#mulefa world

[ssmhhh]

MOTHER OF US ALL ORIGINAL SIN BRAT SUMMER

💚🖤💋🍏💋🖤💚

[kirjavas]

i feel like we moved on too quickly from the fact that the amber spyglass in the show wasn't even a spyglass

[royalbluefairydust]

i'm so bugged by many things in hdm3 but the pacing threw me off, they were Rushing through the first half but the last two episodes dragged for so long

[madisoncounty]

me: ooh i should make one of those giant rainbow gifsets now that all of hdm is out and i can gif

every single scene of hdm: beige

[clonerightsagenda]

Ok! Reread complete. It is now time for me to ponder exactly how amatonormative the ending really is.

It's definitely framed that way. Mary describes quitting nunhood because she wanted to pursue romantic relationships, her story inspires Lyra and Will to pursue a romantic relationship, and that's what stops the flow of Dust.

However, it is more complicated than that. Mary did not have to quit the entire Christian religion to date someone (she could just stop being a nun), but she did, because she wasn't happy and wanted to do "something with all my nature instead of just a part of it". She's not even in a romantic relationship right now and seems perfectly fine with that! While there's an aside about the mulefa having monogamous relationships, their transition into adulthood is getting big enough to wear the wheels. It's about growing up and joining the world as a fully realized adult who can make their own decisions rather than remaining constrained due to immaturity or institutional pressures. The book focuses on sexuality because, well, religious authority has often obsessed over controlling and regulating that, and so embracing it is an act of resistance. (That has not really changed all that much.) Plus, there's a continual emphasis that it won't work if Lyra knows her destiny. You have to follow your own nature! For most of the books Lyra and Will are getting buffeted around by events, and Lyra even thinks rescuing the dead is part of the prophecy, so their actions are arguably constrained, whereas this bit is (to their knowledge) free will and not preordained. So yes preteen love saves the world I guess, and it makes sense that Pullman chose that angle, but theoretically it could have been something else, as long as it involves maturing and chasing your bliss. AU where someone transes their gender or quits their job so hard it saves the world. I mean Mary sort of did the latter.

Also, I'm wondering if this is one of those situations where the prophecy creates itself. People have preteen crushes all the time. None of the others save the world. But Dust responds to attention and intention, and since Lyra was the ~child of prophecy~ a whole bunch of people spent a bunch of time and energy fixated on her, and perhaps the Dust responded to that. If the Magisterium hadn't cared about her, maybe her choices would've done nothing. But they did. You guys played yourselves.

[regexkind]

I keep having this idea every few months and then forgetting it—

—the first time it was a tidal energy station in the House of Piranesi, mostly unmanned except for a weekly visit from a maintenance crew, which produces power used to manufacture something small and expensive that can be carried out by that crew and sold

—the second time it was that in the Suburbs of the Land of the Dead in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, we know they have anbaric lighting, and that there is one portal still allowed open, so we could run a huge transmission line across the lake and past the Land of the Dead and out into the world of the Mulefa. The lodestone resonators don't work in the land of the dead, but they'd work in the world of the Mulefa, so you could use a facility there hooked up to lodestone resonators to issue batch jobs to a large compute farm.

I seem to have trouble holding onto these thoughts even now and I can only conclude that someone or something is trying to prevent me from executing on these schemes, possibly because they quite rightly identify them as profane and exploitative. So I'm making a Tumblr post in defiance of this unknown power

[serenpedac]

hiii !! from the soft asks: 10, 13, 26 & 26 🤗💕💕

Hi!! Thank you for the ask <3

10. what’s something you’re excited for? Getting to see my little niece again around Christmas!!! She's the most adorable little person! I was calling with my sister the other day and my niece was already smiling and making sounds (other than crying haha).

13. what’s your comfort food? Answered here

26. what movie would you want to live in? I tried to come up with an answer, but seem to have forgotten all movies set in a universe that seems nice for this T_T Most of the time, the fictional universes look cool, but I wouldn't want to live in them tbh

27. which character would you want to be? (I'm guessing it was meant to be 27? It's a fun question, so I'm answering this one ;))

Mary Malone from His Dark Materials (the trilogy that starts with The Golden Compass. Warning, spoilers ahead). She gets to do very cool research and to travel to a different world/dimension where she learns to communicate with creatures called mulefa. It's not the most exciting answer, maybe, because I already relate to her in some ways, but that's why it feels like the more realistic answer. She's the kind of person I aspire to be: curious, compassionate, brave.

[dipshitcoyote]

Lyra leaving Pan hurt, and Splash is aggressively and empathetically projecting as a ferret, but I wasn't in danger of crying until all these ghosts started talking about their dæmons but I work at the front desk at a school and I can't just start sobbing at my computer during 6th grade lunch 😭

I'm officially as invested in this plotline as I am interested in the spec bio of the Mulefa world

[rogue-rook]

HDM season 3 is like “we are paying james mcavoy too much money for him not to have equal screentime to dafne keen amir wilson and ruth wilson despite the fact that asriel is a major part of only five of the amber spyglass’s thirty eight chapters and honestly is pretty peripheral to the overall themes the author is trying to explore in this story”

like I get that james mcavoy is a compelling and charismatic actor but I’ve always believed that asriel’s whole mission and constant self-justification is the opposite to the point phillip pullman is making about the value of individual kindness and wisdom and conscious choice and that there’s a reason the chapter of asriel’s battle is not ABOUT the battle but instead is entirely focused on lyra and will trying to reunite with their daemons by navigating a world gone mad with violence and death. asriel’s narrative victory isn’t assembling the army or the battle or the war, the story does not vindicate him or his terrible actions at all by caring even an iota about the chess game of his war against heaven, his narrative victory is when he and marisa chose lyra over themselves in a private, unwitnessed, uncelebrated moment of parental love and acceptance of the value of the one good thing they ever made in their lives. and yet the show cut time for the mulefa and the storytelling of the ghosts in favor of asriel assembling the army?????

[strangesmallbard]

all my favorite female characters are Mrs. Coulter Variants (morally grey or straight up evil women with disagreeable personalities and a very secret soft side) except for mary malone, specifically from the hdm tv show adaptation. she has warm socks for an adventure in the multiverse and loves the world, and all its creatures. she took two lost children home. the specters wont kill her. even marisa coulter wasn’t able to be mean to her. she learned the mulefa’s language so she could communicate them properly. she brought tupperware full of snacks for her multiverse adventure. this is a post about how i want to marry mary malone actually

[raskies456]

I don’t know if it’ll be mentioned in the show but I think it’s important that people know that in the mulefa’s world the original sin was the serpent tempting them to rollerskate on seedpods

[kirjavas]

I have a few numbers for the HDM asks, are you ready????

3, 11, 12, 16, 28, 31 & 36!!

✨✨

bring it!

favourite costume i love all of lyra's cittagazze outfits, especially the blue jacket. i'm just a big fan of the mediterranean vibes tbh. also mrs coulter's green dress is iconic

favourite mrs coulter outfit GREEN DRESS !! but i do also love the fur coat

favourite set/location asriel's lab, the mulefa world or the world of the dead

any book scenes you would have liked to see in the show the scene where lyra lies to the harpies was at the top of my list for season 3. i am still so disappointed we didn't get to see it, dafne keen would have acted the shit out of that

pick a meal probably the omelette scene (i don't even like omelettes but i would love to have will parry make me one)

pick an unhinged mrs coulter moment the scene where she's like "thorold, i should feed you to the wolves.......... but i won't" is simply underrated

which world would you most like to live in lyra's just because i want a dæmon, but on balance the mulefa world because there is no corrupt theocracy

[bestfictionalplant]

Round 1, Group 2

Propaganda and spoilers under cut

Wheel Tree: In the world of the mulefa, these trees have a symbiotic relationship with the mulefa, who fit the spurs on their front and hind legs into the round seed pods of these trees, allowing them to roll around their world like a gazelle/bicycle hybrid. The pods are so sturdy that they only break and release their seeds after a lots of rolling, after which the mulefa plant and cultivate the seeds for the trees. Being able to fit a spur into a seed pod marks the beginning of mulefa puberty, and absorbing the oil from the seed pods connects mulefa with Dust and thus awakens their consciousness. In The Amber Spyglass, Mary Malone is able to use the oil together with amber lenses in order to see Dust, which is otherwise invisible to humans. The creation myth of the mulefa involves a serpent instructing a young zalif (the singular of mulefa) on how to fit her spur into a seed pod, becoming the first self-aware member of her species. This is a clear allegory to Original Sin and the story of Eve and the Tree of Knowledge from the Bible, but in mulefa culture this awakening of consciousness is an unambiguously celebrated event.

Mushtree: The people where your character lives uses mushwood from the trees to build most things, and there is a mini friendship quest with one of the characters where he will build a bar if you give him enough mushwood. You then party in said bar with all of your friends.  Sometimes the mushtrees will have creatures living in them! They range from octopus-like creatures to four eyed mice. You can also climb the trees with a friend I think. And sometimes another character will throw stuff at you from them or just surprise you while he is in a mushtree. 

[arthkael]

About the importance of research in translation

The other day I was leafing through my copy of The Amber Spyglass. It's the first Italian edition, now this was corrected in later editions, but mine has an absolutely appalling description of the Mulefa.

Basically the guy who translated the book didn't understand much about how the Mulefa looked like. He made a decent job with their skeleton shape, but when it came about their trunk, well... Now I know that Mulefa have a trunk a bit like elephants, but years ago the Italian translator decided that "trunk" meant "busto" the world we use to name the upper body, the part where arms and head are attached.

"Trunk" has the same meaning in English too, but there are also several others (like "part of the tree") and one of the most used ones is, well, "sort of a prehensile nose".

So I spent the whole book imagining the Mulefa picking stuff up lodging it between their neck and their upper body (I refused to think their chest was somewhat concave and muscled enough to hold things, that would have made them eldritch beings), and I kept thinking "this is so impractical, how did they manage farming and all the rest? How did they survive?"

So, a small detail partially ruined my experience of the book.

If you have to translate something, please pay attention to the words you choose and make sure to analyze the original text in order to avoid this kind of mistake.

[clonerightsagenda]

Finishing up the show! (As you saw, lol)

Episode 7:

Asriel: I fucking hate prophecies as plot devices. Me: same man

Technobabble? In His Dark Materials? Shut up about your capacitors

Hey, it was Mrs. Coulter's idea to beat Metatron, and now they're having Asriel and Xaphania tip her off. Stolen valor

"Brute physical force!" has been a family injoke for years so when Asriel announced he was going to defeat the angels with "sheer physical force" we all started screaming

"It's not just death down there" just reminds me of that tumblr post about how SFF invents Death 2: A Worse One

I've said it before but one more for the road... the witches look so silly

Well lads they did what I worried they'd do - focus a lot of time and energy on the war that explicitly thematically does not matter.

Why do Asriel's troops even have guns. Can you shoot an angel

Mrs. Coulter's control over the specters was vague in the books beyond that she played them like she plays everyone else, convincing them she could lead them to better prey. I do not know why she can now explode them with her mind

Serafina that bird skull is not flattering. And I say this as a skull connoisseur

God: *telepathically says shit* Mrs. Coulter: Another fucking man trying to tell me what to do

Metatron's leather suit??? Did he get himself confused with Metatton?

Mrs. Coulter didn't hit him with a rock : ( Also Stelmaria pushed them all into the pit instead of her. Kind of a bummer. Wondering what the metaphysical implications are of *her* daemon dying outside the rift rather than in it, though. Also my notes for this scene include the scribbled phrase 'cursed throuple'. I just thought you should know

Well God dying was appropriately anticlimactic I guess although I would have preferred if Will and Lyra weren't in the thick of All That

(My mom: Why aren't they going to the other world?? Why are they still in the war zone? My dad: Because they're stupid. Me: Don't blame them. It's not their fault. The TV show is doing this to them.)

Episode 8:

New scene of Lyra processing her parents' death - even posthumously they are still taking up screentime

You go to the land of the dead and through a war zone and into Eden and that PhD you met months ago just happens to be there. Wild tbh

Mary is a lesbian! Good for her! Does Lyra understand the concept of lesbians or is she baffled by this whole exchange

They cut the "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake" line. Cowards

My mom: Will, do something about that bandage. He has gangrene. Me: He said she smelled bad but it's his hand rotting. (We then remembered they made the timeskip several months and were like... why does he still have bandages on)

Kirjava isn't black :(

Honestly the 'good' angels are coming off even worse in the TV version. yeah you did what we needed you to do so you're done now! We no longer grant you our grace to read the alethiometer because you're no longer of use to us! Go fuck yourself. Ironically her 'falling' does make her a used up and no longer valuable woman to them.... probably not the intended reading but here we are

Send help my parents keep calling the mulefa muffalettas

I joked that when Lyra said she was imagining what Will will look like when he's old he should've whipped out his phone and gone there's a snapchat filter for that

We then spent the last few minutes heckling Will for occasionally having all his fingers in some shots

I was already on the edge but just said "what the fuck?? what the fuck is that?????" for the ending with the like... based on a true story documentary text overlay for Where They Are Now. Why did they do that

[our-future-is-up-to-us-2]

I Am Not Ok

This is a post about the TV show/book series His Dark Materials. Mostly about the TV show at the moment, all things considered. 

I just finished watching the finale, and I am a fucking mess. A complete, fucking mess. 

I usually don’t cry over much. I read the books, and I knew that everything was going to happen. The daemon separation, the Land of The Dead, Mary Malone and the mulefa, Lyra and Will’s kisses, Baruch and Balthamos, everything.

All of it. I told myself it was going to be emotional, I told myself they would ruin me, and they did. Every detail from the bench itself and the positioning, to Will opening the window and breaking the knife, reflecting on Lyra and taking snippets from the past episodes, having Marisa and Asriel die for the sake of their daughter, all their motives surmounting to such a thing. 

Asriel deserved to die. Marisa didn’t, in my eyes. The show creators had spent their time, very well-spent time building up each individual character, Marisa as my specific example right now. She was manipulative and heartless within the first season, powerful and controlling in the second, and understanding in the third. She understood her weakness, her downfall. The suppressed love of her daughter. She wallowed and grieved over it, and yet she still used her powers for good. 

Now to talk about the goodness of such an adaptation. Yes, there were variations from the books, in particular, Jopari/John Parry’s death in Season 2.  I was distraught at the time. How could they take Lee’s death, word for word, emotion for emotion from the books, and mess up John Parry’s so much?! I believe that this was for plot’s sake, and the audience’s sake. Those who read the books would be bitter (myself), and those who hadn’t would likely be confused by a sudden story of unrequited love between John Parry the shaman and a witch. But they made up for it, big time. The creators took the symbolism of the bench to bittersweet, valuable and heart wrenching extremes. They took the symbolism of glances and subtle touch to build into the most romantic swell on TV that I’ve ever watched. They took the themes of storytelling, power, religion, love, and enhanced them all within this high fantasy world, cultivating different dynamics, making each element of the story worth it in its own way. 

And a thought occurred. Will is the Knife Bearer. Knife. Bearer. With a show based around books that involved a central theme of Adam and Eve and religion, the knife acts as a burden, a cross he must bear, per se, because Will and Lyra will forever be together. Their love changed the present, but they alone cannot change the past. He bore the power of the knife, passed every test, and broke it by the end, once and for all. A loss of power. A loss of the overwhelming grief and burden of thinking of Lyra, desperate not to fall back into temptation and cutting a window again... 

Everything about this show has moved me, changed me for the better. 

So, thank you His Dark Materials. Thank you for being an ongoing fantasy, a relevant, moving story, with a wonderful adaptation that will live on. 

“Tell them stories,” Lyra said to the ghosts of the Land of The Dead. 

“Tell them stories,” Atal told Mary, unaware of her status as the serpent.  

The story has been, and will continue to be told. Forever, I’d like to hope.