#Poor Mrs Coulter

[i-have-made-a-flat-thing]

Oh fuck you so very much, Father MacPhail. "An incoherent, emotional woman" indeed - at least we got to see Father Gomez get hit in the face with a brick

[fiercestpurpose]

thinking about girls who are raised in wealthy environments but are always made to feel like they don’t belong there and who are being groomed to be a certain kind of woman without ever having a say in whether or not that’s the kind of woman they want to be

[toxic-mothers-tourney]

Round 1: Match 2

Odalia Blight (The Owl House) vs. Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials)

Odalia Blight

- She's literally guilt tripped and tried to control every aspect her kids lives as well forced one of them to dye her hair so it was the same as hers - Consistently put her own children in danger for the sake of money. Tried to kill her daughter’s girlfriend. Emotionally abused her husband by threatening to harm their kids if he didn’t do what she asked. Gets her daughter’s friends expelled from school because her daughter messed up a product launch. Terrible mom. - cringe - read more here

Marisa Coulter

CW: nonconsensual medical experimentation, child death - she is intensely manipulative, even managing to leverage some influence over the goddamn church at times. she weaponizes her maternal relationship with her daughter in an effort to control her, and uses “mother’s love” as a way to justify her actions. notable shitty moments include sending magic spy drones after her daughter, torturing enemies for information on the whereabouts of her daughter, drugging her daughter into sleep for weeks to “keep her safe,” and kidnapping/overseeing experiments on other children that involve severing their connection to their souls. - Oh she’s terrible and so complicated. No qualms about doing evils to lots of children (luring poor children off the street to be kidnapped for a soul-splitting experiment that was likely to result in their deaths) But when she realizes the same thing is about to happen to her own child she snaps and stops the experiment. Her daughter hates her. She loves her daughter terribly but knows she is (rightly) hated. She’s allied with the evil church, not because of her beliefs but because the church is politically super powerful. Her daughter comes into her care later in the books and she drops everything to go hide away in the mountains with her daughter to keep her safe. But she also keeps her daughter drugged with a sleeping potion because she knows if her daughter wakes up she will run away. She loves her daughter but it’s in such an absolutely toxic way. I think she should win this whole bracket. - read more here

mod notes: mrs. coulter terrified me as a kid. also 'she’s fine with her daughter being a lesbian…just as long as her gf’s not on wanted posters' that is so lan qiren of her. lmao.

[lordeasriel]

What don’t you like about the tv show version of Marisa

Well, it's not Marisa, for one thing. It's a very crude and poor attempt at bringing her on-screen. Talking about what I dislike about her means this gets intrinsic with the show's greatest flaws, because they are a big part of what is wrong with her portrayal.

First issue I have is that she is a very washed down version of what Marisa is. She's soft, purposeless other than "Lyra is my daughter" and overall she is a dull character. Had Book! Lyra ever met her, she would have found Show!Marisa boring.

Marisa's lack of purpose is deeply tied with many narrative problems, such as shallow worldbuilding (the non-women scholar bullshit from season 2, for one, and the lack of daemons) and even with Boreal, they played it very safe and boring. When Marisa deals with him in the books, she is power-playing and very strongly too; he isn't a nobody. In the show is very meh, Boreal is almost on even grounds with her, which makes her scheming silly and uninterested. Worse than that, she whines and cries so much in front of him (in episode 5, season 2 specifically, and this is where I left the show and I do not intend to come back lol) that it makes no sense. Marisa's vulnerability is only seen in specific moments of the book — with Asriel at the bridge, then later at the abyss, once with Lyra in the caves. There is a reason why she is vulnerable in those instances, and only then. Making her open herself to Boreal is utter garbage, plain and simple.

Second issue I have is how they set the tone for her to be a scorned mother. The show plays, again and again, the "I've always wanted you Lyra but--" card. They make it seem like Asriel stole Lyra from Marisa's throbbing chest and disappeared into the night, and oh! how desperately she has looked for her beloved child. Honestly! All the fucking books, even TBOD, show how she didn't want Lyra then and when she finally did, it was out of self interest and vanity. Only later, in TAS, is when she finally warms up to Lyra. They erased her character development for the sake of some motherly tears and I loathe it.

This pair's with Sami's latest post which just proves what I've been saying since season one: they took a great, leading character female character and they made it all about motherhood. It's insulting. Marisa is so much more than a mother. She never wanted to be a mother.

Third issue is the "She is bad because of how oppressed she has been" issue. Northern Lights, chapter four - Lyra dines with the women and the master and you have a whole discussion on female scholars and how Lyra felt pity for them and so on and how Mrs. Coulter was very different. Like, anyone who had actually bothered reading the novels could tell you that Lyra's world is a patriarchal world, but the women still find their way around, as they have since forever in our world.

Now for the show, this pisses me off on many levels, but my main issue is with how they try, so hard, to have Marisa say - and this is important, it's never shown, it's only ever said by her - how men get the better end of the deal, how she had to work so hard to get where she was and blah blah blah. Honestly, this is very true for the show; they bothered very little to write meaningful women into it, the one change I would have appreciated very much, but as in regards to the truth of the character, it's just nonsense. This whole shenanigan could have been fixed with Hannah Relf's presence, because she alone would prove that Marisa's cruelty and malice are innate traits, not a byproduct of her world being sexist. It makes no sense.

If you're looking for more insight into that, I recommend Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss which is an analysis of episode 5, season 2 and this patriarchy business on the show. It's very good and insightful and more reasonable than I will ever be discussing the show lol

There's no excuse for Marisa's poorly written character. It's a waste of Ruth Wilson's acting and a damn shame for a studio that so often claimed to have learned from the movie's mistakes (which they, very very obviously did not as Marisa from the show and the movie are very, very similar). That's why I've only stuck with books since season 2, because while Philman sometimes does stuff I don't entirely agree with, he has a great grasp on the woman he wrote, which is why I leave you with Madame Delamare's own words about Marisa, something the show writers failed utterly to understand and therefore could never truly bring her to screen:

"Delicately and subtly," she mocked "Marisa would know how to show some force. Some character. She was all the man you'll never be."

[ryttu3k]

Some thoughts on His Dark Materials 3.05 and 3.06 - No Way Out and The Abyss! Spoilers for the rest of the series below.

I absolutely goddamn adore how they did everything with the Mulefa. Mary’s development from “...I’m following a talking elephant” to “these talking elephants are my besties, actually”, to how they handled the wheelpods, to the babies - but my absolute favourite thing was how they did the subtitles! Things like the Mulefa speech melting into English, but into a much more limited English to show Mary’s grasp on it, to how it just becomes more and more fluent, until she and Atal are just... chatting. Talking. It was so cool.

Completely understand why they redesigned them, too. The diamond-shaped thing would have been, hm, complicated, and this way they felt much more real. And the wheelpods really did look fun. Like rollerblading!

Land of the Dead was proper eerie. Really glad they kept in Will’s reaction to being separated from his daemon, because like. They have to build up Kirjava somehow, even if he didn’t feel it immediately like Lyra and Pan did. The set felt deeply claustrophobic (even if it did vaguely remind me of a Doctor Who stage set) and oppressive, and seeing poor li’l Roger so... lifeless was genuinely upsetting. Got a bit emotional at them talking about their adventures, Roger remembering more and more, seeing the flashbacks of them as little bitty kids (I guess they filmed those when they were doing season one?), and him just... coming back to life. Storytelling as identity!

I don’t know. “Tell them stories” is one of my favourite fictional aesops.

Adored the reunion with Lee. Look I know Lin Manuel-Miranda has been a... controversial choice, but I think he’s fantastic, and I’m so glad Lyra got to see one of her two dads again (the other is Iorek, obviously. Asriel whomst? He’s lost parental rights forever tyvm). And Will’s reunion with John just felt... so much more loaded. Like Lyra seeing Lee again just felt warm and cozy like a hug, but there was so much weight between Will and John, many more things to say. Apparently it was filmed months after principle filming due to John’s actor’s availability, which was why it felt much more self-contained, but honestly I feel it was pretty important for them to have that time. Also built up the concept that you can’t stay in a world that’s not your own for too long, which gives the viewer the thought, “Oh, okay, so Lyra and Will will have to visit each other via windows, they can’t actually stay together.” When the reveal about closing all but one window comes, it’s gonna hit like a truck.

The Abyss was horrifying. Metaphysical l’appel du vide and all. They played up how it’ll be a major part later on well, I think. Seeing Sergi being pulled in, Ruta’s complete helplessness... yikes, genuinely unsettling. I do like that Serafina explained exactly what was going to happen to Ruta, her soul falling forever. Keep that in mind, viewers! It’ll be important later!

Loved Gracious Wings’ rescue, too - I’m not even sure she knew why she did it. The whole thing plays on this big... trusting your intuition to do the right thing, even if you don’t know why you did. Which works very well with Lyra and the prophecy, actually.

Harpy-related note - it did disappoint me that they cut the Lyra/liar part, especially since it felt foreshadowed with the bureaucrat in the holding area. I just wanted to see Lyra come to that realisation that they wanted the truth. Ah well.

Going through the door... emotions. Bye, Roger ;_; Bye, Lee ;_; (I know he originally joined the fight, but I’m guessing they just wanted to streamline the story?)

My desire to slap Asriel continues to grow. Holy shit, dude. His war is going ‘successfully’ but he’s also kinda. Breaking a hell of a lot of eggs to make that particular omelette. Lowkey wish Mrs Coulter had punched him tbh.

On that note, her character has taken such a fascinating turn! Genuinely much more sympathetic - trying to talk for her life in the chamber, her terror and determination trying to stop the bomb (and her success! She pulled out the targeting mechanism so it could only use Lyra’s last known location, and Lyra kept moving, so it missed!), her despair when she believes Lyra is dead... standout scenes, I think, are after she returns to the camp. There’s the wonderful talk with Serafina, where Serafina talks about how Lyra being Eve is a good thing, a transformative thing, because look at how much she’s transformed, and that beautiful scene talking to her daemon. She’s making peace with her own soul again!

Anyway, Mrs Coulter/Serafina.

The contrast between her and Asriel is really interesting. They start out with like, Asriel is the cool uncle/dad who’s doing cool things, and Mrs Coulter is Evil Incarnate, and they’re both... just changing to be significantly more morally grey (or, well, outright terrible). Mrs Coulter is realising she does care about something/someone, she has a daughter she’s realising she actually does love, someone else to care for other than herself. She’s reconnecting with her soul. Asriel, on the other hand, is going into a downward spiral, becoming obsessive and callous, and any love he actually did have for Lyra is just... not a priority any more. Even Stelmaria is more absent. I really wanted to see her reaction to learning that Lyra was dead :-\

Just two episodes left!

[mrscoultxr]

|| @maggicktouched || For the first time in her life, Beck Tandy was lost. Completely and totally unfamiliar with her surroundings and desperately attempting not to panic as more and more people stared at her as if she were a corpse on parade. She’d been drawing too much attention and had slipped into an empty alley behind of what looked like some sort of church. She’d checked half a dozen times to see if she was alone before making the shift and hadn’t thought she saw or felt anything—but her magic felt strange and unreliable here. 

A gentle voice made her stomach drop down into her feet—or, well, paws— and the fox turned abruptly and froze on the spot. Not ten feet from her, just out of reach, was a beast with a face as blue-grey as ash and fur spun from gold. The soft voice hadn’t come from its mouth, but a woman of breath taking beauty behind it. They had to have seen.

She was about the same size as the monkey, and not inclined to trust anyone. Beck lowered her head and opened her lips in a toothy, threatening smile, letting out a high-pitched whine of discontent. Her own fur stood at its very end, trying to make her as large as possible. Should she answer? 

“Leave me alone.” She pressed her thoughts into the surrounding air, and pressed her will against the monkey, trying to send it away. The animals in her world obeyed when she commanded, but here things were twisted—different. Beck took a step back. “I–I don’t want trouble. Go on your way.”

          Oh, well, now this was terribly interesting. What a fine creature to stumble upon –one not only able to shift it’s form, but had now also shown to be quite capable of communication via a… now what should she call it? It had certainly not been spoken aloud, but neither had it been passed on through her mind. Rather, it was as if the air around her impressed the meaning upon her, and she simply could understand the words. Fantastic, Mrs. Coulter thought to herself. This being, whatever it was, however it worked –she would relish in discovering everything about it.

The creature was sentient however, and had a sense of self preservation that would need to be overcome. Mrs. Coulter had plenty of practice at this game, and continued to smile at the fox, her expression warm and inviting, the curve of her lips, the lift in her brow, all soft and smooth. She radiated kindness, and if she or the monkey felt the other’s tricks being played on them, they didn’t show it. The golden monkey kept his head tilted to the side for a moment, watching, taking in every detail. Then, with a small whimper, he extended his hand to the fox, palm up and open, as if to say come to me.

“You poor thing,” Mrs. Coulter sighed heavily, sympathetically. “You must be terribly lost.” She laid her hands upon the front of her coat and bent down at the waist, so that she was still high enough to avoid a snap at her face, but closer to the level of the creature. “I wonder, did you, too, wander through a window accidentally? Did everything change so suddenly you couldn’t be sure of where you were, only that it simply was not home?” She inhaled a breath, gave a shudder as though at a memory.

[lostberryqueen]

I have never had a child, and may never have a child, but when I hear a child scream “MOTHER!!!” it awakens this protective instinct in my heart and I immediately need to save them. 

[mxrisacoulter]

child murderer? I think you mean comedy queen marisa coulter

[rhaized]

New Fanfic Chapter! The Duty of the Old, Chapter 8. A fic where Asriel actually dies at the beginning and Mrs. Coulter is left to raise her child much earlier than expected.

"It says, you—you're the birth mother, but then you…recently adopted her again?" 

"It's a long and tragic story, Tom. She was taken from me and we only just were reunited again."

"But this—the adoption happened at the same time, the day after her father's death." Tom's eyes were wide again now, not out of surprise but fear as he seemed to take Mrs. Coulter fully in for the first time. 

"Oh, Tom," she simply laughed, resting her elbow comfortably on the table. "You make it sound like I'm some kind of murderer-kidnapper. Do I look like one to you?" 

[alliseaisfandom]

Current people in Lyra's life

The man who lied about his identity her whole life

The man who wanted to poison her only living relative

The woman who locked her in her house and manipulated her, aside from kidnapping kids for a living and torturing her daemon

The woman who actually, for once, told her the honest truth and got killed for it

Imma be completely honest, "I don't think I understand any grown up at all" is pretty much the whole mood of this show and I'm in episode two

[clarabosswald]

ruth wilson on his dark materials

[toxic-mothers-tourney]

Toxic propaganda: Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials)

CW: nonconsensual medical experimentation, child death

She sucks!!! She abandoned her daughter after giving birth to her and then showed up twelve years later, didn’t tell her daughter that she was her mother, and hired her as a “personal assistant.” At one point, Mrs. Coulter’s daemon (manifestation/extension of her soul) physically attacked and pinned down her daughter’s daemon, at which point said daughter ran away from her. THEN it turned out that she was cutting away children’s daemons (again, part of the literal souls of these children) because she is in fact straight-up evil. Her gift is being angelic and sweet and fascinating to children but also she’s a liar and a horrible person and a #girlboss and she loves her daughter but she can’t express that in any normal way bc she needs to control her daughter and treat her like a pet and a doll to dress up.

Basically, everything to her is pursuit of power. Because of the patriarchal church that governs her world, she has to rely on her beauty, her knowledge, and her coercion and manipulation to get what she wants. She's very intelligent and very charming and becomes involved with men she knows can get her resources and influence. She spends a lot of time performing "research" on adolescent children, which involves kidnapping them, cutting their souls away, and, almost invariably, their tormented deaths. At first, she only uses her daughter as a means to an end, or as her own trophy, as something she has acquired that she is not supposed to have. At one point she repeatedly drugs her daughter to keep her completely passive and unconscious in order to be with her, or really, to claim ownership of her while also remaining in hiding and manipulating those around her to think she is a holy woman. A glimpse at her inner self, her soul, reveals something sadistic and frightening.

she is intensely manipulative, even managing to leverage some influence over the goddamn church at times. she weaponizes her maternal relationship with her daughter in an effort to control her, and uses “mother’s love” as a way to justify her actions. notable shitty moments include sending magic spy drones after her daughter, torturing enemies for information on the whereabouts of her daughter, drugging her daughter into sleep for weeks to “keep her safe,” and kidnapping/overseeing experiments on other children that involve severing their connection to their souls.

Oh she’s terrible and so complicated. No qualms about doing evils to lots of children (luring poor children off the street to be kidnapped for a soul-splitting experiment that was likely to result in their deaths) But when she realizes the same thing is about to happen to her own child she snaps and stops the experiment. Her daughter hates her. She loves her daughter terribly but knows she is (rightly) hated. She’s allied with the evil church, not because of her beliefs but because the church is politically super powerful. Her daughter comes into her care later in the books and she drops everything to go hide away in the mountains with her daughter to keep her safe. But she also keeps her daughter drugged with a sleeping potion because she knows if her daughter wakes up she will run away. She loves her daughter but it’s in such an absolutely toxic way. I think she should win this whole bracket.

I really don't have anything beyond the fact that she only went looking for her daughter after Mrs. Coulter started a religious lobotomy/nazi concentration camp experimentation program/daemon separation where they were stealing children and taking them to a facility where the kids were effectively killed after they began puberty. She went looking for her daughter and took her in as a live in assistant/ward (without telling lyra that she was her mother) and on the same trip she took to meet lyra, she also kidnapped lyra's best friend.

She literally drugged her child and kidnapped her child’s best friend that should be enough

[anghraine]

A couple of the replies to my response about modern US American AU Darcy were specifically about my tags, so I’m copy-pasting those for context:

#if i were going to run with it i'd make darcy a rich lesbian with a house in. like #seattle #she is slightly baffled by why queer people in idaho don't just move to washington #elizabeth's family is actually doing okay but she's from west virginia and kind of wants to murder her in her sleep

#alt!lady catherine: if I'D gone into politics i'd have solved all of this by now actually #(she has yet to grasp what the three branches of government are)

eighthdoctor replied:

i personally KNOW several rich lesbians with a house in seattle who fit this (some of them have expanded their horizons. some of them have Not.)

Darcy is definitely one who expands her horizons! But yeah, I think this type of queer person whose politics are generally progressive but untethered from class consciousness is really familiar in the US and esp in expensive coastal areas—obviously there are cultural and local differences along the coasts, but she could easily come from Portland or San Francisco or wherever. The Seattle freeze stereotype does seem particularly apropos for the character, though. (I grew up in NW Washington, however, so not unbiased!)

brambleberrycottage replied:

“She has yet to grasp what the three branches of the government are”🤣

;)

I do honestly feel like Lady Catherine is interesting in the novel because of her likely alignment with Whig aristocracy and also because of her actual stated opinions beyond, uhh, scolding the poor and such, and that this corresponds better to a sort of shallow elitist US liberalism than, well, some Ann Coulter type or whatnot.

In the book, Lady Catherine is like... I see no reason for entailing estates away from women, the de Bourghs didn’t pull that kind of shit, which isn’t wrong, but she only cares because it could affect her personally. She casually talks about how men don’t care about their daughters, but is not only somewhat wrong in the context of the conversation about Mr Bennet (who doesn’t care much about all his daughters but... well, some two of them, in his way) but only brings it up because she either wants Elizabeth’s company for longer or wants the opportunity of graciously condescending to send her home in style (without actually thinking through all the practical considerations of doing so) or some combination of both.

Lady Catherine only seems able to understand injustice insofar as it could theoretically affect her, and I think the point of the critique is not that she’s wrong about entailment or about fathers often being callous towards their daughters or even about “helping” those further down the social ladder, but that her motives are transparently selfish and egocentric, her execution is short-sighted at best, she’s frankly not that bright, and she’s also super classist.

So for me, the most natural US political analogue to all this is like ... a particularly empty, elitist, and self-interested form of liberal feminism more than openly conservative bullshit. She is exactly the kind of liberal to announce “if I’d gone into politics, I would simply destroy patriarchy with the bully pulpit” while 100% convinced that the branches of government are the House, the Senate, and the presidency.

[ellynneversweet]

His Dark Materials!

Send me a fandom and I’ll tell you my:

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most) Marissa Coulter. She’s so clever and full of self loathing. I think she’s a witch. I bet her weird creepy mother from the sequels no one needed is like...Seraphina’s old school friend.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped) Will! He’s NOT A MURDERER the cat did it!

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave) hmmm probably every female academic Pullman dissed. Alice, for keeping Lyra alive for her entire life and wanting her daemon to settle as ‘something poisonous.’ We stan female characters who aren’t just Wives, Mothers, and Your Ex Who Might Kill You.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week) Mr and Mrs Parry. Mrs Polstead. The nuns. The royal family that makes no sense. The Armoured Bears who have a sophisticated society despite retaining the fundamentally solitary nature of polar bears (are they just Finns actually?).

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave) all of them. Pullman’s characters are the product of a mind that probably describes itself as ‘libertarian atheist.’ Marisa, again.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason) those stupid fucking fairy things Asriel allied with in the third book. The essence of the ‘Disney but make it Subversive’ trend. (What if Tinkerbell had the attitude of a musketeer? Fuck you that’s what)

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell) Adult Malcolm can go STRAIGHT to hell and not come back for fantasising about his orphan teenage student.