Alicornutopia

*isn't caught up yet*
*tries to remember what you're talking about*
*remembers*
*...is nervous for Jackson*

I mean, at least he's not getting axe murdered.

From Sadde and Isabella Amariah:

My prediction to that question is that he wants to know if he can be a witch, at least sometimes.

Aaaagh OK now I feel like I have to go re-read the latter parts of HDM. I read the first so many times that I have all the major elements memorized, but I only read the other two once each. In my defense I will only claim that they were Really Emotionally Heavy for me at... 12? and I very much Did Not Like the ending. From a more mature perspective, I'm pretty sure they were well-written and I want to try them again. In the meantime, I've forgotten entirely too much detail. I remembered enough to do fine through Effulgence, but I should have re-read it back then, honestly...

Just checking: what's the new Amariah+Sadde sandbox's status WRT canon? Is it just a modernized version of the setting, without the canonical events in its history?

Also, at least Amariah doesn't seem to recognize the blade the way I vaguely recall Lyra doing... Now I'm curious if those particular experiments (end of book 1) ever happened in this 'verse.

In general I do HDM universes as Earths plus witches daemons bears, rather than Earthalikes with "electrum" and "anbaric power". It is the year two thousand single digit and people do not talk about "The North" and canon never happened etc.

Wait, HOW can Dust not exist? Would this Alethiometer work if moved to another world? Is the magic actually in the device itself this time?

Also, in answer to cbhacking’s second spoiler tag: It was introduced in book 2, so I don’t know how the knife could be experimented on in book 1. The murder opened a rift did happen at the end of Book 1.

I also Did Not Like the ending, because the entire past population of all the Earths decided unanimously they would each rather cease to exist for a chance to see the stars for a few seonds than continue indefinitely, and everybody assumed continued attachment to their old atoms.

IIRC, the subtle knife's blade - or at least half of it, I forget - matches the blade used to cut children from their daemons, or possibly another part of the apparatus involved. I vaguely recall Lyra having a justifiable freak-out over this, though that could just be my memory inventing things. Yeah, it's been too long.

It sounds like some of the world's worst problems can be avoided if Dust isn't a thing. Also possibly portals can be left open to facilitate inter-world travel long-term. That would be a good thing. Which makes me worried, of course.

When half of a discussion need be in spoiler tags, perhaps it is time to move it to Spoilerland.

I agree. The spoilery Effulgence thread should maybe be renamed to spoilery Glowfic thread. I’ll see if I can do that.

Edit: Done