Aging queery...confusion :/

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nattheweirdo

Lance-Corporal
Aug 30, 2009
103
2,275
Devon, UK
#1
I have just been reading thud! and a thought occured to me. On wikipedia it deduces that vime is 46 in nightwatch and there fore 47 in thud! judging by the fact that the glorious 25th of may was 30 years ago and he would have presumedly been 16. But then it said sally von humeding (sp?) was 51. then when vimes meets here he says she looks about 16. he then goes on to say ' it was hard to believe she was not a lot younger than him' did this mean that he was surprised she wasn't 16? or that he couldn't belive she was only a little bit younger than him? i couldn't decide. any ideas?


x Nat
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#2
I think he's seeing a person who looks like a teenager but is in fact about the same age as him. He finds it hard to take her seriously as an equal (age wise).

Wiki surmises things but that doesn't mean they are always right. So, while it's a good guide, it's not infallible (and neither is Terry ;) ).
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
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Cardiff, Wales
#5
Actually that brings up an interesting question about Discworld vampires.

In vampire myths (I think) generally when a person is made into a vampire, they stay the same age forever.

On Discworld there seems to be the sort of vampire that gets made into one and there also seems to be vampire families who presumably have vampire babies that grow up albeit slowly.

Is there any such vampire myth - as in families of vampires in Earth myth? o_O
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#7
Jan Van Quirm said:
In INterview with the Vampire Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) stayed the same age (about 10 was it?) so she aged mentally but not physically - that must be horrible :(
Yes, I remember thinking that when I saw the movie - how awful!
 

kakaze

Lance-Corporal
Jun 3, 2009
488
1,775
#8
There's some stories about vampire babies, and half-vampires (example: Vampire Hunder 'D').

I think that Terry didn't think out the Discworld's timeline very thouroughly in the beginning, not realising how large the series would get. This is probably a major factor in the plot of Thief of Time, in which history is shattered and therefore glaring discrepancies can be explained away.

However, a lot of these stories have odd timelines, or oddly aging people in them. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is in his eighties, and Gandolf is somewhere around 400 (if I remember right).
 

The rat

Lance-Corporal
Apr 18, 2009
247
1,775
Bad Blintz
#9
In the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse novels the Queen of Louisianna is a child that has aged mentally, like young girl in Interview with a Vampire. Even though her bady hasn't aged a day she is fine with that because at the great age she knows that the mind is a more powerful tool than the body.

At least that what I got out of it.
 

Jan Van Quirm

Sergeant-at-Arms
Nov 7, 2008
8,524
2,800
Dunheved, Kernow
www.janhawke.me.uk
#10
kakaze said:
However, a lot of these stories have odd timelines, or oddly aging people in them. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is in his eighties, and Gandolf is somewhere around 400 (if I remember right).
Bzzzzzzzzzz!
Van Quirm - university of Bhang Bhang Duc :laugh:
LotR is not Earth but a parallel universe so aging is different in that Tolkien put a dash of 'elven' blood into Aragorn's heritage (along with some input from a local deity - Melian the Maia if we have any loremeisters looking in :p ) which meant he was exceptional and destined for great things - I think he popped his clogs around age 230. ;)

That or it might be based on a biblical reckoning where the archivists call seasons years, although one of Tolkien's nuttier ideas for the beginnings of Arda went the other way and 1 Valian Year = 11 of our sort... :rolleyes:

Gandalf doesn't count as such as he ain't a man - he's also a Maia (1 rung down from a Vala) who are angelic beings and he takes the form of an old man when he's sent to ME with Saruman & 3 other wizards (2 of whom are consigned to 'the East' and never talked of again :twisted: ). In Middle Earth years (LotR) Gandalf is around the 2000 years old mark as a man - in his true form he's older than the world

PS - it's a story ;)

I think the vampire question is 'genetic' and along the lines of the Little Vampire? This takes the tack that adult Vampires can carry on breeding and have kids who are 'pure-bloods' and grow 'normally' - so like Lachrymosa. The other sort are 'turned' - so they're humans that're given the 'special' bites and then become vampires instead of 'food' :rolleyes: So the The Interview vampires Louis and Claudia are both turned and therefore frozen physically at the age that happened to them.

Of course this now begs the question of whether 'pure-blood' Little Vampire types then carry on aging and presumably end up as Grandparent Vampires... This would mean Terry's Uberwaldian vamps are biologiically pure as they carry on aging (the Old Count) though probably at a different rate to humans as they have a different and likely much slower metabolism...

.... erm :oops: One last thing - in the Magpyr family wasn't Lachrymosa's mum a 'turned' vampire? :eek:

*goes for a lie-down*
 

Dotsie

Sergeant-at-Arms
Jul 28, 2008
9,068
2,850
#11
nattheweirdo said:
'it was hard to believe she was not a lot younger than him' did this mean that he was surprised she wasn't 16? or that he couldn't belive she was only a little bit younger than him? i couldn't decide. any ideas?
Well she looks a lot younger than him, but she's not. She's a bit older. So, she's not a lot younger than him, and that was hard to believe. Make sense? Maybe!

The whole aging of vampires thing makes your brain hurt if you think about it too much. Some days it's one thing, some days it's another. If there's one thing we know from reading Discworld, it's try not to worry about it too much :laugh:
 

nattheweirdo

Lance-Corporal
Aug 30, 2009
103
2,275
Devon, UK
#12
i think He is about 51 now judging from new eveidence from thud!. When he's talkign to the 'daylight face' dwarf the drawf is havcing a go at him about being a blakcboard monitor and vimes says something in his head about it being over 45 years ago...and then goes on to say oh the wonders of being six or something tot hat extent :) it hink who ever put it on wikipedia assumed it he was 47 because that would be how old Sybil is (PTerry actually says she's 16 in nightwatch) and assumed they were the same age. Clearly not... xD
 

nattheweirdo

Lance-Corporal
Aug 30, 2009
103
2,275
Devon, UK
#15
poohcarrot said:
...but in Nightwatch, the new vicar who wants to dig up the graves, says they've been there for over 30 years, so if this is true, Vimes went back in time more than 30 years. 8)
not necessarily because he never says that young sam is 16 back then does he? he just says sybil is, and they may not be the same age ;)
 

raisindot

Sergeant-at-Arms
Oct 1, 2009
5,125
2,450
Boston, MA USA
#16
Exp. Date said:
In the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse novels the Queen of Louisianna is a child that has aged mentally, like young girl in Interview with a Vampire. Even though her bady hasn't aged a day she is fine with that because at the great age she knows that the mind is a more powerful tool than the body.

At least that what I got out of it.
You've got to have sympathy for the newly minted 'teenage vampire' on 'True Blood'; she was a virgin when she was "turned" and is cursed to always remain one... :)

Jeff in Boston
 

kakaze

Lance-Corporal
Jun 3, 2009
488
1,775
#17
raisindot said:
Exp. Date said:
In the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse novels the Queen of Louisianna is a child that has aged mentally, like young girl in Interview with a Vampire. Even though her bady hasn't aged a day she is fine with that because at the great age she knows that the mind is a more powerful tool than the body.

At least that what I got out of it.
You've got to have sympathy for the newly minted 'teenage vampire' on 'True Blood'; she was a virgin when she was "turned" and is cursed to always remain one... :)

Jeff in Boston
I don't know...

I think some guys would be very attracted to a girl who would regain her virginity each day.

Not me though. ;)
 
#18
Eh? Like a little experience under the proverbial wing, eh? Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink? and Bob's yer Uncle, eh?

I dated a guy who was ... let's be gentle and say completely inexperienced... Note to women... do NOT do this... they want to marry you. It was fun until I decided to end it because although he was almost 20 he looked about 15... hehehe, at the age of 22 I felt like a cougar... omg, I can't believe I admitted that. :oops: :laugh:
 

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