his-dark-materials

the "my favorite character did nothing wrong" mindset is completely unappealing to me because i love thinking about all the things my favorite characters did wrong

john parry a father who would leave his at most 1 year old son and possibly postpartum wife for an arctic expedition, despite knowing his family were cold and distant (were they before he went missing on this expedition? well. to not see their son's only child for years..). gets lost, tries to find his way back to them initially, but then resigns himself to building a life in lyra's world and having a purpose that he believes justifies his loss of the family he loves, a republic in the way lyra and will have to do so. becomes a man so entrenched in that purpose, that he will break a promise to a man that died him for it to be fulfilled, that he will tell a young scared bleeding boy to serve this purpose as well. "A child… How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be" (because it has to be worth it. it has to be worth not trying to go back to his wife and son. he has to see this through) "Ignore everything else, no matter how important it seems, and go and do this" a similar belief as asriel that the end justifies the means, but even more so that the personal cost & loss pales in significance to the greater good and he has weighed them up, calculated the fallout, and made that decision, yoked himself to his decision forever to his deathbed. and it will kill him slowly (physically and mentally) to live in a different world. would he have gone back if he knew exactly how his family had been impacted in the aftermath of him going missing? well. he knew in the last moments before he died that this was his son and he would send him to asriel, a boy with a knife, his identity reduced to a weapon, just as john parry had reduced his own identity to a purpose. john parry went missing in the blizzard and stanislaus grumman/jopari/the shaman was his new task till death ("Why didn't you stop the witch, then? Why did you let her kill him?" "We would have done, earlier. But his task was over once he'd led us to you.")

Still trying to finish the Rose Field

New hdm episode today!

finished the rose field with a variety of feelings but predominantly the urge to visit the trout inn and have reg and brenda polstead serve me sandwiches and an enormous bowl of soup