#he should illustrate a hdm book

[tragicotps]

Marisa coulter + ART (part 2) [Artwork from French comic book illustrator Jean Pierre Gibrat]

[squireofgeekdom]

thoughts on hdm 1-2 under the cut, though first i need to register that i am Deeply Grumpy at the stupidity of the world that has led to this deeply absurd release schedule that, specifically, has prevented me from watching these episode upon release properly, that is, on the BBC with m on sunday, instead of on monday evening on hbo by myself. it annoys me and i can say definitively that it is a vastly inferior viewing experience. (yes we’ll watch them together on sunday that’s not the Point the point is There Was a Proper Way for this to be done and release schedules are dumb and i am Irked :[ ) 

that said. show and book spoilers below.

love a show that opens the first thirty seconds with narrated illustrative montage that goes: just to be clear, this is about rebelling against and killing the christian god. just in case you forgot or somehow didn’t get that the last two seasons. the fucking adaptation of his dark materials we deserve.

i am fascinated and puzzled by some of the adaptational cuts here like. well, we’ll see whether i think they work on next viewing, i don’t know that they specifically *don’t* work, I’m just puzzled by what went into them. (and like, there are a lot of additions/changes that really do work and I’m excited about) I want to buy everyone on the creative team lunch and pick their brains for hours about what went into this show, honestly.

Vastly Insufficient Balthamos being A Bitch. Insufficient Balthamos + Balthamos and Baruch in general, honestly, and the adaptational change they made to when he departs is just. very strange. like i can understand not wanting to do it the book way but it’s. it was very odd. (as is cutting the first angel attack & attempt to call metatron, which sets up that they’re being followed and what happens to Baruch later - and what went into their decision to seperate felt oddly rushed compared to other things which the show took more time than the book to set up) Though Balthamos being in human form instead of pretending to be Will’s daemon did allow for some truly excellent ‘what the actual fuck is this child doing’ expressions on that actor who, let me be clear, is excellent

frankly this show has made consistently sufficiently good choices that it had my expectations high enough (i know, the secret to happiness is low expectations and anytime i break that rule with myself i regret it, but) and i mean, the book’s subtext is barely not text that if the angel boyfriends had not kissed i would have been disappointed in the show. but yes. they did. these angels gay good for them good for them. oops now one of them is dead. soon both of them will be dead. 

fascinated that the suburbs of the dead went abandoned industrial grounds / DMV #aesthetic XD (though i do feel the loss of some of the book dialogue there) the world of the dead is very close to the vibes of how i pictured it in my head which is really quite satisfying.

having the gallivespians have dragonfly style (mechanical?) wings instead of riding dragonflies works and is probably one of those things that probably makes more sense from a special effects / keeping characters in frame perspective

having ogunwe be more of a character than in the book and showing more story there is an a+ choice. also love the lack of subtlety of drones being used on a resistance camp by the bad guys. and the continual fuck the christian patriarchy of it all. having mary meet the girls and talk about leaving the catholic church just like. yknow, in case it wasn’t clear what the ‘temple’ in this world was equivalent to.

whoever cast james mcavoy as lord asriel should be showered in praise and money because like. goddamn. that’s lord asriel. fuckin hell. 

im almost hoping that the trailer line from mary about ‘the greatest love is the love you will die for’ is going to be subverted and the whole line is something like ‘i used to believe/ be told that the greatest love is the love you will die for. now i know it’s the love you will live for.’ given. yknow. context of ‘if you stay in lyra’s world you will die’

will’s actor continues to be absolutely brilliant in the role. hurrah’s all around for the casting director and that kid’s acting choices. 

Oh also I'm fascinated by the choices in the intro. The mulefla's world viewed with Dust is gorgeous, and m and I totally called where the amber was going to go in the intro sequence

[argentvive]

The Imagination Chamber - Illustrations

Unlike Pullman’s other HDM minibooks such as Lyra’s Oxford and Serpentine, the Imagination Chamber has only two small illustrations. 

The first is a raven on the dedication page.

The second is at the end of the book, on the last verso page.

Can we make anything out of these?

We know Pullman is very conversant with various kinds of symbolism, including alchemical symbols.  But these are a puzzle.  They are not connected to any of the squibs of text in the book itself.  

Both the raven and the rose are alchemical symbols:  the raven represents the Black Stage (the first stage) and the rose represents the Red Stage (final stage).  So a raven holding a rose makes no sense.  They should not coexist in the same frame.  

So what could the images mean then?  For now my working theory is that both ravens represent Pullman.  He has said, when asked, that his Daemon would be a raven.  So on the dedication page the raven is meant to be Pullman NOT Miss Enid Jones.  And on the last page Raven!Pullman is bringing the reader the final book, which he has already said would be titled something like “Garden of Roses.”  (See my earlier post on the link to the alchemical treatise Rosarium Philosophorum.)  https://argentvive.tumblr.com/post/647131699282690048/roses-in-alchemy-and-book-3-of-the-book-of-dust

Somebody should ask him at a fan event!  Though he might give a misleading answer.

Does anyone have a better idea?  

[ellynneversweet]

How did you decide on the daemons you did for the Bennet sisters?

Oh that’s something that takes some answering, thank you :D. I tend to pick and choose between religious and heraldic symbolism, cultural associations, puns, but I’ve got a bunch of loose ground rules that narrow things down based on age, social standing, gender, etc — it depends on the character. Starting with broad strokes:

Aristocrats and their families really pride themselves on big-cat daemons, which neatly ties up:  Darcy and his cheetah daemon; Lord Asriel and Stelmaria; and the long and storied history of British monarchs representing themselves /the state with lion symbolism.

Following from that, the more important you (think) you are, the larger and more baroque your daemon tends to be. In Mr Bennet’s case, his bear daemon is so large as to be practically disabling, since the accomodations necessarily required to manage his lifestyle are barely within budget (story of Mr Bennet’s life), but he’s also someone who has social power and doesn’t use it.

The enlightenment arguments about concepts of the self as an individual distinct from the society it springs from, and the interest in the scientific community in exploration in classification that were happening at about this time should clash in the public imagination with more old-fashioned heraldic concepts of what it means to have your inner self on display. And, while I had a lot of issues with The Secret Commonwealth, I did think it was interesting that Pullman suggested people mostly knew what animal their daemon looked like, and that’s something take into account at a time when your average person would not be expected to be widely informed on the fauna outside their own home region. So some people are very traditional and conformist (the Fitzwilliams), some people try to game the system on their or their children’s behalf (Jane, to an extent), some would prefer to see the whole thing stripped of artifice or otherwise romanticise the idea of more instinctive and naturalistic (Darcy very much, Elizabeth slightly less so), some don’t think too much about it and  just go with the flow  (Charlotte).

Witches and magicians (almost) always have bird daemons, per HDM and also because of the consistent association of birds with magic in JS&MN, particularly ravens. So Jonathan Strange has a blue jay daemon, because blue jays are corvids but they don’t look it, and Strange is a very good magician but tends not to look it on on introduction.On the other end of the size scale, Mrs Bennet’s dalmatian pelican daemon is springs from catholic imagery in which pelicans are symbolic of self-sacrificing motherhood, based on a medieval belief that pelicans pecked their chests bloody to feed their chicks with their own blood. Since this is absolutely not true of pelican behaviour, and since pelicans in life (enormous, smelly, loud) are much less romantic and attractive than that imagery suggests , I figure it works both with what Mrs Bennet would like to believe about herself and how she actually is.

Which necessarily leads to the Bennet girls all having bird daemons, conveniently narrowing the field of possibilities.

For Jane, whose daemon is a hyacinth macaw, I wanted a tension between outward conformity to the role of perfect daughter and gentlewoman, and someone who has hidden depths. Bright bird daemons are very much in vogue for ladies — think parrots and birds of paradise — so she fits that mould, with an elegant and beautiful daemon; but on the other hand hyacinth macaws are much bigger, cleverer and more powerful than your average parrot, they’re less immediately eye-catching and surprisingly good at camouflaging themselves. They’re also (by parrot standards) relatively patient, even-tempered and shy, and they pair-bond quite strongly in addition to being generally social, but they can be destructive when they’re unhappy, and Jane, I think, quietly excels at self-destruction. The backstory that may or may not make it into the fic itself was that Jane spent a lot of time in her mid-teens being dragged around town to every menagerie and museum Mrs Bennet could manage to get tickets to, mostly without Elizabeth, feeling miserably shy and self-conscious because people kept staring at her. She saw a very lonely macaw (via a Portuguese trader Uncle Gardiner knew) trying unsuccessfully to hide from massive crowds in a showy display, and felt a sort of immediate empathy with it which, erm, stuck.

For Elizabeth, whose daemon is a gyrfalcon and, unlike Jane, a complete accident, I riffed a bit off Darcy. So, something fast (and, importantly, faster than a cheetah), independent and aggressive, but also beautiful, playful and charming — archness and sweetness, you know? Gyrfalcons are beautiful and quite acrobatic, and (pun incoming) their scientific name (falco rusticolus) means countryside dweller. They’re endemic to both England and the arctic areas that the witches are associated with, suiting Elizabeth and her interest in her foreign grandmother. They’ve also got a long association with the uppermost echelons of society, being the valued possession of kings and generally a mark of high honour to associate with in any capacity. (Darcy, whose family still regard themselves basically as vassals of the Raven King, absolutely knows what a gyrfalcon looks like and what it implies, but unfortunately rushed to judgement too soon. He’s in for a hard time sorrynotsorry)

For Mary, (short-eared owl), an owl was the obvious choice, given the association with seeking wisdom, if not necessarily finding it — I admit to a bit of petty amusement at the way owls are not, in fact, particularly bright birds, despite their reputations. Barn owls and snowy owls, while lovely, are just super over-done, and for Mary I wanted something little bit silly, too big and too drab in his colouring to be fashionable, but not fierce enough to command admiration. I figured by this point in their parenting career Mr&Mrs Bennet had moved on from dragging the girls around town, and what encouragement they got to consider the wonders of the natural world consisted of being pointed at the door and told not to come inside until dinner, maybe a  new book of illustrated plates if Mr Bennet thought it was interesting enough to buy. Short-eared owls are pretty commonplace in huge parts of the world, including the UK, so it’s quite likely that Mary would have come across them even with limited resources.

For Kitty, I admit that I don’t have a sub-species quite nailed — he’s a pink hummingbird, but that’s colouration rather than a specific type (possibly a bronze-tailed comet or a red-tailed comet). He’s pretty, tiny, silly and annoying, (‘for heaven’s sake stop buzzing about at breakfast! My poor nerves, etc etc’), which seemed a natural fit for Kitty. However, hummingbirds are also associated with the souls of dead warriors in Aztec mythology (although admittedly my knowledge in that field is woefully thin), and as Kitty has a fair bit of fight in her and absolutely no ability to pick her battles, her daemon would naturally be the sort of animal that starts fights they have absolutely no ability to win.

As for Lydia, well — she’s still working it out, in her own special way.