a sandwich series, we are covering material from all three of the His Dark Materials books. So that's Northern Light slash The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. We will be referencing that throughout all of this episode. But things about The Secret Commonwealth, which is book two of The Book of Dust, will not necessarily be discussed very explicitly in this episode, but will be in a discussion at the end.

Yes, we will have a discussion today, my favorite time of the day of the month so i'm excited for that get hyped for that i was allowed to peak i was allowed to peak this one yeah yeah we'll let aliana in she can come on in the water's warm you know what i mean father tam's water it's warm did a hyena pee in it well see we went two directions you went hyena i went father thames well they're both very different directions well speaking of directions that brings us to chapter nine counterclockwise where malcolm has arrived at hannah ralph's house and has lots to tell her eric's father proclaimed the murdered man was a spy. The League of St. Alexander is uprising and the Priory, of course, has some drama going on,

right? Because Miss Carmichael, who's heading the League of St. Alexander, was also at the Priory. But more had happened since that. The day after the assembly at school, the headmaster forbade all the students from wearing their league badges. He said, the form you signed had no legal force and you can wear them at home. The day that followed that, the headmaster disappeared and the deputy headmaster, Mr. Hawkins, he's taken over. He allowed the children to wear the badges. Actually, he kind of encouraged it. Yeah, so we discussed this a little bit towards the end of the previous episode of La Belle Sauvage, and you're going to see this as we talk about what happens in this chapter, but we're really seeing

that big degradation of societal trust between the adults and the children at the school and uh you know a lot of the ways that the systems in uh lyra's world and the historic materials world kind of uphold some things that are really harmful but here we're seeing a different kind of destruction of of these societal systems right with that trust and an empowerment of ignorance uh from the children we're getting something that I think feels a little bit like the sort of tyranny that was happening in Chittagatse, but here with the children inside the school and their own running amok,

their own sort of Lord of the Flies as they enforce it on the adults around them. But what's really interesting is that usage, I think, here of that term legal force and the lack of really any specifications around it, but that use and force of power there, right? What the children are doing, it's not like children actually intrinsically have more power than adults, like that's, we've all grown up, right, we have all been children

and kind of know that from our own experiences. But it's enforceable here because the children have a different power behind them, right? And it kind of creates an illusion for the children where they're kind of getting drunk on this power, right?

But the real power isn't them. It's someone else pulling the strings. And that in turn creates a system in which someone is exerting power over both the children and controlling them and therefore able to control the adults that they're around. It's

really interesting. And it creates a sort of a panopticon, right? This idea of a state or a surveillance state in which you're sort of always being observed and the threat of that. Right. It's like all this talk going on of the

China's social profile, for example, going on of the uh like China's social profile for example going on and the talk of introducing a social credit system and it also reminds me a little wild right it's a little crazy stuff going on but also these couple of chapters have some heavy subtle knife vibes and I never picked up on it the first read through second read through I didn't really get it but now in this slow reread I'm like oh wow a lot of subtle knife going on especially with that children parallel that's great I did not think about that the first time through Hannah asks Malcolm how his teachers have been taking this entire situation and he says it's a mixed bag Hannah Ralph the math teacher calls it a celebration of nasty rotten little sneak who got his parents killed some of the children saw things differently

after the math teacher said this they were like maybe i don't need the badge but the rest don't want to be reported so they keep wearing them malcolm thinks that at this time about half of the children have joined and half haven't and he he is in the have-not category, of course. Of course, we get this line. It had occurred to Malcolm already, and it came back to him now, that what he was doing in talking to Dr. Ralph was very like what St. Alexander was celebrated for. What was the difference? Only that he liked and trusted Dr. Ralph, but he was no less a spy for that. And, you know, I think it's a little more complicated than the explanation they go into here, right? Where, you know, Hannah notices he's uncomfortable

and tells him, you know, she knows, she gets it, but what they're doing has to be different because it's for good. And I'm like, yeah, well, I think that they think that what they're doing has to be different because it's for good. And I'm like, yeah, well, I think that they think that what they're doing is for good too. It's a little too simplistic of an explanation, but the foundations of what is going on are here in the text. Yeah, everyone that she is working for claims to be against the consistorial court of discipline, against murdering people, against the Leagueorial court of discipline right against murdering people against the league of saint alexander and she vows to learn more about what's going on with miss carmichael and this whole league thing and baby lyra but for now turns to quantum physics yeah and part of why i

say that i think it's a little more complex as you know in our a song of ice and fire read through right now we are going through the davos chapters and we're seeing a lot of uh these questions about belief and faith and what's right what's good whether or not murdering people is good or bad and that sort of arising as a sort of ethical question within standus's storyline and melisandre's storyline so that's why I'm just like I don't think it's as cut and dry as what Hannah is saying. I agree that they are, of course, for good, but

the explanations she gives to Malcolm are, I think, a little lacking, but also he's like 10 years old. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, right? 11 years old, you have to kind of choose your battles a little bit. I don't mean in a cruel way. I just mean.

Yeah. There's only, it's like a sponge. Your brain is a sponge, even as an adult. It only absorbs so effing much a day, okay? I was going to say, full of holes. Absolutely. It's porous. So many things.

I'm serious. No, I'm not kidding. It's just like your hair. Did you know hair is the same way? Your hair can only absorb so much your follicles when uh when you dye your hair red or you dye your hair blue it fades faster because the molecules of blue and red are larger than they would be of brown or yellow it's easier to fall out of your follicle your hair follicle depending on how damaged it is it opens like a pine cone and certain molecules

are big enough or small enough to fit in so red and blue molecules they're far too large and they just fall straight off your follicle so that's how that works interesting yeah that's why it fades so faster like when you go in a pool you have a chemical reaction to that hair color because those molecules are like peace motherfucker i want to get out of the hair follicle. Huh. Yeah. Science, bitch. I know it.

Yeah. And so does Hannah, but in a different way. Yeah. Quantum physics, maybe. I guess it's different than hair. Cosmetology. Allegedly. Allegedly.

So, yeah, we followannah and her own studies seeing her next few days she has been searching for left luggage boxes for use and after finding a dozen she goes back to her bodleian library console harry dibden with a cataloging query and this little bird demon yes i like that we talked about little cute harry dibden last time but you know this week i recently attended blackwell's student event with philip pullman where he chatted with a person from their event team sean and mentioned he's done a lot of research for the original trilogy in the bodleian library. Often, Pullman would go to that library, look things up, and read things, and

it just feels so nice to see Hannah revisiting this library, right? Like, it's magical. You know that Pullman was thinking of as many times writing the original trilogy here. Yes, interesting. Absolutely. And he himself

studying, finding magic. In this place place him checking up and entering cataloging requests for the alethiometer oh i love that harry dibden is glad to see hannah he announces they found her a very new insulator just in time because things are heating up he has children and they start to discuss this whole League of St. Alexander thing. He forbade his children from joining but he knew very little about it, imagining it was the usual sources which implies the CCD.

She tells him what Malcolm told her and he ends up warning her to look after that boy because he worries about him, which Eliana and I agree, I worry about her too. There are many things I worry about regarding Malcolm but yes I do many of them I just yes and she should be worried about him right he's in quite the jaws of danger at school and Hannah assures him that she will do what she can hands him a list of the new drop

points and then they part the report she made to drop in the left luggage box came to about four pages written on the very special India paper, and it just barely folds small enough to get into the little acorn. She hides it in the botanic garden in a left luggage box under a gnarly root and goes back to the alethiometer research for the day because she has a deadline coming up, and if that's not relatable anyway she's got a monthly research focus group she needed to bring something anything to or risk losing privileges and she's just like fuck i've been busy doing spy stuff but that's the thing she has to keep access to the elite theophaner right for the spy stuff there's a lot of tension there i definitely think it's significant there's a left luggage box in the

botanic garden at a tree root and it's probably just a little nod right it's pullman being playful being like oh it's the garden here's the bench bench. For those of us that have read the main trilogy. Yes, the tree. But I also love the way, this is way back in the Northern Lights, where Lyra speaks about everything in the city of Oxford. Almost like this giant fungal connection of roots and tree roots. And it reminds me of that. Lyra thinks, like some enormous fungus whose root system

extended over acres jordan finding itself jostling for space above ground with saint michael's college on one side gabriel college on the other and the university library behind had begun sometime in the middle ages to spread below the surface. Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for several hundred yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above. Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone. Interesting. Yes, I love that it's an interconnected web, though, right?

Everything is connected by matter. Mm-hmm. The roots touch it all. This little web made out of people trying to do, trying to fight for good. Mm-hmm. By Tuesday, the Deputy Headmaster announces Headmaster Willis

will not be returning. Lol. No way. And now Mr. Hawkins is just the headmaster, and all the students know why, of course. The bachelors have a giddy sense of power, and the teachers all know that no one is safe now. We have a line. Mr. Savory put his head in his hands. Miss Davis bit her lip. Mr. Croker, the woodwork teacher looked angry

some of the others gave little triumphant smiles most were expressionless most gotta pay their bills uh something really stood out to me this read about how the league of St. Alexandria kids, they're called badge wearers. It reminds me of the guild of the Tour d'Angely in Chittagatsi having privileges and being called the badge wearers of the subtle knife of

Isahir. The bearer, yeah. Malcolm in this position is kind of like Will in that he doesn't want to wear the badge for the same reasons that other kids or guild men would want it when you look at the kids and chita got say you look at angelica and paulo and why they would want tulio to have the knife and why they would want him to be the bearer it's to protect them but malcolm right he he doesn't want to wear the badge to fit in with the other kids he wants it to protect the people he loves uh and cares about and i i kind

of thought about this i never really saw it until now but the badge wearers part about it felt really significant that they're wearing a badge yeah that they're signaling something to everyone about this power that they have right it's supposed to be sort of like a way to to build affinity but for them they're using it to signal power and like they are only kind of benefiting from that they well they're also being exploited but they don't know that whereas will had to pay quite the price like almost died in order to get his badge. And Malcolm's... You really gotta give Will a hand about it. Wow!

Wow! Hire me! But that is the thing, right? Like, there's a lot at stake for Will and for Malcolm in comparison to the kids of Chittagotse or the kids that are wearing the badge of the League of St. Alexander and that's really apparent here. It stands out as a contrast. contrast i mean there's a lot at stake for the kids that should to god say but yeah absolutely those poor kids sorry that was the show version

but the effects are immediate here right there there's something that really shows across the ripple across the teachers there's a rumor that really shows across the ripple across the teachers there's a rumor that a scripture teacher from one of the older classes told a story about moses parting the red sea but was like you know more realistically from a scientific approach this could be analyzed this way and a badge wearing boy challenged this teacher and was like i have a badge and the teacher walked back the lesson immediately saying, I'm just showing you an example

of a very wicked lie and you've caught me and you've passed the lesson. You've passed it. Shit is getting a little tense at Wolvercoat is what I'm trying to tell you. So this kind of reminds me of something, and this is a amusing anecdotal story but about real life and things that are going on right now.

In the Philippines, there's been a law passed, the anti-terrorism law, right, which sort of is very much an act of government censorship that is clamping down on people critiquing the government which is pretty terrifying but someone was telling me about how they have friends who that they've seen they'd be like fuck duterte is a bad thing to say and you should never say it or duterte is a son of a bitch is something that you shouldn't say under the new law it's like kind of clever i kind of love it i kind of love that i i it's just very clever you know i just thought that was a cute story and would share with all of you i think so i think it's adorable except for the part where people are being like censored and yeah but it's like that oppressing them but if you it's like when kids uh and you know it reminds you of the story we read god i don't know what grade i read this in it's got to be younger like fourth grade or some shit

but it was a story called sink the sub and it kind of throughout this we'll get some teacher stuff going on obviously big focus on the teachers as pullman was a teacher right for a very long time but this book basically was about these kids that had a substitute teacher and they would play the game of sink the sub and like saying mean things to be like haha i got the substitute teacher get him to cry you know get him to quit and that feels very much like what some of these badge wearers are doing not in a a normal way though like sink the sub was a wholesome game god damn it that i read as a 10 year old uh very wholesome probably not wholesome actually to make a grown adult cry because as a

grown adult i can tell you i cry very much and i can tell you uh but there's a lot of sink the sub happening here but with higher stakes very high stakes and yeah other teachers yeah i think so i think he's probably read it i i imagine pullman's probably read some maybe we'll tweet it and find out because some of these other teachers are like immediately they're like water down my courses right the pressure is spreading and the students are getting pressured as well malcolm and many of the other children start to get asked, why aren't you wearing a badge? Are you an atheist? And when Malcolm is asked that, he says, I don't know.

I'll think about it, you know, and he plays it off. Some children say, my parents won't let me join. But when the badge wearers smile and they're like, give me their names and addresses, the kids become frightened and they take a badge. So they're being pretty much frightened into it whether they're like it or not threatened exploited extorted frightening forcing them to to assimilate and become part of the system absolutely and you know thankfully you know

some of the teachers did hold out right like mr croker his name doesn't bode well for him but um malcolm stays after class to ask mr croker about a doesn't bode well for him but um malcolm stays after class to ask mr croker about a wood screw question but seeing that he's badgeless has his woodpecker demon make some wood eating cover-up noises while you know they have this secret conversation and he asks malcolm so malcolm why are you not wearing a badge and mal Malcolm's just like, I don't like them. I don't like how they treat people. I'm not about that. And then he asks, you know, as a child would if the old headmaster is coming

back. And we're all just like, oh, sweetie. And Mr. Croker says he hopes so, which is nice, but A lie. It is a terrible lie. He might really hope so, but. I mean, he probably hopes so. That's his job, man. That's his paycheck.

I think the woodpecker here, shout out to Jack Thorne. Jack Thorne, who's writing for the HDM series, his demon, I believe, is a woodpecker. But Mr. Croker here, his demon is a woodpecker making this white noise, this silent noise in the background. It's very

clever, given the whole spy environment that we started to put malcolm into now i think it's a clever use of noise in the next chapter we actually have asriel having a conversation that malcolm can't hear so here malcolm's having a conversation no onlooker no normal student would be able to hear and i really just like the the use of concealing things from people in the story so far yeah i didn't i didn't catch that in that connection that's a great point and he's picking up he's picking up skills you know yeah and he doesn't want mr croker to be in trouble so he's like oh here here's my real question mr croker uh and he's all asking about his wood screw right this is the wood screw mr tap house and him talked about and he's all asking about his wood screw right this is the wood screw Mr.

Taphouse and him talked about and he was all like I'm gonna figure it out Mr. Taphouse but Mr. Croker is like it exists already Malcolm and he shows Malcolm the tool and Malcolm's all excited and he's almost like fucking up with the tool like trying to use it and he's like uh

oh this reminds me of the acorn but he stops himself before he gives it away. And Mr. Croker is like, well, Malcolm, you know what? I don't think I have much time left in this school. So here's my tools. And I think that they should go to a good home. You have a good day now, Malcolm. You go off, young boy.

Yes, and also because he's probably like, wow, this kid's just like way more excited about nails and this kid cares about things he thought anyone would absolutely and you know this is i think a very literal uh manifestation of the title of this chapter counterclockwise right referring to all this and it also kind of i think speaks to what's going on right with malcolm he's moving in the opposite direction as the other children who are in the League of St. Alexander. It's tied together with, yes, this motion of moving in that opposite direction and also this tool that spins counterclockwise and the acorn as a tool of intelligence. And by intelligence, I mean spycraft. and that even on like the surface right malcolm does seem to be doing something very similar to the children in the league but he's not he's doing something that is in fact quite different and i think we talked a little bit about that last chapter and it's really just a bummer to watch it happen because it's like watching the corruption spread and rot right and rot out from the root like Mr. Croker and Miss Davis

are gone by the end of the week it's like Monday Tuesday at earliest both of them are soft I feel so bad for Miss Davis especially because the boys were like she's emotional and weird and angry and I'm like

same motherfucker they're like I can't imagine her being a spy and i'm like yeah she's done nothing to deserve any of this it's interesting because there's a huge assembly by the end of the week where mr hawkins is pleading begging the other kids like please let's allow normalcy to return please stop this turnover aka making me fire these people and and have to hire new people dude that's not fucking easy especially not in the face of this environment like would you want to start substituting what are the benefits the children will eat you up no i'm not going to take that job fucking sink are on a fucking sink the sub mission. I don't want to work here.

And some of the badge wearers are like, we're going to push on. We're going to report Mr. Hawkins. And then some of the other group, right? Like they've kind of started their own division, which is, I guess, kind of a look at Magisterium and CCD, right? That's kind of like the whole joke that these two sections of badge wearers have broken up and they're ready to push on they're holding the line and some of the teachers stay but a lot of these kids end up prevailing to get some of these teachers you know to quit yeah or or in getting them to admit what they've done wrong or whatever. And I think it's interesting that you have some that split between the

children. You're starting to see like how the magisterium happens with all those competing like departments, like in miniature here, both in the stature of the children and in the size. Anyways, I realized I was like, Oh,

that's kind of a pun, right? Anyways, the use of the zealotry is happening in just like the worst ways possible for some of them who maybe really do believe and I think it's likely in response to the way that the educator is right I think that there's a lot of this section of the book that is inspired by like some of the stuff we saw going on in the aughts it's still going on now but like that you but Philip Pullman's very much against in response to the way that educators had been forced to include things

like creationism, right, or got criticism for not teaching creationism or teaching evolutionary theory in school curriculums and that sort of backlash in general amongst conservative groups. Yeah, it's pretty significant here. And these actions don't actually get anyone fired, right? But they do get two or three teachers to like stand up in front of all the kids, publicly apologize to the students in assembly and beg for forgiveness. Were this not a huge kind of offensive religious thing going on being pushed by the government

it would make me laugh because it reminds me of how uh les miserables kind of works out you have this plot in les miserables where all the little people a lot of young people and of course downtrodden people and people that have been fucked over by the government consistently saying that the world is big but little people turn it around and here these little people are like we're gonna change the world in a really horrible awful direction and they're the

most easily exploitable resource here these kids are being exploited so hard but they feel like they're being special that is so bolded in this text yes absolutely and that's a great that's a great connection um to lame is rob there uh i don't know it as well except for i don't know

like the sad songs of and rain will make the flowers grow that's like the only thing i remember right the teeth thing too yeah then i just sad. Oh, and master of the house. Anyways. Yeah, that's great. And also, you know, later at the pub, right, Malcolm is called up by his father to recant his tales of some of the parents that had gathered and are having similar responses, even at other schools. So it's interesting that we're seeing that this is not just in Malcolm's school. Malcolm tells his father what he can, though it is limited as they won't tell him all of the details of what's going on until he decides to get a badge, but

that teachers and parents, some of them have actually been taken, just like George Boatwright disappeared. And he had thought about wearing a badge and getting some insider info so that he could help hannah ralph more but then he's like i don't really want to like do all the work that goes into that like going to church meetings all the time and spending all that time there so i'm not gonna mood that is a mood and he doesn't have to right because his friend eric has not changed one bit he has taken up a badge and malcolm is easily able to manipulate some information of eric and he's all like i want to join and eric's like okay sure man and malcolm's like how do i join who do i report someone to like mr johnson who's a really pious not a great reporting, right? Like just a teacher that's really pious.

And Eric's like, you have to have sound reasoning and you have to write it on a piece of paper and send it to the bishop's address. And Malcolm's like, who's the bishop? And he's like, I don't know, maybe the Bishop of London. Eric has no fucking clue what's going on at any point in this book. And Malcolm's like, like all right let me push more and he pulls back and he's like maybe i shouldn't push farther because i need to be more quote-unquote suitable as eric had said before subtle the suitable knife i wonder i'm not gonna let that go not at all i wouldn't it was the stupidest thing in the world eric god damn it uh this has to be a magisterium bishop

right because so okay earlier malcolm said he takes sister benedicta to run errands usually to mail things to the bishop and here eric's like no i don't know just the bishop man his name's the bishop so i'm not convinced that there is a bishop right like is there really a bishop or did they just fucking say that there was a bishop so that they would have like some authority right i mean if there is in fact actually bishop he's obviously just mrs culture's puppet which is why we don't really know maybe we have this answer later in the book and I completely forgot. But I'm not convinced that there's a bishop. Even if there is, it's more like a signature on the packet.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just a person with a name. It's not a real person. The person in charge of all of this driving it forward is absolutely Marisa. Yeah, I mean, if there is a bishop, he's, as you said, he's signing his name and like marissa's the one who's like taking him away or whatever if there is that motherfucker is whipped exactly so she just needs a man to sign things or like for whatever so the conversation falls to miss carmichael and malcolm fishes to learn about her position and Eric's like she's just a deacon and Malcolm says

like if he knows why she'd be talking to any of the nuns at the priory and he thinks oh I don't know maybe they're helping to take in teachers and parents who need re-educating oh honey that's not I mean listen when I was

10 11 years old I was an idiot I'm still an idiot but like I was a bigger idiot then I need you to understand that I remember on 9 11 in 2001 I had a neighbor who was a middle schooler he was in 8th

grade here in the US which is age 14, 15. And his name was Dustin. He was an eighth grader. And he was all, oh, planes crashed into the trade center. And I was 10 years old in fourth grade. And I was like, train in the trade center? What does that mean?

Like, I didn't know what things were i was 10 they don't know what things are so it's really sad because this is what they think re-education means they don't understand what a re-education camp actually is uh i get that like i'm just saying like they hide that from us all politics on any global level they hide this shit from us they don't tell you that they assault and torture and rape and murder people like you don't just learn that when you're 10 years old that governments do that to people uh you have to learn it yourself and research yourself and come across the right politics as a kid and google shit nowadays i guess and it's interesting what's politics they don't. They haven't been allowed to learn. And that's actually how a country controls people, right?

How is a person going to understand their politics when you refuse to let them and you keep changing the game and make them work for 90% of their life instead to keep up and survive? How could they learn about culture or politics? How could they? It makes me think a little bit of that pink floyd song um the wall yeah that's like the goal here with what they're doing um but yeah absolutely it's you know i think we're privileged that we don't have to learn it in like life like in terms of actually like the experience of you know watching people that we know and love being taken away uh in into re-education camps aka concentration camps so but i mean of course eric wouldn't know right he's the one who's like yeah it's totally fine like he he's part of the

system right like his so malcolm asked because he also doesn't completely understand he knows a little bit more than everyone else because he is going counterclockwise but he's like so is the bishop of the boss of it all then and i'm like again malcolm i don't know about that and eric says well he's not supposed to tell him pretty much any of this unless it's convincing him to join but you know that's never stopped eric before. Malcolm's like, oh, but I am really considering it. Everything you're saying is so convincing. I want to join every time you tell me more things. He's such a ham.

He really is a ham. This is sad, though, right? Like, to watch him have to lie to Eric. And Eric's not, like, a great kid. Like, no shitting on Eric, you know? He is a product of what he's grown up, right? I mean, his dad works for the courts. And, look, you're either soulless or demonless to be able to keep working for the courts with no heartache.

Or you're maybe not morally there, right? Like, he doesn't seem like he's working on the good guy side. But has Eric ever been dishonest with Malcolm? No, Eric's very true true and his dad seems true too and i don't know i mean eric's not a bad kid but it's hard to watch this too honest kind of separation this severing happening between him and his friends because a as an only child as you understand eliana like you know malcolm's an only child he lives in kind of a fast-paced weird world that isn't the same as

other kids he's had to grow up a lot faster than other kids and now he really has to in the coming chapters and it's showing this moral load that he's carrying for hannah ralph right like he's 11 he should be on the playground playing four square which is the most fun playground game if you have four squares available right and girls have cooties or whatever you want to say or dust or whatever the fuck they have but instead he's out here. All girls stay away from all of them Malcolm yeah all girls have dust

especially those ones Malcolm and instead he's trying to weasel information out of Eric in order to put together this huge mystery plot that's what he's working on as an 11 year old-old, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's true. He is being, he's being brought into a different world.

And that's a big part of, I think. A dustier environment. It is, and that's a big part of, like, what the books, even the main series explores, right? What different worlds look like amongst the different people. It's something that Lyra learns a lot of in the first book. So,

absolutely. Malcolm decides to go to a different world after all this by heading to the Priory that Thursday, hoping to discover Miss Carmichael's plots, and he startles Sister Fenella who enlists him to help cut up potatoes for dinner. And they discuss Lyra and how she's making a secret language with Pan.

Oh my god, that's the cutest shit in the world, bitch. She's like little, she's not even a real bean, and yet she's out here making a language. I can imagine her just going to Pan and then... I'm just so proud of her, you know? We should be. Everyone should be proud of Lyra. The conversation turns to Miss Carmichael and Sister Fenella tells Mal that,

you know, I don't really know where that woman comes from and assumes that she's with child services. Malcolm explains that, well, she came to our school as the front of the league of saint alexander and asks if panella had heard of the saint and sister finnell's like you know what malcolm there are just so many saints and when he tells her what alexander was known for she brushes him off telling him you know that sort of thing doesn't really happen anymore. And Malcolm's like, oh, really?

Interesting. I don't know about all that. We've literally heard some parents have been taken. Anyway, Sister Benedicta bursts in on this and she's like, can I borrow you? Malcolm takes him aside and then she sternly asks some questions of her own. Specifically, she asks about Miss Carmichael's appearance at his, and he tells her all. She absorbs the information carefully, telling him their business with Ms. Carmichael has hopefully concluded, and Nettie's like, can I see Lyra? And she's like, no, but you can see her new room, which is this beautiful warm cream color, smells

like fresh paint, lovely rugs, less doom and gloom, and Benedict is like, Malcolm, what else do you think should be in the room? Go work and plan things with Mr. Taphouse, and so he does. Afterwards, Malcolm has difficulty getting to Hannah Ralph's due to the overflowing waters, and when he arrives, she's filling bags with sand to prepare for what

the policemen are warning will be a flood. They rush inside to get dry, and he begins to tell her the goings-ons of the chapter, but maybe Hannah Ralph should just listen to our podcast. And Hannah, though, has news for Malcolm. She knows who's behind the league.

It is Lyra's mother! Gasp. Malcolm thinks maybe Miss Carmichael was supposed to check in on Lyra for her, but Hannah thinks, I don't know, Mrs. Coulter doesn't seem to care about Lyra. That might be for some other reason, but Sister Benedicta got rid of Miss Carmichael anyway, and the CCD men haven't revisited the trout. So maybe they're free of the issue after all,

and they set to finding malcolm some new books to read narrator voice they were not free of the issue after all they were not that brings us to chapter 10 lord asriel i want to have a disclaimer that maybe maybe Chloe is soft on Asriel in this chapter. Chloe has a very nuanced take on Asriel and Chloe is here to shine a light, to shine

a full moon, a moon upon Asriel for me to understand. No, no, no, I'm here to shine a Lyra on Asriel. Fuck the moon, okay? Fuck the moon. Baby Lyra, that's my shit. Sokka did try.

Leave her out of this. So, chapter 10. Lord Asriel. Back to Malcolm. He's helping Mr. Taphouse finish screwing in the heavy duty shutters with this new tool that he received he's super jazzed and Taphouse lets slip

that you know this should keep them out and Malcolm's like they? who is they in this scenario when Mr. Taphouse teaches him a new great word malefactors evil doers ah they got mal like Malcolm a new great word malefactors, evildoers ah

they got mal like Malcolm that's the insight that I have, Malcolm's like what kind of evildoers and Mr. Taphouse tells him pay that no mind and then launches into a discussion of how there are all sorts of evildoers even spiritual ones and is like

ghosts are the least of it boy night gas specters apparitions all they can do is say boom and frighten you we have a new one a new term of the day of the night malefactors first it was convalescing now we're at malefactors but we also know some of these spirits that tap house is speaking of are not really all harmless necessarily right like specters of another world or what about instead of night ghasts necessarily we have cliff ghasts that terrorize the main three books now that being said there may be something related to the idea of the secret

commonwealth of magical creatures that we learned about in the future and of course how lyra helps the spirits and the amber spyglass who are trapped in the underworld and the harpies with her kindness and maybe even spiritual beings uh just you know, living their life, having somewhere to live. Spiritual sanctuary kind of feels important in this story, not just regular sanctuary. And people are out there destroying their spiritual world. That is a great point. That is a part of this story and something that's part of the main books as well. I have nothing that like is significant.

I don't know why. I just think of the cliff gas not as like ghost things I think of them as like cute but scary mountain gremlins you know the show put them in series

one for a little bit we haven't seen them since but we have seen them we've seen them but you couldn't see them well but that's how I think of them because you remember the old the biggest oldest cliff gas is telling the story about Isahitra and I just think of him as like a huge

fuzzy huge fuzzy cliff gas dude just laughing as he tells the story he's like it's called Godkiller and I'm just like that's my envisioning of that story that's like the Waldron Statler like, it's called Godkiller! And I was just like, that's my envisioning of that story. That's like the Waldron Statler.

Right? The Waldorf and Statler of the story is the cliff gas side of it. That's us someday, me and you up top of the cliff. Oh my god! Gaston, just Waldorf and Statler. Just Gaston. Just Gaston? Well, back to Mr. Taphouse he just told malcolm a story about

when he worked construction on the old jail in the area and a dead body and a noose had been suspended through a trap door in the execution room and he saw it he came upon it he fell to his knees he prayed when he opened his eyes the body was gone and malcolm's like well what'd you do with all the old wood from that project you know how kids are when i was a kid once i was like nana can i have your rings when you die and she's like fuck i don't know if she said that but probably i would have i would like what the fuck's wrong with you kid i digress malcolm's like what'd you do with the wood and he's like I burned it you fool it was coated in misery

and anyways he tells him about another ghost he had seen which was in the priory exactly where they were standing at this moment there's actually a pretty cute moment he's like how old do you think I am A. 70 said Malcolm

who knew well that Mr. Taphouse had had his 75th birthday the previous autumn what a good boy he's like you must be 70 mr taphouse in his head he's like fuck he's so old i like that he went for something reasonable that he's like this isn't too flattering five years five years it's like just flattering enough really playing it up there uh mr taphouse says that when he was 39 years old he saw an apparition a ghost but malcolm doesn't believe him and they're interrupted shortly by sister finella knocking at the door yelling for mr taphouse's help it's actually quite concerning she says that some uniformed men have arrived trying to take lyra away and malcolm falls along as they briskly walk to the priory thinking he also should have grabbed a hammer in the way that

mr taphouse grabbed a hammer on the way there because at 75 he has still got spunk sister finella sinks into a chair as they enter the priory clutching her heart and gestures them towards sister clara who tells them a similar story telling them that sister benedicta is talking to the men now i really love malcolm's fierce protective instincts that are showing in the story at this point specifically in labelle savage regarding the nuns regarding lyra even alice and his family it kind of reminds me of will during the subtle knife and his fierce protective loyalty towards his mom and lyra right like he was just so angry and a lot of that we've discussed as some of his emotions and how they've manifested in being you know a

child caretaker and all the things he's been through at his young age that age him so much more than that. But Malcolm, too, has kind of that fierce loyalty, right? That, like, I'd kill if something bad happened to this person. That's true. He does kind of have that. And, you know, I guess... Quite literally. Something we're supposed to be seeing is similar between them. Yeah, maybe the parallels are intentional. They could be. Behind the door malcolm hears a conversation between benedicta and the men one man is telling her we have the

authority and mr taphouse takes the time to knock on the door saying you know i'm here if you need me benedicta and she calls on him she's like leave the door open mr tap house for the men they're leaving but please wait outside one of the men begins to say you don't seem to understand but benedicta does understand she wants him to go away and not come back he claims he has a warrant from the office of child protection an office under the ccd yes malcolm watches sister benedicta from the edge of the door tear up the piece of paper the men gave her, throwing it in the fire,

and says, I saw Cersei Lannister do the same thing. And the nuns gasp. They're like, wow, that is a Cersei move. And the men watch, and two of them still have their caps on, which Malcolm thinks is a bad man oranner apart from anything else.

Oh, what a boy. Boy. I love the passage that comes here. It's so fierce from Sister Benedicta. Did you seriously think for one moment, she said, sounding fierce now, that I would let this little baby, who's been given into our care, fierce now, that I would let this little baby, who's been given into our care, be taken away by three strangers on the strength of a single piece of paper? Three men who practically forced their way into this holy building without any invitation, who frightened the oldest and the least well of us

with threats and weapons, yes, weapons, waving your guns guns in her face who do you think you are who do you think this place is the sisters have been giving care and hospitality here for 800 years think what that means am i going to abandon all our holy obligations because three bullies in uniform came shouldering their way in and try to frighten us and for a helpless baby not six months old now go get out and don't come back yeah girl yeah you tell him benedicto that's my i know at first you were like oh sister benedicta seems like someone you don't want to cross and and you're like, yes, you don't, but she's on the side of good.

Sister Benedicta stands, squad, here. God is on her side. You know what I mean? Like, that woman is, she's gonna rise to heaven. Yes. Well, as she's

kicking him out, she tells the man to take his thugs and go pray to the lord and once they leave all the sisters flock to benedicta they stroke lyra's hair and give both of them words of sympathy and we have a line of lyra's crying stop and malcolm saw her smile and laugh and preen herself as if she had done something as if she had done something, as if she had done something splendid. It's so Lyra! Lyra, oh, I fixed it? It was me? I did the whole thing?

Me the whole time? I am uncomfortable when things are not about me? Mr. Taphouse guides Malcolm back to the workshop after all this commotion and malcolm's like were those malefactors mr taphouse and mr taphouse is like yes malcolm those are malefactors they clean up they get water ready for taphouse so that he doesn't spontaneously combust from the danish oil that he uses. And home Malcolm goes. His mom doesn't really know what this new Office of Child Protection is that he mentions to her at dinner.

She tells Malcolm, eat your dinner. Malcolm tells her all about the events of his day instead, in between feverish bites, even getting to use his new term a couple times, you know, malefactors. Mrs. Polestad heads to grab something from the basement and Alice, who is doing dishes, turns.

Ben, her demon, is growling and she goes, I know the Office of Child Protection. Her demon said, Bastards and growled again. Chills, right? Yeah. A government office that's supposed to protect children?

Do you think we have something like that here, maybe? In theory. In theory, there's a lot of theory in this couple of chapters, and I feel like the U.S. practices a lot of it. I'm sure the U.K. practices theory, too. Don't look into Arizona Child Protective protective services too deeply is all i'm saying and do not look at our podcast from it the system is broken but there are definitely people who care yeah it's just that they get pushed out through extortion and blackmail and emotional heartbreak

or murder oh wow so shit's good you know, look, the child exploitation themes in the story, and I'm not going to tell you in detail my personal experience, but I can tell you as someone who was questioned by forensic scientists at the age of 11 personally, some of these services are just not out to help children, right? They're out to exploit them. And that is the big theme of labelle sauvage at this point because you have malcolm as the child spy being exploited you have hannah's guilt from

that you have the league of saint alexander with the badge wearing children being exploited and manipulated by government being told you'll be powerful if you serve us loyally and of course the thematics of alice here hinting that the government has a child protection service that might not always be helpful maybe sometimes even to the extent evil and they happen to be tied to the CCD as we know meaning a fresh supply of children is very easily found by them this division is being headed up by Mrs. Coulter, we just learned, right? So this is the humble beginnings of what we learn as the Gobblers. She's like, oh, interesting. Using children.

That's a thought. Easy peasy. Yeah. And because of just how morally bankrupt the mission of this office is, you know, that's part of what gives sister benedicta such strength right because they're clearly in many ways supposed to be founded on some principles right like there are in theory some things that are laid out in the bible that are uh kind of clear like and and all of that or like what they're following and you can't say that

you have that much more moral high ground working for this office than you do over nuns right like they gave up their whole fucking life and have devoted themselves to god so like who am i yeah like especially someone like sister benedicta and like the speech that she gives uh is a great way that she shows like you don't have the moral high ground here what you're doing is so clearly wrong like there's no way that it makes any sense especially compared to like i mean they are within like the faction they are within like that system of the madraserium right and and honoring the same entity so i mean it doesn't matter right like we're all the same flesh the same fucking air that we all breathe and this is a fucking tiny baby who's done nothing.

You guys are ridiculous, is what Benedicta said. She's like, you are literally acting a fool, a complete fool. And she tears him down. It doesn't obviously necessarily help her in the future, but. Yeah. And I i mean you know i know you said lyra has done nothing but you know she she sure thinks she did something great as we said at the end of all this she did the crowd eventually thins though and malcolm has to make his own entertainment at the trout he starts his geography homework, making a list at the principal

rivers of England and draws them on a map. He starts to wonder if La Belle Sauvage would ever be able to float out at sea. Interesting. He's been trying to measure the English Canal on his book, but suddenly he's overtaken by an aura, he he does get routinely yeah it's described kind of like a migraine aura which philip pullman does get these he gets these auras this is a total self philip pullman thing that he's put into the story about 20 of people who suffer from migraines will have an aura with it so 20 minutes to an hour before the pain, they see flashing lights, wavy lines, dots, some trippy shit. They have some blurry vision. These are classic

migraine headaches, and Pullman apparently gets these. Because Polstead is his insert character who loves boating and carpenting and karate and scholarship and a spy, and he's really hot, but he's still nerdy. Anyways, but

Dude, he's just fucking Milo from the latest Pokemon games. I know. I hated that. Ruins for me. It was a fun gym to get past, personally. I always loved defeating the grass gyms. Anyways. Interesting. Interestingly enough,

Polvin has an atlas on his wall. This is the cutest shit in the world. You'll like this. He has an atlas on his wall this is the cutest shit in the world you'll like this he has an atlas on his wall and he looks at it through binoculars from across the room I think he might have talked about that even before and yes and that that he feels

significant with later on right like when Huckam's like mom yeah can you get me an atlas and like wow yeah that is a very Pullman on, right? Like when Huckam's like, Mom? Yeah! You get me in Atlas? I'm like, wow. Yeah, that is a very Pullman thing. Very cute. I like connected those two before, but now

I'm really connecting them and I'm like, hmm. Well, back to his migraine aura. Yes, we have a line of, And it was very slowly getting bigger. It wasn't a spot anymore. It was a line, a curved line, like a loosely scribbled letter C. and it was very slowly getting bigger it wasn't a spot anymore it was a line a curved line like a loosely scribbled letter c and it was sparkling and flickering in a zigzag pattern of blacks and whites and silvers and asa cannot see this aura but she can feel the aura migraine

and feels like they're a long way apart and she can see for miles and everything is clear and calm but if malcolm tries to look at it directly it goes away but when he looks at it from the side he sees it and these are kind of like the floaters in my eyeballs but those are not magic those are just pools of protein in my eyeballs it's not fun um there was an anime i watched that uh had a similar idea and that one was actually like really cool they weren't like floaters, but kind of looked like floaters. Mushishi. It was a calming anime. If you're looking for a calming

anime that also has some interesting supernatural stuff. Anyway, I believe Chloe, you have some things to say about this in the discussion? Yeah, I'm definitely going to talk about this in the discussion. Eliana's actually talk about this in the discussion eliana's actually gonna be invited we're gonna let her attend yes you're invited eliana the big comfy

discussion amazing it's not a dusty discussion so that might be part of my too this all lasts about 20 minutes right until finally the aura ebbs away and he talks to asta and says that was very strange like spangled like that him you remember and the horned moon at night mid her spangled sisters bright it was spangled they discuss whether this was real or not but both decide we could feel it which means it was real a common theme right as we move forward he thinks maybe nothing but asta says it must be something so this is actually a hymn that was written by john milton you know of paradise lost fame it is called let us with a gladsome mind he actually wrote this get ready to be disappointed at age 15 while he studied at saint paul's as a paraphrase of psalm 136 which is

sometimes known as the great halal it is probably his most famous hymn of the 19 that he created because his poetry style didn't always give kind of an easy battle for congregational singing. Lots of different meter changes, lots of stuff happening, so it wasn't always easy for congregational singing. The hymn in question, a verse from it, is, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, his love endures forever. And give thanks to the Lord of lords, his love endures forever. The actual quotation of the hymn that he's speaking about comes from, he the golden tress sun caused all day his course to run, the horned moon to shine by night mid her spangled sisters bright. all things living he doth feed his full hand

supplies their need it's a song about creation and the way the spangled eye is described here reminds me of what the worlds look like blast apart right when we get asriel blasting them apart come lyra's story and the shimmery air of maybe a window into another world that Will would have cut with his knife it's a very interesting image the fact that if he just looks if Malcolm just moves his head just right he can see this shining spiral of something maybe dust interesting interesting yes it does feel quite a bit like all these other things. It's quite a bit like a... there are moments of it that remind me of a scene that we're going to get, like, literally practically right after this. When they're interrupted by Malcolm's father knocking on the door, saying a man is here to see Malcolm, that he's in the terrace room, and that man and his

leopard demon, snow leopard demon, to the fear friends of Hannah Ralph, and he introduces himself as Asriel Balakwa, and Malcolm's like, yeah, he actually literally more or less

says that, he's like, I don't know him. And he doesn't believe him at first being like, Hannah's never said anything about you. And then Asriel's like, all right, all right, here's some other credentials. I'm the father of the baby that is in the priory. And he's like, ah, yes, right, that Lord Asriel. It's like, damn, what a power move, Malcolm. He does test him on that right because he's like

all right malcolm how are you gonna prove what i just said is true and malcolm's like what's her demon's name and he says panna layman which tells me that maybe his demon was the one that named panna layman yes exactly and that's i, it's a pretty good proof, right? Considering that everyone else just keeps calling her the baby. They talk about the legacy in Alexander and Malcolm explains the men that recently showed up at the Priory and their connection. And Asriel tells Malcolm, you know, you know what, I'm not allowed to see Lyra. And I've been ordered by the High Court to stay away or they will take Lyra away from even the nuns that Malcolm has explained love Lyra like their own and Asriel asked Malcolm if he could put a good word in with these nuns to just like let them see Lyra and like kind of right

now and Malcolm's like it's pretty late they go to bed early and he's like they're probably sleeping and asriel's like we gotta do it now because i gotta be gone by the morning and he pressures malcolm to take him now yeah we got this line there was no refusing this man which seems to be a pretty good identifier of asriel right there is not often refusal around this man he is quick to anger passionate and it's very obvious here they take labelle sauvage in order to avoid the malefactors that await asriel downstream he's pretty surprised right asriel surprised to find that labelle sauvage is a real canoe not a toy interestingly enough this is kind of reminiscent of spruce goose what is spruce goose eliana what is you want to know spruce goose how did you know that i didn't know it was like i know you didn't because i didn't know because my partner had to tell me.

And Spruce Goose was a creation by Howard Hughes. He wanted to kind of take the toys of his youth and make them into these giant, ridiculous, unrealistic planes. And thus was born the Spruce Goose. It was a Hughes H-4 Hercules, a prototype strategic airlift flying boat that he designed intended as a transatlantic flight for world war ii it was not completed in time so when asriel's like oh this isn't a toy this is a real boat it kind of feels a bit like that and it also reminds me of pano i don't know what is up with pano in our historic materials episodes lately but lately, but Ponyo, when Ponyo comes back, if you've seen Ponyo, you will understand this. When Ponyo comes back,

Ponyo shows up and is like, Sosuke has a boat! And makes Sosuke's boat bigger and life-size. And that's also what it feels like. Like, Malcolm is helping this magical child aka Ponyo and making his boat magically bigger so that he can take care aka Ponyo and making his boat

magically bigger so that he can take care of Ponyo yes to all of that I am a Ponyo podcaster now I mean it's not the worst idea we could be a Ponyo podcast it's such a good movie

I mean I wouldn't say no I'm just saying um pod yo that's not that didn't have the rig that i thought it would um so asriel with the canoe right uh malcolm's so surprised a lot of the time that asriel's so good with the canoes which kind of makes me think that this is supposed to lend uh or tie back into the time that he spent with egyptians right and how the egyptians are like we love lord asriel he helped us out in the flood and like does this mean that then he was like we had this discussion before was he in the flood in the 50s and again how old is asriel mysteries also i'm just like i think that may be part of us seeing lord as here, right, versus the way that the League and the Office of Child Protection or whatever is working is with people who love her versus Mrs. Coulter who keeps just coming up with like,

I'm going to try all these random schemes, right? Coming up with department after department, all very randomly, very Blair Waldorf, trying to secure her daughter in her custody somehow or control her. That's not exactly the Waldorf thing, but it's just like schemes, schemes. You know, interestingly enough, when I was younger,

I went on this canoe trip with my family we had like family and family friends yes this is off the cuff get ready eliana eliana's like ready to edit uh i went on this canoe trip with my family friends it was like an annual thing and i remember my uncle told me it was a little under the influence of alcohol at the time and he was all like louis I want you to know you should try everything once. And I was like, what? And he's like, try everything once. All the drugs, you know, like it's pre-drink.

And I was like, maybe not everything, Uncle Matt. And he's like, no, everything. Like he just argued with me about it. And I was like, but I don't want to. I don't want to do heroin. Fill in the rest everyone but uh now just a week ago he was like i'm glad you use your discretion and only tried the things that you felt were right once because maybe i was wrong about what i said and that's

the kind of parent asriel feels like here right like holter's more like my mother who wants to control everything i breathe or do but asriel is like the character's like nah lyra's gotta make her own path exactly the way she's gotta make it man and that's kind of what it felt like here absolutely and i want to know i did not try everything once just a lot of things once yeah i just how old was your uncle at the time oh my god he had to have been like 40 at the time and he was like it was him and his best friend in a canoe i was in a canoe with them and they're like you just gotta try everything once man and i was like i don't think that's true i just i think i could try some things once, but I just don't think everything is the right idea. Yeah.

Sometimes kids know better, right? Yeah, exactly. Like Malcolm. Well, just Malcolm. Thank you, Chloe, for your story. My wisdom. Your wisdom. And, you know, we'll see some of maybe wisdom maybe not here in a moment right

when they arrive at the priory and malcolm softly throws rocks at sister finella's window trying not to startle her too badly with her bad heart but also praying that he doesn't wake up sister benedicta because then he's in for it and then eventually sister finella does wake up and she's like what the fuck is happening malcolm comes to the window and she refuses to help azrael of course at first and and malcolm's cause and nothing malcolm can say will convince her then azriel's like leave it to me comes to the window says something that alcham cannot hear or make out as you were discussing earlier when he's talking to finnell and after a few moments of that she disappears from the window and two minutes later she comes back. She's leaning out of the window

and giving Asriel a small little bundle. Lyra. Lyra. Lyra. That's the song that Asriel sang to her. How had he persuaded Sister Fenella? Malcolm could only wonder.

He watched the man lift the baby again and walk along the grass between one bare flower bed and the next, holding the bundle high so he could whisper to her, rocking her gently, strolling along slowly in the brilliant moonlight. At one point he seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it, holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon. At any rate, he looked like a lord in his own domain, with nothing to fear, all the silvery night to enjoy. Up and down he strolled with his child. with all the silvery night to enjoy. Up and down, he strolled with his child.

Malcolm thought of Sister Fenella, waiting in fear, in case Lord Asriel didn't bring her back, in case his enemies attacked, in case Sister Benedicta suspected something was up. But there was no sound from the priory, no sound from the road, no sound from the man and his baby daughter in the moonlight.

It's a beautiful scene. Yeah. It's pretty good. Chloe, you good? I'm good. I'm good. I've never been upset about anything in my life first of all. So I'm here just observing Chloe allegedly being good as malcolm observes that

azrael and his demon are very still like ghosts and watches them as they move azrael comes back up the walk giving lyra back to sister finella and beckons for malcolm to join him because now a noise is heard of a gas engine a searchlight is seen on the bridge and Azrael knows that they've come for him Malcolm thinks quickly is like here Azrael just take my boat and then Azrael promises to get the boat back to him we have this line closing it all out with and then he was gone speeding with long powerful strokes down the river on the swollen current. The leopard demon, like a great figurehead at the prow. La Belle Sauvage had never gone so fast, Malcolm thought. This is a passage about Asriel.

I'm going to start with. I feel like that's a strong way to open that this is a passage. This is a different passage, right? I feel that Asriel's presence in the amber spyglass is a lot gruffer. Marisa's presence when juxtaposed against his is very sympathetic. Right? Like Asriel says, if she can't deal with herself, re Lyra, if she can't figure it out, then it is what it is, Marisa. You know, he's a total dick, kind of. And Marisa's like, that's our daughter, Asriel. And Asriel's like, no, we're looking into the void right now.

Fuck Lyra, which is kind of this big flip from where we are here, where we get this very sympathetic scene with Asriel. This this last moment right like this is the last goodbye to lyra before he sends her on her way to have a semi-lonely upbringing uh and what he thinks is the better life for her and i can tell you that as somebody that is a child of a different biological parent than raised me. Lyra was obviously raised by a group effort, some of the people at Jordan, and later, of course, by Lee, Yorick, Serafina, Mary Malone, and even by Will, right? She was not raised by Asriel, and I was not raised by my biological father either. And I remember a very, very distinct memory. When I was one raised by my biological father either and I remember a very very distinct memory when I

was one year old I don't personally remember seeing it because one year old it's another thing you remember but I was one year old and my mom has told me about a time where my biological father on my one year birthday probably the last interaction we had with him that we knew it was him he left a toy on the back deck which was a present for me it was a barbie doll in a brown paper bag and it was tied off and it was just left on the back porch and that was my birthday present and it was his goodbye present right this was asriel's goodbye letter this was asriel's way of saying goodbye to lyra and i don't think the way that he dealt with his relationship with lyra throughout any of her life or his life was healthy.

He and Marisa were quite obviously chasing a different star, right? Like they were chasing something so different for each of them. They had different ambitions. But this for Asriel was definitely his goodbye letter to Lyra, his goodbye song. You know, he held her, he showed her to the moon, and he probably told the moon. I mean, we won't know what he said, but I'm sure he told the moon, and I'm sure he told Sister Frinella about how important Lyra was. He knew, without a prophecy, he didn't need a prophecy to know that this was the most important daughter in the whole world,

at least to him in that moment. And that was really special, I think. No matter what he does, no matter how much global climate change he causes, that was a special scene, in my opinion. I think it was a very special, very proliferate, like, just a really special scene. Pullman wrote, you could tell he put his whole heart into it. You could tell that he put a lot of the spirit, a lot lot of the soul a lot of the demon of the series into that moment yeah oh no what if I cry but it wasn't the books it was Chloe who made me cry and maybe that's what's right um yeah I think that that's all really clear when we come through this scene

right and it casts a different light on asriel right and and the relationship and really shows what lyra kind of lost out on what was torn from her what she could have had had things gone differently um had people decided to fight for her but But also we see what the system is like, right? Even in Malcolm's school. And it's so hard. It's such a hard battle for Asriel to fight. Like if the children, right, are even part of it, how can one man do that just to be with his daughter?

So he takes what he can and takes these fleeting moments to be with her. And as you said, say goodbye and try to set her up the what he can and takes these fleeting moments to be with her. And as you said, say goodbye. And try to set her up the best he can with what he can. I mean, I think he could have done better. He's not the most caring father, as we see in the main series. But, yeah. Yeah, and that's the thing is, he could have done better.

But, like, anyone could be a parent, you know? Yeah. He didn't stop, anyone could be a parent, you know? Yeah. He didn't stop up to continue being a parent, but anyone could be a parent. You don't purposefully have to try to be one. Sometimes it accidentally happens. Hence, I'm here, you know? I'm here. Yeah.

I'm talking to you right now. I happened. I wasn't a purposeful thing. But, like, that's the thing. Like, anyone could be a parent and I think if things could have gone differently maybe he could have been a better parent to Lyra but that is something that we

see in the next chapter which I do think is very interesting framework because Pullman doesn't get to play with as much of it in the main trilogy that I mean Asriel is sought after by the government he is absolutely sought after by the government he's not allowed to have a normal parent life. And that doesn't excuse it. That doesn't mean like, I mean, in this moment, he doesn't take Lyra and. Nancy Botwin has a newborn at some point, no spoilers. And like, she ends up trying to sneak in to see a doctor.

She's on the run as this big drug dealer. And she's like, my kid's upset. And he's like, oh, are you doing all these awful things with your kid? Are you on the run? Are your kids unable to get the right proteins and vitamins? Are they this? Are they that? This might be why your kid doesn't feel well your newborn baby and she's like oh my awful lifestyle is killing my child

wow who knew that would happen and like that's what asriel would have done if he took lyra in this one didn't return her to finella's arms if he didn't go back to the window that's what would have happened he knows as malcolm later notes and hannah later notes like obviously he knew this was the better way to go sadly but was it could he have made a life with her we'll never know because he didn't we don't know he didn't try he didn't try but neither neither and i think that's what's sad and hard neither of her parents truly tried yeah well everyone you know now that we've talked about the one heart that we all have let's talk about the next chapter three legs malcolm and asta talk endlessly about the entire encounter with asriel for days as i think we will be doing here here for many days for the rest of our lives

on this podcast. I mean that actually very seriously. Malcolm can't really talk to his parents about it because they're too preoccupied with the inn to notice if anything's up with Malcolm anyway. When Saturday comes, he's able to finally tell Dr. Hannah Ralph after a delayed journey

by foot as his boat was loaned to Asriel. Hannah thinks that that was very generous of Malcolm, and Malcolm had trusted Asriel fully after seeing him handle Lyra and Fenella. Hannah says he's hard to say no to, and she also says that she's sure that he did the right thing, and Hannah wonders if his pursuants are from the Office of Child Protection like Miss Carmichael, and malcolm's like i don't think so the fact that azriel didn't take lyra with him means that he must think that the priory is safer than wherever he was going and he hopes that labelle sauvage doesn't get bullet holes in it oh malcolm i find

it interesting that repeated language of he's hard to say no to from Hannah. I was curious to see if it was in the main series in that exact form, but it's not, which I was surprised about. But that is something that kind of describes Azrael with that passion, as we discussed in this whole entire character. Yeah. This entire story with Malcolm does remind me, though, of how Lyra was embellishingishing maybe is the word to use her story about her parents and what happened yeah she's like and then there was a sword fight and Makas

is like no there wasn't you are high uh interestingly enough try everything once Lyra try everything once Lyra thanks uncle Matt and they were on a boat, you know, Chloe. La Belle Sauvage, I mean. Oh my god.

Interestingly enough, handheld guns feel more prominent in this trilogy than the original trilogy so far. There's more machine guns noted in the original trilogy, but I feel like we're getting a lot of handguns. But Asriel could get bullet holes, right? Because the whole story is that he's a wild man the first shot was from edward coulter mr coulter who reached his gun he fired and then the second shot was asriel shooting him right between the eyes and dashing his brains out

and that whole origin story has these vibes right similar to the story right now with the gunshots back and forth and that feeling of suspense over keeping Lyra safe and Asriel's troubles with the law I loved seeing that story brought back to life here yeah and Asriel's you know protecting

Lyra in that moment and Malcolm checks out some new books one on symbolic pictures the other is called The Silk Road. He thought that The Silk Road would be a murder mystery. And turns out it was not. It ends up being by a modern traveler of the trade routes across Central Asia from the Tartary to the Levant. And he goes home that night and while snacking on rice pudding asks his mom for a bigger atlas for his birthday and she tells him she'll ask his father to to finish up

and get to work because it's busy and this is again what we're seeing about atlases he loves them philip pullman yes his atlases he's like girl where that atlas at you know what i mean let me search let me explore that booty let me get all up in that atlas at you know what i mean let me search let me explore that booty let me get all up in that atlas that at last at last i'm plundering that land says philip coleman so on sunday day after saturday hannah ralph is checking on her house's preparations for the flood she walks the end of the street to eye the water down in the banks the water level on the canal has drastically risen and the wind is blowing the water toward her house and others beyond in jericho when she heads to her

house a gray unmarked very official looking van is sitting parked outside of it and a person's knocking on her door jesper's like look natural keep walking don't stop jesper yes professor jesper is here everyone stay calm she keeps a steady pace she thinks she had nothing to fear from police or any other agency except that like every other citizen she had everything to fear they could lock her up with no warrant and keep her there with no charge the old act of habeas corpus had been set aside with little protest from those in parliament who were supposed to look after english liberty and now one heard tales of secret arrests and imprisonment without trial there was no way of finding out whether the rumors were true except for living them i was gonna say except for like

she has access to the alethiometer right yes she made it so but she could try. That's true. I mean, I'm just saying, she has something that is literally able to do that. Anyway, Hannah Ralph decides she can't just walk around in the rain forever and decides to face the man who's knocking on her door. She heads straight there, trying to be confident and strong, and asks the man what he wants, and he's like, I'm from the Environmental Protection Agency here to check on everyone in the neighborhood

in the extreme manner and she's like oh oops and puts her rifle away and there's this man and his bedraggled rain trotted robin there's another man with an otter demon and they're warning her that her sandbags

are leaking ma'am and uh and asks who the neighbor of this place is hoping to get the house their house also settled with more sandbags and she asks if he thinks it'll flood then and he says he's unsure but

better to be ready and she fixes up her sandbags to redistribute them and heads inside and locks the door and i i just want to know more about the otter demon this is nuts for me because you know that like i love otters this is this is hard for me i really do and you know they're they have a lot of meanings they're like great fortunes, freedom, passion. Maybe this man is passionate about something, like the environment. Oh, that would be actually

really wholesome and nice. Just flip it around passionately. Yeah. Yeah. They are cute. When we flash over to the priory from here sister finella is not as cute as the otter because she

refuses to talk to malcolm about asriel she's like i am avoiding everything about the situation she's like you peel these apples bramley apples by the way uh and they're less than perfect because they sell the good ones he waits for an entrance and then slowly malcolm's like all right i have a new method to talk to finella he's like i wonder what happened about george boatwright sister finella sister finella says yeah interesting says he may be in the woods if they haven't caught him yet and And Malcolm provides that he might even be in disguise. But doesn't know what he or his demon would be disguised as, or even how.

So he asks Sister Fenella what games she played as a child, and she tells him that King Arthur was their most popular game. She pantomimes the game for him with a knife and a lump of unused dough. And it would be that King Arthur would be able to pull the sword out, but no one else could do it it's the cutest story right and it's really interesting to think about King Arthur in regards to this book La Belle Sauvage and a little bit of the rest of the story no spoilers but especially when thinking about the secret commonwealth of magical creatures being set up

in these stories in King Arthur's realm you have the Lady of the Lake, right, who was considered by some scholars symbolic of a Welsh lake fairy. Interesting. Nimue is often shown in stories providing Arthur with the Sword of Excalibur, helping to eliminate Merlin, raise Lancelot, save the dying Arthur's life. How our later Lady of the Lake comes into play is not quite 1 to 1, however she kind of provides a plot turning point and in rereading this now, the second time I found the King Arthur game, it's kind of a huge standout. It reminds me a bit of Lee playing the Alamo with his friends. And there's almost a certain severing imagery happening with Fenella sticking the knife into the dough.

Just a thought. It really stood out to me. It directly connects all of this to King Arthur, Lady of the Lake, and maybe even Malcolm's plot moving forward. Malcolm's plot moving forward. And even the idea that one person gets to be chosen to hold the sword feels a little bit like the subtle knife as well. Yeah, the bearer

of the badge. Yeah, literally only one person really gets to use it the way that it's meant to be used. I'm gonna be real with you, I don't really get this game. You don't get the game? I don't understand. It's understand so everyone but then everyone just agrees that like one person gets to be the one to pull the sword out and everyone else just has to

pretend that they can't do it yeah eliana we live in a society do you not get that some people have to be treated fragilely because they have an ego that has to be fed so quietly or they implode do you not know that i just don't get the game. And I'm like maybe that it makes sense as a children's game, right? Because Ring Around the Rosie doesn't make sense either. We just spin around, sing the song, and then fall down and like talk about the bubonic plague without knowing it. Yeah.

So like maybe I have lost my sense of childhood wonder. Wait, are you saying your imagination has run away and you have to spend the whole book finding it? I'm thinking about it. So Sister Fenella tells Malcolm, here, you try the game.

And Asa changes into a monkey on his wrist to help him heave and pretend to grunt and strain to pull the knife out as King Arthur did. Sister Fenella laughs and says that she wanted to be King Arthur but was usually just a squire and her squirrel demon pipes up that sometimes the both of them would play this game on their

own though and he was like but you were always king arthur then i think this would be me and my demon as an only child maybe playing alone because kids are awful but then we'd be like reading a book and talking about it deeply. Maybe my demon would just be Jesper. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what games my demon and I would have played as only children, but definitely a lot of reading. Sister Fenella asks Malcolm

what he plays, and he says, well, I like to play Explorer a lot, discovering lost civilizations, et cetera, and she asks him how La Belle Sauvage Audra's these days. And he's like, well, I loaned it to Lord Asriel when he was seeing Lyra.

And Sister Fenella says nothing in response, goes back to the pastry and offers I'm sure he was grateful. Yikes! Sister Fenella is not having it. Good for her. Malcolm and and asked to discuss the abrupt ending of their visit with sister finella who asked is thinking and she's like she seemed ashamed of

breaking the rules for asriel they can't decide if she's already confessed her sin to benedicta or not but they think about looking in on mr taphouse for a minute they're like maybe we'll go check it on him then his lights are off though so they don't plan to bother but they stop because they see something a shadow asta thinks she sees a man-shaped shadow and they wait watching 100 yards away until something comes limping into the view. It's a hyena. A three-legged hyena. It's unmoving, a hulking shadow detaches itself from it, a man-shaped shadow, and the shadow stares at Malcolm and becomes one with the wall again. The maimed hyena stares straight at Malcolm and Asta and then begins to pee, eventually loping back into

the shadow. Malcolm is completely rattled. He tells Asta to turn into an owl immediately and makes for the priory, telling Sister Phenomela he needs to speak to Sister Benedicta. Benedicta rushes him in, and Malcolm tells her of the demon that he saw, and he finds himself unable to tell her, though, of the foul thing that the demon had done, because he felt soiled and belittled by it. And this is not about Malcolm's feelings, but I do want to talk about, you know, I wonder why he feels so, it's not like I'm wondering why he feels so soiled. I, like, get it, but also I'm just like like i don't understand to an extent also how demon biology works like i know that they're not technically biological but like do they even need to defecate at all or urinate like we know that they don't really need to eat right that's made pretty clear to us but we see that they kind of

do need to sleep but like does it doesn't need to pee so maybe that's why he feels so soiled because this was such an unnecessary act but i'm like do demons i mean i guess they can pee if they want that's the point there's something interesting that pullman talked about in the blackwell's interview this week, where he just talked about how, you know, he's growing as he gets along with demons. I think he has had a lot of conversation open up on some of the gender aspect of demons that he kind of started to explore and never really and I think he's learned a lot about that or discovered it. But I really just love the way that he's constantly talking about how he's constantly discovering new things about demons

like he he literally refers to it as i'm still learning new things about demons all the time and i think this is definitely an expansion and evolution of that that we're seeing yeah absolutely and i think that's something that comes up you know later on in this book like how how he's discovering and in in this sequel series in general and i think that that's something that i really respect about pullman as a writer that he says that he talks about in the terms of discovery and we'll see kind of the way that he thinks about discovery in this chapter but you know this demon is missing a leg and the the characters discuss the hyena missing a leg but we also see at another point there is a demon

who is completely paralyzed, right? But the human, the body, is still able to move well. It's not like the demon being paralyzed is a blight or speaks to the ethics of that person the way that this demon's sort of disfigurement does. So I think it's interesting and that's something that I have enjoyed watching philip pullman grow in yeah he's developing it very interestingly and even here i mean malcolm explaining what he saw to the sisters it freaks

them out too they're like oh this kid's shaken this is a weird thing it's not normal it's taboo they thank him for his good deed and they're like go home sister benedicta says malcolm go home lyra will be safe here behind these very strong shutters mr taphouse and you made and i'll watch you cross the bridge home and he feels very protected by that presence that angelic presence so to speak watching him and runs home asta flying ahead as an owl he gets into the kitchen but he's stopped dead in his tracks because the man with the demon the hyena demon is sitting at the bar the hyena demon's missing one leg and the man is talking to his father everyone is sitting

as far as they can get away from this guy right he's obviously having a very strained conversation with mr polstead breaking the silence uh mr polstead leans over he's like hey malcolm where you been this is awful and we get this passage the hyena demon clacked her teeth big sharp yellow teeth and a small head she was astonishingly ugly whatever had robbed her of her right foreleg would have suffered for it if those teeth had met in its flesh yes malcolm goes on to wait on the other bed and they all quietly warn him to watch his step with the with the man and his demon and mal goes to check the terrace room empty but for a couple of dirty glasses and he and asta discuss the man's nature and asta says surprisingly that the man is warm and interesting but the hyena is the one that has

the issue and malcolm's like but they're one person though aren't they which is yes what we were taught throughout the main books and in the this this book it's not untrue um they plan to go upstairs and write it all down to tell dr ralph but then they make a pit stop to the kitchen to wash some glasses. He tells his mom about the man and his demon, and his mom isn't much help either. She tells him to stay away from that guy because she doesn't like the look of him, which is mom thing to do. She's not wrong. He figures that he'll talk to his father about it later and comments that there's hardly anyone at the bar, not even Alice, and his mother says well if that man

keeps coming around it'll be like this every night and the father's gonna have to kick him out she changes the topic to his homework and gives him a supper and tells him to get on with it ass as a squirrel toying with a nut while malcolm hurries through his cauliflower and cheese which actually sounds really good and so does the cold plum pie that he eats with cream. The pie sounds good, but how could you say that about cauliflower? Oh, that's right. I forgot you don't like cauliflower.

It's horrible. It's great. It made me sad. I was like, I get it. You don't have money so you eat cauliflower. No, I'm sorry. What? Cauliflower is so good. Cauliflower is disgusting. cauliflower is disgusting you're disgusting I am disgusting but the cold plum pie is delicious

okay that sounds good I'll give you that both of it sounds good to me all of it sounds good to me you can have the cauliflower I'll have the pie what I want the pie too and the cream when they drop the now dried clean glasses off at the bar I want the pie too and the cream. When they drop the now dried clean glasses off at the bar,

the man, the hyena, is still there and he can't help but take a peek at him. He's wearing traveler's clothes and is actually almost handsome with a rough mischief about him. Malcolm feels like he can't help but like him. The man smiles at him and winks, warmly seeming to say, we know a thing or two between them. What an interesting kind of just relation that, you know, we're expecting this very rugged, evil interaction, and yet he's charming. I will comment. I want to make sure the pronunciation by Philip Pullman is known. Gérard Bonvy. Oh. Yes, that sure the pronunciation by Philip Pullman is known Gérard Bonvy oh

like Emily and Harry that's what I said did you see me say that in the chat by the way I said that I literally uh yes during the Blackwell's interview Pullman confirmed the pronunciation is Gérard Bonvy

it's very French. It's very Amélie and Perry, as you, me, and our friend Pete would say. But beyond that, I do have some other thoughts. Gérard Bonvy has the same energy as Marisa Coulter. Hardcore. Right down to the domestic abuse of their creatures which Pullman has also named that as domestic abuse as exploration of the hyena demon he's called this domestic abuse of your demon the way Malcolm's mom and dad treat this man it's this quiet horrified kind of feeling right

they're afraid the rest of the bar is also afraid. And it reminds me of how those in the series with severed demons are treated. Foreign, horrifying, exiled. And this is of course because the hyena is named, disconnected from the reality being presented when we look at Gerard Bonvy. It wouldn't surprise me if the hyena was severed from him. look at Gerard Bonvy. It wouldn't surprise me if the hyena was severed from him. He's able to hurt his demon, right, heavily, and not hurt himself through that, so that to me sounds like his hyena may be severed from him. It's kind of implied if you listen to our Northern Lights slash the Golden Compass episodes, we chatted a little about it during my very first read-through of the story for the first time where i theorized that maybe marisa coulter just might be severed from her demon due to the treatment of how she treats her demon how her demon treats others

the metallic scent that happens when she's angry maybe correlating to you know the metallic alloys and her weird psycho personality in general that i love her for it might be partially due to her being severed from her demon the tv show has taken that as a little bit of canon as well proving me a very brilliant motherfucker i digress marisa's introduced so warmly and brightly right we watch her through lyra's plot all that glitters is not gold she's like lyra i'm a scholar and i know stuff and i'm gonna teach you stuff and it's so bright so fun and we see that first twist of betrayal through her demon right through the monkey in that personality when she sicks the monkey on lyra and pan and we notice that personality and those traits and the

tension rippling in the gorgeous fur of the demon while marisa just dazzles us with a smile it's interesting that the man with the hyena is being introduced like this to us yeah there's a lot there that is uh that's so similar to both of them and really evokes Mrs. Coulter, right? And I think along with those similarities and what's so clearly a parallel with them, I think there's a lot of other things that are interesting that he's discovering more about how demons work in relationship with their humans as Bon Vie. Fuck. So many new pronunciations to absorb lately chloe um but as bon vie contrasts with both of lyra's parents who are you know as as we've discovered are both after her uh not only what you said about um their introduction but also how

bon vie is in many ways very different uh from marisa and her demons portrayal especially like marisa oozes seduction in different ways but her demon does so well as also you know he's this glamorous golden furred monkey and golden tamarind monkeys are so cute and so pretty and marisa is really able to right hide a lot of those ugly conniving parts about herself and her demon as well uh her demon's able to hide uh and bon vie isn't it's very much broadcast to everyone and no one wants to be around him while people long to be near or to serve marisa but also in a way i feel like bon vie has aspects of him that are similar to asriel right like ralph and malcolm describe asriel as being impossible to resist very charming and he has

this really strong demon right that is carnivorous whereas like the snow leopard is a hunter the hyena is more of a scavenger but can hunt um it almost feels like his hyena is like a dark version or something of still maria in that sense or he is especially coming on the heels of that chapter that's a great point especially when you consider how still still maria is described as right she's described as being this like very statue-esque demon during this and how no one knows what asriel could really be thinking right and this man is described as just charming and offsetting you meet him and you're like wow what a warm smile but his demon is just disgusting in the corner and listen we've all met dogs who maybe share some of the traits with the hyena right have you met a dog that's like

been making gross ass noises eating itself before i have yeah but they're just dogs exactly but you know what that's kind of what i'm saying is you might say this is the dark version of stell maria but i'm saying we should support the demon more yeah I agree I agree I don't know I don't feel like Pullman's scope here on the demon and like his whole like oh this man's so charming

it's the same shit I feel about Maurice's demon I feel like Maurice's golden monkey gets a lot of hate that should be better directed at Maurice just like's golden monkey gets a lot of hate that should be better directed at Maurice. So just like the hyena gets a lot of hate that should be better directed at Gerard Bonvy. And maybe the hyena is not that bad after all. We should just be nice to the hyena and rehabilitate it. That's all. I just think it's interesting that it's so clearly telegraphed by the hyena, whereas the monkey's not. But yeah, no no i i agree with that and we'll talk about that

in a bit when hannah ralph goes into her uh description her her own demon corner but for now asta wants to politely fly and chat with the person's demon but she's also like too frightened by it so malcolm stares curiously at the man smiling in return and they head upstairs shutting the door and talking about whether hannah will know who the man is or not and he thinks that this man is way too obvious to be a spy that's for sure yeah he does his school homework uh which he can't focus on then the next day he asks hannah about the man and his demon she'd never heard of anyone who could have such a demon hurt in such a way and he tells her about the peeing in the path it's interesting that he tells her no one else um which puzzles her even more i too am puzzled she and malcolm break down the act like she would with the alethiometer step by step and malcolm felt it was a contemptuous

action that the demon did for him personally and because of where it was the priory and then she gives us as a demon corner yeah she says that hyenas are a scavenger they feed on carrion and dead bodies and they kill prey themselves she calls them disgusting but useful that they make a crying sound but they mean it as laughter and she says that's hypocritical i love this because hannah is breaking it down in a way bit by bit she teaches him the invention versus discovery thing a little bit and she gives him the alethiometer symbols and she's teaching she's starting it even even here in a way she's very very much Malcolm's Miss Honey, right, to his Matilda. Not to say the Polsteads are uninterested.

They're just, they're preoccupied. They're surviving. They're trying to keep an inn alive and keep a life for him and food on the table. And they have other things going on that they are preoccupied with. And Malcolm, he has a bored brain. He wants more. That is obvious malcolm wants more it's very much the miss honey situation yes absolutely and that's a great connection i think that like malcolm's parents are supportive like my parents are supportive of my education like

they you know they're just not like like, big book readers, right? They can't support what Malcolm wants to do. Can't really always have those conversations. They're not, like, uninterested. They just, like, aren't able to do it. Something that I think is strange about this description, I'm not sure that hypocritical is the right word or the one that I would think of in the context of the actions or even the description of a hyena or a crocodile right like hyenas don't preach one thing morally and then go on to do the same thing right and crocodiles

don't either like neither of them are like creatures really based in some sort of moral code and i think this because you know we have been talking about what hypocrisy looks like in characters and literature uh again in our song of ice and fire coverage and i just like don't really get it here like hyenas and crocodiles maybe you could assert that they symbolize or have to do with deceit they're deceitful like they're talking about crocodiles tears but yeah i didn't think about that i don't know i just don't know if that works for me the word hypocritical there yeah i don't think it works at all but i do think there is such a duality that's present right between the laughing and the crying the switching of the two manners just because two things contrast each other

doesn't mean they're hypocrisy also exactly that's why i'm like i don't know this was the right word maybe hannah ralph's not as good of a teacher anyway so well maybe that's the point right because malcolm is teaching her things that she even doesn't know as we go along or she's learning things from the youth and from that innocence that she might not have known prior to now uh i mean even the way he's describing the events of what's happened right he tells her that this man smiled and winked at him and no one else saw i mean these are really intimate things he's telling her about how he felt as you mentioned with the the peeing like he he has not told his parents

he hasn't told anyone he doesn't feel comfortable telling anyone, which is weird because Hannah Ralph is, you know, this weirdo adult he just met randomly, and now he's, like, going over to your house and kind of lying about why. But no one else saw this whole image of Gérard Bonvy staring at him and smiling at him. And he'd feel guilty, but he thinks it felt nice asta comments

that that demon just kept gnawing her bloody stuff and hannah's like i wonder if this means that they're vulnerable that if the demon lost another leg they couldn't walk malcolm reminds her the man was perfectly fine he's in two minds of all of this too right like malcolm's like i don't feel sorry for the demon me over here i feel sorry for the demon uh but his dad had even said that man's a bad man but wasn't going to elaborate on it he just like he's a bad man he's not coming here again and his mom was like keep away from that man but they didn't say why it was a feeling they had and that's it yeah and i mean like i get that i absolutely get that as like an adult and having met more people than as a child and being able to kind of see that in people but i do think that

like you know you were saying you felt sorry for the demon and i'm like not trying to rehabilitate some of the things that bonville will sorry bon v will do in this book um per se but it feels like it's an idea that's dropped in here and maybe it's not like super explored maybe it'll be explored more in the next book i don't know um it is a little bit in how we see bon v treat his demon right you were comparing it to mrs coulter's treatment of her demon but i think that idea of both laughing and crying, being the same thing or masking the other is very interesting and sort of eliciting that sort of like pathos for the hyena demon. So anyway, it's complex. Hannah says that she'll see what she can find out about all of this situation. And they move on to discussing the books that she had given him this

week. He found the symbolic picture book very difficult and only comprehended it meant things can stand for other things. I mean, it's not wrong. That's, that's a pretty good summary of what I assume is going on here. And,

and he says it's like a secret language, and I think it reminds me of earlier on in these three chapters, right? The focus on Lyra and Pan speaking to one another in their own secret little fabricated language. It feels a lot like this, right? Like a nod maybe towards their own ability

to understand secret languages later on in life. We don't get a lot of a close look like i love getting to know ben and asta as demons because we don't really get this close look in this close relationship about this secret language but he and asked to even have it right like just a few pages ago he was like you need to be a snow owl and she does not argue because she already knows she's already in there she's like duh i need to be a snow owl i and she does not argue because she already knows. She's already in there. She's like, duh, I need to be a snow owl. I gotta fly ahead and tell you what's up.

It's something really special about that, you know, soul-person connection thing going on, where you have a soul attached to you, I guess, or whatever. I don't know the feeling. No one fucking knows the feeling. I don't know what it's like to have a soul in the year 2020 seems gauche hannah is so proud of malcolm because he seemed to grasp all this theory she's teaching him pretty easy and they need it for the alethiometer right this this theory of the symbols no one can remember all the symbols next hannah asks malcolm about the theorem of pythagoras which

he knows it's the square of the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides it's true every example malcolm's ever tried and he was like so does that mean it was true before you realized it was true and he's like what the fuck deep this is deep so buckle up she explains she's like you didn't invent it malcolm you discovered it so now she relates this to the beehive symbol on the alethiometer the beehive symbol means sweetness another meaning for it is light he gets it honey for sweetness and candles are made from wax light she asks malcolm so did the association between the items exist before we realized it or did it not exist until we realized it did we discover it or invent it he thinks and he's like this isn't the same you cannot prove the theorem

you can see the connection but you can't prove it and she's like fine fine so could we choose anything to represent sweetness and lightness and he's like no there's a connection naturally with the beehive it was a discovery she's like very good gives him another one she says if you can imagine another world where Pythagoras never existed, would your theory be true there too? And then she changes it. She says, imagine it has people, but no bees. How would they symbolize sweetness and lightness? He says the connection would be in their minds, but not physically there. If they can think about another world, then they can see a connection, even if no one else can see it.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Deep. Theoretically, knowing these things, Hannah puts together then the final question of, we can't say whether the language of symbols was invented or discovered but it looks like and then malcolm says and finishes that sentence with it was discovered but it's still different than the theorem because you can't prove it it depends on people being there to see it malcolm's like well i still think it's a bit invented as well, because with no one to see it then, right? Why would it still exist? This was so interesting to me, all of this.

This idea being presented, and Hannah even comments on this. She says, at some point in this book, she basically kind of insinuates, wouldn't it be interesting to be able to read the alethiometer without the alethiometer i find that such an interesting concept harnessing that power of it without using the instrument so here we see her teaching malcolm all of the theory that is behind that idea but stuff we already have seen in his dark materials before this isn't new right we see it through lyra especially with mary malone she's able to pull shadow particles to the cave through the same method that lyra would use with the alethiometer mary's able to copy this using the

e-jing eventually and in the angels that flock to the cave later most of this is done through negative capability as we've discussed many many times i don't want to bore you all you're probably experts of negative capability by now but this whole conversation the chicken and the egg it reminds me of this idea the matter is already there it's been there for 30,000 or so years, right? It's how you use the matter, how you invoke the matter, the technique, the application of theory through instruments is what has mattered about the matter before. Because shadow particles have existed as we've learned for that many years, we didn't invent them. We discovered them. So how can we perform this method but without an instrument? Interesting. It is interesting. It's a question that it feels like they're coming down definitively on, but also not. I think that they are raising it as a question. It's a fun thought experiment going on here, and it raises a lot of different philosophical ideas in this conversation some of

the ones that you brought up and i don't think i'm even touching on all of them um i'm just bringing up a couple ones like subjective idealism to an extent right whether an object is real and that for it to be real it has to be perceived by a mind um and the connections right between sweetness and light and the bees i'm gonna give my hot take here right if there are no humans at all and only bees then in my opinion the connection like isn't there because who the fuck is making candles no one's making candles so this is like a bullshit thing that you just connected that's my that's my take um anyway but that doesn't mean sweetness and like lightness doesn't exist aliana it's just there would be different things right concepts still exist it just doesn't mean sweetness and like lightness doesn't exist aliana it's just there

would be different things right concepts still exist it just doesn't exist in that framework you're very close-minded today i i am i just think like there were other i mean like why not another symbol that's more closely right like the madonna you could be like the virgin and the whore. Right, but I'm also just like, why would we be like, yo, the B means light when we could just be like, the sun symbol

means light. There's literally a sun symbol. And I get it. I know that she's saying that it can mean both. Not that the alethiometer necessarily means it to mean both and maybe they have different like connotations right the sun versus the candle the candle being a small light lighting the way I'm making shit up on behalf I'm doing Philip Pullman's work for him right now but I'm just like

the sun's right there anyway anyway some of the other philosophical ideas that are brought up are like the platonic forms which we've discussed and again not trying to tire y'all out on it um in our coverage of book one and that discussion of semiotics and i think there's even a little bit of theology that's brought up in this discussion right um and i think that marissa coulter makes a great even though all she did was make a single question about it she made a great case for it in episode five somehow uh of his stark material season two but in terms of the theology with this philosophical questions here like if there's an intrinsic

meaning that's inherently linked with each of the symbols and the images regardless of whether or not there's a person there in that world like that means that there might be something else some some other external thing there somewhere that is perceiving it right in order to give it that meaning so it does that mean that there is an omniscient or omnipresent observer that is conferring meaning onto these symbols or these objects? So it's a fascinating discussion. It's a lot of, I think, what you were saying about the Blackwell's discussion, right, where Philip Pullman talks about his love of discovery. I would even add that if there's an observer conferring this meaning isn't the magisterium declaring what's important or wait the authority interesting

i think there's an argument for both right like so the limitations of language right of you know if someone controls what things mean then that limits the ability to discuss certain ideas. Yeah, absolutely. This is the definitive definition of the word. Like in 1984. Yeah. Malcolm can't tell anyone but Asta, but Hannah's warm, comfortable living room with the comfy chairs and all the books. And the chocolate and the chocolato yeah it feels more like home than any year ever has he's drowsy hannah's like you worked

very hard today of course you are and he's like this is work he's like wow i want to see the alethiometer hannah and she's like you't, because it has to say at the library, unfortunately. But you can have this picture of all of its symbols. It's a circle. It's not the same. It's not the same at all. It's a circle with 36 divisions. I've seen many pictures of alethiometers. It's not the same. It's not the same. We've

studied alethiometers. What's the study of alethiometers? The alethiometer ometer? We're there. She used to use this circle, though, herself, when she was first learning. And she's like, it'll teach you some memory tricks. And I'll teach you more when we see each other next. The circle reminds him of his auras, his spangled ring. And she's intrigued by that.

And she's like, this kind of sounds like a migraine aura. And she asks if he has headaches. He doesn't. And she's like this kind of sounds like a migraine aura and she asks if he has headaches he doesn't and she's like okay well we'll see and he says he'll probably see it again sometime soon so the spangle and the moon and lyra and i i feel like there's something being drawn a connection being drawn between all those i don't know what it is yet i'm also going to say it's interesting that his connection with spangle was that horned moon uh line in that milton first because chloe what's your first association with the term spangle my first association is a midnight summer's dream with really moonshine well it's not really the character Moonshine. It's a character playing Moonshine in Midnight Summer's Dream when they perform the play,

Thespis play, with the marriage that goes on. And they name a character Moonshine. He uses almost the exact same language of the horned moon and of a lantern representing the horned moon, basicallyhine says and it is total william shakespeare and i'm pretty sure that's where john milton is getting it from i do think so yeah um that's interesting that blows my uh what i was getting at out of the water it's okay don't ask the questions next time no i mean like no i think that's great and i think that's a great connection that you brought up um i wish you had you should have kept it in the notes and i'm glad that you said it and we

still brought it in um because my uh because i think dreams and the midsummer night's dream is definitely something that uh plays into some of the stuff in the later part of this book but i was thinking like star spangled banner you know i think for many americans that's the our first touch point on the word spangle yeah i didn't even think of that as far as spangled but that makes sense because uh that's because you're not a patriot and you're gonna be sent to a re-education oh my god listen thanks listen you little fucker with your league of saint alexander i don't appreciate it okay wow eliana wears a fucking badge everyone jesus oh my god narc yeah for jesus that is uh that was

the story okay you narc anyways so hannah returns and she's like, by the way, did you like that book you read on the Silk Road? And he's like, it's the one place I want to go the most in the whole world. And Hannah says, maybe one day you will go, Malcolm. Hmm. Hmm. We close

out the chapter with that evening someone returns La Belle Sauvage to the Trout Inn. And that is like how you know sauvage to the trout inn and that is like how you know shit's about to go down in the story right you're like labelle sauvage is back malcolm the protagonist is gonna do some stuff it is it's you're like that's the thing it's the thing it's the title of the book it's back eliana what the hell labelle sauvage chapters 9 through 11 that was it what a book was it a lot happens it was a long ass three chapters they were truly it was you know if there's one thing in the structure of the book i can say

i don't want to be a bitch i'm not trying to be an asshole pullman i love the book it is a favorite book of mine honestly labelle sauvage is probably one of my favorites of the entire all of it ever because it's just so smart just clever i love it it got me invested i really loved it it reminds me of you more than just the normal his dark materials eliana because i read it on the way to your house once. Aw. Yeah, I just think about it. It's a clever book, but-

You meant me, not Philip Pullman. Yeah, not him. It's not about you right now, Philip. You wrote it, but I just, I love the book. I love the story. I think these three chapters were so thick, And this is where it gets really good. I remember reading it and like, I've read these three chapters in a row and went,

I have to keep going. This was where it started to really pick up for me, in my opinion. Hmm. I can see that. I can see that. It is like things start really rolling after this. I mean,

the legacy in Alexander is a big point. and Gerard Bon vie going back as you said and because i mean the whole time i'm like reading this right when i was reading i was like when's the flood coming and now you have people talking more explicitly they're like yo the flood's coming so soon enough the waters will flow well we are going to do a discussion today it's been a little bit this discussion will be covering thoughts about the secret commonwealth and la belle sauvage combined so if you have not yet read the secret commonwealth at least up to about 37 of the book please tune out i don't want to spoil you it will not be too thorough past that it should probably be about literally 37 of the first part of the

book there so eliana you're allowed to stay whoa eliana's gonna get dustyiana, my first conceptual thing about Dust right now is this is the first time we're getting strong mentions of the Levant and the Silk Road, which is total secret commonwealth, right? Like, we know there are some adventures that take place there, and this chapter really hammers it home about Malcolm's dream of seeing them. Absolutely. And And you know, you were talking about atlases with them, and we've been getting

hints at that for a while from, like, Lyra's Oxford, the novella, with those pictures and some of the enticing towards that. So we get it with the Silk Road, and you were talking about a last episode about the murder right on the Orient Express. Did I make that up? No, you are you were

correct yes okay yeah murder on the orient express is happening yes so you can see you know good for malcolm he gets to fulfill his childhood dream there's a lot in there about malcolm not only fulfilling that dream from his childhood but also like busting out of that societal bubble right he did not want to be an inn owner that's just not what he wanted he wanted to explore he wanted to travel

he wanted to see things he wanted to do things and help people and I think that's really big that he doesn't get shoehorned into that lifestyle that's true and you know a couple of other things right uh playing to malcolm's future yeah what about this migraine aura it has to be more right the first time i read it i was like uh you have a portal in front of you malcolm polstead you're gonna jump in the portal right i just like couldn't understand like what is happening and i figured it'd be elaborated and maybe it is maybe it isn't

based on what you've allowed me to see here yeah i mean we see him like still looking at this and what's so funny is like when he's grown up people have just accepted that this happens so what they all just wait around for 20 minutes while malcolm does his whole fucking thing yeah strangely enough so like he doesn't get a migraine right like he gets the aura no migraine normal people would get the migraine 20 minutes later and be fucking, you know, unable to process life or do things, which is, like, the story of my life.

But in this chapter specifically, it's interesting because it's juxtaposed against them reading the alethiometer symbols without the alethiometer. That's a huge theme. Even throughout the Secret Commonwealth, we get that unorthodox new way of reading the alethiometer.

So his spangled eye kind of reminds me of some of the windows to the world that we get Will cutting open in the main series, and it seems to be connected to the new way of reading the alethiometer. We have a few quotes from the Secret Commonwealth about what it's like reading the alethiometer in this manner very unorthodox experimental partly the new way depends on abandoning the sort of single viewpoint perspective you have with the classical method that's from hannah's pov we also get olivier saying it puts a severe strain on the nerves.

And then from Lyra, the classical method required the reader to frame a question by pointing each of the hands at a different symbol, thus defining precisely what it was they wanted to know. But with the new method, all three hands were pointed at a symbol chosen by the reader. And then the reader had to abandon control and enter a state of passive vision where nothing was fixed and everything was equally possible. Lyra being able to see people while using this weird new method, specifically Olivier Bonvie, and possibly being able to use it or see Malcolm, maybe seeing Will, possibly, is a huge concept, right?

But this scene, this part of the chapter, really bore. It makes me wonder if this new method is just one step closer to maybe uncovering power of the alethiometer without using the alethiometer, right? Interesting. Or mastering dark matter. We know it's possible we see it happen with the matter attaching itself to the cave in modern his dark materials times to communicate with mary according to some of the logic and theory that we have discussed here before most things are right they've already been for many years they have happened, they've existed. The nausea Lyra's

experiencing using the new method? I mean, this new method of the alethiometer to me says that this is being discovered. This is not being invented. It's been done, it's just being discovered by people for the first time. Yeah.

Could maybe they be staving off this nausea and this awful feeling with something like an oil perhaps to calm everything maybe a rose oil could malcolm use rose oil to connect through his auras that he's still getting even now in the secret commonwealth maybe to the spirit world wide web maybe communicate with lyra while they're in the levant or maybe could will use the mulefa pod oil to connect to the spirit world wide web i'm just throwing out some ideas these are just some thoughts if will did that maybe he could see lyra again i don't know. If Malcolm looks at the spangle directly, it goes away. When he looks from the side,

he sees it. It reminds me of specters, it reminds me of windows, reminds me of a whole lot of stuff, and I feel like it could become important because it was not important in this book. At all. Great. Good to know. Um,

yeah, uh, I don't know, i think it's interesting because like even some of the physical descriptions of malcolm's first time experiencing it sounds similar to reading the alethiometer right without the classical method in terms of the dizziness he experiences granted that disappears later on uh it sounds like. And he's just like, all right, I'm just going to ride this thing out. Just do this thing. But in terms of the sensations, right, his demon feeling far away, seeing a lot of things far and wide, it feels like a lot of the descriptions of what happens in the alethiometer.

And I think that there's something really pointed here about the reader having to abandon control and enter a state of passive vision where nothing was fixed and everything was equally possible. On one hand, it almost sounds very similar to the negative capability that Lyra and Will and Mary Malone rely on in order to communicate with dust but I guess different in that there is as they said nothing is fixed everything is equally possible which is very different from the method that's discussed here in terms of symbols having intrinsically fixed meanings right and here they're arguing against that there's also I think like a that idea of everything is equally possible you were talking about the spangled ring being a portal or a view into

other worlds and if you know we're going off the theory that every new dimension or every new world it has to do with a diversion or is created out of a diversion of worlds or possibilities if you go into a state where everything is possible is that how you become able to see into every other worlds i don't know that's interesting especially because there's a lot of talk in these few chapters of like understanding different viewpoints and being able to see from different places different worlds malcolm has to learn to fit into a lot of places during this story as an 11-year-old spy. As we continue in The Secret Commonwealth, we see him start to master some of these adult mid-20s spying effects.

You know, it's very natural to spy in your mid-20s or be a spy. Or like a girl that's a decade younger than you. So these are some things that we will see moving forward. I mean, we'll see some of these major themes for Malcolm. And I don't know, just watching him spy now does give you that buildup for what he's going to be like in a decade. Yeah. And as you said, Brie's going to go in that exploration, especially as Philip Pullman says, he loves to explore and discover. Yeah, absolutely.

Yep. discover yeah absolutely yep well these are some thick chapters i'm very excited to get into the middle of this book because as i've said i love this book i love the story i love the mythology that pullman is starting to pull in when it comes to some of the secret commonwealth of fairies and creatures and etc. And I am so excited to finally share it with you, Eliana, and that you are getting through the secret commonwealth. I know you are because you can discuss things with me now, which is so exciting. And then I scream at you

and I'm like, Chloe, why is this happening? Why is this book awful, Eliana says. I don't... I don't know, Eliana. Yeah, there's some really good things. There are some really good things. No, there are. There are things. Yeah.

There are just some really shitty things, too. Well. Well. Ain't that just the way? That is the way. This is the way, according to Star War. And thanks so much for listening to us this week. You know, we will be back in 2021.

We're going to head on a very hard hitting path to finish out La Belle Sauvage so that we can get a head start on the Amber Spyglass in the face of Series 3. There will be more of that to come for you all, so stay tuned. Absolutely. And yes, we're're gonna see you all happy holidays and happy new year but of course we do have more His Dark Materials content coming for you in the rest of

2020 right we do still have our coverage of the television show and our Patreon episodes yes this month like we said we will be covering a Patreon episode about the music of His Dark Materials with our friends from the Dust podcast, Matt and Holly. So please make sure to tune in over at Patreon.com slash Girls Gone Canon, where patrons in the Stranger tier and above, $5 and above tier, every month get a special episode.

Every other month, it's His Dark Materials. Every other other month, it's A Song of Ice and Fire. And, of course, as we said, those are not our only guests this month. We are also going to cover the last episode of His Dark Materials Season 2 with Cam, aka Candid59, and

we are very excited. I'm kind of sad that the series is ending. We are going to close 2020 with a bang. But if you want to keep up with any of those episodes coming out, you can find us on Apple Podcasts,

Google Play, Spotify, Podbean, all those good places. Yes, look us up, search us up, we're probably there. Thanks so much for listening. As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana.

You can find us on Twitter and Gmail too. Oh yeah, forgot about them, but you know what? You'll find them. You'll find them. It's fine. GirlsGoneCanon at gmail.com. GirlsGoneCanon on Twitter. You can't miss it. I mean, you can if you add an extra N. One N in canon.

C-A-N-O-N. You're doing great, everyone. Goodbye.