#hdm commentary

[elodieunderglass]

I am absolutely wild and feral over HDM (legit like, daemons fit SO well. I'm watching dunmeshi wondering where Laios' dog went) and super curious if you do plan a sequel or other fics following this AU??

(In reference to the His Dark Materials / Dungeon Meshi fusion fic)

thank you so much for this question I love this question god!!!! Thank you thank you thank you

God sorry about HDM being delayed, I’m going through hell over it at the moment. It’s meant to end a little after the dragon, then a timeskip epilogue, with special coding so that you can read it two different ways, depending on whether you want spoilers for the manga/season 2. (My idea is that you’ll click a button to reveal/hide it, and the spoiler-free epilogue will be like found poetry.)

Firstly, if you or anyone else would like to take the concepts/characters in His Delicious Materials forward for themselves, you must do this. You don’t need my permission (but I’d love a link! so I can read, scream, reblog, comment, link to it, etc. there is also the “inspired by” setting on ao3 so we can link works directly to HDM, forming a collection for anyone who reads one and wants more.) I don’t own any of it! We are all just having fun! YOU can be the sequel you want to see in the world! If your heart feels a way forward, then follow your heart!! A daemon AU is really about revealing character and I find them really inspiring, like adding a whole engine to a story idea.

If I were to write something to follow up, I do know what the sequel WOULD be! It would be a sort of Discworld novel about the slow social revolution occurring in the half-foots as a chain reaction to Bee settling as a weasel, all occurring behind Chilchuck’s oblivious and unhelpful back. Pushed into a sort of bottleneck of sparrow- and mouse-souls, and marginalised to the very edges of society, half-foots are precarious and endangered. Chilchuck is mostly eating a ham sandwich unhelpfully in the foreground, and at the end of the story looks back and sees to his bewilderment that his people have found a way forward (they don’t have a Shire or a Chosen One, but they do have a goddamn functional worker’s union and their own collective dignity.) kind of Discworld-commentary-comedy, kind of a loving argument with Tolkien, kind of Sharpe hostile-and-awkward-protagonist-POV-doesn’t-know-and-wouldn’t-believe-that-his-men-genuinely-love-him, kind of about the experience of parenting, and kind of gently warmly political BUT FUNNY so it would be ok. but feel it would be too much of a stretch of people’s patience and the original materials’s intentions to call it fanfic. Too many OCs needed to carry the weight, too little reference to the other Dungeon Meshi characters, almost too little “payoff” for what would be a full 70k word work. So maybe to let the story breathe, it would be better worked up as original fiction?

(Plus, that is actually an actual novel: if people write their own novels and manga about orc coffeeshops and dnd parties, I could just write my own too: wait but how do you know if you should?)

Anyway, that is an entirely separate kettle of weasels and my own cross to bear! If your heart cries out for a sequel the best way to manifest it in the world is to write it!

If you feel that A Weasel Heart In Defiance feels like it would scratch that itch, here is a bit that is mildly relevant to Dungeon Meshi, which is Chilchuck and Bee starting to work away from home while the girls were still small. You’ll probably see what I mean from it.

About seven of the village children, including his own three, had a snake in a wooden bucket. They didn't look up.

The reappearance of a random guy who functioned mostly as a postal service and occasionally shouted at them about bedtime - in a way that could be easily blanked out if something more interesting was happening - simply could not be expected to compete for attention with a snake in a bucket.

Chilchuck could recognise this on some level, but as his own children ignored him, he felt very hot and angry, in a way that he had never wanted to feel about children, especially his.

Bee, also rigidly pissed off, growled, "Easy, boss."

This was where Chilchuck did the only thing so far that he was proud of, in this day. He did not start shouting, even though his temper was going something like What the fuck, kids, but worse. He stopped, took a minute, and remembered he'd had this whole thing where he'd wanted his kids to love him. He rubbed his nose, said, "Remind me," and his daemon reminded him: "What do we want them to actually do?"

And he said, "The bare minimum fucking acknowledgement would be nice."

And Bee said, "Have we explained that to them? Do they know?"

So Chilchuck and Bee, hot and tired and cross and still on the job apparently, sat down on the ground with the kids and looked in the bucket. The snake, poor bastard, looked very limp and tired. Chilchuck could relate.

After a while, Chilchuck said, "Girls?"

Or more accurately, something like, "Girls! Girls. Meifleurpatti-I mean Puck-PUCK. Listen up. Mei! Fleur, I'm talking - thanks Fleur - Puck. (Ryeland, stop the baby.) PUCK. Mei, Fleur, Puck - PUCK, eyes on me - thanks, Ryeland - PUCK. EYES," which condensed in parent-speak to a single roar of "Girls!"

When he had them more or less listening, he remembered to set his voice to the more singsong cadence one used for children, instead off the deeper version of his natural voice that he used for shouting at the top of his abilities at tall people; making the choice to be patient and gentle, or at least pretend to be someone who was; and in this manner he said reasonably, "Now, your dad's been away for a very long time and missed you all very much. What do you say? What do you say when your dad comes home?"

Six children stared at him blankly, and the baby toppled gently into the bucket. He fished it out, stuck it sideways under his arm, allowed the snake to escape in the confusion, acknowledged someone's grievously injured finger, stopped Fleur from pinching, took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped Puck's nose in essentially one continuous motion.

To be completely fair, now that he'd let go of the initial anger, he could see that the kids had absolutely no idea what he'd wanted of them. Kids had practically no social instincts at the best of times. Chilchuck coming home was remarkable, sure, but beyond their influence; how were they supposed to react? What do you say to a comet? What do you say to a hailstorm? What do you say when daddy comes home?

He repeated the question, as the children had universally drawn blanks and devolved into staring vacantly.

"Good morning, Daddy!" A child chirped helpfully, setting off the rest in an automatic drone of "good morning, Daddy," in the strangely universal dreary tone of all children saying that.

"So close, Fernwise! Is it morning? What else do we think?"

Bee, fighting for order among the kit-daemons, was simultaneously washing Fleurtom's daemon, Pantoufle's, face; receiving a long rambling report of a grievance from three incoherent witnesses; and minding the baby's chick-daemon; up to her ears in parenting. She said, around a mouthful of Pan, "Speed it up, boss, you're losing them."

"Where are your spots, Daddy?" Pan asked him. He was in the form of a young ferret and scrabbled against his mother's grip on his scruff.

"My what?"

"Your freckles," Bee said grimly, and seeing he'd been temporarily disarmed - and being a valiant beast in her way - charged in to her human's defense, "Is that nice, Pan? We don't want to make people feel bad about their looks, do we?"

"Yes we do," said Fleur.

"Fleur! We've just - we haven't seen much of the sun, that's all," said Bee, taking charge, the best and most loyal soul a man could have. "They'll come back, and they're not spots."

"Mei has spots."

"Freckles."

"Grimbob has spots."

"Yes, and you shouldn't notice," Bee said. "Think of Grimbob's feelings."

"I do, I think he feels spotty."

"I'm thirsty," Puck said flatly.

"Stick to the point, kids," Chilchuck said, recovering from the fact that his usual face was apparently indistinguishable to children from Grimbob's, who had been taking puberty hard. This was surprisingly difficult to do.

Ryeland, a mildly bright spark who was older than the Chils girls, connected two dots and suddenly roared "WELCOME HOME DADDY," so six children all repeated that automatically, and Fleur added sunnily, "I missed you Daddy!"

And just as a very small piece of Chilchuck's heart was finally allowed to melt, she added, equally sunnily, "Mei didn't."

"I did a little," Meijack said vaguely.

"That's great kids, well done, we got there in the end," Chilchuck said. "Remember it for next time, okay? It makes Daddy feel better about his stupid life. Now, next time, let's remember that it's traditional to do a hug."

He realised his mistake instantly, as six children and their daemons all bore him - and the baby he'd forgotten he was holding - to the ground.

___________

[multicolour-ink]

Whilst I love the His Dark Material books, I do appreciate the show for explaining the parts of the book that I always found a bit difficult to wrap my head around: namely the prophecy and what Lyra being the second "Eve" meant.

It's hard for me to voice exactly my opinions on the original story of Adam and Eve, given I was not raised Christian and only told the basic outlines of the bible (Adam and Eve, birth and death of Jesus etc) from my primary school days at a Church of England school.

But from what I understand, Eve was the cause of "original sin/fall of man". I am purely fascinated by what exactly this means, as I can't seem to find a solid answer anywhere; but HDM (or rather the author, Philip Pullman) attempts to explain "the fall" as becoming aware of knowledge, love, and experience. Things that are associated with growing up, and moving away from childhood innocence. This was (in my opinion) quite vague in the books, so the show adds some commentary about it that I appreciate:

So that's it. Lyra as Eve is doing what her predecessor did: was tempted to experience all the good and bad that makes us human.

I'm also curious as to how Adam fit into this - Was he tempted as well, or did he follow Eve into "sin" because he wanted to remain faithful to her? Were they really like children until they became aware of everything g thanks to the fruit? Was it all a good or bad thing?

[flowerpotmage]

mist & rue

It is night in a new world, and you've lost a dear friend.

notes & etc: reader, lee scoresby, and john parry. oneshot. HDM series. canon compliant with events of book 2. ambiguous relationships. angst!! more writer commentary at the end. 584 words. on Ao3 here

It’s unreasonable to have expected your choices to take you down any other path than this. You were always going to find yourself here.

Mist touches your skin, permeating through the relatively thin layers of your clothing and down through to your bones. You’d like to say that the cold air numbs your distress, shocks you enough to calm down and jolt out of it, but… truthfully, it has little effect on why you’re here, crying and swallowing shaky gulps of air with your arms around yourself and a silver turquoise ring in your fist. You don’t notice the osprey dæmon that soars overhead.

The soft sound of familiar footsteps draws another shuddering breath into your lungs, your hand wiping shaky and surreptitiously—you hope—at your cooling tears. You want to greet him, as you normally would, but you know your voice would betray you. Although, if he’s here right now, he already knows, and you’re taking much too long to say anything anyhow, and he’d be an idiot not to know anyway—

He comes to a stop near your shoulder.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he says in that smooth, enigmatically charming voice of his. “Sayan saw you, and I thought you might appreciate an ear.”

Your dry chuckle is exceptionally soggy, and you take a deep breath to steady yourself, breathing it out through your lips with closed eyes.

“Jopari,” you greet, looking out at the foreign stars. “It has been an exceptionally trying time. I don’t think I was ready.”

“Ah,” he says, and you can hear the rueful smile in the sound. “I don’t think most of us are.”

You turn to look at him over your shoulder. “John.”

You’ve come to know him well over these last years. Sayan can journey far, that’s true, but even a shaman with a witches dæmon is reluctant to part too far with their own very self, and shamans and witches alike need unassuming individuals to be their knowing eyes and hands in far off lands. None of you would never have gotten this far otherwise. So you understand immediately.

“You knew Lee would…” your throat closes up on the words.

“I did. I'm sorry.”

The tears come fresh, the heat of the saltwater on your face due to more than mere thermodynamics. It’s as if the anger at the man by your side is finding the only escape it can, through the water of your eyes, leaving room for growing dismay.

“Come back to the camp,” he says, nothing but gentle. “You’ll catch cold and we’ve a ways to go yet.”

You turn away again, looking down at the small furry body of your dæmon by your boot.

“Ah, so I will be continuing on further?” You regret the spiteful comment as soon as it leaves your mouth.

“This is not the world you’ll stop in,” John Parry says, cryptic as ever.

You turn to face him, the stones making their small sounds underfoot. He looks at you, sharp eyes apologetic. “I know you were close with Mr. Scoresby,” he says. “If there had been another way—”

“Then we wouldn’t win, in the end, would we?”

One side of his mouth lifts, once again rueful.

You sigh, and nod. The two of you walk back to your small, humble camp, and John, Jopari, Stanislaus Grumman and all his names, sits with you in silence by the fire. Before you know it, he will be dead, and you will be left behind to tell his son about him.

---------------------------------

i have sooo much fun facts about this reader in my head all of a sudden. in my mind they were a little bit in love with lee (a longtime friend) and john (platonically? romantically? we'll never know about either of these for either fella and neither will they bc theyre kinda messed up about it all!!) and they work with john and the witches towards asriel's big plan to Kill God. yippee!!

[sneakystorms]

Ngl personally i found the asoue take on it much more compelling... Maybe it's just bias because i liked that series as a kid but i think the old testament commentary rings a lot clearer. Like hdm is entirely alllll about deconstructing genesis and xtianity but despite that (or maybe because of it?) the message seems muddled to me. Taking on too much and adding too mant metaphors until everything means everything and nothing means anything (I'm exaggerating but i did feel that way a little bit). Asoue in its later volumes comments on morality so consistently that it really hits when the final volume takes the subjects of guilt and blame, choice, kindness, good and evil etc head on. I really liked how the eden allegory was related to the question of parenthood vis a vis safety and danger and simplicity and complexity. And in the process it ends up actually saying something about the idea of god as father and other aspects of xtianity (and presumably judaism too?). I do think the incredibly deadly viper is just there because handler wanted to use his snake character rather than because its inclusion gives any added depth to the allegory lol

[broomsticks]

memorable jan reads

hp and hdm

remus/gilderoy! canon plausible, very sweet on the surface, and completely fucking fucked with just two seconds more thought! i love it!

pov second person + future tense wolfstar classic. falling!!!

the first twelve NYEs of tom riddle’s life. read and feel sorry for baby!tom with me thanks

sirius/tonks. smutty and fun, just the way i like this pairing, but that last line!! oof!

sirius/harry!!! set up so beautifully.

short little marisa & lyra. what can i say i’m soft for the rare few believable occurrences marisa’s not an entirely terrible mother and for the watching-people-sleep trope.

lyra x will, a partial reunion 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

a dean thomas character study

rita/narcissa! the social commentary of one horribly wonderful narcissa black!!!

rita/marietta, co presidents of the i hate hermione granger club!!! thistlecat!!!

[hyperpotamianarch]

-Hey, Arch?

Yes, fake audience voice?

-Why are you reblogging your question a third time?

I'm so glad you've asked! See, I've went over some historical stuff and came across a completely different answer for the first question. So, since the other reblog line (the Jewsade) has become too long, I've decided to start over.

-Why not reblog some other post that discussed that topic? Also, why the heck did you not do the proper historical research while working on the origi-

All right, that's quite enough.

So, another answer to question one! How exciting! Especially since everybody loved the original so much. So, you see, it has come to my attention that some 17th century events might have greater bearing on-

-It's because you liked the idea of the Jewsade too much, isn't it? You've spent a whole whopping Shabbat researching David Reubeni, Shlomo Molcho and John Calvin, and it was so darn exciting-

Shut up!

-on the presence of Jews in certain places by the time HDM occures at. You see, Menasseh Ben Israel-

-You were so caught up in your idea of a Jewish Messiah getting somewhere and then failing miserably. Why? Was that a commentary on the State of Israel or something?

Shut UP! I'm trying to-

-Trying to nothing, you keep allow me to break you because you enjoy this way of portraying stuff and don't have a proper outline to anything about Menasseh Ben Israel!

All right, fine! I'll admit it.

So. Umm. That.

Yeah, as my fake-audience-voice (-Hi!) said above, I did get caught up with research on David Reubeni, even though I knew about Menasseh Ben Israel's bearing on the history of Judaism at the time. The truth is, the thought hit me on my way to the Synagogue on Shabbat eve and I got so excited I kept it in mind for the entirety of the Shabbat. Then I wrote my post immediately when Shabbat ended where I live.

Those are not very important details, but I think they explain my odd focus on the Jewsade on the other post. I got excited. It was a cool - if slightly disturbing, considering its relation to the crusades - event that didn't happen in our world but could happen elsewhere. Only problem is, the alterations were slightly too early.

I don't know at what year was John Calvin elected pope in Lyra's world. However, besides it changing very little (the people who mattered for the sake of the Jewsade are the kings more than the pope), it was also likely after both Reubeni and Molcho were imprisoned by Charles V. It doean't have to be that way - slight alterations, even prior to the major deviation point, are not hard to make - but it makes it more of an independant idea.

Menasseh Ben Israel, however, held an important role in the history of Judaism, and lived during the 17th century, placing him in an easy place to be affected by this alteration. I will admit to lazyness in my historical research - when galvanized during the Shabbat I can do a lot, but Ambaric and Computing devices tend to distract me easily during the weekdays. That's a weak excuse, but this is why my reading on Ben Israel was mostly just his Wikipedia article.

Either way: Menasseh Ben Israel was the son of Porugese Anusim, forced converts. His family lived in La Rochelle for a time as a way to escape the Inquisition, but later moved to Amsterdam, where Menasseh Ben Israel spent most of the rest of his life. For the record, the time cite in Wikipedia for their move to the Netherlands is 1610.

Now, it's probably important to note that the Netherlands were only starting to become independant - there was a war, which was somewhat related to the Netherlands being mostly protestant while Spain, which sort of controlled them, was famously Catholic. This is probably significant, since most Netherlanders were not just any type of protestant - they were Calvinists.

To get to the point, though, Menasseh Ben Israel apparently attempted to explain Judaism to the Christians of the world - he was in a good position for that, I guess, having been raised in a family of Anusim. He also made efforts to convince Sweden and Britain to allow Jews to live in them, under the belief that the salvation of the Jewish people will only come once they reach the farthest corners of the Earth. He had limited success with Sweden - a small Jewish community was founded there during 1680s, but was later expelled. He didn't live to see that, though, or the eventual success of his efforts in Britain, because he died at 1657 while trying to bring his son's body to burial in Amsterdam.

To be fair, it took about a century more for Sweden to truly allow Jews in again, but Menasseh Ben Israel is, in some ways, the man who caused those two countries to accept Jews. Incidentally, if you follow Lyra's journey, most of the time she's in her own world is in one of those countries. Plus a portion in Greenland (Svalbard and Lord Asriel's hut, possibly the Station as well) and some time in India (I think? I'm pretty sure it was a mountain range in Southeast Asia in the book. In the series it was a somewhat forsaken island, IIRC). Though, considering she was unconcious for most of her time in that last place I'm not sure it counts.

Well, I just checked and it turns out there were Jews in Denmark earlier than in Sweden - it's not clear if there were Jews there during the Middle Ages, but Jews were allowed there in 1622, when Menasseh Ben Israel was about 18. So maybe I exaggarated his influence a bit. I'm not sure what bearing it has on Greenland, though. Anyway, attempting to avoid uncomfortable topics: with changes in how the church functions, a lot of stuff in Europe will change. I've said so in the other line of reblogs already, but I don't know if the Magisterium will start by giving the Inquisition more authority or close it entirely. We know that by Lyra's time the Inquisition isn't active anymore, but the hints that it was active in the past might indicate it survived Calvin's reforms to the Catholic church. So, in short, the Ben Israel family might have nowhere to go in fear of the Inquisition. It can affect Menasseh's life in a myriad of ways - he may have went to live in America, for example - and many of them can lead to no one raising to Cromwell, or whoever else might be controlling Brytain at the time, the topic of allowing Jewish return to it.

Without the Jewsade (assuming I'm dissuaded from it. I'm not yet - still attempting to work on a fanfic, which doesn't mean much considering it has been less than a week), the results of simply not having such an important figure will mostly just be no Jews in Sweden or Brytain. For the same reason Menasseh Ben Israel doesn't fulfill his function in our timeline, it may be that there won't be Jews in Denmark and Norway either. It might be that there would be mass emigration of Ashkenazi Jews to North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, or America due to expulsions. Alternatively, there will be much more Anusim.

What you may have noticed by now in this attempt at historical research and alternative history is the prominence of Portugese Anusim and Expelled people. Or you might have chucked it to the "two is a coincidence" bin. I'm not sure what to think of that myself, as I'm usually more focused on the Spanish Expulsion as a significant event for Judaism in that era. The Portugese one usually comes as an afterthought. I do think it points out to a significant fact: the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula were very well educated and strongly affected every community they got to. There were Jews in Italy prior to the Banished Sepharadim, but instead of joining those local congregations - the Sepharadim started their own. In North African and Middle Eastern Congregations they're considered to have had a significant effect on practices.

If you're wondering what I'm getting at, you should know I myself don't know. Maybe that instead of talking about some French theologian I have to focus on Spain and Portugal when talking about the History of Judaism at the beginning of the Modern Era? Also, a lot of religious development in Judaism at the time occured in the Ottoman Empire, where Rabbi Joseph Karow wrote the Beit Yosef and Shulchan Aruch. One religious and political shift in Christianity isn't enough to change that. The Jewsade possibly has the largest effect because it's shaped by European politics and will change the state of affairs for Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Other than that, though, it's just a question of more oppression or less oppression.

And I'm starting to ramble. Main takeaways:

a. Shifts in the timeline might result in Jews not only being kept out of Brytain and Sweden for the forseeable future, but also migrating from Christian countries to Muslim ones or to the newly-sprouted coloniess.

b. Most everything related to that is shaped by the Spanish and Portugese Expulsions, forced conversions and Inquisition. Considering the possibility of those expanding all over Europe, I'm not sure what role Spaniard and Portugese Jews might play. They had a significant role at this period already, to be honest, but they might even have an even bigger one here, if very different.

c. Honestly, I'm not very good at this historical research thing. I love reading lore details about alternate histories and such, and feel that Judaism is usually ignored in the grand scale of things in most works about that (excepting WW2 related works, which is something of a tired trope to my understanding), but I don't see myself as the right person to change that. I just decided to drop History as a topic for my BA, and got a barely decent grade in the only class o the topic I took this year. I'm fascinated by history, but some things in its study are slightly boring me. In short, I really want someone else to take this from me. That might be why I just wanted to see the post by the Tea Detective instead of doing all this work: I knew, if subconciously, that I don't have the willpower to do it well. So please, if anyone reading this is as interested as I am in the topic and actually knows how to do historical research, please help.

Huh. Glad to have this off my chest, but not sure I expected it.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading that and found it interesting. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

All right. So, first: if you are either Jewish, like His Dark Materials, or both, please reblog. If you aren't any of those but know someone who is - please share it with them. I want to get as many thoughts on this as possible.

In essence, I just want to ask two simple questions. I have the beginnings of answers for myself, but Judaism is nothing if not full of discourse and many opinions on one topic. So, again: reblog. Share your thoughts and opinions. Hopefully, it will give us a wide variety of possibilities and answers.

The two questions are: where are Jews in Lyra's world? And what are the theological and Halachic concequences of having dæmons?

I intend to share my opinions in two separate reblogs, but please share your thoughts even if you don't see mine. The short version is that I looked about events in Jewish history around John Calvin's time for the first question (pope John Calvin being the major alternation of history in HDM). As for the second question - I have some thoughts relating to the Chabad thought stream. Elaborations, again, going in reblogs.

Thank you in advance!

(PS, question number 1 was handled once by the sadly deactivvated user the Tea Detective, though their full post disappeared. Link to a reblogging of the first half: here. Note, another reblog mentions other religions - feel free to discuss them, I'm focusing on Judaism because I'm Jewish. Another post asking this question was posted here, so have fun with it. Meanwhile, this post is about dæmons and religions in general and lightly touches Judaism.)

[anewarise]

HDM episode 6 commentary + things I love.

Spoilers from series and book ahead. Doing because I need to share my crazy emotions.

Its 2a.m. where I live but I needed to see my poor boy.

Fuck. This is so fucked up. The walls. The whole center. The nurses and is trauma (where is her daemon????). The music. This is such an excelente work really. The chills have started and I know they're not gonna stop.

Damn Lyra 10/10 in acting as Lizzie.

F Billy

The doctors of the murderers. Until which point there is moraly redemption. He's not getting it at this point.

Hi Will. (Omgosh the music is so beutiful, I cry ×2 because I know it's not in the OSTdisc)

OH NO ITS HER. Lyra anxiety in a new level.

The fear is one of the biggest motivators of humankind. My Lyra doesn't even understand the will power she have.

I love the blond girl.

AY ITS TOO SOON. Oh no its too soon. Oh damn. THE MUSIC AH.

DONT HURT PAN WHY DID YOU THROW HIM LIKE THAT.

OMGOSH THE MELODY NOO

WHY AM I CRYING IF I KNEW THATS GONNA HAPPEN

Ms.Coulter is starting the emotional russian rulete. Lyra has making her change.

THATS UNFORTUNATE SHE SAID.

This is a whole poisonus conversation. It's toxic. And fake. But fake for bouth parts. As mother as daughter. They bouth are playing wonderfully. But Lyra's winning.

Lyra's is destroying this woman from the core, its austanding her act.

Scream!! YES SCREAM!! SHE WIN THE PLAY.

...Poor nurse Clara.

Roger you're are a hero.

LYRA IN TWO MINUTES YOU DESTROYED THE THING (This is going quick)

Look at Marisa acting like Lyra(or is it the other way?) I need a gift for comparaisons

Oh. The gypsians are already here.

SERAFINA GODESS

This whole thing as been quite fast for me. I understand. But the heavyness of the fight as been lost a little. Its a question of time needs I get it, but still. I expect the non regaders won't hace the same feel really, it's being a great work by now.

Lee you are a father now. The adoption was complete by Witch sentence.

For a moment I thought the gypsians were gonna be atacked

Ohoh. Oh no. Sounds bad. Cliff ghosts.

There they are! So cool!

LEE YOU GOT ONE JOB!!! IT HASN'T BEEN 24 HOURS. ARE WE BEING SERIUS.

Ok so that was it. Poor Lee really, Im not mad, Phill did it like that, it was just a little comic somehow.

That being said.

WOAH.

SO MANY THINGS TO FEEL IN ONE EPISODE.

I knew things were gonna speed up, but I didn't expect this level! Let's see how it keeps going I guess im worryed but have faith.

[chuhubba]

LYRA LIES FOR WILL BECAUSE WILL DOESNT LIE

WILL THREATENS AND KILLS FOR LYRA BECAUSE HE HAS THE POWER TO

i. love these kids. they are so ride or die and ready to kill a man to get shit done

[mercurymagpie]

serafina pekkala 😍💖💞💜🌿❤🥰💕💗🌱💘💞🌿

[anewarise]

I already reblogued this, but after two weeks I realice....THERE ARE ANGEL WINGS IN THE SECOND GIFT. HOW I DIDN'T NOTICE BEFORE THATS SUCH A GOOD DETAIL.

His Dark Materials - Opening Credits

[pandasaurio-espacial]

Every single one of Will and Lyra's interactions means the world to me

[tartareus]

shh, i’m thinking...

[cachekakusu]

can :) people :) not :) use :) my :) gifsets :) to :) air :) out :) their :) grievances :) with :) the :) show :) thanks! :)

[anewarise]

He's being a big favorite c'amon these scene aditions are glory, and this men is just playing with fire.

Look at Lord Boreal, swanning into our world all ominous, threatening soundtrack

and then

AND THEN HE KICKS IT JUST IN CASE IT MIGHT COME OFF

[daisyachain]

HDM fails because the author had a vision and a message he wanted to communicate, but he was a lot better at worldbuilding than at social commentary. It’s a book series that tries to critique the Catholic Church, the broadest target possible, and misses the shot through some basic misconceptions. It’s an institute with such a long and broad history of regular old corruption and theft, murder, colonialism, misogyny, and your entire angle of attack is that it’s not a creative institution??? How embarrassing. How embarrassing

[jamlavender]

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss: Mrs Coulter, misogyny and the His Dark Materials TV show

The show went hard on misogyny as a vital part of Mrs Coulter’s backstory, and I want to talk about how they did it, and why, and how it might have been done better. This is quite long (when is anything I write not, let’s be real) so it’s under the cut. Read on for thoughts on women, power and fictional villainy.

As a quick disclaimer, though: I’ve enjoyed the show a lot! I’m so glad they made it! Ruth Wilson is mesmerising as Mrs Coulter! There’s so much to appreciate about the show overall, including many aspects of Mrs Coulter’s portrayal. But the HDM team have also made gender politics and misogyny very explicit themes of the show – particularly season two, particularly season two, episode five – and I think it’s fair to critique that.

Let’s be clear: Mrs Coulter is a villain. She murders kids by tearing out their souls. She kills and tortures friends and foes alike without a second thought. She abuses her daughter. She upholds and advances a totalitarian regime. She’s a Bad Person, as confirmed by God himself with the unforgettable line: “You are a cesspit of moral filth.” She’s fucking terrible, but, in life as in art, many of us are fascinated by how such awful people are made. What drives someone to commit atrocities? I am keen to see such questions examined in fiction, because I don’t think exploring a character necessarily means excusing their actions, and because it’s interesting (I mean, of course I find her fascinating, I’ve written a novel’s worth of fic about her). However, after a few snarky comments (“What sort of woman raised Father Graves, do you think?”) and some subtler commentary on sexuality, gender and power (her unsettling MacPhail with the key in the bra in S1E2), S2E5 drew a weird line between sexism in Mrs Coulter’s professional and academic life and her vast and senseless institutionalised child murder, and the longer I’ve sat with that the more I’m like: what the fuck?

Look, Mrs Coulter doesn’t tear apart children to search for sin inside them and poison Boreal and break a witch’s fingers because she’s experienced sexism in the workplace and in her education. That’s… a very odd thing to imply. We have to remember that there are lots of women in Lyra’s world, all of whom will also have experienced sexism, misogyny and other forms of marginalisation (many in more expansive and pernicious ways than Mrs Coulter, who’s a woman, yes, but also white, wealthy, highly educated and very thin and beautiful), and none of them are running arctic torture stations. She will have experienced misogyny, absolutely, and that will have affected her in various ways that inform how she approaches her work, but to imply that being denied a doctorate is the reason she became a sadistic killer is frankly bizarre. Here are a few of the lines from that episode with my commentary:

“Do you know who I could have been in this world?” What does this mean? If she’d been roughly the same person in our world, the answer is: Margaret Thatcher, which is probably a step down for Marisa, all things considered, because the Magisterium is far more autocratic than any recent Tory government and would be a much easier institutional environment in which to enact her cruelty. What we’re supposed to think, clearly, is that she’d have been a different person: a scientist and a mother, and she’s had this realisation because she saw a woman with a baby and a laptop and had a three-minute conversation with Mary. This doesn’t make sense. We live in our world! It’s less repressive than Lyra’s world but it’s hardly a gender utopia. If Mrs Coulter had chosen the scientist-and-mother life (which, as I’ll revisit later, she could have done in her world but chose not to because of her megalomaniac tendencies), she’d still have been affected by misogyny here too. Our world is not kind to young mothers, nor young women embroiled in scandals, nor is the world teeming with female physicists. It might be a little better, sure, but it’s hardly as if those gendered challenges would have been solved.  

“What do you mean she runs a department?” This is just the show forgetting its own canon. Marisa, you ran a massive government organisation (the GOB), including a huge murder science research initiative in the Arctic. That’s a much bigger undertaking and much more impressive than running a university department in our world. Pull yourself together.

“But because I was a woman, I was denied a doctorate by the Magisterium.” This is the show flagrantly ignoring the source material to make a clumsy political point. In the books, there are women with doctorates (notably Hannah Relf, also a major player in the new Book of Dust trilogy) and at least one women’s college full of female scholars. Now, would that women’s college likely be underfunded and disrespected compared to the men’s colleges? Almost certainly. But saying that is different than saying “I couldn’t get my doctorate!” when women in Lyra’s world can. The show knew what point they wanted to make, and were willing to ignore canon to do so, which is frustrating. Also, given that there are female academics and scientists in Lyra’s world, and that Mrs Coulter is a member of St Sophia’s college, it’s clear that she could have lived that life if she so desired. But she didn’t want that, because being a scientist and academic at St Sophia’s imbues her with no real power, and that’s what she craves.

I’m not opposed, in theory, to exploring Mrs Coulter and misogyny in more depth, but I think doing so through an examination of the sexual politics of her life would have made a lot more narrative sense and been much more powerful. It’s better evidenced in the text – her using her sexuality to manipulate people and taking lovers for political sway is entirely canon, as is her backstory where genuine love and lust blew up her life – and it links much more closely with the most shocking of her villainy, which involves cutting out children’s dæmons to stop them developing “troublesome thoughts and feelings,” referencing sexual and romantic desire (and what Lyra and Will do to save Dust is clearly a big ‘fuck you’ to those aims). She even says this to MacPhail in TAS, “If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care - the care! - of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches - if you thought I would expose my child to that, my Lord President, you are more stupid than you take me for.” Don’t get me wrong, she’d have been a villain regardless, but I do believe that there’s a much stronger link between her sexual and romantic experiences and her murder work than between professional and academic stifling and child murder. It would have been a lot more interesting and a lot less tenuous.

However, the show is trying to be family-friendly, and digging into why this terrible, cruel woman might want to cut the ability for desire and love (and other non-sexual adult feelings, I’m sure) out of people could get dark. We know that the show doesn’t want to go there, because they’ve actively toned down her weaponising her sexuality: in the books, she has an established sexual relationship with Boreal, whereas the show made it seem like she’s been stringing him along all this time, and made it about potentially ‘sharing a life’ together rather than fucking, which was clearly the arrangement in the books. Also, I think Ruth Wilson said she and Ariyon Bakare filmed a “steamy scene” together, and given that only a single chaste kiss between them aired it must have been cut. I think they deliberately minimised the sexual elements of the text, particularly regarding Mrs Coulter (the mountain scene with Asriel, which I did still love, was also a lot less horny than in the book) and replaced that with another gender issue, that of professional sexism, as if the two are interchangeable, which they are not. This is a shame, both for Mrs Coulter’s character and also for the story as a whole, because the characters’ relationships with sex and desire are an important part of the books! (If this minimised sexuality approach means that they don’t use the TAS scene where Asriel threatens to gag her and she tries to goad him into doing it, I’ll scream). Overall, I think they missed the mark here, which is a shame because I also think it could have been done well, if they’d been bolder and darker and more thoughtful.

Why might this happen? Why might the show take this approach? Why might it be latched onto by viewers? Personally, I think the conversations we have about women and power are very simplistic, which leaves us in a tight spot when we see women seizing power for themselves (even in fiction) and weaponising that against others, not just other women but people of all genders, because we struggle to move past ‘women have overall been denied power, so them taking it ‘back’ is good,’ even if that immediately becomes a hot mess of white, corporate feminism and results in the ongoing oppression of many people. I think we are so hungry for representations of powerful women that we – producers and viewers alike – struggle to see them as bad, because it’s uncomfortable to be so intoxicated by Mrs Coulter effortlessly dominating the men around her, subverting systems designed to marginalise her for her own benefit, and generally being aggressive and intelligent and ruthless, and then realise that you are entranced by someone who is, objectively, a terrible, terrible person. It can be hard to realise that if you channelled the energy of someone who mesmerises you, you’d be the villain. So instead of sitting with that (more on this below), a lot of legwork goes into reworking her villainy into, somehow, a just act, a result of oppression, as her taking back power that has been denied to her, rather than grappling with the fact that for anyone to desire power in such a merciless way, even if they have to overcome marginalisation to get it, is really, really dangerous.

The joy, of course, is that Mrs Coulter is not real! She’s not real! Adoring fictional characters does not mean condoning their (imaginary) decisions, nor do stories exist for each person in them to fit neatly into a good or bad box so you know who you’re allowed to love. Furthermore, fiction can be a fabulous tool for exploring and interrogating the parts of yourself that, if left to bloom unexamined, might perpetuate beliefs or behaviour that cause harm to others. Mrs Coulter doesn’t need to be a feminist or taking down the patriarchy or a righteous powerful woman to illuminate things about gender, power and feminism for those reading and watching. In fact, it’s important that we explore what happens when women (most commonly white, wealthy women, as she is) continue to perpetuate brutal systems under the guise of sticking it to ‘men,’ because it happens all the time in the real world, and it’s a serious issue. Finding characters like Mrs Coulter so cool and compelling doesn’t make you a bad person, but it might tell you something about yourself – not that you want to be a villain or kill kids or whatever, but something about how you relate to your gender or women or men or power – and that knowledge can be useful! We all have better and worse impulses, and finding art that helps us make sense of ourselves, both the good and bad parts, is a gift that we should relish.

Anyway, tl;dr, Mrs Coulter doesn’t need to be sympathetic or understandable or redeemable to be brilliant – but you wouldn’t know that from how she’s been portrayed in the new adaptation.