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His Dark Materials - 03x03 "The Intention Craft"

↳ @saecookie's chrismun presents part 1/3

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I saw a super cute photo of a guy with a cat and I had to paint it in my own way. It let me practice some rendering techniques I haven't tried before :)

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his dark materials had such an astounding lack of official promotion so here are my favourite serializd reviews instead. go watch

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Into this wild Abyss The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire But all these things in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, thus must ever fight Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while Pondering his voyage⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

HIS DARK MATERIALS as Penguin Classics

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😍😍😍

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Colonialism in His Dark Materials

CW: racism, sexism, sexual violence

Spoiler warning: all the books in the His Dark Materials series, as well as La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth, and Once upon a Time in the North

Intro

His Dark Materials takes place in a world like our own, but not quite like our own, which is evident in everything from daemons to their use of anbaric light instead of electric light. It’s also evident in the way national borders have evolved in their world, as is clear if one looks at the map of Lyra’s world:

 (Source: His Dark Materials Wiki)

It should be noted that while this map is to my understanding an official in-world map, it doesn’t seem to include every country, for instance there is no mention of Norroway which is mentioned in Northern Lights (Pullman 2011a, 170). I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how the North in this world functions and compares to our world in this essay, and the parallels one can see to the history of our North. Furthermore, a while back the excellent podcast Girls Gone Canon pointed out that in The Subtle Knife Lee Scoresby meets someone who he describes as a Yoruba man (2020a). This is interesting, since in our world, the Yoruba people are split across several different nations (mainly Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana) as a result of colonial borders. As Girls Gone Canon said, this makes one curious about the colonial history of Lyra’s world, was there a British (and French, Spanish, Dutch etc) empire in the same way as in our world? It’s clear that racism and xenophobia exists in Lyra’s world, for instance there are several instances of disparaging remarks about the Gyptians, Turks, and the Tartars. The Tartars are described as dangerous and brutal throughout Northern Lights, for instance in regard to their practice of scalping and trepanning enemies (Pullman 2020a, 26). We later of course find out that they don’t trepan their enemies, but that it’s a ritual reserved for those the Tartars esteem (ibid, 228). We also hear of Turk children kidnapping children (ibid, 105), and as I will expand upon further later, the gyptians are often looked down upon by landlopers (non-Gyptians). For instance there’s this quote from La Belle Sauvage, when Malcom tries to pass on Fader Coram’s warning about a flood coming to his teachers who think: “It was nonsense- it was superstition- the gyptians knew nothing, or they were up to something, or they were just not to be trusted.” (Pullman 2018, 277) But it’s also clear that while there is racism in Lyra’s world just as in our own, the history of Lyra’s world is different than ours, as can be seen in how the national borders have been constructed. So, one might assume that the systems of colonialism, and how coloniality still effects Lyra’s world is different as well. In this essay I will argue that the Magisterium plays a similar, if also different, role to the colonial powers of our world. I will specifically focus on three aspects of this; the gyptian’s situation and the Magisterium’s treatment of them, the Magisterium’s attempted control/colonialization of The North, and the Magisterium’s control/colonialization of Asia Minor.

Keep reading

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Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon), female, EAT TASTY FISH!!!, family Alcedinidae, order Coraciiformes, found across most of North America, Central America, and coastal northern South America

photograph by Ron (Rondv)

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Canonically, a daemon and their human cannot communicate telepathically

I knew this, but it's so common in fanfic for daemon-humam pairs to talk in their shared mind space that I keep forgetting and wondering why Pan and Lyra need to whisper to each other when they're hiding

And, not to argue with the author, but doesn't it kinda make sense for them to be able to talk telepathically? Like, they're bonded at the soul level, one being in two bodies, and they can definitely feel the other's emotions and pain

Why not just let them mind chat?

Tbh if Avec were real/corporeal we would be chatting out loud constantly, but that's just cause I talk to myself all the time already

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I think my daemon is a greyhound. She looks most like a polish greyhound right now*. I don’t think she’s settled as one yet (‘cause I’ve only had her for less than a day).

I do have a vivid imagination and frequent dialogues with myself, so at least that explains why it didn’t take too long for her to show up.

Her name (right now, I think) is Ophelia. I just scrolled through baby names until one felt right for her.

I love her, she helped keep me from freaking out when I got anxious today.

*Is it possible to get noemata for daemons? I just kind of knew how her fur felt and what her shape was without really choosing it.

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chaos family + the amber spyglass/ series parallels

1.01 “Lyra’s Jordan” // Chapter 25 “Saint-Jean-les-Eaux”, The Amber Spyglass // 1.01 “Lyra’s Jordan” // Chapter 28 “Midnight”, The Amber Spyglass // 1.08 “Betrayal” // Chapter 35 “Over the Hills and Far Away”, The Amber Spyglass // 3.03 “The Intention Craft” // Chapter 28 “Midnight”, The Amber Spyglass // 3.08 “The Botanic Garden”

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his dark materials fan week 2020 | day 6 | thing you are most looking forward to about season two/upcoming books | mary malone

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sometimes the commentary in his dark materials on class difference and the ways in which wealthy people abuse their influence is seamlessly and organically interwoven with the narrative and sometimes its like Will says something mean and lyra literally goes "this bitch is too poor to talk to me like that"

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HIS DARK MATERIALS, S01E01 | Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua

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making my peace with how lyra was characterised in the show vs the books because so much of it relies on her age and even dafne keen being only one year older than lyra when filming set her up to portray a different character from the very beginning. it doesn't seem like a huge difference but lyra being a child and not a teenager is of fundamental importance to her path in the books so it's inevitable that she was written more like a teenager in the show (and you can't stop child actors from ageing, you can only adapt the writing and directing to match how they mature). the show wrote lyra's arc in accordance with her maturing to the age of around 16, so they chose to have her grow out of her habit of lying and instead wield the power of truth to further her on her journey. it was a different journey from the books, but it got her to the same place: saving her friend and countless others with the power of storytelling and a silvertongue

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She sat beside Will, and her eyes never left Pantalaimon, who stood trembling at the shore end of the jetty; but as the boatman let go of the iron ring and swung his oars out to pull the boat away, the little dog dæmon trotted helplessly out to the very end, his claws clicking softly on the soft planks, and stood watching, just watching, as the boat drew away and the jetty faded and vanished in the mist. Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even in that muffled, mist-hung world it raised an echo, but of course it wasn’t an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. “My heart, Will …” she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a great betrayal and it would hurt her terribly, was fulfilled. The Amber Spyglass, Chapter 21: The Harpies

HIS DARK MATERIALS (2019—2022) 1.01 Lyra’s Jordan | 3.04 Lyra and Her Death

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childhood daemon headcanons

children asking their daemons to become very small, hiding them in their pockets, and trying to scare the other children by pretending they don’t have daemons at all

children and their daemons staying up reading far after their parents have put them to bed, their daemons becoming fireflies to light up the pages of their books

daemons playing “guess which animal I am,” asking their human to shut their eyes, turning into different animals, and having their human touch them and try to guess what animal they’ve become

nerdy children reading about an exotic animal and school, and asking their daemon to become that animal so they can study it better

kids and their daemons trying to scare each other, kids making crazy faces while their daemons transform into tarantulas and bats

children trick-or-treating with their daemons, making sure that the daemons form matches their costume perfectly

daemons turning in to fishes when their human counterparts don’t want to take a bath, trying to coax their humans into the water and show them that it isn’t scary

the daemons of children who don’t have coats and blankets turning into big bears to keep them warm in the winter

children taking care of their daemons. daemons taking care of their children.