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“You need to clear your mind.”

#OHHH this #Parallels #chaos family #Hdm

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girls with mother issues will be fed again

#Yes they will be #his dark materials #Hdm #Marisa coulter #My love

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Chapter 1: For You

A light chill filled the air as Lyra stepped outside, eyes adjusting to the blare of the sun as Pan curled against her neck as an ermine, staying close.

“Here, my love.”

Her mother was guiding her, grasping her arm softly and nudging her along. Lyra hadn’t left the cabin in a long while—weeks, perhaps, or maybe a month. Her legs felt numb and stiff as she moved forward, soles of her feet crunching against some kind of gravel. 

Are we on a road? Pan asked, barely able to discern their surroundings himself as they moved forward, warmth and heat touching their skin and fur.

Lyra didn’t know, and she said and thought nothing as Mrs. Coulter continued to lead her, a soft fragrance whirling through Lyra’s nostrils as they continued down some sort of travel path.

((read more on ao3))

#his dark materials #hdm #marisa coulter #lyra belacqua #season3 #fanfic #so inspired actually #backonmybullshit

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#His Dark Materials #hdm #hdm season 3 #oh my god #so excited

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Pls don't let us down, Jane????

#his dark materials #hdm #s3 #ohPLS #weneedthis

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HDM S3: Exploring Lyra's Love for her Mother

I watched the livestream of the NYCC where Dafne said this season explores Lyra's love for her mother, which is a new feeling to portray as so much of what we've seen is Lyra's hatred of her. In season 1 she's running away from her, in season 2 she's avoiding her while nonetheless being brought face-to-face with her. Throughout the books, too, we only ever see Lyra's raw emotions and disgust of her mother's work, even though having a mother is the one thing Lyra always wanted and never had (and now so cruelly has in a way she doesn't want).

They also said Lyra is asleep for most of her time with Mrs. Coulter in s3, which makes me wonder if the time skip happens *after* that or if Mrs. Coulter keeps her (mostly) asleep, waking her up every now and again to see how she'll react, to give her a chance, to tell her something and do something motherly with her before she gathers herself and if after 3 years of this Lyra grows attached in a way she can't comprehend.

There's so much potential here, and I'm so excited to see what happens and how they portray this devilishly complicated and nuanced relationship.

#his dark materials #hdm #hdm season 3 #theories #i do wonder about this time skip though

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hello tumblr i am back at the perhaps ill-fated expectation that we will finally get a s3 trailer this evening

#hdm #his dark materials #pls #want to see marisa and lyra #and marisa and the golden monkey #and asriel #and everyone

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Manifesting the His Dark Materials Season 3 teaser trailer to drop this month. Please BBC/HBO!

#PLS #plssss #plsplspls #hdm

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I have been so MIA on this blog, but I've finally finished my PhD (!!!) and would like to make a shout out to fandom and fanfic, HDM in particular (novel incoming!).

I've always been a fangirl, before I even knew what that was. When I was little, I was obsessed with A Bug's Life and used to draw little stick figure motion books. I'd scribble the ants running around or talking to each other, rescuing someone or falling over something. As I got older, this obsession didn't really fade. I continued to become obsessed with things, like utterly and entirely obsessed with TV shows and actors and stories. Of these obsessions was one of my earliest and most favorites: His Dark Materials.

I happened upon the trilogy as a middle school teen looking for something to do after school. My local bookstore salesperson recommended I read this series because she thought I might enjoy it. Indeed, I did. There were daemons and armored bears and witches and, yes, a beautiful and mysterious woman I couldn't stop thinking about. Marisa Coulter captured me just like she captured all those children. I kept thinking about her life and her motives and her connection to Lyra. How did she become the way she was? We only got her POV in book 3. What was she thinking all that time living with Lyra? How did she view the events that happened? What if she had done even the slightest thing differently? How would that change the story and her relationship with Lyra?

To satiate my desire to know these things, I started writing little stories about her on pieces of paper in my school notebooks. I didn't know that fandom was a thing or that ao3 or ffnet existed, so I just kept to myself. I annoyed some friends and made them read my ideas, but I was alone in my obsessive pursuits.

It was like this for a long while, even into high school and then college. My dirty little secret; my strange thing nobody else would even understand. At some point, however, I *did* discover that ffnet was a thing. There was an entire site dedicated to people writing about books and TV shows! And there was even a space for HDM! So, I started to post my stories there. I did this for years, without realizing that spaces like tumblr and twitter existed as well. I was half in yet half out, here yet not. But I was happy. Sharing my thoughts and stories made me happy. It was enough for me, even though I was actually missing out.

I joined this tumblr space during the pandemic in late 2020, when I was well into my doctoral studies. Like a lot of people, I found myself displaced during this time, moving states to return home to ride out this uncertainty. I didn't see anyone except my immediate family. I couldn't access my university's library to do my research the way I wanted. I worked on my PhD qualifying exams and then my dissertation every single day in this weird isolated void, with the days bleeding into one another like bad dreams.

And then I remembered, suddenly, that HDM was returning for season 2. And I wondered if there were people out there who were talking about it.

So then I found this space. A friend encouraged me to start a tumblr, as it was a place for fans to connect and had content I'd probably like to see. I started this blog literally knowing nothing and no one. I simply wanted to talk about HDM and share my stories and read other stories. I hoped it would be a place for me. I slowly learned more about how things worked (although still hardly know and am the queen of the faux pas !), and then season 2 aired and I found myself going completely feral here with other people. At long last, I had a community of people who were just as excited as I was. I didn't feel embarrassed about my undying love for Marisa Coulter. I felt heard. I felt seen. I felt at home.

I joined a discord server and met amazing people through that. After more consideration, I made a Twitter account and met even MORE people, including an incredible woman I actually fell in love with and now have a long-term, serious relationship with. Because of fandom. Because I decided to make an account and see if other people like me were out there talking about HDM.

My PhD is finished now. After the hype of season 2 I had to buckle down and finally finish my dissertation. I had to apply for jobs, too, and somehow found one. And then I worked on another academic book and some articles, and what was once weekly fic updates and oneshots became distant memories of a freer and less inhibited time.

But I made it. I'm a whole new person now. A doctor, actually (something Marisa Coulter wasn't allowed to be). And I'm so thankful for the role fandom has played in this journey, in what it has given me and provided me not only during my PhD but for my future moving forward.

Fandom will always have a special place in my heart. I might not be as active as I used to be, during that strange pandemic era where time seemed to still. But I'm here, in the ways I can be, and I'm so excited for season 3 of HDM that my heart very well might BURST!

Thank you to those who have gone on this journey with me, be it yelling with me online or reading one of my stories or posting one that I've read. I'm so grateful for you and for this space, and I'm so excited for this next part of my life, fandom and otherwise. ❤️

#personal #his dark materials #marisa coulter #means so much to me #where would i be without it #season 3 pls get here

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betty crocker is an alien empress and an important enemy in the plot of homestuck fyi

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thinking about how his dark materials is about telling stories, and how Will falls into this fantasy storybook world and has all these adventures with magic and witches and talking animals but eventually has to return to his own world (our world, the reader’s world) in order to grow up, and how that’s just like the way you read these fantastical magical children’s books as a kid but you eventually have to leave them behind and grow up in your own reality, and you can never quite be in those other worlds again the way you were when you were a child, and really that means we the readers are all Will, growing up and looking back on the fantasies of our childhoods and yearning to be with Lyra again but with her world always just out of our reach, and the only way we can access it again is through stories

#oh ok #I'm not crying #hdm

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mrs coulter: he died of natural causes.

lyra: you pushed him off a 55 story window.

mrs coulter: gravity is natural.

#spluttering #exactly Marisa #marisa coulter #hdm

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SHOCKED TO SAY THE LEAST

so i've been working on a dissertation thesis on his dark materials & decided to do a comparison between how many times "Mrs. Coulter" vs. "Marisa" is used.

"Mrs. Coulter" is used 488 times"

"Marisa" is used 19 times.

Makes my point (and Pullman's I guess) but only 19 times is she called by her first name over all three His Dark Materials books....... was expecting a low number but wow! I AM SHOOK!

#Omg #This is wild #Sexism at its finest #Good find #marisa coulter #Hdm

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heyyy - this is for the fanfic questions themed around time - Friday and August :)

Friday, most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted? Okay, I said previously One Kernel at a Time, but I'll also add Show You. In this one, Mary admits to Marisa she's never actually been kissed before and Marisa "shows" her how it's done. I...wrote that for me and for ALL of us who have ever had a crush on Marisa Coulter 😅

August, are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs? I had to think about this, but I really don't think so! I don't often write based on music, but I did just recently write The Sea and the Stars based entirely on and around the poem "Saltwater" by Finn Butler that is worth sharing here in full because I just think it is so incredibly beautiful:

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.

And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know

sometimes

you cannot even breathe deeply, and

the night sky is no home, and

you have cried yourself to sleep enough times

that you are down to your last two percent, but

nothing is infinite,

not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day

you are going to find yourself again.

—Finn Butler, The Wreckage

#thank you for asking! #I appreciate it #asks #writers talking writing

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september? :)

September, share a comment or review that still warms your heart? Oh, this is such a HARD one because literally every comment means so much to me! I feel so humbled at the time people take to read my work and their kindness in sharing their thoughts. My heart warms every time (and long after stays warm!). If I had to choose one, though, I keep thinking back to this comment a guest left on The Duty of The Old:

normally reading grief/trauma triggers me but this is done with so much sensitivity that I feel comfortable enough to read it so thank you🥰

This fic deals with the death of a loved one, which is so, so hard and something I know a lot of us have experienced. I felt so touched to know that I wrote it with enough sensitivity for this reader. This was also a reminder of how we really feel and experience so much both reading and writing fanfic. It really is an embodied experience, and this comment forever lives with me as I write different kinds of emotions and consider how the reader might feel. ❤️

#ty for asking! #asks #these questions are so interesting

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questions from @torrefaction-of-silver​ (ty!)

Wednesday, name a fic that you have posted which you think is underrated? Oh gosh, not sure if I’d say underrated, but back in the fall I wrote For A Better Future, A Better Life as an AU with a teen Marisa and toddler Lyra. It's not the kind of Lyra & Marisa fic we typically read and write about but I think it still captures their dynamic for the way Marisa refuses to claim Lyra, lies to her mother about sneaking to go see her, and gives her up and away at the end (spoiler, lol). I portray her as feeling perhaps more sad and emotional than she would normally be, but I am a sap so gotta indulge a little bit 😝 And I enjoyed writing this one.

November, do you have any rituals or requirements for getting in the mood for writing? Ooh this is really interesting! So, I'm a PhD candidate trying to write my dissertation (*cries*) and I often turn to fanfic when I'm at my wit’s end with my academic work. So my fanfic-writing is usually inspired and facilitated by my academic writing, which feels like a cool yet kind of chaotic ritual. This makes it a bit inconsistent at times, I suppose, as I can’t always predict when I’ll a) get sick of writing my dissertation and b) have story inspiration. I tend to get inspiration for Maryisa fics from activities in my own academic life (ha, to talk about self-indulgence!), so sometimes I jot down ideas in between meetings on sticky notes 🤪

Seconds, shortest completed fic? Twin Souls (1208 words), featuring the golden monkey in 2x05 of HDM when Marisa left him to go and visit the illustrious Dr. Mary Malone.

fanfic questions themed around time

monday: do you struggle with the ‘boring’ parts of writing?

tuesday: name a fic you have posted which you think is overrated?

wednesday: name a fic which you have posted which you think is underrated?

thursday: have you ever written a high fantasy concept?

friday: most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted?

saturday: what gets you excited whilst writing?

sunday: how frequently do you take requests or prompts, if at all?

fortnight: what wip do you plan on posting next, if at all?

january: what was the first fic you posted this year?

february: have you ever written and/or a holiday-centric fic?

march: do you listen to music whilst writing? 

april: have you ever written and/or posted a crackfic?

may: a fic you have regretted posting?

june: have you ever written and/or posted a marriage fic?

july: what’s the hottest fic you have written and/or posted if you write smut at all?

august: are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs/etc?

september: share a comment or review which still warms your heart?

october: name the darkest or angstiest fic you have written and/or posted?

november: do you have any rituals or requirements for getting in the mood for writing?

december: have you ever gifted a fic to someone?

recent: the most recent fic you have posted online?

ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?

seconds: shortest completed fic?

minutes: how long does it normally take you to complete a fic?

hours: longest wip or completed fic?

tomorrow: favourite ways to write fluff? yesterday: favourite way to write angst? today: have you made any progress in any wips today?

calendar: do you have a schedule for posting?

forever: do you balance fic writing with original concept stuff?

#asks #ty for indulging me #I love talking about the writing process!

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Friday and October for the fanfic questions 💙

Friday, most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted? Is it a cop-out to say most of my Maryisa fics...? 😅 Of the Maryisa fics, I’d have to say: One Kernel at a Time. I wrote this after I burned a bag of popcorn and was feeling very silly about it and needed to work it out through writing as I ate charred kernels 🍿 so tag, Marisa, youuuu also burned popcorn because you don’t understand modern microwaves (but fortunately you had Mary to comfort you).

October, name the darkest or angstiest fic you have written and/or posted? I would have to say All A Lie, which features Asriel dying in the North while Lyra is living with Mrs. Coulter and Mrs. Coulter breaking the news both about that and her parents’ identities. It’s from Lyra’s POV and I feel like it’s just so intense, to see a child go through both blows like that and to both hate Mrs. Coulter for it yet turn to her for comfort because she’s all Lyra has. And of course Mrs. Coulter doesn’t exactly say she’s Lyra’s mother, either, in true Mrs. Coulter fashion, which makes it hard. Some of my others might be angstier and certainly darker, but this one was the first one to come to mind.

Thanks for the ask! 💙