#join me next time when i'll keep being exhaustingly nitpicky about stupid details

[clarabosswald]

my hdm reread continues, i’m already 2 full chapters into the subtle knife and i’ve already got a few points of interest to share:

1. the question of lyra’s age/how much time passes from the trilogy’s beginning to its end from my last post: when will is introduced he’s described firmly as twelve years old, so no vagueness here. when he meets lyra, he notices she’s about his age; later when lyra is thinking about him, she says he couldn’t be much older than her.  then a few people have commented on my last post that lyra’s oxford takes place 2 years after the end of tes, and that lyra is 15 there - i didn’t remember that because i actually haven’t read that book yet (i’m ashamed about that, yes - and i won’t manage to read it before la belle sauvage either, bc i’ve only purchased once upon a time in the north) so lyra is 13 by the end of tes; and we know the events of tgc take about 6 months; and we’ve still got the events of almost two books ahead of us. so i’d still say that makes her high end 11/low end 12 in the beginning of tgc. it’s a bit annoying to me that la belle sauvage is described as taking place 10 years before the trilogy, yet lyra is 6 months old in it, bc it’d make it seem like she should be 10.5 in tgc - but i guess saying 10 years/a decade is more graceful than saying “eleven years” all the time, so oh well. (and again all of this doesn’t actually matter much except for my perfectionistic obsession to this sort of detail) 

2. more age details (sorry) - lord asriel’s this time. i’ve always been wondering about his age - the details surrounding it always seem super confusing. then i stumbled upon a line in tsk which i completely forgot about/haven’t noticed before. thorold, asriel’s servant which is left in svalbard and talks with serafina, tells her about asriel and says: “I may have learned a thing or two in the forty years I been with his lordship, but only by picking 'em up accidental.“ and something i noticed just now - in the digital version of the trilogy i use only for referencing purposes, the word “forty” isn’t there. so maybe i’ve never noticed this before because it doesn’t exist in the hebrew version either (i’m too lazy to check right now). maybe it’s a newer addition in this version of the trilogy. either way, that line troubles me - if thorold had been with asriel for 40 years, how old does that make asriel? if asriel hired thorold as an adult, it could make asriel about as much as 60 years old.  but is thorold’s been serving asriel for almost all his life, as kind of a personal family servant or something, it could put asriel’s age around the mid-forties range. why does this bother me in particular? because of asriel’s relationship with mrs coulter. marisa is 35 years old. the thought of her being in a romantic relationship with a man twice her age makes me beyond uncomfortable (it’s not as their relationship is particularly healthy to begin with).  i can definitely live with a forty or forty-something year old asriel - a 10 years age difference is the most i an feel comfortable with in this case. but i don’t know if the assumption of thorold being asriel’s servant since babyhood is realistic enough (even in lyra’s world).  i’ll hold on to it, but i’m still troubled. 3. ruta skadi - a character i always wish we had seen more of - the last few years i was toying with the idea of her being black. all i could remember about her was that she had dark curly hair and black eyes. and i’m all for more characters of color when possible. but now i’ve noticed that shortly after her initial description, this line appears: “Ruta Skadi stood. Her white arms gleamed in the firelight; her eyes glittered so brightly that even the farthest witch could see the play of expression on her vivid face.” so sadly that killed off my black ruta headcanon.  but, ruta and serafina’s relationship is even stronger than i remembered - i’m still early on and i know that they’ve still got a few things to go through together but whoopsie doo, after all these years i think i ship them.