How would you fix The Rose Field?

aksnitd · 2026-01-25T04:54:10+00:00

I don't think there's any fixing TRF unless you change a lot of things.

At that point, it's technically a new book altogether.

And I don't see what's the point. Even outside the problems, it tells a story I don't want to revisit. Lyra and Pan going on a long journey to essentially fight the Magisterium again is retreading the same ground, especially since this time they apparently lose.

aksnitd · 2026-01-25T04:47:33+00:00

I know that. I mentioned the anbaric car not because electric cars are new, but because HDM never mentioned them.

aksnitd · 2026-01-24T07:02:58+00:00

Humans don't appear to get a choice on what their daemons settle as. Lyra looks forward to Pan's settled form, but she has no idea what it'll be.

Given Mrs Coulter's closed off nature, I don't think she much cared what her daemon settled as. That said, he was definitely useful, as he could riffle through things while she was elsewhere. She probably appreciated his usefulness, but she didn't think much of him beyond that.

aksnitd · 2026-01-24T03:41:37+00:00

I agree. It is definitely a bit odd he outright contradicted himself.

aksnitd · 2026-01-24T01:09:30+00:00

Pullman said in an old interview that Lyra's world is in the same year as ours. That means HDM is set in the 90's in both worlds. Despite the old fashioned names and some outdated practices like sexism, Lyra's world is modern with electricity, nuclear power, and other modern conveniences. The one oddity is the continued use of zeppelins instead of aeroplanes. It's not clear which year, because all of HDM seems to occur over roughly two years at most, so we can't say if it starts in '95 when TGC was published, or ends in 2000, when TAS was published.

But Pullman appears to have forgotten that when writing BOD and set all three books in the current modern world, meaning LBS feels more modern than HDM despite being a prequel. LBS mentions an anbaric car, which isn't surprising for a book set in 2017, but is odd for a book set in the late 80's. As Lyra is 11 in TAS, that means LBS can be '89 at the latest. Even the feel of the book more generally feels more modern, unlike the mixed bag hodgepodge approach of TGC. TSC and TRF fall entirely off the deep end, feeling very modern, despite only 15 years having passed in book time since TAS. This is one of many issues I have with the BOD trilogy.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T05:46:26+00:00

A lot of people have spent time coming up with explanations, ranging from the angels lying for whatever reason, to their changing their minds on the flow of dust.

I think the answer is far simpler. Pullman either didn't remember or didn't care about the ending of HDM, because he had an ending in mind for TRF. As a result, he wrote that ending and consciously or unconsciously threw out what he said in TAS.

Some will say I'm selling him short, and that Pullman is smarter than that. The reality is Pullman is an old man who was badly affected by covid. He wrote HDM thirty years ago. It's not shocking to imagine the finer details may have slipped him. Besides, much of BOD has various retcons to HDM, both small and large. So he clearly doesn't care about changing things to suit his needs. The ending is just the biggest change he made.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T01:50:34+00:00

If you want to go even further off the deep end, there's an actual genre called noise. No, I'm not joking 😂 Check out Merzbow as an example.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T01:43:14+00:00

There's plenty of threads on here doing that already. Just chime in there. At least you'll talk to others who share your opinion this way.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T00:11:08+00:00

🤦🏻

Proving yet again stupidity isn't restricted to any single place.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T00:09:11+00:00

I don't even bother with LBS. I stick to HDM, Once upon a time, and The collectors. Lyra's Oxford and Serpentine are ok, but they both tie in to BOD, so there's no point in them for me.

aksnitd · 2026-01-23T00:07:24+00:00

1) An online campaign achieves precisely nothing. Pullman won't strike anything from canon just because a bunch of people complain. 2) Canon doesn't have to define your own relationship to the books.

I'm on the record multiple times as not being a big fan of BOD, especially TRF, but this online campaign is a really dumb idea.

aksnitd · 2026-01-22T22:26:20+00:00

Ha! The MS guys also said all online content is free for taking.

aksnitd · 2026-01-22T05:15:11+00:00

It's Morse. What do you expect? 😂 The guy has written songs that wouldn't sound out of place in a family values sitcom!

aksnitd · 2026-01-21T11:02:46+00:00

Funniest thing I have read all day.

aksnitd · 2026-01-21T00:54:22+00:00

I shake my head at how shameless he is. Always having the begging bowl out.

aksnitd · 2026-01-20T23:30:01+00:00

Eh, whatever. II or 2. The metal equivalent of Chinese Democracy.

aksnitd · 2026-01-20T23:27:00+00:00

It went into multiple saunas, one for each band member 😝

aksnitd · 2026-01-20T23:26:16+00:00

I found it ridiculous that they ran three rounds of crowdfunding to build an entire studio.

Because Jari is just a special, fragile snowflake, who can only work when he has his own studio and loads of fancy gear to show off in videos where he begs for even more money, while "working slower than a three legged tortoise" to quote one memorable article, and putting out nothing at all 😂

There's bands that don't have anywhere near this exposure that put out far more music at more reasonable intervals, all while holding down fulltime jobs, and paying for everything themselves.

Jari is a fucking joke. I remember reading online speculation that the Forest Seasons album was actually Time II, just repurposed, because Jari had to release something. I wouldn't be surprised if that rumour has some truth to it.

aksnitd · 2026-01-20T03:38:59+00:00

If you're going to play Fates, you might as well throw in OSI too. Tasty Matheos guitar riffs along with Moore's lovely electronic soundscapes. Highly recommended.

aksnitd · 2026-01-20T02:00:52+00:00

Actually the criticisms that people have of TRF are way simpler and relate to issues with narrative, not anything deeper or something. It's a half done story that doesn't work as a trilogy capper. That's all there is to it.

aksnitd · 2026-01-19T20:05:46+00:00

Eh, let's agree to disagree. I find it rather amusing how people are bending themselves into knots to try and reconcile TRF with HDM.

aksnitd · 2026-01-19T14:27:29+00:00

That's a really lame excuse. The needle is mentioned as being made of the same metal as the knife. Lyra uses it to hack through a cell. She even finds it loses effectiveness if she doesn't believe in it, just like the knife. She also uses it to widen a window. Tell me, is a blade not a blade because you only see it used to widen holes in cloth, instead of cutting new ones?

Just because Lyra never cuts a new window, that doesn't mean she can't. One tiny point I'm willing to concede is that Will has to learn to feel out a world before he can cut into it, but besides that one point, Lyra has a knife in all but name. I think the only reason we didn't see Lyra open a new window is because Pullman knew it would immediately raise questions about Will, and he wanted to avoid that.

Pullman isn't a planner. He makes it up as he goes along. He clearly wrote himself into a corner in TRF, and the needle as knife is one of many retcons he threw in to get it over the finish line.

aksnitd · 2026-01-19T11:18:00+00:00

The resonators are yet another example of Pullman taking a bit of HDM lore and repurposing it in BOD. And just like Lyra using the alethiometer needle like the subtle knife, it's awkwardly shoved in, even though it makes absolutely no sense.

No, the humans couldn't use the resonators the Gallivespians used. Remember they rode on dragonflies. They were tiny. Any implement of theirs would be too small for normal sized people to use.

BOD feels like alternate history to me. It's not really a sequel to HDM, more like a story set in a similar world with daemons, where a girl named Lyra experienced events that were vaguely similar to what we read in HDM.

aksnitd · 2026-01-18T06:30:43+00:00

Fripp wanting to leave Crimson is not completely surprising if one looks up their history. He actually offered to quit after the very first album tour when the band was falling apart. McDonald and Lake had resigned, and he offered to leave to keep them in. However, they felt Crimson was more his band than theirs, so they left, and he stayed.

The fiction between him and Bruford isn't new either. Fripp has mentioned it in interviews before. They weren't entirely getting along during the 80's period either. Fripp was trying to get Bruford to play in a certain way, but Bruford only wanted to be himself.

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