His Dark Materials

[AllGoodDogs]

New BBC adaptation, looks so good, can't wait trailer here -

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10162256439035553&id=683285552&sfnsn=mo

I imagine it like my internal monologue, especially when I'm telling myself off or giving myself a good talking to!

I've always thought the daemons were basically everything that goes on in a person's mind/heart/brain/soul. So sometimes they are like 'sidekicks' –like when part of you thinks 'I can't' but another part thinks 'No, I must' and you 'go along with' yourself, IYSWIM. And they're also your conscience, and the 'wiser' part of yourself, and the less wise part –everything.

Everything in your brain?

GCSE Latin vocab?

Following a recipe to bake a cake?

Remembering a game you played as a child?

Falling in love?

All that happens in your scuttling/swooping/sloping-alongside friend? So what are you? Surely just a bony encasement for blood and veins? And I thought we needed our brains to hold our muscles up. Damage to the memory part of the brain affecting the physical structure and capabilities of a body for instance. So that’s hard to imagine.

But if not that, it would mean some parts of our non-physical self being housed in our bodies and other parts in our daemon. How does that happen naturally - without an intelligent creator to arrange it all?

You don't want to think too much about dæmons because they don't make sense to us in our world. It's like trying to imagine a universe with more dimensions. How are they born, do they just appear or does the female dæmon of the father give birth to the dæmon at the same time as the mother gives birth to the child? Presumably not or it would be very obvious if your child was the result of an affair (Mrs Coulter, I'm looking at you). Who names the dæmon? What form does a brand new dæmon take? Do dæmons age? If a dæmon is the physical manifestation of your personality does that mean humans in Lyra's world change less than we do in our world? The human brain doesn't stop maturing until mid 20s and yet in Lyra's world your dæmon fixes at 12 or 13? What happens to your dæmon if your have a degenerative brain disease?

Wonderful, useful, captivating literary device though.

Whoever mentioned your internal monologue - yes! I was amazed to find out that some people don’t have this. My husband gets really uncomfortable if you say ‘internal monologue’ to him, he can talk to himself deliberately but I have several different strands of monologue in my head at any one time and I suspect he thinks I’m not normal.

I’m willing to bet Phillip Pullman has a rich interior monologue and whoever adapted this book for tv just...hasn’t. It would explain why the daemons have become secondary elements, cartoonish sidekicks.

There's a part of me I call the Sergeant Major.

Bitch is always on my back making me do difficult things! I swear I'd make it out of bed half as quick in the morning if she weren't there barking orders at me.

Maybe the joy of reading about the dæmons is that we can imagine them how we want and any visual adaption will fall short. Although I like the idea of people without an internal monologue, sounds a bit like those who have no mind's eye.

Oh wow - finally it’s Sunday!

(Am currently binge watching Season 1 Buffy - it is even better than I remembered. Wonder if, in years to come, HDM will provoke such love ...)

Oh! LOOK!

The Book of Dust on R4 Extra at 2.30pm today! Read by Simon Russell Beale.

How did I miss this in 2017?

I remember driving back from Cambridge with it on. It was just the right length for the journey. I think it was the same week LBS was published.

Book of dust was waaaaay too bleak, got into big trouble in the books board for spoilers, so will shut up about that here!

I didn't realise it was on at 9m tonight.

Is it not being shown tonight?

9pm

@WaterSheep , helpful cross post, thank you.

Really, Loopytiles? The only Book of Dust thread I was on was intended for those of us who had read it - so it was open to spoilers as far as I remember.

The broadcast this afternoon was quite absorbing - but I couldn’t help feeling I’d have preferred a proper dramatisation. Simon Russell Beale doing ‘all the voices’ was just a little too seasonally close to Jim’s Ghost Stories in the Attic. (Archers ref. ).

Any time now please.

WHY have the bears not got their armour on?!? Whyyyyyyyy? It's such a huge metaphor, why have they left it out of the big fight?

Anyone watching?

Am an hour behind.

Yes, just finished watching. Liking Mrs C using feminine wiles on McPhail

I can't believe I'm the first to suggest this but google doesn't reveal anything.

Was Pullman inspired by The Snow Queen when he wrote Northern Lights? Lyra (Gerda) travels into the land of snow to rescue Roger (Kay) who has been captured by Mrs Coulter (the Snow Queen). I don't think it goes much further than that but it struck me as too close for coincidence.

Interesting, Cooroo! Hasn’t Phillip P adapted classic fairy tales in a collection book?

Snow Queen in Lion, Witch and Wardrobe and Frozen too. The illustrations used to terrify me.

Can someone tell me what happened at the end
We missed the end as the sport thing must have run over, we got to the bit where the good bear told her that her father was in a sort of cabin

Outside the cabin Roger told lyra he would be there if she was ever scared. Asriel’s assistant answered door and took roger for a drink, asriel came in and was horrified to see lyra - “I didn’t send for YOU!” Stelmaria spotted roger, and asriel looked at him in a sinister way, which lyra couldn’t see from where she was standing.